Firefox

Install Firefox 4 Beta 1 on Ubuntu 10.04

Since Firefox 4 Beta 1 launched, I wanted to test it where ever I could. I’ve tested it on Windows and it works great. Mozilla also put a build for Ubuntu, but there is no installer, of course.

After Googling around for a while, I came across an excellent article that described exactly how to install the new beta. Shannon Eric Peevey on Secret Ham wrote provided the following instructions:

speeves@mycomputer:~/Downloads$ bzip2 -d firefox-4.0b1.tar.bz2 speeves@mycomputer:~/Downloads$ tar xvf firefox-4.0b1.tar firefox/ firefox/mozilla-xremote-client firefox/platform.ini firefox/README.txt firefox/libsoftokn3.chk firefox/libnssckbi.so ... speeves@mycomputer:~/Downloads$ sudo mv firefox /opt/ speeves@mycomputer:~/Downloads$ ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox ~/bin/firefox4 speeves@mycomputer:~/Downloads$ firefox4

Basically, download Firefox to your downloads folder. Then, unpack the zipped tarball. Once you get that far, you’ll move the beta firefox folder to your /opt folder. Then, make a symbolic link pointing to the special beta firefox in /opt and put the symlink in the ~/bin folder so that it can be launched via the terminal.

My addition to is to add an icon to the launch bar. Open up a file manager window and navigate to root, and then go into the bin. Look around for your firefox4 symlink, and then drag it to the launch bar. Once you get that far, it’ll ask you to give the launcher a name, call it “Firefox 4b1” or something like that. Then, close that window and reopen the properties of the launcher, and click on the little spring icon that’s default. Navigate back to root, and go into opt/firefox/icons/ and select the mozicon128.png.

That’s all there is to getting Firefox 4 Beta 1 to run on Ubuntu!

Fix: Firefox Requires Elevated Rights on Windows 7

Recently my Firefox freaked out and started requiring me to run it with elevated rights. That means every time I closed it and then reopened it, it would ask me if I really want to do that from UAC. This is a pretty annoying problem. Since Firefox is my default browser, TweetDeck and GTalk can’t open links at all. So we’re going to totally fix this problem.

Firefox with Shield

To get Firefox out of Admin mode, it needs to be closed. Once closed, you need to right click on it’s icon on the taskbar. Oh? Did you get the jumplist menu instead of a context menu? You can get the context menu by holding shift while you right click. Open up the properties.

You’ll wind up in the Shortcut tab. Move over to the Compatibility tab. Look near the bottom for Change settings for all users. Windows will pop-up another window that looks identical to the properties window you had open already, except for that the button has now become, Run this program as an administrator . If your Firefox has this problem, the box is probably checked. If it’s not and you do you have this problem, then this probably isn’t the correct solution.

Anyway, uncheck that Privilege level checkbox and Apply and then OK.

You might still see a shield over your Firefox icon, but fire Firefox up. If you’re lucky, it won’t ask you for anything. The second and more important test is to see if it opens links correctly. Try any application that uses Firefox to open links and see if it works. Hopefully it will.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 – A Quick Review

I’ve been testing Firefox 3.6 for a couple weeks now. This is just a quick review of a couple new features.

First of all, help Mozilla test Firefox 3.6. This is a pretty stable beta for me and will probably be stable for you. Check it out.

Look in the top-right corner!

Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 comes with Personas. It is basically a lite version of the bigger and more comprehensive themes. You can hop over to the Personas Download Site. If you have the beta, just hover over one of the previews and your Firefox chrome will automatically change. To keep it, simply click on the preview image and then click wear this. I would never install a theme in fear it would slow an already slow Firefox, but Personas appear to in no way affect the speed because they are so tiny.

Fullscreen Video Option in Firefox Context Menu

Less impressive than Personas, but still pretty neat, there are new tricks in the open video technology. Check out this video and once it is playing, click on it and select full screen. If you haven’t guessed, it’s not Flash, it’s not Java, it’s not SilverLight. It’s just Firefox magic. It clear and very consistent even repeatedly switching to and from full screen. I don’t think it will catch on very soon, but in a couple of years, it will be a standard to provide a high quality, possibly high definition, video without anything plugins required.

Finally, there are 190 changes, mostly subtle, from Beta 1 to Beta 2. I seriously encourage you to check out Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 if you’re not afraid of using a in-testing piece of software. I’m really enjoying it.

