Initial Design Mockups for Firefox 3.7/4.0

Lifehacker has just pointed out that Mozilla has released some initial brainstorms of the design for Firefox 3.7 and Firefox 4.0.

It looks like they are going in the direction of creating a simplistic interface following the path of Google Chrome and Safari. Hiding the menu bar by default and using the two buttons (XP) on the right side. They also seem to be following Safari 4.0 changing colors with the Windows theme. See this. Notice that the toolbar color changes with the Windows theme color. On Vista, its just a tools menu with the page menu on the tab bar left instead.

This design also features (for Windows Vista/7) a full glass interface.

The current design for Firefox 4.0 features the Omnibar and Top Tabs.

Find out more:
Lifehacker
MozillaWiki
Mozilla Links

Technorati Tags: Mozilla,Firefox,Streamline,Designs

User Agent Switcher (Firefox Extension)

An interesting article came up on CNET Download.com about a Firefox extension I wish I found long ago.

Its User Agent Switcher which lets you pretend to be another browser. Opera has something similar to this built in. Handy for those sites that simply won’t load in Firefox. Unlike IE Tab (and related add-ons) the site still uses Firefox, only pretending to be other browsers like IE by “switching” the user agent.

Be aware however, that many sites want Internet Explorer because their site breaks in other browsers.

Read CNET Download.com’s Post here.

User Agent Switcher (Mozilla Add-ons)

Technorati Tags: User,Agent,Switcher,Mozilla,Firefox,Extension

Firefox 3.5 is now available for Download!

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is now available for download after more than a year of development!

New features include HTML 5 Open Video Support, CSS Improvements, Private Browsing, Speedier Performance, Forget this Site, and much more.

It also includes their new Tracemonkey Javascript engine. It is claimed to be twice as fast as Firefox 3.0 and ten times as fast as Firefox 2.0.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes.

Be in the Shiretoko Shock!

Note: Most of your favorite add-ons should have updated to work with Firefox 3.5 already. If not, please contact the extension developer.

Technorati Tags: Mozilla,Firefox,3.5,Available,Download,Upgrade,Web

Firefox 3.5 is Coming!

According to the Mozilla site, Firefox 3.5 is ready for release. Check back on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 which is tomorrow! :)

Find out more here. (Mozilla)

If you’re using Firefox 3.5 already, the video on the above site will use the new Open Video features. Otherwise, it will use Flash Player.

Feature overview videos:

Mozilla.com
Ogg Download
MP4 Download
YouTube

There are also some other Mozilla Labs features worthy of trying with the new release such as Ubiquity, New Tab Page, Weave, and Jetpack as well as various other projects.

Can’t wait? Download the Release Candidate!

Join the Shiretoko Shock!

Technorati Tags: Mozilla,Firefox,3.5,Release,open,video

Firefox 3.5 RC 3 Available

The third release candidate of the long anticipated Firefox 3.5 is now available. Its probably a bug fix release as the release notes does not work and/or have not been made. Clicking the Release Notes link under download links you to Mozilla’s 404 Error Page. You can use the Firefox 3.5 Release Notes for now.

To update, you can use the Check for Updates in the Help menu (if you are on an administrator user account or running Firefox under admin) or you can download the latest version from the Firefox Pre-Release Download Site.

Firefox Pre-Release Download Site (Mozilla)

Technorati Tags: Mozilla,Firefox,RC,Release,Candidate

Firefox 3.5 RC Update Pushed to Beta/Preview Testers

The long anticipated update to Mozilla Firefox updates again. :) If you have been using Firefox 3.5 recently like me, you can receive

From the Beta Download site, you can download Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. But from there, pressing the Check for Updates button would update your Firefox to a version known as 3.5b99, which is a preview version, between beta and RC.

Just today, another update has been pushed out. This one happens to be the Release Candidate.

From CNET:
"Because of the 800,000 or so testers that Mozilla says have been using the beta versions, Firefox director Mike Beltzner said that he expects this to be the sole release candidate before version 3.5 goes public at the end of June"

That is certainly great news. More than one year after Firefox 3.0, the what was supposed to be a minor update 3.1 released in December is now 3.5 and contains many new features.

There aren't really any noticable changes between the beta/preview and the RC. Just expect it to be more stable.

Here is an excerpt from CNET:
"The upgrades to Firefox 3.5 have been well-documented by now. Private browsing, geolocation, faster performance than Firefox 3 for both loading pages and running JavaScript, local storage for better offline support, and native video for Ogg/Vorbis. If you're running the release candidate or one of its beta predecessors, you can check out Daily Motion to see how the non-Flash based video playback performs.

