Justyn Smith | Blog » Firefox

My Firefox addons

Justyn — Sun, 01 May 2011 06:50:43 +0000

My web browser of choice is Firefox. I have been using it for years and since the upgrade to 4.0 losing the status bar, I thought I might create a post with my Firefox Addons.

Adblock Plus – Homepage
This addon is self explanatory. It allows you to block ads based on filters that you can subscribe to.
Status-4-Evar – Homepage
Since Firefox 4, the status bar has been hidden. This addon enables the statusbar that we’ve all grown to love.
Download Statusbar – Homepage
This will allow your downloads to show on the statusbar instead of opening a new window.
IE Tab 2 – Homepage
Allows you to have pages load in an IE tab, rendering them in IE7, IE8 or IE9 compatability.
StumbleUpon – Homepage
Addon bar for StumbleUpon users.
Greasemonkey – Homepage
Allows you to change webpages via bits of Javascript, can get scripts from UserScripts.
Image Zoom – Homepage
Allows zoom and rotation of images.

Old version of flash? Firefox will let you know

Justyn — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:51:48 +0000

If you check out the latest blog post on the Mozilla Security Blog you will notice that John Nightingale announced that both Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14 will inform you if you have an outdated version of Adobe Flash Player.

Once you have installed the new version, if you have an outdated version of Adobe Flash Player you will see this warning.

If you already have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player you will see the normal screen like this.

Internet Explorer first, Safari last against phishing

Justyn — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:12:33 +0000

An independent security research group named NSS Labs found that Internet Explorer 8 came out on top at stopping phishing attacks. Firefox and Internet Explorer both tied first followed by Opera and Chrome. Safari was the biggest loser, coming last with only 2% of phishing attempts being blocked and there was no difference between the Mac or Windows client.

You can read the full PDF document that NSS Labs has detailing the testing process and their results.

Internet Explorer 6 Blocker

Justyn — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:49:40 +0000

There has been some issues with my blog and viewing it with Internet Explorer 6 (mainly the lightbox effect) and since Internet Explorer 6 is 8 years old I felt it was time that people should be upgrading their web browsers to atleast Internet Explorer 7.

Microsoft have released Internet Explorer 8 and it has major improvements over Internet Explorer 6. The other options are ofcourse Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Safari.

People that try to view the website in Internet Explorer 6 may get an error saying “Operation Aborted”, you can refresh the page and it will load alright but I am not going to go through all the hassles to try and support a browser that is so old.

Force which browser to use?

Justyn — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:54:49 +0000

Just recently I got a suggestion via Skribit to stop forcing you, the reader to use a certain web browser. Now with out being rude, I am not forcing you to use any web browser.

For those that don’t know what I am talking about, I have a bar across the top of my page when visiting the site in Internet Explorer. The bar simply states:

Please, stop using Internet Explorer as a browser. It’s slow, unsecure and doesn’t render web pages correctly. You may download free and better browser like Mozilla Firefox or Opera. Close.

Now, I am not forcing you to switch browsers, if you look closely there is also a Close link at the end of the sentence, so it removes the recommendation. Maybe if I had the site redirect to a page that said “LOL, your using Internet Explorer, FAIL”, there would be a reason to make a suggestion.

I just am recommending an alternative web browser to use, at the end of the day it’s your choice what web browser you would like to use.

Firefox 3, excessive HDD usage

Justyn — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:57:51 +0000

I’ve noticed for the past couple days, there seems to be a constant read/write with my HDD when I open up Firefox. After trying to find out what it was, I decided to do a Google search for it, which brought me to a post on gHacks.

There is a fix for Linux where you set the Urlclassifier.updatecachemax from -1 to 104857600. When it’s set to -1 it means the cache is unlimited, now set to 104857600 it means it’s limited to 100 Megabytes.

To set it, open a new tab in Firefox and in the address bar type in about:config then in the search bar at the top, type in Urlclassifier.updatecachemax. When you see the result, double-click on it and change it from -1 to 104857600.

I hope this helps. I will monitor my HDD usage over the next couple days and see if it fixes it.

Update: Well, it seems setting the Urlclassifier.updatecachemax helps a little. I can still hear/see the HDD reading/writing from cache, but only lasts about 40-60 seconds, instead of a couple minutes.

Firefox 3 is here

Justyn — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:09:48 +0000

The much awaited and anticipated web browser is here. Firefox 3 has been awhile in the making, and just for the people that like reading over the release notes, they are also available.

To become part of the Guiness World Records, please go ahead and download Firefox 3, you have roughly until 04:00 on the 19th, as it only lasts for 24 hours, c’mon people, set a world record!

Enjoy this release, and remember to download Firefox 3 – The best Firefox yet.

Firefox 3.0 RC3 Released

Justyn — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:22:35 +0000

The Mozilla Foundation have recently released Firefox 3.0 RC3, which is one step closer to the final release. You can check out the release notes for Firefox 3.0 RC3, or go straight to the download page. Now remember that these builds are for testing purposes only, so enjoy.

Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 34 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 15,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.