Making Firefox Better with Addons

As a web developer, I understand that many websites need ads to support their income. However, as a user, I understand ads are plain annoying. My father always says he doesn’t mind and likes to at least see them to pretend he’s supporting those ad-supported sites.

Firefox has an amazing addon called AdBlock Plus. This plugin will make your browsing experience quite different. For example, on Facebook with most applications, you’ll see a column of ads along the right side of the screen. With AdBlock Plus enabled, that sidebar will go away. AdBlock Plus saves you bandwidth and makes your browsing experience better and faster.

There are two other add-ons that backup my Firefox installation and favorites. Xmarks makes my life easier at home and at school. Xmarks syncs my bookmarks and passwords between computers. Once you install it, it asks you to make an account and then uploads your bookmarks (and passwords if you’d like) to their secure servers where it keeps your bookmarks encrypted the entire time unless you allow it to use them for other services. The other add-on that makes my Firefox better is a mouth full, Firefox Environment Backup Extension, or FEBE. This add-on will backup just about every aspect of Firefox that you have set or change. I have it backup all of my other add-ons, their settings and also my customized Firefox settings (about:config level settings). It backs up everything at least once a day, I set it back up every 12 hours.

Finally, an add-on that is new to Firefox is new-tab (sadly there isn’t an official site yet). It doesn’t do anything that exciting however it does add some fancy tools to the regular blank tab. For instance, if you copy an address from a web page, and you use ctrl+t to open an new tab, you can easily run that address through Google Maps with one click with the new-tab add-on. It has other uses too, like having quick links to your frequently visited sites and more contextual actions.

Using only a couple add-ons makes Firefox more useful but keeps it fast. There is nothing worse than a useful browser that is slow.

Remove Xmarks Info Icon from Firefox’s Address Bar

With the new introduction of Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks), new features have been added. One of the new feature sets is theÃ‚Â discover-abilityÃ‚Â enhancements. These things allow you to discover sites like the one you’re viewing. One part of the new discover-ability features is the info icon that sits next to the bookmark star icon in the address bar.

Xmarks Info Icon in Firefox Address Bar

If you don’t want to see that Xmarks Info Icon anymore, you can easily remove it by going to Tools, Xmarks, Xmarks Settings. Once you see the new preferences window appear, click on Discovery. Once there, you’ll notice settings for Smart Search, Enable Site Info and Suggested Tips. You’ll want to uncheck the Enable Site Info checkbox. That should remove the info icon from the address bar.

If for some reason you still want quick access to the information the info icon used to give you, you can always right click right above the address bar and go to customize. Then look for the info button and drag to some place on the Firefox chrome and you’re good to go.

Please, add-ons, leave the Address bar interface alone.

Biggest Firefox Icon In The World

I was searching for large Firefox Icon PNGs the other day and I stumbled across this site. It takes huge to the extreme and turns our friendly firefox icon into a giant 4000px by 4300px image. Of course, it’s not really that amazing because you can resize any vector graphic without distortion. Still though, to make a site for it is pretty crazy. Now if only someone made these for the other four major browsers.

Biggest Firefox Ever Screenshot

Additionally, there is also a little drop down that says Go to Mozilla for the latest Firefox. It’s kinda cute, in a boxy kind of way.

Maybe This Is The Biggest Logo Of Firefox In The World

UA Profile Browser Results

UA Profiler is grown into BrowserScope. It’s must more comprehensive, it includes the original network tests and also Acid3, Selectors and Rich Text tests. According to my testing, Chrome 4 beat everyone.

On Ajaxian today, one of the posted articles is UA Profiler. This is a browser testing system. It was built to test features of browsers using javascript and css. For instance, one of the current tests is the connection maximum. Another example is caching of redirections (which I honestly never thought of before!) and data urls.

My results for the tests in the five (5!) browsers that I have here follow with their screen-shot.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 UA Profile Result

One of the greatest inventions of URLS was the data url. It allows a base64 encoding of an image along with a type (like png or gif) to be embedded into html. This could save time, not space, in high traffic places. Firefox 3 handles it, and I know that Firefox 2 did as well.

This test result is odd because it isn’t inline with other tests from other people. Most people had 8/11 tests return success while I had only 7!

Internet Explorer (ie7) us profile

Internet Explorer 7

IE7 can’t stand up because it has less than half of the tests returning success. I think it is truly pathetic that Mircosoft, because they have Windows Update, does not force an upgrade. I understand the issues with system that rely on such bugs, but something really should be done. There could be hope in IE8.

