John Hesch

Be sure to grab the latest version of Firefox from Mozilla on June 17. This is the fastest and trimmest version yet.

Speed tests are showing a 2-4x improvement over Firefox 2 and 9x over Internet Explorer 7. Memory usage tests measure that Firefox 3 is 2x more efficient than Firefox 2 and 4.7x more efficient than IE7. There’s been a tremendous focus on performance for this release, and an incredible amount of effort has gone in to achieving these numbers.

Field Guide to Firefox 3

Mozilla recently released Firefox 3 RC2. Get it while it’s hot.

Firefox is expected to reach 20% browser share by July of this year. Firefox 3 being released later this month will likely give Mozilla the boost they need. I’ve been using FF3 since Beta 1 and it seems to be faster, but I still don’t see much of a memory decrease over other versions. Too bad.

via ComputerWorld

Have you ever tried accessing a website and it didn’t respond? Of course you have. We all have! Mr Uptime is an extension to your Firefox browser that will keep trying to reach that website in the background while you continue surfing on other websites. When the website is accessible again, Mr Uptime will let you know. You can also use Mr Uptime when a website responds but doesn’t load correctly.

Get notified when an unavailable website starts to work again.

I found a pretty cool list of Thunderbird Add-ons with some real gems like the add notes to email extension and the folder shortcuts.

I’m constantly reminded how much I love Mozilla applications!

View and update Google Calendar with Thunderbird

If you use Google Calendar and Thunderbird check out the above tutorial for keeping the two in sync. I was able to delete events in Thunderbird and see the changes in GCal, but I wasn’t able to move an event to a different day in Thunderbird and have it moved in GCal. The tutorail uses Mozilla Lightning and Thunderbird 2 RC1, so there are bound to be a few problems up front.

MyFoxyWeb

MyFoxyWeb2 is a Firefox extension that downloads your bookmarks from Yahoo! My Web 2.0 and stores them locally.

Mozilla issued an update to the Thunderbird email client yesterday. This takes it to version 1.5.0.2. And while your updating, check out this article about using Thunderbird like a pro. The article discloses some ‘hidden’ features not covered in the online help that can significantly improve your emailing habits. And since Thunderbird’s functionality can be expanded via extensions, you can add some clever features to it too.

In FireFox under Tools, Options, Privacy, Passwords, and View Saved Passwords all of your web passwords are stored. This is a management console for you to delete username and passwords from storage. But, there is also a Remove-All button next to the Remove button. If you ever accidentally clicked Remove-All you would lose all of your stored usernames and passwords. There is no "Are you sure?" warning.

This hack by Chris to the userChrome.css file will remove the Remove-All button from the console.

userChrome.css is not created by default. You will need to locate the userChrome-example.css file in your FireFox profile directory. Rename the file to userChrome.css and add the following line to the end of the file:

I added the following to mine so I can keep track of why I made the change and where the source came from:

Save the file (remember to save it as userChrome.css) and restart FireFox. The Remove-All button is now gone and safe from accidental use.

Be sure to upgrade your copy of Firefox with this security and stability update.

This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak.

I found this hack on Digg and tried it for myself and it works great. After applying the hack, Firefox was sitting it 70MB maximized, after I minimized Firefox the memory dropped to 4MB. After maximizing again Firefox was using just 40MB. Very nice for those of us with limited RAM.

This hack works by moving Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it. You would think that when maximizing Firefox there would be a delay as it is moved to RAM but I don't see any delay. Very nice.

Firefox Extension Guide and More

If you're a Firefox power user or web developer who uses Firefox, here is a good list of Firefox extensions including description and screenshots of extensions. Plus Firefox Hacks and keyboard command guide.

Found via Slashdot

This is a great list of the 21 Best Firefox Extensions for Web Development.

Several weeks ago I upgraded to the RC of Firefox 1.5 which basically disabled most of the extensions I had installed. I have been able to find upgrades to some of my extensions but two of my favorites, Spellbound and Minimize to Tray, haven't been released as 1.5 compatible.

Today I saw a post on Lifehacker showing how to force extensions to work in Firefox 1.5.

Keep in mind the following is a hack and may cause Firefox to become unstable.

1. At the location bar, enter: about:config. This will show you a list of Firefox internal preferences.
2. Right-click on the list, select New > String
3. Enter "app.extensions.version" (without quotes) for the preference name.
4. Then, enter "1.0" (without quotes) as the value for app.extensions.version.
5. Restart Firefox 1.5, then enable those disabled Firefox extensions.
6. Restart Firefox 1.5 again to active the extensions. Done.

I successfully reinstalled Spellbound but Minimize to Tray still won't work. At least I can check my spelling now.

For the really daring Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 was released today.

Cool stuff:

• Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Thunderbird may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
• Spell check as you type.
• Built in phishing detector to help protect users against email scams.
• Podcasting and other RSS Improvements.
• Deleting attachments from messages.
• Integration with server side spam filtering.
• Reply and forward actions for message filters.
• Kerberos Authentication.
• Auto save as draft for mail composition.
• Improvements to product usability including redesigned options UI, and SMTP server management.
• Many security enhancements