So what do you do?

Get an intern to do it? Nope because it is confidential!

Bang your head against the wall?  Nope!

As you are a Make Use Of reader we are here to show you a solution.

That solution comes from one of our favorite utility programmers – NirSoft . NirSoft has two applications Mozilla History View and IEHistoryView. As you can probably work out, each one of them works for their respective browser and will not work with the other. So keep both of them on your memory stick when you go a’ hunting.

Run the portable application and it will start scanning the machine instantly. Below I ran this on..umm…a user’s machine – yeah that’s the ticket – a user’s machine and not mine at all!

The application will scan all your (or a user’s) browsing history and return it in the graphical user interface. If you browsed your local machine with your browser it will show up here as well.

Uh oh….this person (not me! ) has been browsing the Pirate Bay and Rapidshare! Wow and they have been downloading files! For shame for shame! Now we need to record and export browsing history to send to Human Resources. We simply hit the save button on the tool bar which you can see represented by a disk like so:

Once you hit that button you will have several options for file types such as CSV, TXT, XML, HTML or even a “tabular” file. Once you save it you can print or email it at will!

The Internet Explorer version is very similar – actually identical but it obviously reads in a different history file and has a different name.

Again your desktop browsing will also show up in here so you can catch someone opening porn or other non work related items (unless you work for a porn company!). Both applications have a different set of fields and they are from the IE application:

• URL
• Title
• Hits (counter)
• Page Modified Date
• Expiration date of the page
• User
• History folder

Firefox’s columns are a little better with:

• URL
• Title
• First Visit
• Last Visit
• Visit Count
• Refering site
• Host Name
• Title
• Record Index
• Visit type (Download, link or typed URL) <— This is the big one that proves the site was typed in instead of being opened by a pop up or something along those lines.

No one wants to be the bad guy and get people fired but network security is a administrator’s job and sometimes the job can fall on a executive secretary or anyone – at least make the job of recording browsing history a little less painful with these easy to use tools.

Nirsoft rocks! Do you have another method of doing this? Hit us up in the comments!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Customizing Headers & Footers For Printing Webpages (6)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with YopMail (21)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)

It’s safe to assume that you have more than one browser installed on your system. I have five. Though we may not use more than two, all of us suffer from a bit of browser fancy. As soon as developers announce a launch of a browser that promises to speed up the web for us, we click on the download link. That’s not a problem, but keeping the same set of bookmarks across the browsers is.

Xmarks is a nifty solution to migrate bookmarks across the world. But for now, it supports Firefox and IE (with Safari in Mac OS). The one for Google Chrome is in the works. The browser that’s missing is Opera. That leaves us with a job half done. Bookmark syncing using Delicious and its bookmarklet tool is one roundabout. But it’s public by default and you have to log-in to change it to private. So, it’s still not as easy a click.

Transmute attempts to fill the gap by letting us migrate bookmarks across all the browsers.

Why Is it Such a Headache to Migrate Bookmarks?

Not very much so, but every browser has its own way of storing its bookmarks. Most bookmarks are stored as HTML files. Opera uses an .adr format. Firefox 3.5+ too differs in that respect as it stores its bookmarks in a Places.sqlite file which is a database file. The bookmarks.html files that used to hold all the links in the earlier versions had been discontinued from Firefox 3 onwards.

Does this create problems in migration of your bookmarks to other browsers still using the HTML formats? No, because Firefox, just like all the others has an import export utility under the Bookmarks Library that allows you to convert the database format to the HTML one for it to be picked up by the other browsers.

The imported bookmarks also get added to the existing bookmarks usually in a separate folder with the name of the browser that was the source. For instance, imported Firefox bookmarks get located in a folder that’s marked Netscape. Imported bookmarks in Chrome get added under Other Bookmarks. You can then manually shift the bookmarks around into any other root folder.

Next, you have to manually weed out the duplicates by going through each and every link. This is where the headache can start.

Transmute Offers Better (& Quicker) Control Over Bookmarks

Why such a name? Is it because it does the job of bookmark transfer ‘silently’ and without fuss? Perhaps, because the Transmute interface is hassle free.

1. You have two dropdowns – Source and Target. You can use the path field to select the location of the bookmarks file for the individual browsers in case you ever changed the default location.
2. Use the dropdowns to select the respective source and target browsers. There are 12 supported browsers and I am guessing that should cover most of what the world uses. The 13th placed XBEL format (XML Bookmark Exchange Language) covers a few other browsers like Galeon, Arora and Midori which use this one to store their bookmarks.



3. Transmute gives you two more options to migrate bookmarks – Overwrite Collections and Backup Collections.
   • Duplication can be handled if you select the overwrite option as it will plant a fresh copy of the bookmark links (but will also remove the older but unique bookmarks in the target).
   • Backup collections are a safety net in case something goes wrong with the conversion process and you want your old bookmark collection back. By default Transmute timestamps and backs up your bookmark collections before changes are made, providing extra safety.

   

   • To restore the old order, just browse to the bookmark folder location and rename the time stamped backup file to the default file name.
4. Close the source and target browsers and press Start. An alert box pops up and with your agreement the transfer begins. A preview window is the last stop before the conversion starts.

And finishes! That’s it; you can migrate bookmarks across multiple browsers without the hassle of import and export.

Transmute also comes in a PRO flavor giving some extra bookmark selection controls and co-ordination with services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious. But for the simple task of keeping all my browsers with the same bookmarks, the free version more than stands up. If you hate installing things, then there’s a portable option too.

Having the same bookmarks across all your browsers is such a basic need and keeping them all updated with each other is where Transmute steps in with a speedy click.

Transmute v1.63 is Windows only and requires Microsoft .NET Framework. It may also run on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

Most download managers have it, µtorrent has it and they are perfect for my need. There has always been a great void in this setup due to Firefox. Many a time, I have files downloading in Firefox but no way to auto-shutdown the computer. Some time back, I hacked together an auto script that would sit there and wait for the Firefox’s ‘Downloads finished’ notification to appear, it would then close Firefox and shutdown the computer. Lame I know, but it did the trick.

Recently, however, I found an excellent addon that lets you do schedule auto shutdowns in Firefox and a whole lot more, its (aptly) called Auto-Shutdown. The addon is auto shutdown software that provides you with a number of options to perform precisely the action you want once the downloads have completed. You can play sounds, clear downloads, shutdown, logoff, restart your computer or run any command or multiple commands through a script.

Auto Shutdown is available at AMO, it works with Firefox version 3 and upwards. Once installed, the auto shutdown software will add a power icon to the status bar. You can remove the icon if you desire, however it provides quick access to its options and can be used to enable auto-shutdown in a flash.

You can use the built-in commands for basic needs like shutdown, hibernate, stand by, etc. There are different versions of these commands for different version of Windows and Linux and Mac.

Apart from the built-in commands you can do almost anything with Auto Shutdown. You can run any JavaScript code or any external application when the downloads finish or when the computer is idle while Firefox is downloading the files. To run custom commands or JavaScript code:

• Go to the Customize tab within Auto Shutdown settings.
• Type in your code in the lower text area surrounded by <javaScript> </javaScript> tags or <shell> </shell> tags depending on what you are planning to achieve.

• Click Save As and assign the script to User Command 1 or User Command 2

• Choose User Command 1 or User Command 2 from Adjust shutdown Command drop down list towards the top.

You can easily pass arguments to external applications and Auto Shutdown also provides you with certain reserved words that can be used in your scripts to refer to special locations and files. %sysRoot%, for example, refers to the Windows/system32 directory and %WinD refers to the Windows directory. The complete list is available here.

You can also choose the amount of time Auto Shutdown waits before executing the commands after the downloads have finished. Auto Shutdown will display a countdown for that specified time, allowing you to save any work if you have been working along or cancel the download altogether. You can force Firefox to exit when the command is eventually triggered and choose to restore the session, the next time Firefox is started. If you use DownThemAll, Auto Shutdown has you covered and can monitor DownThemAll as well.

Auto Shutdown is a dream come true if you ever leave the computer running only to let the downloads complete. With Auto Shutdown, you can now automatically close the browser or shutdown the system when downloads complete. Give it a spin and let us know what you like or dislike.

Do you have some clever ways of your own to automatically shutdown the computer after downloads complete? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• Lazarus – Bring Your Form & Browser Data Back From The Dead (3)
• How To Trigger the Download of a File Remotely (Mac Only) (8)
• Dr.Web LinkChecker – Scan Files Before Download (Firefox) (1)
• DeeperWeb Gets More Out Of Your Google Search (6)

Let’s today shift the focus slightly towards a few external Firefox tools that can be used to optimize Firefox:

SpeedyFox

SpeedyFox is a cool little Firefox tool which lets you optimize Firefox for speed. Firefox stores a lot of information in an sqlite database, which grows over time.

SpeedyFox takes care of any database fragmentation and thus makes Firefox zippier. You might not see a difference if you try SpeedyFox on a fresh Firefox install, it works great after you have been using Firefox for some time. Just close Firefox, run SpeedyFox and point it to the profile you want to optimize.

The optimization may take some time depending upon how much data SpeedyFox has to work with. Also don’t forget to check out The ultimate guide to speeding up Firefox 3.5

Silence of the Foxes

This simple Firefox tool lets you create custom Firefox installers which you can use to deploy Firefox’s preconfigured settings and add-ons. It unpacks the original Firefox setup, lets you add your own extensions, themes, preferences and then repacks to give you a silent installation package.

Although this Firefox tool was designed a long time back for a now obsolete version of Firefox, it worked pretty well for me. Download and fire it up, choose a new project and point the application to Firefox Setup that you downloaded from the web. It will extract the files, detect your Firefox profiles and show you the files that it will add to the silent installation package.

By default it adds your preferences and bookmarks, if you want to add themes and extensions you will have to download the .jar and .xpi files and add them to the files to be added to the installer. Once everything is done, it will create a file sfirefox.exe which is your new silent installation customized package. You might want to go through the readme file for some advanced tinkering.