More improvements include support for HTML5 tags such as < video > and < audio >, native JSON support, support for Web workers so browser-based apps can run in the background, support for CSS and SVG standards, the ability to erase browsing traces by site or by time, personas for easier theme management, and downloadable fonts. The release candidate is also available in more than 70 language localizations."

Theres a nice new shiny Firefox logo too.


Learn more at CNET and Mozilla Developer site.

Note: In Firefox 3.5 RC, it doesn't seem to actually say RC anywhere except the welcome page. The About window just shows 3.5.

Update 6/19: Firefox 3.5 RC 2 is now available for download here. Fixes a few bugs and stability issues found in RC 1.

WinTechpedia Add-on Collections

You probably noticed Mozilla Add-ons' New Design of the site. The main addition was Collections!

What are collections? "Collections are groups of related add-ons assembled for easy sharing." (from Mozilla)

So we have created 3 collections. Click the following links to go to them and find out more information.

WinTechpedia Recommended
The top add-ons we recommend. Add-ons here include WOT, SkipScreen, NoScript, Adblock Plus, etc...

WinTechpedia Security
The top add-ons we recommend for security and privacy. Add-ons here include WOT, NoScript, etc...

WinTechpedia Fun, Social, and Media
Add-ons we recommend for fun, socializing, communication, and media. Add-ons here include Bork! Bork! Bork!, Yoono, etc...

You could also install the Add-on Collector add-on to subscribe and add favorites to collections.

We need your help to expand these packs. What add-ons do you recommend us add? What add-ons do you recommend us take out? Leave your ideas in the comments!

Subscribing to our collections gives you alerts of new updates to them. This requires the Add-on Collector (by Mozilla).

All add-ons were created by their respective developers.

Mozilla Ubiquity: Connect with the Web Through Language

Ever need to map something right there? Translate something? Do you have too many tabs to switch to one easily? Mozilla Labs, creator of the popular and very successful Personas add-on, has created something called Ubiquity last summer. Its goal is to allow users to access and use common Web services quickly and easily. More information can be found here.

Ubiquity can be installed from the Mozilla Labs blog link above or from Mozilla Add-ons. Ubiquity 0.5, a major update is coming mid-June. Expect a new post on the update when it comes!

Note: This is beta software. Some things may not function properly however it should work overall. Works best in Firefox 3.5+

Additional Note: Certain commands especially page rotate and image rotate rely on new abilities of Firefox 3.5 and therefore will NOT function in Firefox 3.0.

Upon installing, you will be presented with a tutorial at about:ubiquity, which is Ubiquity’s control panel. It shows some of the commands you can use known as “Subscribed Feeds.” You can also create your own at: chrome://ubiquity/content/editor.html.

To launch, use the shortcut key specified in about:ubiquity. By default its Ctrl+Space. It has a Mac OS X like interface.

Start typing your command in and it will run as you type.

For example, I want to translate The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog from English to Spanish. So, I will type translate The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog to spanish from english. It often can detect the language so you can leave the from part out in many cases. As you type it will update so you don’t even have to press enter. Pressing enter takes you to the service pack, which would be Google Translate here, but that's unnecessary. In the following screenshot, there are two available commands as you may choose to actually translate the phrase “to spanish” to something else, but the first result assumes you mean translate the term to spanish.

Pretty neat right? A really big time saver!

Lets try another one. Need to search Wikipedia? No problem. Just enter wikipedia followed by your term and if you need a foreign language, just add to language.

Need weather? Then just type in weather followed by your city or zip code and if you want, followed by in F or in C for Fahrenheit and Celsius. Press enter for more detailed info.

Need to send an email? Need to update your Twitter status? Yup, Ubiquity can do all that! Here’s a screenshot for Twitter. Upon pressing enter, you will be asked for your password in a dialog window stating that Authentication is required for Twitter API.

You can also highlight text and search those terms, map it, and so much more and can also be used to run commands like switch tab, close tab, exit, restart, etc… Much much more! And very easy to learn.

Ubiquity by Mozilla Labs is an excellent and useful feature that may soon be implemented into Firefox as a built in feature. What do you think of it?

Click here to download and install Mozilla Ubiquity Now
Click here for more information

Technorati Tags: Mozilla,Ubiquity,connect,web,language,Labs,Firefox

Firefox Omnibar

While you could use an extension, here's an addition to my previous post on Firefox's Location Bar hidden features.

