Ramblings, ideas, problems, and solutions

Category: Web browsers

  • Firefox: Get more add-on search results

    When searching for new Add-ons, you are by default shown five results. You might find it more efficient to increase this number.
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  • Firefox: View code in an external editor

    When you want to view the source of a page, it opens up in browser popup. However, if you want, you can make it open in your favorite editor, instead of having to cut and paste. To achieve this: do the following:
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  • Firefox: Auto export bookmarks

    In Firefox 3, bookmarks are automatically saved. The only problem is the way they are stored, as they are stored as places.sqlite, as opposed to saving them in HTML. You can change this easily however, by doing the following:
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  • Inverted colors in Windows Media Player running in Internet Explorer

    A user logged a support ticket, saying that she was having problems playing streaming video in Internet Explorer. According to the ticket, it “doesn’t work”. The user would be away from work, but had left her passwords “in a secure place” (read: under her keyboard)…
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    I went to her computer, logged on, and tested a few video sites such as YouTube etc. I was unable to reproduce the problem. I sent the user a message, telling her to contact me when she returned to work.
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    When she returned, I had a look at her computer. It turned out that her problem wasn’t that it didn’t work, but rather that the colors were all distorted and inverted-looking. The error only occured on sites that streamed video for replay in Windows Media Player.
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    I checked out what version of WMP she was running, and predictably enough, she was running an ancient version of WMP. Armed with this knowledge, I updated WMP, and lo and behold; the problem was gone.

  • Unable to uninstall Internet Explorer 8

    The next version of Microsofts Internet Explorer is currently in public beta. Many of the beta testers are reporting that they are unable to uninstall the beta. The reason? They are running Windows XP SP3.
     
    Now, you can still uninstall IE8, it just takes a little more time, and effort. The first step to doing so is uninstalling SP3, which in turn should allow you to uninstall IE8.

  • Firefox – Displaying saved passwords

    One of the pracctical functions in Firefox is the option to save passwords. This also has a backward function, in that you can find out what your saved password is. To do so, simply go to the login-page in question. Then right-click the site and select View Page Info. Go to the Security-tab and find the button View saved passwords. Then click the button View passwords to see all saved passwords.
     
    Now, as I’m sure I’m not the only paranoid browser around, here’s how to set a master password to protect your saved passwords:
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  • Firefox – Use keywords for specialized search

    You’re sitting in front of your computer, surfing the web, and you find a website, let’s say this one, that has a nifty search function which you want to use. However, you don’t want to open the website every time you want to use the search. This is where keyword browsing comes in handy.

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  • Firefox – Tweaking the Awesome-bar

    The “Awesome”-bar, otherwise known as the address bar, has a few nifty little things you can tweak. First off, you can turn it back into a boring old address-bar. To do this you go to the (for now) awesome-bar, then direct your browser to about:config. In the filter enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults, and change its value to -1.
     
    If you only want it to show you websites whose URL you’ve actually entered the address for, go to about:config and find the entry browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped. Change its value to true.
     
    To remove addresses from the Awesome-bar that you haven’t visited, you once more go to about:config. Find the entry places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus, and set its value to 0.
     
    Lastly, to remove all addresses from the Awesome-bar, you go to about:config, find the entry places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus, and set its value to 0.

  • Firefox – Change the close-button for tabs

    There has been so many discussions about where to place the close-buttons for tabs that Mozilla has created a config key for this specific option.
     
    To access the key, open a new tab, enter about:config then press enter. In the filter search for browser.tabs.closeButtons. Change this value according to your choice and the following table:
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  • Firefox – Open mailto:-links in GMail

    I use GMail a lot. I also send a lot of emails, many of those originating from mailto:-links. Hence, it is practical to have mailto:-links open in GMail.
     
    This is quickly and simply achieved by going to Tools, Options, Applications. In the search-field, simply enter mailto, then use the Action-field to select GMail, Yahoo Mail or something else, like so:
     

     
    Some installations of Firefox do not have the GMail-alternative. This is simply fixed. Open a new tab, then enter about:config in the address-bar. Into the filter enter
    gecko.handlerService.AllowRegisterFromDifferentHost, then doubleclick the value so that it is set to true. Then copy/paste the following piece of Javascript to your Addressbar: javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail"). When asked whether you want to add GMail as an application, answer “yes”.

  • Firefox – Getting the normalsized back-button back

    I don’t mind it, but I know that many users feel annoyed that in version 3, the “Back”-button in Firefox is large and round, as opposed to the same size as the “Forward”-button. Here’s what it looks like:
     

     
    Luckily for my users, this is easily rectified. Simply right-click any of the buttons close to it, click “Customize”, and then select the checkbox for “Use small icons” like so:
     

     
    The result looks like this: