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May. 26th, 2008
So, I decided to try Firefox 3rc1. I must say that it does feel a bit better than beta 5. I can't explain, exactly. I think the address bar change they made was tweaked so it's a bit less hideous.
I, of course, had it crashing at first, so I had to disable addons, and remove those that weren't ready for ff3. Fortunately, a lot of the ones I use DO have beta versions (foxmarks, foxytunes, del.icio.us (I found out about that via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
radiata_prime, and it's damn nifty now. There's a button to click so you open a sidebar in the browser with all your tags, instead of needing to go to del.icio.us directly). PicLens isn't working right, yet :( Hopefully it will soon.
I do suggest that if you upgrade from 2.x, to install foxmarks first, then do a backup to the foxmarks server of your bookmarks, and then install the foxmarks3 beta, so you can get your bookmarks working. Otherwise, you lose them. At least, from what I can tell. Maybe it was just an issue I had.
Also note that RC1 does erase your FF2 by default (it installs in that directory). You can manually change the directory it installs in if you wish to retain the old version of FF (smart thing to do).
The only thing that's annoying me is the tab setup (which was in 2.x, but I think I had tabmix to fix it, tabmix has no updates that work with ff3, so I'm SOL) -- You have that scrolling tabbar thing they introduced. I prefer multiple tabs to create another level on the bar, not cram more on the same line that you have to scroll over. Then again, I oftentimes have 40+ tabs open (thanks doggdot.us+reddit+boingboing!)
So... Here's a list of recommended addons:
1) the obvious ones:
del.icio.us (check upper right corner for new extension)
flashblock -- no more annoying flash, unless you want it
adblockplus and filterset.g -- Never see an ad again; filterset.g will update your filters as new ad-servers pop up
2) more useful ones
foxmarks: backup your bookmarks on a server -- this is not a social site like del.icio.us or furl or spurl, etc... You can back up and retrieve your bookmarks, sync between computers/os's (I use it to sync between my windows and linux installations.), you can access your bookmarks from any other computer by logging in to foxmarks where it's not installed. Very handy.
foxytunes: control your music player from the browser, no need to open up winamp/itunes/WMP/foobar, etc... to skip to a new song. There's other features. But I mostly use it for basic controls. Cool shit.
3) the cooler/funner/more obscure stuff
Tab Counter: remember how I said I have 40+ open, often? That's how I know. Shows how many tabs you have open, next to the throbber.
copyurlplus: have to copy text, and then hate having to copy the address in a separate step? This allows you to copy a block of text and the URL all in one fell swoop, like this --
linkification: IIRC, LJ automatically converts URLs to links, so the above URL that I pasted via copyurl+ is already linked for you. But some sites don't do that, and you'll find a URL that's not clickable. linkification will fix that for you. If there's an url, it converts it to clickable. No need to copy/paste.
locationbar2: sometimes you're on a sub-section of a site, and want to get back to the main area quickly, or something like that. But you didn't access it from the main page. So you can't hit the back arrow. locationbar2 will take the URL in the address bar and chunk it up into clickable links. So the main domain is clickable, but also the subdirectories. Very handy.
And finally!
Quickdrag: Based off of Super Drag n Go, this allows you to select text and then drag/throw it and it will do a search for the text in a new tab. Again, no copy/paste, just throw the text. You can also grab an URL (rather, something that isn't linkified (linkification, iirc, only works with protocol prefixed addresses (http: ftp: etc...) though i can't recall if www.xxxx.com is linkified. Anyways, say you have joe.com, you can drag that and throw it with quickdrag, and it will open that address in a new page. Finally, you can also drag/throw an image, and it'll download it to the default download directory. This is annoying to me so I disable it.
Anyways, those are my picks!
I, of course, had it crashing at first, so I had to disable addons, and remove those that weren't ready for ff3. Fortunately, a lot of the ones I use DO have beta versions (foxmarks, foxytunes, del.icio.us (I found out about that via
radiata_prime, and it's damn nifty now. There's a button to click so you open a sidebar in the browser with all your tags, instead of needing to go to del.icio.us directly). PicLens isn't working right, yet :( Hopefully it will soon.I do suggest that if you upgrade from 2.x, to install foxmarks first, then do a backup to the foxmarks server of your bookmarks, and then install the foxmarks3 beta, so you can get your bookmarks working. Otherwise, you lose them. At least, from what I can tell. Maybe it was just an issue I had.
Also note that RC1 does erase your FF2 by default (it installs in that directory). You can manually change the directory it installs in if you wish to retain the old version of FF (smart thing to do).
The only thing that's annoying me is the tab setup (which was in 2.x, but I think I had tabmix to fix it, tabmix has no updates that work with ff3, so I'm SOL) -- You have that scrolling tabbar thing they introduced. I prefer multiple tabs to create another level on the bar, not cram more on the same line that you have to scroll over. Then again, I oftentimes have 40+ tabs open (thanks doggdot.us+reddit+boingboing!)
So... Here's a list of recommended addons:
1) the obvious ones:
del.icio.us (check upper right corner for new extension)
flashblock -- no more annoying flash, unless you want it
adblockplus and filterset.g -- Never see an ad again; filterset.g will update your filters as new ad-servers pop up
2) more useful ones
foxmarks: backup your bookmarks on a server -- this is not a social site like del.icio.us or furl or spurl, etc... You can back up and retrieve your bookmarks, sync between computers/os's (I use it to sync between my windows and linux installations.), you can access your bookmarks from any other computer by logging in to foxmarks where it's not installed. Very handy.
foxytunes: control your music player from the browser, no need to open up winamp/itunes/WMP/foobar, etc... to skip to a new song. There's other features. But I mostly use it for basic controls. Cool shit.
3) the cooler/funner/more obscure stuff
Tab Counter: remember how I said I have 40+ open, often? That's how I know. Shows how many tabs you have open, next to the throbber.
copyurlplus: have to copy text, and then hate having to copy the address in a separate step? This allows you to copy a block of text and the URL all in one fell swoop, like this --
"The Copy URL+ extension enables you to copy to the clipboard the current document's address along with additional information such as the document's title, the current selection or both.
You might find this behavior useful when you want to send (IM, email) an interesting link to a friend and out of laziness convenience you don't want to copy the link and an explanation of what the link is in a single step. The explanation can be as short as the document's title or it can be a descriptive text from the document. "
http://copyurlplus.mozdev.org/
linkification: IIRC, LJ automatically converts URLs to links, so the above URL that I pasted via copyurl+ is already linked for you. But some sites don't do that, and you'll find a URL that's not clickable. linkification will fix that for you. If there's an url, it converts it to clickable. No need to copy/paste.
locationbar2: sometimes you're on a sub-section of a site, and want to get back to the main area quickly, or something like that. But you didn't access it from the main page. So you can't hit the back arrow. locationbar2 will take the URL in the address bar and chunk it up into clickable links. So the main domain is clickable, but also the subdirectories. Very handy.
And finally!
Quickdrag: Based off of Super Drag n Go, this allows you to select text and then drag/throw it and it will do a search for the text in a new tab. Again, no copy/paste, just throw the text. You can also grab an URL (rather, something that isn't linkified (linkification, iirc, only works with protocol prefixed addresses (http: ftp: etc...) though i can't recall if www.xxxx.com is linkified. Anyways, say you have joe.com, you can drag that and throw it with quickdrag, and it will open that address in a new page. Finally, you can also drag/throw an image, and it'll download it to the default download directory. This is annoying to me so I disable it.
Anyways, those are my picks!
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