FirePasswordViewer

Firefox can remember the login details for your favorite websites. All these details are encrypted and then stored in Firefox’s profile database. FirePasswordViewer lets you view these details for any Firefox profile you point it to. You can use it to get back passwords you might have forgotten and some other purposes (use your imagination here).

The Firefox tool will not work if you have enabled and set the Master Password. So it might be a good idea to set your Firefox Master password to protect yourself from such hacks. It can be set via the Security tab inside Tools > Options in Firefox.

FireMaster

Just when you thought setting the master password protected all the sensitive sign-on information, we present FireMaster. FireMaster can be used to recover the master password in case you forget it. However, like always, there are inherent limitations as with any password recovery tool – FireMaster uses a combination of dictionary and brute force attacks so it would take a very long time to recover any moderately strong password. All the more reason to use strong passwords. Refer FireMaster page for usage tips.

Do you know of some other tools you can use with Firefox for similar purposes? You can tell us all about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 15 Best Mozilla Firefox Skins To Customize Your Browser (40)
• Ubiquity – Extend Firefox and Improve your Browsing Experience (9)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• The Complete Guide: Troubleshooting Mozilla Firefox Problems (25)

Today, not only can browsers go to websites and view information but they can also interact with the websites they visit and that can end up leading to trouble if you’re not careful of what you download, specifically with installing Active X controls.

A brief history of ActiveX before we start. ActiveX is a software and coding framework made by Microsoft in 1996 and now competes with Sun Microsystem’s Java platform. ActiveX controls are almost like “mini” pieces of software that can be used not just in Internet Explorer, but also in other pieces of software such as the Offfice product suite and Windows Media Player. When the controls are in your browser, they are usually used for visual plugins, such as specialized 3rd party media players, remote control applications, online virus scanners and other things of that nature.

You might visit a website occasionally which will prompt you to download/install ActiveX in your computer, and say “yes” to the couple of security confirmation prompts that come up not knowing what you’re really accepting, but this is exactly where the danger lies. Most people only care to get to the content they’re visiting, so they will keep clicking “yes” and “accept” as many times as it takes to see the final page, and that is where the danger lies for you to be opened up to viruses, trojan horses, spyware and even phishing attempts.

ActiveX controls can be dangerous because, once you finish installing Active X controls, they have most of the functions a regular Windows program running on your desktop has, which is a significant security problem if the control was from a malware infested site or was downloaded by mistake. That’s why if you have a prompt for a questionable or suspicious ActiveX control from your browser, the worst thing that can happen will simply be that you won’t be able to see the site or page you’re trying to visit.

If you think you’ve installed a risky ActiveX control, it is easy to remove. If you’re using Firefox, click on Tools, click Add-Ons, then click on the Plugins tab and disable the control that you’re trying to remove by clicking disable.

In Internet Explorer, click on Tools then on Manage Add-Ons and make sure that the “Toolbars and Extensions” type is selected on the left menu. Click on the control you’d like to remove and then click disable by its information in the lower right corner.

Finally, a word about how to stay safe. Some online toolbars (such as the Google Toolbar) and many browsers (including Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox) can help by warning you that a site you are trying to visit is known for downloading malicious code to its visitors browsers so if you do get such a warning from a browser, be sure to pay attention to it. Most browsers usually show a red screen before loading the page to make sure you get the message!

Do you have tips on how you stay safe while browsing? Share them with us in the comments below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• Are You a Reckless Web User? Secure Your Browser With AVG Linkscanner (13)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)

Alternative web browsers are aplenty and have a low barrier of entry even for less technically savvy computer users, but people are generally not keen to change their habits or spending time researching, downloading and installing another application – especially when the one that comes preloaded appears to be working just fine.

1. Firefox is not perfect software, but its vulnerabilities are fixed in a considerably shorter amount of time. Many new users are curious – is Mozilla Firefox safe? Updates are released immediately, not on a monthly schedule, and clock in at fewer than 10 MB. Users are notified automatically and prompted to install the update with a single click. The update process doesn’t take more than a minute on a modern computer.

2. Since Firefox is open source, anyone can look at the source code, anyone can spot a problem and contribute a fix. Would you leave your car keys with a guy that says “trust me” or at a car lot with video surveillance and a logbook?

3. ActiveX applets, the way IE extends the functionality of the browser, are a known highway for malware and viruses. Firefox works with verified and signed add-ons. Even if you choose to install a malicious add-on – and the browser warns you – the damage is limited to the information in the browser whereas ActiveX exploits could be used to take over the whole computer.

4. Conscious users can install NoScript, an add-on that takes care of vulnerabilities that are not yet patched, either in Firefox or other plug-ins such as Java, JavaScript and Adobe’s Flash. It achieves this goal by allowing the user to selectively enable interactive objects that the user decides to trust, automatically blocking the rest.

5.  Security through obscurity; malicious programmers will always target the browser with the largest user base, especially if that user base is less tech savvy.

6.  Firefox uses a service provided by Google that notifies the user before entering a potentially malicious web site. These websites ask for your financial data under false pretenses or contain malicious software often posing as something useful such as codecs or registry fixes.

We check the radiator on the car when the temperature indicator turns red; by the time the computer starts acting up or not starting at all, and by all chances appearing to work just fine, your documents, passwords and financial data might already siphoned half a world away. Most people don’t realize this, there are no clear warnings, but using Internet Explorer is in itself a security threat.

I substantiate that statement by citing the Google Analytics on my blog – there are still people using old, un-patched and therefore vulnerable versions of Internet Explorer. The reasons behind this range from the hassle of dealing with Windows Update, millions of machines without a valid license which cannot access updates and users not realizing the importance of having up to date software.

This is not news, yet there are people unaware of the danger posed. Washington Post’s Brian Krebs reports on the Security Fix blog “Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006”. Even a fully patched and up-to-date version of IE 6 contains at least 22 discovered vulnerabilities; IE 7 stands at 9 and IE 8 at 2. By comparison, the latest version of Firefox (3.5.1), a free and open source browser, has zero un-patched vulnerabilities; the previous version (3.0.x) also stands at zero.

As always, you’re welcome to leave a comment below. Is Mozilla Firefox much more safe compared to IE? You might also want to check out some MakeUseOf posts on security, Firefox or browsers in general.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• Are You a Reckless Web User? Secure Your Browser With AVG Linkscanner (13)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)

What makes Firefox so popular? Back in the days it hit a nerve with geeks by letting them create, add and share their own content: extensions and themes. It was the start of Web 2.0 and the fascination soon caught on with the general crowd.

If you’re using Firefox, I hope you can appreciate the freedom it provides. One is that you can express your style with custom Mozilla Firefox skins. Here are 15 of the best. Dig in!

Black Steel

(3.0 – 3.6a1pre)

A dark metal theme with sharp contrasts. It will definitely draw attention.

Silvermel

(1.5 – 3.6a1pre)

Silvermel is silver, shiny and quite unobtrusive. The transparent effect for tabs is awesome.

Daum Blue

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

This Mozilla Firefox skin is not revolutionary, but it has a fresh look with nicely designed tabs. If you keep on reading you’ll see that I’m a little obsessed with pretty tabs.

Anthem

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

Anthem is a very stylish template in dark and light grey. I love the look of the tabs. The icons are exceptional and they’re smaller than with most themes, which saves space and gives more room for browsing. This one is my new personal favorite.

Scribblies Plain

(3.5.*)

A playful theme for your kids or the kid in you. Gotta love the icons in the navigation toolbar. Also the tabs are quite original. Definitely something different!

iFox Graphite

(3.0b5 – 3.5.*)

This is the theme I’ve been using for years. It’s clean and simple and also available in three more flavors: pure, metal and smooth.

Simple Green

(3.5b4 – 3.5.*)

Simple Green reminds me of Netscape. If you still mourn the end of IE’s first serious rival, express your grief with this theme.

Stratini Padded

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

This theme made the list because it has a refreshing set of icons and very lovely shaped tabs and boxes. I’m still a huge fan of rounded edges.

Vista on XP

(3.5.*)

If you’re using a Vista transformation pack on XP, you can’t do without a Vista Firefox theme. So this one’s for you!

NASA Night Launch

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

One of the few dark Mozilla Firefox skins that are actually stylish. NASA Night Launch is very cool. Pretty tabs, well-designed icons and a very clean, dark look.

Utopia FFSE White

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

I love the fox in this theme. But also the buttons and tabs are pretty cool. If the animal is a little too much for you, there is one without it: Utopia White.

yogurttree

(3.0 – 3.6a1pre)

Here’s a very soft and girly skin with lovely pastel colors and roundish icons. Yes, we do have female readers! Girls, where are you?

XboxFox

(3.0b1 – 3.5.*)

Girls play Xbox, too! Maybe that’s why this theme isn’t exactly virile. Or is this just a very modern design?

OldFactory Black

(3.0 – 3.5.*)

Here’s one for the guys. Chrome, stone, levers and rounded edges so that you don’t hurt yourselves. I love the levers. Makes me think of Myst. And get this: they’re actually animated!!! How cool is that?

Chromifox Extreme

(3.1b1 – 3.6a1pre)

Finally, here’s a theme that will give Firefox a Chrome-like look, including tabs on top.

You like none of them? Maybe you should try Personas. Kabir wrote an article on How to Create Custom Themes for Firefox with Personas, which can be your guide in getting to know this Firefox addon.

What else would you like to see in a Firefox theme? Maybe you’re lucky and a talented theme designer will read this. So let it out!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 4 Cool Firefox Tools That Are Not Addons (44)
• Ubiquity – Extend Firefox and Improve your Browsing Experience (9)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• The Complete Guide: Troubleshooting Mozilla Firefox Problems (25)

Quit Firefox, run “firefox.exe –profilemanager”, and create a new profile to experiment on. Use the new profile as your default only if your performance improves. Only those changes needed from a default installation are mentioned in this guide.

1. Use an Optimized Build of Firefox

If you’re using Windows, use an optimized build of Firefox 3.5.1 for your processor. Use Swiftfox for Linux.

2. Use Blank Homepage, Default Theme, Minimal Extensions

Set your homepage to about:blank. Use only must-have extensions with the default theme. Use Adblock Plus and Flashblock to block unwanted ads and Flash.

3. Optimize Download Options

In Options->Main, choose a folder for your downloads and save all downloads to it automatically. Close the download window automatically when all downloads are finished. Turn off download history in Options->Privacy, Custom settings for history.

4. Customize Content Type Handling

In Options->Applications, modify the following Content Types:

• Set archive files like .zip, .rar, etc. to Save File. Use your favorite archive program separately to open them.
• Set PDF files to Save File. Use your favorite PDF reader to separately open them.
• Set mailto to use your favorite desktop email client or Gmail/Yahoo webmail account. Sorry, Windows Live/AOL Mail users!
• Change Web Feed from Preview in Firefox to your favorite RSS reader.

In general, open files separately, rather than from within the browser wherever possible.

5. Increase Cache, Reduce History Size

In Options->Advanced->Network, increase Offline Storage (size of the disk cache) to 150 MB.

In Options->Privacy, use Custom settings for history, and reduce length of remembered history to 15 days.

6. Customize General Advanced Options

In Options->Advanced->General->Accessibility:

• Check Search for text when I start typing
• Uncheck Use smooth scrolling
• Turn off spell checker if you ROTFLMAO on forums and don’t aspire to be a writer. Keep it on if you’re looking for a job.
• Uncheck Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup. On Windows, set Firefox as your default browser using Program Access and Defaults.

7. Remove Unused Search Engines

Drop-down In the search box, select Manage Search Engines…, and remove any search engines that you will never use.

8. Clean up bookmarks, avoid Live Bookmarks

If you have a lot of bookmarks in Firefox, you might have dead links, or even duplicate bookmarks. Clean them up using the CheckPlaces Firefox extension, and uninstall after you’re done.

Firefox checks Live Bookmarks every hour for updates. Use a dedicated RSS Reader like Google Reader instead. Delete the preset Latest Headlines Live Bookmark.

9. Performance Enhancing Extensions

If you prefer a nice GUI to tweak advanced settings, use these performance enhancing Firefox extensions. If you are the DIY type, these optimizations (and many more) are covered in the next sections.

• FasterFox 3.8.1 Lite is an (experimental) add-on that lets you choose from four presets (or use a custom profile) to optimize Firefox.
• Tweak Network 1.3 allows you to choose from Default and Power profiles for tweaking network settings in Firefox.

Advanced About:Config Tweaks

The following two sections are advanced Firefox configuration changes that are simple to make. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar in an empty tab. Click ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’. You can use Firefox’s Safe Mode and select ‘Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults’ to undo any changes you make. Also, entries you change are displayed in bold, and can be reset using the right-click context-menu.

If an entry does not exist, create it by right-clicking on an empty space, selecting New, and choosing the type of entry as listed.

10. Advanced Browser Settings

You can use these recommended values or tweak them as per your system, preference, and browsing habits.

• accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound [Boolean]: Change to False to avoid a sound alert if no match is found when you search for text.
• alerts.totalOpenTime [Integer]: Reduce time to show Download Complete alerts to 2000 (2 seconds).
• browser.bookmarks.max_backups [Integer]: Reduce number of bookmark backups to speed up shutdown from 5 to 2.
• browser.cache.disk.parent_directory [String]: Move your Firefox cache to a disk or partition different from your Windows drive by specifying the folder path here.
• browser.download.manager.openDelay [Integer]: Don’t open Downloads window for very short downloads. Set to 2000 (2 second delay).
• browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed tabs you can undo from 10 to 4.
• browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo [Integer]: Reduce number of closed windows you can undo from 3 to 1.
• browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab [Boolean]: Change to False, so that Firefox doesn’t accidentally shut down when you close the last tab.
• browser.urlbar.maxRichResults [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of results in Awesome Bar from 12 to 6.
• dom.popup_maximum [Integer]: Reduce maximum number of simultaneous popups from 20 to 3 or 5.
• security.dialog_enable_delay [Integer]: Reduce delay to wait before installing a new extension to 1000 (1 second). Setting to zero is not recommended because of security risks.

11. Advanced Network Settings

These changes are recommended for broadband users with at least a 2 Mbps (256 kB/s) connection.

• network.dnsCacheEntries [Integer]: Increase number of DNS entries cached from default 20 to 512.
• network.dnsCacheExpiration [Integer]: Increase number of seconds DNS entries are cached from default 60 to 3600.
• network.dns.disableIPv6 [Boolean]: Disable IPv6 if your ISP doesn’t support it (most don’t).
• network.http.max-connections [Integer]: Increase maximum number of simultaneous connections to 48 or 96.
• network.http.max-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum connections per server from default 15 to 24.
• network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server [Integer]: Increase maximum persistent connections per server from default 6 to 12.
• network.http.pipelining [Boolean]: Change to True to enable HTTP Pipelining.
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests [Integer]: Increase from default 4 to 8.
• network.prefetch-next [Boolean]: This specifies whether Firefox pre-fetches web pages (and associated cookies) even before you visit them. It is most frequently used to pre-load the first result of a Google search. If you want to improve security and don’t want Firefox to load pages you never actually visit, change this to False. See the FAQ for more information.

Did these optimizations make your Firefox 3.5 faster? Tell us in the comments!

(Some of these tips are via Tweakguides Firefox Tweak Guide)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• It Takes only 7 SHORTCUTS to Become a Lightning Fast User (51)
• Increase the Speed of Your Internet Connection (30)
• Give Firefox an Adrenalin Shot with Preloader (25)
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Here’s a list of 10 essential software apps for web development on a Mac.

10. TextWrangler is a multipurpose text editor that works for editing code and plain text documents. It can even open files from (and save them to) remote FTP and SFTP servers.

9. Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator. It is the first open source program to adopt Spiro curves. You can also go through their clip art collection and find dozens of images made with Inkscape that are free to use or modify.

8. Cyberduck is the all-in-one FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDav and Mosso Cloud Files browser application. Web developers often need to switch between different file systems, and Cyberduck does this without a hiccup. It works with Textmate (which has a free 30 day trial), so you can open files from Cyberduck in Textmate, edit, save and upload. Read more about FTP clients for Mac here.

7. Gimp is the second-most popular photo editing software program on the market, second only to Adobe Photoshop. The difference? Gimp is absolutely free! You can do just about everything in Gimp that you can do in Adobe Photoshop, so web developers will find this a welcome and wallet friendly addition to their software arsenal.

6. Aptana takes up where Textmate leaves off in some aspects. It is a full featured code editor, but adds the FTP support of Cyberduck, as well as important web technologies like Ajax, Adobe AIR and PHP. Read more about Aptana here on MUO.

5. Firefox is a must have for web development because of three great add-ons – Firebug, the Web Developer toolbar and ColorZilla. Firebug lets you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page; while the Web Developer toolbar adds additional tools like clearing cookies, disable CSS, display ruler and display source. ColorZilla lets you pick colors from websites or images online, so you can match them to your web designs, plus measure the distance between two points on a website.

4. JAlbum helps you make attractive photo galleries for websites. JAlbum comes with various templates built-in, but you can also customize your own template to better match a web project you’re working on. Read about 5 more Excellent Mac Apps for Graphic & Web Design

3. Colloquy is a basic IRC client that every web developer will use at one point or another. Many web platforms use IRC for support, including WordPress.

2. MAMP is what you need to manage websites locally when you are without an internet connection or want to test changes without making them live on a website. It is easy to install MAMP and have access to Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X. It is also a stand-alone program, so if you need to install it, it won’t interfere with your OSX installation. Plus, you can use it to install WordPress on your Mac.

1. iTerm is a feature-filled Terminal emulator for OSX. You can bookmark your frequently used sessions, have tabbed windows with multiple sessions and more.

Do you have any suggestions for better similar apps? Let’s hear them in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Apart from using your favorite website (wink, wink), we’ve seen a bunch of services here on MakeUseOf in the past, allowing you to make a personal, dynamic homepage, greeting you with image slideshows, recent RSS updates, and so on.

Although it seems obvious for most computer users, finding out how to set your browser home page is not evident for everyone. Today, we’ll show you how to change your home page in 5 different browsers.

Firefox and Firefox-based Browsers

Firefox is not just the acclaimed geek-browser anymore. These days, it’s the most used browser in the internet market. As such, that is where we’ll start. Note that any menu-names might have to be translated to your own language, but any changes should be obvious.

How to Set Browser Home Page

In the top left of your browser, open the Edit menu and select Preferences.

In the Main tab, you can change your default homepage. You can also configure Firefox to load with a blank page, or to restore your last session.

When you start typing in the text-field, Firefox will make suggestions based on your history. Alternatively, you can also use the address of the webpage currently active in your browser, one of your bookmarks, or restore the default Firefox Start page.

You can add multiple home pages — which will launch in tabs upon opening firefox — by putting vertical slashes between the links. (e.g. “http://www.makeuseof.com | http://www.google.com”)

This will work with Firefox, but also with Firefox-based browsers, like Flock, Wyzo, and many others.

Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8)

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer might be loathed by many, but one can’t ignore the fact that it takes a worthy second as most used browser. And thus we go on. The differences between Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are superfluous for this tutorial.

Option 1

In the top right of your screen, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Internet Options.

In the General tab, you’ll be able to set the browser home page to one of your liking. Similar to Firefox, you can use the address of the currently active page, the default start page, or a blank page.

If you want Internet Explorer to open multiple pages upon launch, you  need to type the different addresses in the text-box, below each other.

Option 2

There’s a second way to configure your home page. First, surf to the webpage you want to use.

Next, open the dropdown menu next to the Home button, and select Add or Change Home Page…

A new window will pop up. You can choose to replace your current home page by the current address, or to add the webpage to your current bookmarks.

In Internet Explorer 8, you can also use the current tab set (all your open pages) as homepages.

Google Chrome

Chrome’s one of the new guys on the block, but a relatively popular browser, taking in account its short time with us. If you like Google’s browser of simplicity, this part is for you.

In the top-right corner of the browser, open the wrench dropdown menu and select Options. Go to the Basics tab, here you can configure your homepage.

Option 1

Make sure that ‘Open the following pages’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.

In the box below, you can add multiple web addresses to be opened upon browser launch. If you want to open a blank page, you’ll have to enter ‘about:blank’, manually.

Option 2

Make sure that the ‘Open the home page’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.

In the Home Page section, you’ve got two options. Either use the New Tab Page — which is selected by default — or enter a custom address in the text-field.

Safari

Safari is the default browser on Mac OS X. A while ago it was also ported to Windows. I must say it’s one of the finest browsers around, but sadly underused. If you belong to the Safari-minority, this section is for you.

If you’ve got Windows, open the Edit dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.

If you’ve got a Mac, open the Safari dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.

Both in Windows and Mac, you can change your homepage in the General tab. You can choose how to open new pages — blank, or with a homepage — and type in the address of your favorite site. Additionally, you can also choose to use the address of the page you’re currently visiting.

While you’re at it, you can also tell Safari what to do upon opening new tabs. Top Sites, one of the best features in Safari, is default, but perhaps you still prefer to use your homepage.

Opera

Opera is – sadly – one of the lesser used browsers, even though it’s got remarkable charms and has introduced numerous innovations in the browser market. If you’re amongst the fine men and women using this slick competitor, this section is for you.

At the top of the browser, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Preferences.

In the General tab, you can configure your homepage. Either type in the address you want to use, or choose to use the currently active page as homepage.

Alternatively, you can configure Opera to launch with a blank page, the startup dialog, or with the tabs of last time’s session.

This is where we conclude this multi-tutorial. I hope you’ve learned something useful today. If there’s anything you want to say, or ask, please refer to the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
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What is Mozilla Firefox safe mode? Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode) becomes the next resort when the regular browser comes crashing down. Firefox is the most talked about browser and has a fan base that would put The Beatles to shame… But hey, it’s only a bunch of code so browser errors do rear their heads.

Here are 5 reasons why the Firefox Safe Mode isn’t a bad idea at all -

1. It’s a diagnostic tool to troubleshoot issues with add-ons, themes or toolbars especially after upgrades.
2. It can be used to compare the extension-loaded Firefox with the default clean slate version of the browser.
3. It can be used to compare speeds if there’s a worry about performance.
4. It can be used to pin down conflicting issues in the user settings (about:config tweakings) after an upgrade.
5. It can be used to go back to the default installed state.

Mozilla Firefox Safe Mode gives us a window to start over (temporarily) by disabling add-ons and resetting (permanently) other settings to defaults. By comparing the performance, we can narrow down and fix the cause of any problem.

There are two ways we can start Firefox in Safe Mode (Windows) –

• From Start – All Programs (Programs in Vista) – Mozilla Firefox – Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode).
• From Start – Run – Type firefox.exe -safe-mode. Hit OK. (or “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -safe-mode)

For other operating systems, the paths are:
Linux – use Terminal and type in /path/to/firefox/firefox -safe-mode
Mac OS X – open Terminal and type in /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -safe-mode

The Safe Mode dialog box pops up.

We can choose to Exit or go for the other two options – Continue In Safe Mode or Make Changes and Restart.

Continue in Safe Mode

The browser starts in Safe Mode with all customizations disabled. Safe Mode does not load any extensions, themes and third party toolbars. Safe Mode uses the default theme. This is especially useful to check whether the problem is associated with these elements or some other hidden issues. When we exit the Safe Mode, the browser reverts back to the Normal Mode with all the customizations intact.

Make Changes and Restart

This option gets activated if we put a checkmark against any of the five options given in the dialog.

• Disable all add-ons will start Firefox in the Normal Mode with the extensions, themes, and plug-ins disabled.  Note that they are not uninstalled, only disabled. Browse the web with the add-ons disabled or selectively enabled one by one. This helps to whittle down to the problematic add-on. After the fix, don’t forget to enable the remaining add-ons (extensions, theme and plugins).
• Reset toolbars and controls reverts the browser to Normal Mode but without any toolbar customizations.
• Reset bookmarks to Firefox defaults will start the browser in Normal Mode but our bookmarks will lost, replaced by Firefox’s default set.
• Reset all user preferences to Firefox defaults will undo any changes we made to Firefox preferences and options or any through about:config.
• Restore default search engines will revert to the default search engines of Firefox.

To exit Safe Mode, close down the browser completely. Sometimes, the browser keeps running in the background – do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to check using the Task Manager. If the browser keeps resuming in Safe Mode, close it down again and restart the computer. Then start in Normal Mode.

The first great thing about Firefox is that it is relatively non-buggy. The second good thing is that the Mozilla Firefox Safe Mode is absolutely straightforward. And the third, with Mozilla’s rich gallery of add-ons — even if one fails, there’s an alternative out there.

You might not have used the Safe Mode option frequently. Even then, your opinion matters. Do let us know your experience with resolving buggy issues.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• The Complete Guide: Troubleshooting Mozilla Firefox Problems (25)
• Get The Awesome Read it Later Extension For Firefox 3 (19)
• Five Steps to a Better Search Experience in Firefox 3 (10)

1. NoScript

Many browser security issues stem from exploits of JavaScript code. NoScript prevents that code from executing, and then notifies you of what code is blocked. You may then add the page to your white-list with a few clicks. That way, you’re protected when browsing unfamiliar sites, but can still check your Gmail and surf Digg.

2. Ad-Block Plus (ABP)

According to Mozilla, this is the #2 favorite add-on (next to FlashGot), and it is for good reason. Ad-Block Plus improves on its predecessor, allowing you to subscribe to a list of advertising codes to block, just like one might subscribe to antivirus updates. Advertisers can potentially track user behavior across the Web, and it’s no surprise that many users don’t like that. Like NoScript, ABP can be disabled for specific sites and pages. ABP will block 99% of the ads out there. And as a bonus, pages should render much faster.

3. Web of Trust (WOT)

My new favorite! WOT adds an extra layer of protection to your browser, utilizing users ratings to show you, at a glance, which sites are OK and which ones should be left unclicked. WOT can enhance search results and links on AOL, Ask, Bing, Delicious, Digg, Dogpile, Google, Gmail, Mahalo, Wikipedia, Hotmail, Yahoo, DMOZ and Reddit, among others.

Above is the first screen you’ll see after installing WOT. WOT can be as intrusive as you wish, and also be used to block kids’ access to unsafe sites.

Above is an example of Firefox viewing a site which has been rated poorly by WOT users. You can still go to the site, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so.

NoScript, Ad-Block Plus, and Web of Trust take only moments to install, but will help keep their users safe from many of the Web’s seedier elements. We welcome any suggestions you may have of additions to this list are welcome, in the comments below.

For more posts on security and privacy online, do read:

10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons
7 Essential Security Downloads You MUST Have Installed
Detect Fake Antivirus software & Spyware Removal programs
Things To Know When Using a WiFi Hotspot Or a Public PC

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Block Annoying Ads in Firefox (22)
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Today, you can see that Microsoft has decided to give a lot more attention to the design of its products. Windows 7 is a testament to that endeavor. It does sadden me that the majority of the UI improvements are derivations or adaptations instead of innovations.

Safari 4 hasn’t suffered radical changes since the beta version – except maybe for the tabs issue which generated a considerable amount of uproar – but it did a fantastic job of polishing rough edges. Safari 4 is fast, usable and has taste.

Let’s dig in a little deeper, shall we?

Unlike earlier versions of Safari for Windows, this iteration integrates beautifully with the default themes in Windows XP, Vista and even Windows 7. Whether we believe that “the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3” or that it “loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3” is up to each one of us and the guys who benchmark milliseconds. It does however feel faster than Firefox and IE8 and about the same as Chrome 2.04.

For many of you running Windows 7 (if you aren’t, what are you waiting for? Here’s how to upgrade), Safari 4 has another surprise – it works with the Aero Peek feature the same way IE8 does. The latest stable version of Firefox 3 does not support this capability.

As for the Top Sites view, I can’t really decide what to think about it. It’s not particularly useful – like the integration with Aero Peek – but it does look good and does not impede my usual browsing habits. Use it for a couple of hours, maybe a day, and the most visited websites will be nicely presented when you open a new tab. And, believe it or not, this Minority Report style interface doesn’t take any longer to load than a new blank tab in Firefox. What is useful is the Cover Flow view for History – it makes finding websites a snap for people with good visual memory.

Another aspect that persuaded me to switch to Safari was the layout of the interface elements – compact, streamlined, bare bones – modifications that I did myself in Firefox. Even the menu bar is hidden to save space. However, I didn’t manage to convince the bookmark list to stay on the side in Safari, a perk for wide screen displays.

Thanks to an AdBlock list and a CSS file designed for Opera by Fanboy you can now disable most of ads. All you have to do is download Element Hider CSS file and go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Style Sheet –> Other. Select the CSS file you just downloaded. Remember though that you’re undermining the revenue model for MakeUseOf and the writers behind it as well as other web publications.

The only thing that’s missing from Safari right now is an add-on similar to NoScript. At that point, Safari is just an upgraded version of Firefox (without getting into a technical discussion about the different rendering engines, Gecko versus WebKit).

All the graphical candy takes a toll on the system memory. While I can’t say it’s a memory leak or something else, Safari with 4 tabs open consumed about 200MB of memory repeatedly. Firefox isn’t far behind with a jump from 90Mb to 160MB – one hour staying in idle mode.

You can also read my review of the Safari 4 beta as well as other posts related to Safari. Tell us in the comments what browser you use, why you like it and of course, your impressions on Safari 4.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
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• The Ultimate Guide To Speeding Up Firefox 3.5 (131)

But for the serious guys, the source code is often a mine of info. It’s the backdoor into a competitor’s SEO strategies – keyword use, design optimization etc. In brief, what’s the guy doing right and what is he doing wrong.

Every browser has an inbuilt viewer, much like a notepad. Commonly found under the View menu, it displays the client side source code at the touch of a mouse. Commonly though, it is not feature rich. For instance, a feature to change the font face would have been nice. Also, a simple addition of a comment before saving the file is not possible as it is usually read only. It is merely meant to be a viewer… the word ‘editor’ a bit ill-chosen.

