Multiple Cookies for one site

Firefox Facts mentioned Cookie Pie in their latest article and I thought it would be nice to review it as well because I’m using one website where this does make sense.A friend of mine is visiting me from time to time and we normally do not use the computer when she is there. We both do have Gmail accounts however and like to check the account from time to time.

Instead of using two different browsers to login into both Gmail accounts we simply use Cookie Pie and two separate tabs to access both Gmail accounts from one browser. I suppose there are other applications where this would make sense, maybe one where the administrator of a website is also a user of it and does not want to communicate and post as a user.

Usage is pretty straightforward. Just install Cookie Pie on your computer and activate it by right-clicking an open tab. Activate it again in another tab and you are free to visit the same website using different accounts.

Secure Firefox Cache with a Ramdisk

This is a quick useful tip that I found at the Ghacks Technology News website. Instead of using a hard drive to store the Firefox cache users could use a Ramdisk instead to speed things up and increase security at the same time. The two benefits of a Ramdisk are that its data will not be recoverable by normal means after rebooting or shutting down the computer and that it allows faster read and write processes because those are stored in RAM and not on the hard drive.

You need a software to create the Ramdisk, one amongst many is Ramdisk.sys which can be extracted to any location on your hard drive. You have to initialize the Ramdisk by clicking on Install Ramdisk. Select a size of RAM that you want to use for it afterwards (I suggest 25-50%) and pick a drive letter for it. The Ramdisk will be available after clicking on OK.

Fire up Firefox and use about:config in the address bar to open the Firefox configuration. Filter for the value browser.cache.disk.parent_directory, if it is not found create it by right-clicking and selecting New > String. The value has to be the path to the Ramdisk in the form drive letter:\\folder.

My Ramdisk has been installed as drive letter Z: and I have a temp folder in there called temp. My path looks like z:\\temp\\ therefor.

How to synchronize Firefox profiles

You might want to synchronize your Firefox profile folders if you use Firefox on more than computer. This is handy for instance to always have the same bookmarks and extensions available no matter on which computer you work with Firefox. The easiest way to sync your bookmarks, passwords, cookies and history would be to use the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox which has to be installed on all computers that you want to share those files with.

A Google account is required if you want to use the feature though which might turn some users away from this solution. It could not be easier to use it though. Download the Google Browser Sync extension, install it, enter your Google account information, select a PIN for additional security and repeat the process on every computer that you want to sync the profile with.

Passwords and Cookies are always encrypted and you can opt to encrypt all other data as well. The syncing process is completely automatic. Whenever you start Firefox the extension compares the current data with the one stored on the Google Server and synchronizes all data that is not the same.

Two Firefox browser cache tweaks

Firefox is running fine for most users with the default settings. Advanced users however can tweak an immense amount of settings in Firefox to make it more effective and suitable for their special needs. This is one of the main reasons for creating this blog. I wanted to create a place where I could write about the tweaks and tips that work for me to let other Firefox users know about them and try them out for themselves.

Today I’m writing about two Firefox browser cache tweaks, one dealing with the memory cache and one with the hard drive cache. My partition on C with Windows XP has a size of only 10 Gigabytes which is not much. I did install Firefox on that drive as well and was looking for ways to store temporary files on a different drive.

The Firefox hard drive cache stores a lot of temporary files and i decided to move it to another hard drive. This was not the only reason though. I’m using an encrypted hard drive for all my temporary files and wanted to move the cache to that drive for privacy reasons as well.

Tweak the Firefox Auto Completion

Whenever you start writing text into the address bar Firefox tries to auto complete the text by comparing it with previously entered text. The default way of handling and comparing is not optimal and there are several ways to configure the settings to become more effective.

I did find three options that can be changed that make a difference. The first requires that links have to being with the phrase that you are typing, the second searches in normal text as well and the third option is the time that Firefox waits for new keystrokes before showing results.

You have to change them in the Firefox configuration file. Type about:config in the address bar and filter for the following phrases:

accessibility.typeaheadfind.startlinksonly Set this to true if your links have to start with the phrase that you are typing.

accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly Set this to false if you want to search in entered text as well

accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout Change that value which is the time in ms Firefox waits for new keystrokes before showing suggestions.

Move Firefox sidebar from left to right

I had a quick chat with a friend of mine lately and we ended up arguing whether the left or the right side would be the better position for the Firefox sidebar. While I did not really mind because I tend to disable the sidebar his opinion was that it would fit better on the right side because it would not interfere with the flow of the eye and website.

There is no “put sidebar on right side” button in Firefox but we can add some code to the beloved userChrome.css file to move it from the left side to the right.

Search for userChrome.css on your system and open it. Now scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following code to it. Restart Firefox after saving the changes and you will notice that the sidebar is now located on the right side whenever you display it.

How to use Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 on the same system

The beta of Firefox 3 is relatively stable and users are beginning to download and install it on their systems. The problem that they face then is that Firefox 3 accesses the profile of Firefox 2 which means that many add-ons will be deactivated in the process and are re-activated once Firefox 2 is started again.

There are two solutions to work with Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 on the same system. The first is to download and install the portable version of Firefox 3 which does not interfere with the settings of Firefox 2. This method is not complicated at all.

Some users however prefer to install the normal versions of Firefox 3 and Firefox 2. This is understandable as well. A post on the Codefront blog explains how this can be achieved without facing the difficulties of sharing a profile. The solution is to create a new profile for Firefox 3 and tell Firefox 3 to explicitly use that profile when running.

Remove main menu items in Firefox

You can use a quick CSS hack to remove unwanted – or unneeded -top menu items in Firefox to save space in the horizontal menu bar. I have been using only three of the seven available top level menus. The three that I’m using are the View, the Bookmarks and the Tools menu. I’ve never used the File, Edit, History or Help top level menu items.

You need to add some code to the file userChrome.css which is located in your Firefox profile folder. I suggest you search for the file because the path depends on your operating system.

Open userChrome.css in a text editor and add the following lines of code to it:

Funny and Cool Firefox Pictures

Firefox has such a dedicated user base that many cool and funny pictures are posted on many places on the Internet that are somehow related to Firefox. I though it would be nice to post those images here on the Firefox Mastery blog to entertain all you freaks out there that think that Firefox is something special.

The inspiration started with a post on the Firefox Facts blog that listed several images depicting Firefox. I soon began my journey to find more pictures and the following list is the result of this journey.

I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

One Password for all websites

A lot of users tend to use the same password or a few passwords for all the websites that they created user accounts for. I would bet that most users tend to use more usernames than passwords simply for the reason that usernames have to be unique on each website.

Password Hasher could probably become the most important extension for those users who want to increase the security but keep the few passwords that they have been using on all of those sites. The concept is pretty simple. Different passwords are generated from a master password and used as the password for the websites that the user is a member of.

The user needs to remember the master password – and only the master password – to login to the website in question. The great benefit is of course that the password that was generated for that website is unique and can’t be used to access accounts on other websites or in real life.