Safari 3.1.2 (525.21)

Apple Safari UA Profile Results

Safari is a great browser performance wise and a leader in new css but, on Windows at least, it seems to me as a bit lacking. Firefox has handy features and it also has the ability for plugins. I don’t see such things with Safari.

These results aren’t remarkable in anyway nor are they bad. I just get a bit of a laugh out of the way the boxes are set touching each other.

Why no Link Prefetch, safari?

Opera UA Profile Results

Opera 9.51 (10081)

I loved the Opera update from 9.* to 9.5. The new UI, while many people did not like it, makes the browser unique and actually fancy compared to the slow-tabs bottom based tabs of Firefox/Safari/IE.

I think Opera, one of the four major browsers, should have more than 5 if it’s name isn’t Internet Explorer. I’m not sure how max connections are scored, but if that’s what made it 5 instead of 6, they need some fine tuning of their browser.

Chrome (0.2.149.2)

The results on Ajaxian’s quoted post showed that Chrome and Firefox 3 were the same. My tests didn’t give me a tie, Chrome won instead. Chrome is pretty impressive to come out of no where and instantly get a score similar to Firefox 3.

In Conclusion

There is room for expansion, clearly, in the list. I was thinking that we could test for simple things first, such as url length. I find that it’s not uniform across browsers and is a limit on bookmarklets. There are likely other imporvements/additons to the UA Profile system, I can’t wait to see them!

syntax error [Break on this error] <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML…3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

This totally ambiguous error is a pretty simple fix but surprisingly, not many people have said anything about it. The error comes from Firebug. The break on this error isn’t a part of the error but it is in the firebug copy dump.

syntax error [Break on this error] <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML…3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd”>

For instance, you won’t find this code while working with javascript, since it’s not javascript related. It’s not CSS related. It definitely has nothing to do with the server side parts of the application. What else could it be? How about ordinary html?

The way I encountered this error was that I forgot to specify a src attribute value for my script tag!

<script type="text/javascript" src=""></script>

If your script tag has a strict xhtml doc type and you forget to specify a tag’s src value, it’ll yell at you.
The solution is that you must specifiy a value for all attributes.

Chrome versus Firefox via Slickspeed

One of my favorite things to do to a browser when a new version is released is to run Slickspeed on it. Slickspeed was made by the great people who made Mootools. Since release, it has been changed, by adding more javascript libraries and a greater real world selector set. I simply used the one from their website.

The results are interesting. Mootools, at one time, was touted as the fastest selector engine. That isn’t true as of Firefox 3 or Chrome on release day. (We’re going to refer to the Chrome on 2008-9-2 as IR, Initial Release. So Chrome IR is Chrome – Initial Release.)

Here is the result. Dojo v1.1.1 was the fastest in Firefox 3, but jQuery 1.2.6 was the fastestÃ‚Â in Chrome.

The slowest in browsers were the YUI selector library. The other interesting data, from my limited testing, was that Prototype v1.6.0.2 got slower by about 60 milliseconds.Ã‚Â

I recorded my data here, and you can also view my fancy screenshot. The dark blue is the fastest in the set, the pink-ish color is the slowest and the greens are the middle men.

Results of FF3 and Chrome on release version

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I wish someone, if possible, would run Slickspeed in Internet Explorer 8 a bunch of times.

Shiretoko – Japanese Island Firefox

This morning, I noticed on my Google Reader feeds that Firefox 3.1 Alpha has been released. It’s called Shiretoko! Of course it’s an Alpha and you probably don’t want to test it. I do though, and maybe someone might actually want to test with me.

If you’re wild enough to try an Alpha version of anything, you don’t want it to mess with your work too much, which means messing with the normal stable friendly firefox 3.0.1 you have right now. How are you supposed to work around that? Use the code below! (If you’re on windows.)

set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
start “” “C:\Program Files\Shiretoko\firefox.exe” -p
set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=0

My Shiretoko installation was at that path, but your path may be different; change it to suit your system. Basically, the code above is put into a bat file and clicked on. It’ll open a windows command prompt for a second then close, then bring up the firefox profile manager.

Why use profiles when testing? What if Shiretoko decides to eat your bookmarks? Well, that can’t happen if you’re not using the profile with your beloved bookmarks. Simply use the Profile Creation Wizard in the Profile Manager. It’s really handy. That will create a brand-new-out-of-the-box Firefox for you to use and mess with!

Hope this encourages someone to test Alphas of Firefox.