So can we get the browser to use the editor of our choice? Thankfully, most of the browsers themselves are open to the idea. Here’s how we can foist our own choice on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 3’s default viewer is accessed from View – Page Source. It has basic options to change the text size, syntax highlighting and a feature to wrap long lines. One feature I like is that Firefox lets me see the source for a selected area of the webpage (Right click – View selection source).

But to choose another editor, let’s do this:

1. Type about:config in the address bar. Ignore the alert which comes up and go ahead.
2. In the application preferences page, scroll to the bottom half of the page or use browser’s Find (CTRL+F) to search for two values.
3. Find and highlight view_source.editor.external. Double click and toggle it to “true”.
4. Next, just below it find and highlight view_source.editor.path. Double click on it and enter the new path of your preferred editor in the Enter string value box. If the path doesn’t exist or is not executable, the inbuilt viewer will be used.

It’s done!

Firefox has a host of add-ons which help to get under the hood of a webpage. Ann Smarty, a colleague here at MakeUseOf has covered seven of them quite comprehensively in an outside post at SearchEngineJournal.com. Of the 7 add-ons mentioned, only View Formatted Source is not updated for the latest version of the browser.

Internet Explorer

IE8’s source viewer, accessed from View – Source doesn’t add anything more than the standard options. But the inbuilt Developer Tools feature gives IE8 some extra teeth and us, an option to have an editor of our choice.

Developer Tools is a debugger which makes dissecting a webpage and its included elements like CSS, Javascript and HTML much easier. The developer tools can be opened by –

• Open IE8. Press F12
• Or on the Menu click Tools – Developer Tool.

It is a powerful tool and to explain it would require a few tutorials of its own. Here, we just want to change the source code editor.

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Press the F12 button to start the Developer Tools.
3. Click on File; Choose Customize Internet Explorer View Source.
4. Three options are presented: Default Viewer, Notepad, Other…
5. You can use Notepad or select Other for an editor of your choice. Browse to the location of your program, select the program’s executable file and click Open to set it up as the new editor.

Opera

Opera v9.64 does allow you to make changes and apply them on the fly in its source editor. The source editor is available from View – Source. Opera also gives you the option to change the default and it is easy.

1. On the Menu, click on Tools – Preferences.
2. In Preferences, select the Advanced tab. Under Programs, click on Edit for Choose application for viewing source.
3. Opera gives us three choices,
   • The Opera source viewer – use the inbuilt one.
   • Open with default application – specify the path of your preferred application.
   • Open with other application – here you can browse to the program of your choice, select its executable and set it as the editor. You can also fix launch parameters for the program in the Parameter field.
4. Click OK to close the source viewer options and set the changes.

A short note on Google Chrome…

Google Chrome does not allow us to change the default source viewer (yet!). Chrome has a Developer’s section under the page icon, from where you can view the source of the current page, use Debug JavaScript function and open a JavaScript console. The source viewer itself is minimalistic with syntax highlighting, line numbers and active links.

The view source option is akin to a diagnostic kit, especially for a web developer. Therefore, it makes sense to use the better ones on the table like for instance Notepad++, SourceEdit, or even dedicated but lean HTML editors like Homesite (good but not free). For more free options look at 3 Windows Text Editors For Programmers.

As we are talking about the ‘language of code’ why not also look at Damien’s post on tools to clean up CSS files.

Have you changed your source viewer/editor? Or are you sticking to the default? Also let us know your own editor of choice.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
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• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)

If you are a web developer, you sure have to take care of browser compatibilities and ensure that your web app looks and works almost the same, if not entirely the same across different browsers and platforms.

If you have been looking for an easy solution to see how your site looks in different browsers, then check out the new Adobe BrowserLab. Adobe BrowserLab provides you with exact renderings of your webpages as they would look in different browsers and operating systems. The service might remind you of Browsershots which also provides you with screenshots of your site in different browsers. There is however, no waiting required in Adobe BrowserLab and you get to see the results almost instantaneously.

Adobe BrowserLab allows you to preview your work in Firefox 2.X Windows, Firefox 3.X Windows, Firefox 2.X Mac OS, Firefox 3.X Mac OS, IE6.X and IE7.X and Safari 3.X; which is less than what you can get with Browsershots but includes the popular browsers.

You can view the results side by side (2-up) view, or any individual screenshot (1-up view) or compare the renderings with the “onion-skin” view which overlays one screenshot over the other (as seen below).

You can install BrowserLab MXP extensions to integrate Adobe BrowserLab with Dreamweaver CS4, which would then allow you to preview and compare the local files which you are developing for your site.

Looks too good to be true? Well it is true, at least for a certain period of time anyway. Adobe BrowserLab is a limited free preview service. While Adobe is testing the service, they are letting people hop on board. The final product would most likely require you to shell out some bucks. However, with the time most webapps take these days to drop out of beta stages, you might be able to use BrowserLab for at least a considerable amount of time. You can give it a thorough spin and decide if you would like to spend some money to avail its services in the future.

Interested in webdesign? Check out our MakeUseOf posts to help you become a web-designing wizard.

What clever ways do you use to preview your work in different browsers? Virtualization? Or you install all the browsers? Let us know about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

The semantic web, as Wikipedia puts it, is:

an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

In this case, semantic recognition technology means that Glue can figure out when you are visiting a web page about the same “books, music, movies, wines, stocks, movie stars, recording artists” as your friends, but not necessarily on the same website.

If your friend left a comment on, let’s say, Slumdog Millionaire’s page on IMDB, that comment would also show in the Glue toolbar when you are visiting the Wikipedia page of the same movie. The technology basically aggregates information from across the web and serves it back according to ‘semantics’.

After you go to getglue.com and install the 500KB add-on, you’ll be presented with a bar at the top of the page you’re visiting. This bar shows friends that have liked the same thing you’re looking at as well as their comments. You can add it to your favorites or leave replies/comments.

It’s extremely easy to use Glue, it doesn’t seem to slow down Firefox and it only shows up when it detects one of the aforementioned categories i.e. you won’t see Glue popping up on the Wikipedia page for LHC.

It connects to Facebook – which makes importing friends easy for you and gives them a  great opportunity for exponential growth. They also invite you to give your Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Linkedin, FriendConnect and Myspace in order to allow fellow Glue users to “instantly see your books, music, movies, and more!”. However, it’s vey easy to close your account from: Glue For You>Account>Delete Account.

If you’re not sure yet whether to install Glue or not, check out this short video which explains how Glue works:

Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Glue is definitely a very interesting and useful Firefox add-on, and I invite you to try it and let us know in the comments what you think about it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
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A search query always gives us a heap of search results to sift through. DeeperWeb takes these search results, churns them out in the normal Google fashion and also sorts them out according to other associated sources like news, blogs, metrics, Wikipedia and answers. Thus, a user gets a better view of his search results. Now it’s a choice of which heap of results to dive deeper into.

Courtesy DeeperWeb.com

How does DeeperWeb help me get a deeper look at the web?

Let me try it out with a simple query – I type “recession” in the search box. It’s something I am worried about and here’s what I get:

The usual 9,370,000 results in 0.27 seconds. Just like a Google search results page. But I also get the two unique DeeperWeb features on a sidebar.

The Tag Cloud

The tag cloud (or DeeperCloud) provides the user with an understanding of the relative issues arranged around the main query. The other tags are basically keywords which I can click to fine tune my search results further.

I click on the ‘economic’ tag and Google works behind the scenes to return a results page for ‘economic recession’. The Tag Cloud and the sidebar resources contents change to reflect the new result.

I can also use a phrase like “personal finances” to enhance my search or search in a specific site. A mouse-over over a particular tag allows me to filter out that word from a search, much like the Google query minus (-) operator.

I can now go on clicking the related tags to go ‘deeper’ into the search results. Probably, I can get the same results using Google operators directly but tag searching not only takes the hassle out of it but also suggests associated keywords which we may not have thought of at the time.

Topic Mapping

DeeperWeb describes this feature as a way to reduce the usual clutter of search result page. DeeperWeb ‘maps’ the results into specific sidebar categories depending on the source and type of result. These categories resemble mini search engines.

Courtesy DeeperWeb.com

Search results are arranged into neat little boxes like – Blogs Search, Answers Search, Metrics Search, Business News Search, Resources Search and Wikipedia Search.

For my ‘recession’ query, I can go directly to blogs which discussing the topic or check out when the last U.S. recession took place via Answers Search. The Resources Search gives me many PDF documents on the subject. The Business News Search tells me that it might not be a good time to buy a car. The Metrics Search gives the pollsters feedback on a universal worry. And of course, Wikipedia Search throws in its rich storehouse of information.

Narrowing down the search results into categories and sources does wonders for personal productivity.

Great! How do I get DeeperWeb for myself?

Couldn’t be easier. DeeperWeb 1.1.0 is available in these flavors:

• Directly, as a web interface at DeeperWeb.com.
• As a Firefox Add-on from the Mozilla Add-ons page. Conduct a usual search and the DeeperWeb pane appears on the results page and disappears when you leave the page.
• And for IE as a search plug-in. The plug-in is available for Internet Explorer 7 and 8.
• Nope! It doesn’t work with Chrome, yet.

The DeeperWeb add-on is compatible with Windows (2000, XP, Vista), Mac OS X and Linux.

I took DeeperWeb for quite a few spins around the web. The web app is still in beta and so the promise for the days to come is still fresh. Although, it’s Google that’s doing the heavy lifting, DeeperWeb does give it more muscle.

Let us know whether DeeperWeb enhanced your search experience or boosted your efficiency. How does it stand up to the other Google-driven search engines? Speak your mind in the comment.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Google Sidewiki – Sideswipe for Sharing Website Reviews (5)
• Are You a Reckless Web User? Secure Your Browser With AVG Linkscanner (13)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with YopMail (21)

Here’s how it looks like in Internet Explorer:

Sometimes we might need it but usually we don’t. It’s not gibberish but for the sake of dandier appearance we should ideally remove the header and footer info from the printed page. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox make it easy to remove or include this header-footer information. But just how?

