Archive for October, 2005
· October 27, 2005 at 9:00 am · Odds & Ends
I love to tweak things as much as the next geek around me here. Sometimes, though, I can admit I don’t know everything, and I have to look at outside sources to get my information. One tweaking guide I have grown to love is the Firefox Tweak Guide over at TweakGuides.com. It has twelve pages of tips and tricks that will keep you busy on a slow weekend afternoon.
This guide is filled with a plethora of information for folks new to the Firefox experience and people who know what they are doing with the Firefox browser. Here is only a short sample of the introduction.
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox for short, is just a free Internet browser. It’s not a cure for cancer. It doesn’t wash your car or make you a frothy coffee. So why all the fuss and hype over Firefox? In a nutshell, the reason is simple: Firefox is a true open source competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Sounds great already, huh?
So check out the Firefox Tweak Guide and let me know how you do after tweaking up your Firefox install some. Hey not every browser is perfect, but at least Firefox gives you the ability to change what you don’t like about it.
· October 26, 2005 at 11:00 am · Odds & Ends
Firefox is a great browser, nobody can say that fact is false. For somebody just getting into the Firefox world though, alot of the options, extensions, and features can be scary. How do they know what themes to install, what extensions to start out with, what features to use. That is where the Firemonger Project comes in. It is there to make jumping into the world of Firefox simpler.
Here is what the Firemonger Project is all about:
The Firemonger project is an attempt to create a multilingual easy-to-use compilation CD with Firefox, Thunderbird (more about Firefox) and the best extensions, themes and utilities. Both of these programs have been created through collaboration overseen by the Mozilla Foundation and are free for use by anyone.
Over time it has been created and contributed to by many people who enjoy using Firefox and Thunderbird and want to spread the word. As most people interested in the Internet and software already know about Firefox we especially aim to make our CD easy for the average person to install and learn everything they need to know about Firefox and Thunderbird. Our CD has become a way for Firefox users to convert their friends.
The idea is simple, it creates a file that you can burn on a CD and give to a friend. That friend will then install Firefox and Thunderbird. Along with the programs they get a plethora of extensions and themes to choose from as well. This takes some of the “geek” out of having to run Firefox and knowing what to do with it. Want to know what will be on CD you burn? Take a look at all the features that are included.
· October 26, 2005 at 10:00 am · Odds & Ends
Using keyboard shortcuts is second nature to any geek who is worth his weight in pocket protectors. For the rest of us, remembering what key combination does what can be more than a little hard. That is why I am happy to say that the folks at Mozilla have put together a great chart outlining all the Firefox shortcut keys there are.
The keyboard shortcuts Web page doesn’t waste time with a lot of fluff. It gets right to business with all your key combinations. It also has a few notes for Mac OS X users so they don’t get confused either. There is a lot of information here. Who knew there were so many keyboard shortcuts for this little browser?
Some of them are easy to remember. What does the “Ctrl key” plus the “B key” do? It opens and closes your bookmarks sidebar. Did you know though that if you hit the “Ctrl key” plus the “T key” you will open up a new tab? Pretty nifty stuff.
Internet Explorer and Opera users aren’t out in the cold either. The folks at Mozilla have even listed keyboard shortcuts for both of these other browsers as well. For the most part I think it is to show how many more shortcut key combinations there are in Firefox compared with the other two browsers.
So toss your mouse out the window and get to becoming more friendly with your keyboard.
· October 26, 2005 at 3:51 am · Odds & Ends
Now I am not going to play the roll of Chicken Little here. For most of us in the Web hosting world, the sky isn’t falling just yet. I do have to say that the new Google Base (link via Chris) does look a little scary as far as Web hosting alternatives out there go.
Could this be a small step for Google into the world of Web hosting? Even if it is, I don’t know if we have much to fear just yet. I mean, when Google entered the blogging realm with Blogger, it didn’t really take that over. There are still better and more reliable services out there. I have a feeling that this will probably be turned into another way I can learn about growing my hair or making parts of myself bigger. Google has done a piss-poor job at keeping spam off of Blogger, how are they going to do with this?
So is Google making their own Internet? Maybe. If history says anything about the subject though, it will be filled with the same crap, spam and junk this Internet has had for years.
· October 25, 2005 at 11:00 am · Odds & Ends
Thanks to Gada.be I have made Blogware’s keyword function a little more useful. There is something that still bugs me about it though. For some reason, you can only have one word keywords. Instead of using “Internet Explorer” I have to use “IE7″. Instead of using “Web Hosting Show” I have to use “podcast”. This is fairly annoying.
Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do about the problem but hope that others have noticed the same issue. Don’t get me wrong, I like Blogware. I’d just like to like it better.
· October 25, 2005 at 10:00 am · Odds & Ends
Everybody would like to make searching Google just a little better right? The only problem is that what I think would be better and what you think would be better is probably different. That is where this Firefox extension comes into play. The CustomizeGoogle extension does all the Google tweaks you would ever want, and then some.
Here is what the folks at CustomizeGoogle.com have to say about it:
CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).
Some of the features include: use Google Suggest (suggest words while you’re typing), Add links to competitors, rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images, removes image copying restrictions in Google Print, secure Gmail, switch to https, remove ads, anonymize your Google user id, add a result counter in search result, filter spammy websites from search results, add links to WayBack Machine (web page history), and remove click tracking.
So try it out and let me know what you think. Along with some of the other search results, I’d really like to see them add links back to Gada.be as well. Maybe we will see this feature in the future?