Chrome's URL bar has a lot of hype and excitement. But heres how to do it in Firefox without an add-on.

Mozilla Firefox had this feature all along. Go to your search bar and click the arrow. Then click Manage search engines.

Click on each engine and assign a keyword to it. I suggest a simple letter initial such as g for Google and w for Wikipedia.

Then head on to your URL Bar, and type in the keyword followed by a space, then your search term. If w was the keyword for wikipedia, I would type in w Mozilla Firefox, then Mozilla Firefox would be searched on Wikipedia.

Want to conserve screen space?
No problem! Just right click on the menu bar. Click customize. Drag the search bar into that window and voila! Omnibar! No add-ons needed!



Full details can be found in this video. Click here to watch on YouTube. Watch in HD if possible.



That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors

Accelerators for Firefox.

Internet Explorer 8 introduces a nice new feature known as Accelerators where you can highlight any word and a blue button appears. Clicking that button lets you search that highlighted term using a variety of engines right there. Firefox doesn't have this feature built in, but like most other features, it can be replicated. There are many ways to do this.

For the second time, I am posting about ways to get accelerators for Firefox. The first one was about Kallout, which adds a nice button like IE and lets you search from a pre-selected number of engines. Now, want full Accelerator support?

IE Activities (Accelerators) for Firefox

Basically it makes an extra option in the right click context so you can search using your installed engines, then head on over to the IE Addons site. Notice that the Add to Internet Explorer buttons on the accelerators now say Add to Firefox. This was made possible by a script.


However, there is one drawback to this. Unlike Kallout, this doens't use the button. Instead, it uses a right click menu. A bit more inconvenient, but works with most IE Accelerators. In addition, the button that appears on IE and on Kallout is slightly obstrusive and can lag, especially Kallout on some Blogger blogs, including ours.

Recommendation from the developers of IE Activities: Upon installing, you will get a notice saying that they recommend installing Kallout. They work nicely together but I found using both unnecessary. I currently use IE Activities because I find the overlay button that automatically appears slightly obtrusive.

The post about Kallout can be found here.

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors

Firefox URL Bar: The Unknown Feature

There is a lot of talk about Chrome's new Omnibar, where you can type in anything and it would perform a search on the default search engine, which is Google by default. However, there is one hidden feature in Firefox's Awesome Bar that many have never known even existed. At first, Firefox search from URL bar seems to be like all other browsers, type something thats not a URL, then it searches your default search engine. But thats not how Firefox's one works.

Note: If the follow feature loads up a net error, an add-on may have corrupted your profile. This has occurred for me and I had to reset my whole profile or hunt down the corrupt file. Firefox Safe Mode doesn't fix the issue. This will also not function if you have the Omnibar extension installed.

Yes, if you type in terms, it would search the URL, title or bookmarks and history, etc... but try typing the name of a company in. Unlike other browsers which perform a search for the term, Firefox might do something special and smart.

Try it now! Type in weather into the Awesome bar. Just that, and nothing else. After loading a while, you end up... at Weather.com!

Type in gmail. It will load Gmail right there.

Type in wintechpedia. Since our blog is not as well known yet, it performs a search using your default search engine, just like most browsers would.

Type in WOT. Guess where you end up? To the home page of the Web of Trust!

This doenst' just work with names. Try entering: youtube.com Google. You end up at Google's YouTube Channel!

Firefox does a good job preventing you from visiting malicious sites. If you type in screensavers or screensavers dot com (exactly that), it doesn't go to the first search results because they are all malicious.

This is another awesome feature of the "Awesome bar." I know of no other browser that goes directly to a page. Most other browsers perform just a search. It pretty much finishes the .com, .org., etc... part for you in most cases without you having to press the auto complete shortcut.

Firefox takes your term and does what it thinks is best. If the search result that comes up first is a popular site (i.e. you type the name of a famous company), it would load their page. Otherwise, a search is performed. Pretty neat eh?

Continue reading. New Post on Built in Omnibar! Click here.

Enable Chrome's Omnibar Instead!
But if you don't want this feature above and you want the Omnibar, just install this extension. You might want to go to Manage Search Engines to edit the keywords first cause you'll need them. Then right click on the menu bar and click Customize. Drag the search bar away and voila you're done.

That's all folks for today! Please comment on tech as we need comments to improve on the tech guide. Don't hesitate to ask any questions. Thanks!
By - WinTechpedia™ 2009 Contributors