Removing header and footer information in Internet Explorer

Select Print Preview from the File menu on the menu bar. The Print Preview window has a ‘Turn headers and footers on or off‘ button on the top. Toggle that to switch the visibility of the header and footer.

The changes in the Print Preview window are temporary and will remain only as long as the window is kept open. To permanently customized our print jobs, we need to head over to Page Setup.

Adjusting header and footer information in Internet Explorer

Modern browsers provide us with a lot of customization options and IE8 is no different.

1. Browse to the webpage you want to print.
2. Click on Page Setup from either the File menu or from the Printer icon drop-down menu on the menu bar.

   

   

3. In the Page Setup box click on the dropdown lists under Header and Footer and select what you want to print. If you want to exclude any header and footer field, select Empty from the drop-down menu. You can print or exclude information from the left, right or center positions of the page.

   

With Page Setup complete, all that is left is the final Print command.

Making your own header and footer information

A slew of simple ampersand codes let you add your own custom headers and footers. For a custom header or footer in Internet Explorer 8, click on one of the drop-down menus under Headers and Footers in the Page Setup dialog box, and then click Custom. In the Custom dialog box, type your own text along with these codes:

• Window title – &w
• Page address (URL) – &u
• Date in short format (as specified by Regional and Language Options in Control Panel) – &d
• Date in long format (as specified by Regional and Language Options in Control Panel) – &D
• Time (as specified by Regional and Language Options in Control Panel) – &t
• Time in 24-hour format – &T
• Current page number – &p
• Total number of pages – &P
• Right-aligned text (following &b) – &b
• Centered text (between &B&B) – &b&b
• A single ampersand (&) – &&

For example, if I want to show that I printed the page on a particular date, I can enter – &w By Saikat on &d.

Adjusting header and footer information in Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox follows the same path as IE.  Access Page Setup from the File menu; go to the ‘Margins & Header/Footer‘ tab. Use the drop-down menus to select or remove the headers and footers of your choice – left, center or right.

Adding a custom field to the header and footer is slightly simpler than IE as no codes are involved. Select Custom from the drop-down menu and enter your desired text in the pop-up. You are done.

Some headers and footers like page numbers and dates are often essential. What we need to print or exclude depends on the content. With this method, my woes have gone. Hopefully, yours will too.

Did you like this ‘How-to’? Did you find this “hack” helpful? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Easily Record & Print Out An Internet User’s Browsing History (5)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)

Now we don’t have to blindly click those links anymore. Using AVG’s Linkscanner browser plug-in. I installed it and tested it on Internet Explorer which worked flawlessly and on Firefox where it would not work with Google. Maybe it was something I did (or didn’t do) but I would love to hear about your experiences with it.

(Note: If you’re using AVG 2008 Antivirus software then you already have this installed, you just need to enabled it from AVG settings panel.)

I started by downloading the 14.4 mb installer from here

I ran through the normal setup steps. You know hitting next, next and then finish…

I choose the standard installation.

And I allowed it to install the toolbar (which turns out to not be necessary to get this to work.)

After you install it the plug-in will be added to each of your browsers automatically.

I only tried IE 7 and Firefox 3. In Firefox I was able to get Yahoo to show me AVG’s ratings on websites. Below is a search for the term Warez. You can see the Red X next to potentially dangerous websites and websites that are proven clean have a green check mark next to them.

I fired up Google in Internet Explorer 7 and searched for HACKz and as you can see by the green check marks next to each of the search results… They are clean! So you don’t have to be worried browsing on over to um research hackz and all

Some of the statistics provided by AVG’s website will blow your mind:

• On any given day, some two million web pages are poisoned by hidden threats.
• 60 percent of malicious web sites appear for less than one day.
• Real-time scanning is critical as relying on a database of known URLs isn’t sufficient protection.

• 95% of online threats are web-based and cannot be stopped with anti-virus software alone.
• AVG sees 100,000-150,000 threats a day.
• Online criminals set up their own websites or poison legitimate ones (even just single web pages).
• 60% of all pages hosting web threats are poisoned for less than a day, making the threats difficult to catch unless they are viewed on the actual page in real-time. This makes AVG LinkScanner essential protection.
• One in eight web users will unknowingly come across a poisoned page at least once a month.

So how are you protected from web threats? Share your experiences and favorite software in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• Browse Safely & Avoid Viruses & Spyware With HHOTT (22)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• 7 Essential Security Downloads You MUST Have Installed (54)

Yes that is why you learned about your Web History and cookies. You even know how to delete them when you are done with your porn your research. But what happens if you forget? Will you be fired, divorced or worse?

If this has you worried then Close N’ Forget is the plug-in for you!

Simply browse on over to their plug-in page here (in French) and you can do your due diligence and read up on it here in English.

After running through the plug-in installation you will have a right click option that looks like this:

The red X followed by “Close and erase cookies for the current site” is Close N’ Forget’s icon. Now for easier use we will add it to our FireFox’s favorite quick links by following these steps:

• Right Click on your tool bar at the top of your browser. And choose Customize.

• Select the Close and forget button, you might have to scroll down. It will look like this:

• Simply drag and drop the icon to your favorites bar and you will see it as the red x icon like this:

Now that we have the icon readily available to us let’s look at the options. This is what will happen when you hit that magic red x. We can see and configure the settings by going to our add-on manager within Firefox. You go to Tools –> Add-ons.

Select Close N’ Forget and then hit options. You can tweak exactly what it will junk with the options above.

The Author says:

Thanks to a few simple options, you can control how your privacy is protected when you close a tab with Close’n Forget. To do that, simply go to the extension manager and open the Close’n Forget options dialog.

You can then activate or not the cookie removal, and you can extend it to all subdomains of the current page’s domain. For example, if the page currently loaded in the tab is http://www.foo.com/bar.html, you can remove cookies for www.foo.com and for .foo.com, but also for media.foo.com, ad.foo.com, tracker.foo.com and so on !

You can also remove the visited site from the browser’s history.

Now let’s put it to work!

You do some super secret browsing and then you go and hit that red X on your toolbar. The button glows an eerie redish brown when you hover over it to help you distinguish it from other  buttons. Hit the button and it closes the active tab and displays a message at the bottom of your browser like so telling you what it did. If nothing appears nothing was removed:

So with the right options selected (all of them!) you can safely and securely remove whatever site you want from your browsing history. But remember if someone is watching you with monitoring software this will not help!

How do you protect your browsing history and how do you get rid of nasty entries from your history? Do you automate it or do you do it manually? Share your methods with us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Really Delete Your Browsing History – wipe MRU & index.dat files (23)

In the world of web apps, the name refers to this Firefox add-on which just might save you a few cusswords and more than a few joules of energy if and when your browser goes down with all your typed data in it. And sometimes it’s like a breath of new life.

Oh well there are a lot of add-ons with a five star rating. Why do I choose to write about this minuscule 99KB application? Simply because I think the attribute of this add-on should be a default function in all browsers.

Imagine the chore of filling out a lengthy web form and submitting it, only to see your browser crash or some error message pop up. Our choice name callings won’t bring the data back – but Lazarus will. Lazarus lets us recover all that data with a single click.

The 99KB Firefox add-on saves whatever we type in any text field within the Firefox browser- blog entries, blog comments, online email, forum posts and online forms, etc. It automatically saves the data we enter into a form field during the process, and also saves the entire form with the hit of the submit button.

If some accidental error happens and the data needs to be resent, we just need to go back to that page again, right-click in one of the fields in the form, or just within the part of the web page that the form occupies, and choose Recover form from the menu. Lazarus restores the data in the form and we are on the go again.

Is the form data secured?

The best thing is that all the data is stored locally on the hard drive. Lazarus uses a SQLite database which encrypts and stores the data. This database is stored within the default Profile (C:\Documents and Settings\<username.\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile) folder in the system.

For extra protection there’s a master password which has to be given before Lazarus can save or restore any web form. An additional setting can be configured to delete the form data after a set period. Lazarus also gets added in the Clear Private Data options box of Firefox. As Lazarus can also save passwords, this triple barrelled security is always desirable.

Lazarus configuration settings can be accessed from Menu – Tools – Add-ons-Extensions OR from the Ankh icon on the lower right of the Firefox browser. Version 1.0.5 is available for download from the Firefox Add-on site or from the developer site here. It is compatible with Firefox 2.0 to 3.1b3.

Even as web forms get better at auto-saving entered fields, losing our just entered data is a situation we encounter often during our web surfing. This is where Lazarus comes in handy with its one click headache curer. Do you think this Firefox add-on is a must have in our browser arsenal? Add your opinions below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Close N’ Forget Covers Your Firefox Browsing Tracks (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)

Firefox with the myraid of add-ons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox security and privacy addons that you should install for safer browsing.

Stealther

Stealther – Stealther provides you with what can be called a private browsing mode. It allows you to browse the web without leaving any trace. The addon disables browsing history, cookies, cache, recent tabs and sending of referrer header for as long as you want. It’s lot like the incognito mode in Google chrome. Distrust is another similar addon that allows you to acheive the similar results.

Close ‘n’ Forget

Close ‘n’ Forget – While Stealther and Distrust require you to turn on private browsing explicitly, what if you happen to stumble upon a site that you wished you would have known to turn on the private browsing mode for? Close ‘n’ Forget comes to your rescue. Just hit the special close button once you are finished and that site will be deleted from history and cookies cleared as if you had never visited the site.

WOT

WOT – We all know about the threats which surfers suffer like viruses, spywares, adware, malicious spam, phishing etc., but here Web of Trust comes to rescue. WOT warns you about risky websites that try to scam surfers before they enter in them using a safety rating of 21 million websites, WOT combines evidence collected from multiple sources. Not only does it help surfers but also sets a protection level for children by blocking inappropriate content.

NoScript

NoScript – An absolute must have security addon for your browser. NoScript gives you the power to specify the sites you trust and only those sites will be allowed to run active content like Javascript, Java code and other executable code. The addon thus protects you from cross-site scripting attacks and clickjacking attacks.

