Firefox

[Tom]

I am having another go at switching browser. Can anyone tell me if it is possible to (1) have my Google toolbar in its proper place [lower left] (2) resize it to give me a bigger search box.

I'am also trying to switch to Thunderbird. Doing the first email account was easy. Then I made a mistake typing a password and that took about an hour to sort out. I reallly like the downloadable extensions.

[James]

Tom,

Don't know the answer to your question, but I know someone who will - where are you Francis?

I hear that Mozilla is reaching 10% market share. Whilst I doubt it will ever be a serious threat to IE, it can't be ignored any more when coding a site.

Damn - I don't really care whether IE or Mozilla is right or wrong. What I do know is that web designers have got a headache in getting sites working perfectly in both.

Cheers

[francis]

Sorry - been busy recoding some stuff to standards (and, more importantly, watching Spiderman 2!), but here's a lengthy reply!

Yep - Firefox is doing very nicely (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4037833.stm). That article resulted in a phone call and a visit to my desk at work from a couple of people who wanted to know if I'd heard of FF. Both were going to go home and download it, so hopefully I've converted some more people.

Tom - I don't think you can move the Google toolbar it's one of the main reasons I still don't use FF - I much prefer Moz's ability for me to type in whatever I want into the address bar, hit the down arrow then enter to search Google. I use Google so much that it's a real issue for me. But, at the end of the day, I'm more than happy with Moz. A quick look around the Moz extension site (or, one of them) shows that someone has developed their own version of the Google toolbar for FF (http://googlebar.mozdev.org/) - you might want to give that a spin. If you're going to start using loads of extensions, I've found it a good idea to save the URLs of all of them in your favourites. FF is now sporting a nice extension manager that seems to work very well, but it's just a bit of extra backup.

Favourite extensions for FF:

Paste And Go (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/pasteandgo) (functionality copied from Opera - IE really needs this)
Web Developer (http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/) - version 9 has just come out and it's AWESOME (although, for some reason in FF, the validation stuff has been relegated to keyboard shortcuts (check under Options to find out what they are))
Dictionary search (http://dictionarysearch.mozdev.org/) - highlight a word, right-click and it looks it up at dictionary.com
BugMeNot (http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.php#bugmenot) - now it's even easier to bypass compulsory registration
Tabbrowser extensions (http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#tbe) - takes FF's tabs and turbo-boosts them. An essential install
Scribe (http://prismicspiral.com/scribe/index.html) - this is cool - you can save form entries that you're typing out (like this one) if you need to, and then load 'em back up again later when you get time to finish them off

You also might want to checkout the Mycroft repository of search entensions (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/) - I've got searching ability for amazon.com + .co.uk, eBay, HMV.co.uk, Yahoo, Wikipedia, dictionary.com, IMDB and more.

James - it's time for you to start coding for standards and then hacking for IE. You've seen in the last week what a complete arse IE6 makes of certain CSS layouts. It's far, far easier to work this way than it is to code for one browser and then hack for all the rest.

Thunderbird 0.9 introduced some annoying bugs - I'm really hoping they release a 0.9.x release soon. Thunderbird's message threading is excellent - click on the speech bubble thing in the message header pane - if you've got a few emails that are part of a 'conversation' it should group them. The junk mail filtering maybe turned off by default - if it is, turn it on and keep an eye on the junk folder for a while as the filter needs training as to what is and isn't junk. If you've got Norton installed, that's where any virus-laden mails will be sent to after the attachment is stripped off. I use Thunderbird as my RSS feed reader as I'm not using FF as my main browser and Moz doesn't have that functionality yet

[Tom]

Thanks Francis. Its odd that Google have not done their own downloadable toolbar for FF. I look forward to trying some extensions.

You are right about the Thunderbird spam. At present ALL my mail is going into the junk folder. Does this mean I will have to keep watching it forever, because mail from a new correspondent will always go into junk? I suspect the longer term solution (when Google get round to POP3) to route all mail through Gmail and turn off Thunderbird's spam filter. I like the idea of a managed database being used to kill the stuff before it gets anywhere near my computer.

[francis]

The junk mail filtering learns (I've no idea how - I wish I did) what's junk and what isn't. It takes a bit of time, not it's not too painful. Just go into the junk folder - each mail will have a little bin icon next to it - just click on that icon to turn it off - this tells TB that it isn't junk. Apart from about once a month when it makes a mistake, the only thing I get in there now is legitimate spam and stuff Norton has quarantined. You'll have to check it daily for the first couple of weeks, but it learns quickly.

On the subject of, this book on spam is meant to be very good (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590790634/qid=1101713142/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-6554616-6820657?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).

[Phil]

two more - perhaps not essential - extensions:

Foxy Tunes (https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=219) lets you control your iTunes / Media player from buttons at the bottom of the browser window (and displays the current song)

ForecastFox (http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/installation.html) gives you a little weather forecast.

[francis]

Foxytunes, I think I love you...

Don't forget AdBlock (https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=10&vid=664)

[Tom]

Sorry Francis but I am back on IE - I liked the tabbing and the bookmark management and much else but I couldn't live without a proper Google bar. In fact I'd like a better one with image search, translation, Google Scholar on the toolbar instead of on dropdown menus.