All Amazing Articles

µTorrent - I’ve used a few BitTorrent programs in the past, but I love µTorrent. It’s lightweight but feature packed. If your ISP is anything like mine, just having the scheduler to download at off-peak times is a god send.

CCleaner - This has got to be one of my favourite apps of all time. Just the ability to change start up with out using the MSCONFIG promt is great, but it gets better. The default Windows uninstaller is so slow, CCleaner has it’s own programs uninstaller built in, saving a lot of time. Oh, and did I mention is also has a registry cleaner?

ClamWin Free Antivirus - I haven’t been using this for too long, I tried it out because I got annoyed with AVG Free taking three hours a day to do a virus scan. This is quick, easy to use and lightweight.

Defraggler - Another good app from the guys at Piriform. The default windows defragger takes a lifetime. That’s time I just don’t have. This tool does the job in a fifth of the time. Get it.

Dup Detector - Not everyone will need this, but if you download a lot of porn pictures (I don’t, I’m just trying to use it as an example) you’ll find you have hundreds of dupes. This tool scans folders looking for pictures which are identicle then it asks you which copy you want to remove, giving you such information like file size and image size so you can keep the better copy.

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There are countless extensions available, but there is one thing that always made me jealous of Opera users. Yes, a built-in bittorent client in Firefox!

Opera has this feature since a long time, but Firefox never had one. But today, while going through a forums, I found this cool Firefox addon called, FireTorrent, thanks to which I’m no more jealous of Opera users.

This addon lets you download BitTorrent files directly from Firefox with just a single-click. That means you are no longer restricted to have a BitTorrent client first before you can download a torrent.

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\\ tags: BitTorrent, Firefox

Tabs is one of the most important features in browsers these days. All browsers support tabbed-browsing as it allow users to surf as many websites as they want in one single window without cluttering your Windows taskbar.

Tabs in Firefox can be more useful than other browsers as they can be customized by using different extensions.

Useful Firefox Extensions for Tabs

Here’s a list of 10 Firefox extensions that can make tabs more fun to use and help increase productivity.

Colorful Tabs

Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. [Download]

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\\ tags: Firefox, Firefox Extensions

You already know about Firefox 3’s marquee new features, but now it’s time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn’t mention. In honor of today’s official release of Firefox 3—at 10AM Pacific Time—let’s dive in past Firefox 3’s most talked-about feature-set into its lesser-known power uses, tricks, and customizations.

Shrink the Super-sized Back Button

The very first thing you notice in Firefox 3 is its extra large Back button. While it’s actually quite handy—less chance of missing your target!—if the Back button’s just too big for your tastes, it’s as easy as pie to reduce. Just right-click on Firefox’s toolbar, and choose Customize. In the dialog box, select “Use small icons.”

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\\ tags: Firefox

Read the hype on every new web browser released or due out this year, and you’ll see claims that every one of them is “faster” than all the others. You could compare super-specific tests and decipher all the code-brain terminology, and you’d still be left wondering which browser starts quicker, uses less memory, and slides through dynamic interfaces like Gmail the fastest. Since our squadron of independent analysts had the week off, we ran the latest editions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows through some unscientific but highly geeky tests ourselves on a plain old Windows computer. Take a look at the full (and somewhat unexpected) results after the jump.

The testing system

For the sake of rating all four of the latest new-and-improved browsers in the same environment, I tested the most current releases of Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.5, Safari for Windows 3.1.1, and the third Release Candidate of Firefox 3 (which is pretty darned close to the final version dropping Tuesday) on my Windows Vista laptop. Each browser was installed completely fresh, and, in the case of Internet Explorer 7, re-set to its new-install settings.

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\\ tags: Firefox, Web Browsers

Now that Mozilla’s locked down Firefox 3’s feature set, it’s clear the new browser iteration will render some extensions obsolete. Firefox 3 will include functionality out-of-the-box that you could only get with add-ons before. Let’s take a look at five extensions you might not need when you switch to Firefox 3.

• NoSquint: Never have to enlarge the text on that web page with the teeny tiny font size again. Firefox 3’s new “Text Only” zoom feature doesn’t enlarge images, and is smart enough to remember your text size setting on a per-site basis when you visit again.
• Google Gears: While offline web application support is still a ways off, Firefox 3 does have support built-in and ready for webapp authors to turn it on, effectively making Google Gears unnecessary. It will be very interesting to see Gears’ fate in the face of Firefox 3 offline webapp support, and which webapps support which. Overall, it’s great news for users who want their data whether they’re online or not.

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\\ tags: Firefox, Firefox Extensions

Holy offline access, Batgirl! Google releases Google Gears, an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser. Google Reader is already supported - read your feeds on the plane! - and word on the street is that Gmail and Google Docs is to come. Screenshots after the jump:

On the Mac, Google Gears is just a regular Firefox extension; on the PC it’s a full-blown application (.exe installer.)

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\\ tags: Firefox Extensions, google, Google Gears, Google Reader

All platforms with Firefox: The NoSquint Firefox extension remembers text zoom settings on a per-site basis.

So that one web site with the teeny-tiny text that you have to enlarge every time you visit? NoSquint remembers your preferred zoom setting for it for you, even after you quit Firefox and revisit. This is indeed how text zooming should work. NoSquint is a free download which works with and wherever Firefox does.

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\\ tags: Firefox

When it comes to heavy duty download jobs, Firefox’s default Downloads manager just doesn’t cut the mustard. If you often need closer control of multiple, large downloads, you need the DownThemAll! Firefox add-on. This extra-strength download manager can speed up, queue for later, and batch download sets of files from the web based on patterns you define in one click.

Today we’ll use DownThemAll to grab all the MP3’s from a web page as well as an entire set of Flickr photos in one click. Sound fun? Let’s get this downloading party started.

Using filters: Download all the MP3’s on a page

When you right click and choose DownThemAll from the context menu on a web page, dTa presents a list of possible downloads from that page - every single link that exists there, whether it’s to another web page or a piece of media, like an image, video or MP3. The power in dTa is the Filters area, where you define a pattern that selects the files you want to download from the often long and crowded list.

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\\ tags: Firefox

In today’s earlier list of five extensions you won’t need in Firefox 3, we said you won’t need any special toolbars, third-party apps, Greasemonkey scripts, or extensions to get Firefox to use webapps to open certain types of links. This means that when you click on an email address that uses the standard mailto: email protocol, Firefox 3 itself can launch Gmail instead of a desktop app. By default, the Firefox RC 1 only comes with Yahoo Mail as a possible mailto: link handler, which leaves Gmail users out in the cold—unless you know how to set it up by hand. Here’s how to configure Firefox 3 to use Gmail as your default mailto: application handler.

Ready to set up Gmail? Roll up those sleeves.

1. Open Gmail in Firefox.
2. In the tab where Gmail is loaded, copy and paste the following snippet of JavaScript into your address bar:
   javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)

   If you are a Google Apps user, use this code instead, but replace example.com with your domain name:

   javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/a/example.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)

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\\ tags: Firefox, Gmail