Panic

Panic – Panic allows you to instantly close all the open tabs and replace it with another tab of your choice. So next time while you are on facebook and your boss drops to check in just hit Alt + ` and you would be taken to predefined page in no time.

hideBad

hideBad – Hides bad things! Saves all the tabs, closes them and opens your home page. Allows you to clear history, cookies, cache and passwords at your will and then restore them later.

TabRenamizer / Page Title Eraser

TabRenamizer and Page Title Eraser – Do your tabs give you away? Why not change their names with TabRenamizer or remove the names all together with Page Title Eraser? Both these addons let you play with the tab titles so that you can change them according to your will.

Gish It / tEMPORARYiNBOX / spamavert

Gish It!, TemporaryInbox, spamavert – These addons allow you to protect your inboxes from Spam by getting throwaway email addresses to be used with web forms while registering for sites you are not sure about.

BetterPrivacy

BetterPrivacy – Now you don’t need to worry from anything like ‘you are being tracked..!!’ BetterPrivacy is a Super-Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually undeletable Flash-Cookies. It blocks long term tracking on Google, YouTube, Ebay to name a few.

Ghostery

Ghostery – It keeps an eye on the websites that are keeping an eye on you i.e. it finds out that which web sites which are tracking you and would alert you about the same.

Torbutton

Torbutton – It provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser’s use of Tor. Tor can be used for anonymous browsing and has been covered on makeuseof in detail.

FoxyProx

FoxyProxy – FoxyProxy automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns and switching rules defined by you.

JSview

JSview – Allows you to view the source code of external files like javascript and CSS files. Although it would require a bit of knowledge and looking through the code to determine if it really is harmful, it can be quite useful to see if there is some malicious code sending off your passwords to somewhere else.

If privacy and security are on top of your list check out how to remain safe on public computers and how to set up firefox to automatically clear sensitive data.

Did I miss any Firefox security or privacy addon that you use for similar purposes? (I am sure I have, there are just so many or them!) Fire up a comment and share your Firefox knowledge with us!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• 7 Essential Security Downloads You MUST Have Installed (54)
• How To Block Annoying Ads in Firefox (22)
• Dr.Web LinkChecker – Scan Files Before Download (Firefox) (1)
• Are You a Reckless Web User? Secure Your Browser With AVG Linkscanner (13)

I’ll be honest upfront and say that it can be a little irritating at first to use.   It’s also not very visually appealing as you can see below.  But if you persevere with it and work with it, you’ll start to realise that it can be quite a useful tool that can save you time by not having to reach for the mouse everytime you need to click on a link.

As you can see from the screenshot, it works by assigning a number to every link on a page.   You can choose in the options to either have those numbers showing all the time or you can toggle those numbers to appear on and off.    I chose to toggle them on and off with the use of the key combination CTRL + ALT.    Then whenever you want to go to a particular link, just type the link number on your keypad, press “return” and your browser takes you to that page!    Quick, easy and no mouse necessary!

So how does it get a little irritating?   Well for a start, if you specify a bad key combination to toggle the feature on and off, you can also accidently switch the feature on if you use those keys for something else.  For example, I initially chose CTRL + ALT for my toggling so when I then did CTRL + ALT + DEL to bring up the Windows Task Manager, that also turned on “Mouseless Browsing”.   If I pressed the ALT key to then press another key to type the @ symbol, that also started the “Mouseless Browsing” feature.   So I needed to change my key combination to stop all of that.    So choose your key combination carefully otherwise whenever you start other processes, your screen is suddenly filled up with numbers!

I’ve also noticed that certain other webpages are messed up design-wise if this extension is switched on.   Google Reader doesn’t respond too well to “Mouseless Browsing” for example.   But I’ve noticed that if you toggle the extension off, refresh Google Reader then toggle the extension back on again, everything is OK again.    There seems to be a bug somewhere.

One other piece of advice – in the options, don’t choose “use numpad exclusively for Mouseless Browsing”.  If you choose that, your keyboard numberpad will be frozen out for all other functions you need it for.

If you’re a keyboard shortcut fan, this is the Firefox extension for you!   Once you get used to it, you’ll be whizzing through pages, your hands a blur, and your mouse will be sitting there looking forlorn and neglected.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• It Takes only 7 SHORTCUTS to Become a Lightning Fast User (51)
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• How To Run Windows Keyboard Shortcuts Using Your Mouse (7)
• How To Master The Power of Mac Shortcut Keys (3)
• How to Get Screen Actions for your Mouse on Linux (4)

To get started, just download the addon for your browser. If you’re using Firefox or IE, download and install this search addon. Once it’s installed, just select YopMail.com from your search drop-down list. Enter in a random string of characters, and that will become your @yopmail.com email address. Hit enter, and you’ll be taken to the mailbox for that address. Couldn’t be easier!

Opera users can download this widget. Once it’s installed, open the widget and click the “lightning” button to generate a random address. Then click the Mailbox button and Opera will open a new tab and display your newly created mailbox.

Creating random temporary email addresses is perfect for those web signup forms if you don’t want to get hit by spam mail. If you value your privacy online, these browser addons are perfect for creating one-off “use them then toss them” email addresses.

You might also want to check out 5 “DISPOSABLE” Web Accounts to Keep Your Identity Safe by Aibek and Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You by Tina.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Get a Grip on eMail Spam Before It Gets A Grip On You (12)
• Five Free Temporary Email Services To Avoid Spam (27)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• How To Stop Spammers From Getting Your Private Info from Forums or Blogs (20)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)

1. Shortcuts

It’s tedious to take your mouse and move it up into the toolbar to hit the search bar when all you want to do is look something up real quick. Instead click [CTRL] + [K] to instantly find your cursor in the search bar and use [Ctrl] + [DOWN] or [CTRL] + [UP] to navigate through your search engines.

If yo’re interested see what are Top 5 Firefox shortcuts among MakeUseOf readers. Or just download a Firefox cheat sheet with all the shortcuts.

2. Customize

Don’t like the location of your search bar? Move it. Right-click into any Firefox toolbar and select >Customize from the menu. A window will open. Then left-click and hold the search bar, move it to its new location and release the left mouse button.

3. Open Search Results in New Tab

What I found very annoying after updating to Firefox 3, was that searches wouldn’t open in a new tab and no option was to be found to change this. However, there is a simple fix that requires some editing of the ‘about:config’. Type ‘about:config’ into your URL bar and hit enter. You’ll see this:

Don’t worry, we’re not going to break anything. At least we’re not going to instruct you to. So click the button, then look for “browser.search.openintab” and double-click it to change its value to “True”. That’s it.

4. Organize & Add Engines

Click on the current search engine icon in your search bar, a list of engines will appear, click the option >Manage Search Engines at the very bottom.

This is where you can change the order of your search engines, edit their names and remove ones you won’t need.

Towards the bottom of the “Manage Search Engine List” window you’ll see a link that says >Get more search engines. You can also visit the Mycroft Project to select additional search engines. In both cases the process of adding a search engine is quick and easy. Just click the desired engine to add, the window pictured below will pop up, click >Add, and you’re good to go.

5. Add Make Use Of

A few months back Mark wrote a post about how you can add a Make Use Of search engine to the list. So if you like us well enough, please add us!

Do you use your Firefox search bar a lot? What other tweaks do you know of?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Make Your Own FireFox Search Plugins & Other Tips (8)
• Get The Awesome Read it Later Extension For Firefox 3 (19)
• 4 Cool Firefox Tools That Are Not Addons (44)

Let’s face it, no matter which operating system you are using, you got to surf the web. It seems like a good idea if your browser automatically knew what you had bookmarked on the other operating system and you don’t have to customize your settings, passwords and search pages all over again.

Well if you use Firefox, and want to achieve something like this, then read on:

The Profile Manager

Firefox geeks may already know this but just to be on the same page, let me tell you that a profile manager exists for Firefox. The profile manager can be accessed by typing “firefox.exe -profilemanager” on Windows and “firefox -profilemanager” on linux systems. We are going to use this profile manager and Firefox profiles to accomplish our task.

The Steps

1. Let’s assume we are using Firefox from within Windows XP and want to be able to access our bookmarks and settings from within Ubuntu. (If it’s other way round, read ahead, only minor changes are required).

2. Take a note of these locations, we will be using them in steps that follow.

- Windows XP : C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\xxxxxxxx.default\
- Windows Vista : C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\xxxxxxxx.default\
- Ubuntu / Other Distros : ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default

where xxxxxxxx refers to a random string, username to you windows user name and ~ to you Linux home directory

3. Make sure that the profile directory in Windows XP as mentioned on step 2 is accessible from within Ubuntu. This should not be a problem as modern Linux systems have read write access to almost any file system that is used by Windows.

4. Now boot into Ubuntu, open terminal and type: “firefox -profilemanager”

5. Click create new profile, a wizard appears, give the profile a name, click next and when prompted to choose a directory, choose the Windows XP directory for your profile as found from Step 2.





6. Click Finish and you are done. You will now have access to all the add-ons you installed, the bookmarks and other settings!

Variations

I want to do this the other way round Ubuntu to XP?

No problem, everything is the same except you have to make the Linux File System accessible from within Windows. This is easy to achieve using the freeware Ext2fsd. Once you do this, create a new profile for Firefox in XP and point it to the Firefox directory on Ubuntu / other distros. (refer Step 2)

I want to do this between XP and Vista ?

Still no problem, I already mentioned the location for the Firefox directory on Windows Vista. Just use that location and create a new Firefox profile on either operating system that points to the other.

What if I have a dual boot of Vista and Ubuntu ?

Same steps, just use the respective directories.

How can I get more creative?

If you have a home network, and you switch between computers you can share the profile directory on the network and obtain the same results.

How about sharing the profile over the internet ?

Well you can use the same method and share the profile directory over the internet as well, however this may not be the best solution. Try looking into Weave (Make Use Of article), or sync your bookmarks using Foxmarks (this will only sync bookmarks).

Any other Profile hacks?

Well not really, just a mention that if the browser is the mainstay of your work and you do a lot of work online and you don’t want to lose your customizations and bookmarks then you can backup your profile directory, just in case something goes wrong.

Also try using different profiles for different types of work you need the browser for. This way you don’t clutter up your browser with too many add-ons and this also avoids some problems. Like for example I use different profiles for developing sites in which I have installed Firebug, Web Developer Tool bar and similar add-ons, and I use a different profile for the casual – fun – entertainment browsing!

Have you used the Profile Manager creatively in a way that I forgot to mention? Why not share it with the world? Write it up in the comments.

(By) Varun Kashyap, who blogs about such interesting tip, tweaks and hacks on TechCrazy Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Lazarus – Bring Your Form & Browser Data Back From The Dead (3)
• Close N’ Forget Covers Your Firefox Browsing Tracks (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)

However this time, its a list with a difference. The add-ons in this list are the Winners of the Extend Firefox contest organised by Mozilla Labs.

The add-ons are classified into three categories.

Best New Firefox Add-on

Pencil

Pencil is a GUI prototyping and diagramming add-on. This means that you can use Pencil to create mockups of windows, buttons, panes etc. Some of the features of Pencil are:

• Built-in stencils for diagramming and prototyping
• Multi-page document with background page
• On-screen text editing with rich-text supports
• PNG rasterizing
• Undo/redo supports
• Installing user-defined stencils
• Standard drawing operations: aligning, z-ordering, scaling, rotating…
• Cross-platforms
• Adding external objects

This may not seem useful for an average user but it means and speaks a lot about the capabilities and the extensible nature of Firefox (apart from the countless uses for developers and UI designers)

Tagmarks

Firefox 3 offers a neat feature for bookmarking webpages that you visit by clicking on the star in the address bar. If you thought that was clever and useful wait till you have a look at Tagmarks. Tagmarks adds a set of icons to the quick bookmarks, allowing you to quickly add tags to your bookmarks by clicking on each icon. A lot like Gmail Superstars which let you classify your mail and then search them based on the star you applied to the conversation.

HandyTag

Can’t think of relevant tags for the page you are bookmarking? Fear not HandyTag comes to the rescue!. Handy tags simply provides a set of the most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel. These keywords are retrieved from many different sources so that you don’t have to think much!

The following add-ons are the runners up in the ‘New Addons’ category. However I like some of them better than the winners! Read on ahead and see if you agree or disagree.

Webchunks

This is one of my favourites and one of the most anticipated add-ons. First off you need to know what a webslice is. A webslice is a new way that allows you to subscribe to only a part of the webpage. Using webslices you could subscribe to the area containing the most recent article here on Make Use Of. This is an Internet Explorer 8 feature, but Firefox can’t be left behind, can it?

In fact Firefox does it even better than Internet Explorer because using IE requires the author of the webpage to specify an area of the page as “Webslice”. However using Firefox with Greasemonkey, you can get webslices on any page on the Web and then subscribe to that slice using webchunks.

Check out this link to know what I am talking about.

Badges on Favicon

Badges on Favicon allows you to put a rounded badge over the tab favicon of some pages.

These badges will show numeric snippets of information from the page, for example your unread mails from Gmail or the stock quotes from Yahoo Finance.

This way you can always see that data, even if you’re navigating on another tab.

The extension uses little scripts, called badgets. Each badget is designed for a particular webpage and you can get more here. There are not a huge number of badgets available at this time, however it is an interesting concept, especially when you combine it with the Faviconize Tab add-on.

Devo

This one is again one of my favorites. Devo is like Enso Launcher for your browser. Hit SHIFT+X to open up the UI. Just type the action keyword followed by the parameters (if there are any).

(i.e) to search Make Use Of on Google you would: Hit Shift + X, type google and then type in Make Use of and hit enter. There are many more complex commands like “play.song”. You can even write your own commands for Devo.

Close ‘n’ Forget

Close n Forget is simple and useful. It lets you close the current tab and practically forget about the visit. This means that it removes the related cookies and the whole domain’s pages from the history (if it is configured to do so). I can see some mischevious uses for this one!

Callout

Callout allows the web applications and Greasemonkey scripts access to the notification area of your operating system provided that they use the Callout API. Not many web applications and scripts use the callout API yet, but this certainly has a potential to become huge.

Reasy

Reasy is a RSVP (Rapid Sequential Visual Presentation) Reader. In English this means that it presents a word or two at the same place at a rapid rate to help you read better. Select some text ( > 25 words) and a pop up appears, click on the text and the Rapid Sequential Visual Presentation starts. Great for reading large chunks of text on a web page. Check out spreeder which is a similar web app.

Best Updated Firefox Add-ons

Read it Later

Read it later has already been covered on Make Use Of before here and here . Some of the newer features include offline reading, sync between computers, and RSS feed creation.

TagSifter

If you have lots of bookmarks in your browser, consider using tags to sort and classify them. Then if you use tags, Tagsifter is a must. Tagsifter provides you an efficient way to browse your bookmarks by tags. Tagging helps in managing your bookmarks and tagsifter helps you to find that link which you bookmarked two months back but only vaguely remember what it was about.

Bookmarks Previews

If you liked the Pogo browser but couldn’t use it, then Bookmarks Previews allows you to get some of those features. This extension allows you to view you bookmarks in style! You can choose from among the coveted album flow animation, thumbnail view of the bookmarks and a tool tip preview of you bookmarks. Excellent to jazz up your browser a little while still remaining useful.

Best Music Addon

And the award goes to…

Fire.fm

Fire.fm allows you access to last.fm’s music library. You can listen to music related to your favorite artist, and discover new artists and music in the process. You can find Last.fm users with musical tastes similar to your own. Quickly access your favorite stations by just typing a few letters into the location bar. If you are into music, you must check it out.

Please note that some of these add-ons are still experimental and may require you to login with your Mozilla account (which is free to create), or alternatively you can download the extensions from the developers’ pages.

Which ones are your favorite add-ons that can perform similar tasks? Tell us about your dream add-ons and functionalities that you wish existed.

(By) – Varun Kashyap who loves Firefox add-ons. He blogs about latest on the web, firefox, tech tips, tweaks and hacks on TechCrazy Blog

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Apart from being in-built into most of the operating systems available, there are various screen capture tools available, ranging from desktop softwares to web apps, from free ones to their more sophisticated paid counterparts. And if you are one of those who love to work entirely from the browser then there are some cool firefox add ons which let you capture screens in the snap of a finger (the click of a mouse button actually )

1. Screengrab

Screengrab is a nice firefox extension to capture screens. You can save an entire webpage, a particular selection or a frame in the JPEG or PNG format. You could drag and select a particular portion of the page or save the entire scrolling window. You can even save flash screens with this extension. When you install this extension, you get a small screengrab icon on the right side of your firefox status bar. When you click on it, it gives you the various options to save or copy the screen. Yes, you can even copy the screen to clipboard. Quick and simple.

2. FireShot

FireShot goes one step ahead of Screengrab and apart from allowing you to capture screens partially or completely, it also allows you to modify the captured images. It lets you edit and annotate the screenshot and add graphics and text messages. Screenshots can be saved in 4 formats – PNG, JPEG, GIF and BMP. Like Screengrab, FireShot also allows you to save or copy the screenshot to the clipboard. You could also directly email the captured screen. When you install FireShot, a small icon is added to the toolbar and options to capture the entire page or just the visible portion are added to the context menu.

3. Kwout

The Kwout Firefox add on is another cool app to easily capture and save webpages or online images. It also gives you the code for the screenshot which can be immediately embedded in your website. In fact Kwout has many more options and Kyle did a good job describing it elaborately in this post.

4. Page Saver

Page Saver is a simple browser extension for capturing screenshots and has limited features in it’s free version. It lets you capture the entire page or just the visible portion of it and save it in JPEG or PNG format. You can also configure keyboard shortcuts for doing the same by going to Add on options after installing it in Firefox.

All the above mentioned add ons are compatible with the latest version of Firefox. So if you were to use a firefox add on to capture screen, which of these add ons will you use ? Do you know of any other Firefox add on which does this task efficiently ? Let us know in comments.

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But now this wonderful extension has been updated for Firefox 3 and in a big way. It brings some awesome new features which, I am sure, could make it one of the most popular extensions for Firefox 3.

So without any further delay, here are the power packed features of this updated extension.

1. Now Save and also add to social media/bookmarking sites

Yes, apart from just saving the web page for reading later, this extension now also allows you to add it to a bunch of social media sites. It shows as a red check mark just beside the bookmark start icon in the address bar after you’ve installed it.

You can click it to save a page or mark it as read. When you click on this red check mark, just below it a small arrow appears which gives you more options like adding it to social media sites. Plus, it hasn’t spared any social networking site either. It lists the popular sites such as Digg and Delicious and then there is a drop down menu which gives you a huge list of other social media and bookmarking sites.

2. Sort pages easily through date and tags

We know that Firefox 3 now supports tags in bookmarks. So when you click on the red check mark to save a page for reading later, you can also click on the star beside it and give it some relevant tags.

Now your reading list icon will appear at the extreme right beside the browser search bar. When you click on it, you should see a revamped interface which allows you to sort the list by date and by tags.

3. RSS Feeds of your saved pages

You can now get the saved pages in the form of RSS Feeds. When you go to your reading list, on the top right there is a small link to the RSS feed of that list.

4. Syncing and Offline Reading

Sometime back, LifeHacker reported that Google Gears may become irrelevant in Firefox 3 because it has built-in support for web apps going offline and developers could make use of it. Here we see an example of that. There is a small link to offline reading in the reading list, which allows you to save webpages for offline reading.

Also it goes one step further and allows you to sync your reading list between different computers.

5. Save All Tabs For Later

Although we do have the “Bookmark All” tabs feature in Firefox, this extension also adds ‘ Save All Tabs for Later ” in the right click, when you right click a tab, thereby allowing you to add all the tabs in your reading list at one click.

6. Click To Save Mode

This is another cool feature. If you switch to this mode by pressing Alt+M, the links which you click on a site will be automatically saved in your reading list. This could also be a nice time-saver.

Overall I found the extension to be very impressive. I did face some hiccups while using it but when I retried, it worked. It’s in beta so sometimes it may fail to deliver.

So have you tried this yet ? What do you think ? Let me know in the comments.

Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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