computer online tips & tricks

Do you know how many cache locations Firefox uses to store web pages and images? It turns out there are three locations, known as device’s that makes up the cache used by Firefox. They are Memory cache device, Disk cache device and Offline cache device. In case you are unfamiliar with the “cache”, it is a location that Firefox uses to store web pages, images, etc, that’s used to speed up loading and displaying web pages. So instead of downloading a page from a web site server, if the page has not changed, Firefox will check it’s cache and load the page if it exist. Now, you may not care much about what’s in the cache, but if you are having problems and need to check the content of the cache, Firefox provides a command that will display all locations. All you need to do is type the following command in the location bar (address bar) and press enter. about:cache You will then see the following page with information about the three cache locations and how much space is in use. What’s

A friend of mine was commenting today on a common scenario that a lot of us run into. When you’re actively working on a project, you often times have several tabs open in your browser solely related to that work: some API documentation, a couple versions of a site you are working on, a google spreadsheet, a project resource/status page, and things of that sort. When you change gears to work on something else, you might have another entirely different set of pages that you keep open all the time. If you juggle several projects at the same time, it can be a nuisance (not to mention a waste of time) to constantly be closing and opening all those windows throughout the day. This isn’t new news, but Firefox and Safari both have a really convenient and often overooked–feature built into their tabbed browsing and bookmarking functionality that makes managing groups of commonly viewed documents really simple. In Safari, just create and fill a folder in your bookmarks menu for each group of sit

If you are running Windows XP, there is no standard support for ISO files. These files however are quite common as an alternative to installation CDs or DVDs. An ISO file is basically an image of a CD or DVD. You can use CD Burning software to create a CD from the ISO file. But in many cases you might not want to write a CD-ROM or DVD from the ISO file, you simply want to access the contents while the ISO file resides on your hard disk. There are software solutions available for this, which create a virtual CD or DVD drive. You can then mount the ISO file as a drive and access the contents of the ISO file. Most of these software solutions however are commercial software, which means you need to pay for them. If you do not need the fancy user interface, you can also use a virtual cd-rom tool created by Microsoft. It is called the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, and can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. The downloaded file (60KB) is an installer, which you need to execute to extrac

If you’re tired of the slow downs and errors of Internet Explorer, then maybe it’s time to try something new, perhaps safer and more efficient. It’s a free web browser called Mozilla Firefox. It’s a good idea to have more than one web browser anyway; so why not give this one a try? Necessary Things: Computer with Internet access, Brief downloading knowledge, Access to Mozilla Firefox’s website 1. Go to the website listed below in the Resources section (http://www.mozilla.com). 2. Once there, click the large button on the screen labeled “download Firefox–free.” Then wait for the download to begin. A dialog box then appears that asks “would you like to save this file?” Click the “save file” button on the left. 3. Once the file is downloaded, click install and follow the on screen step by step prompts. Your browser will restart with Google.com as your home page. If you would like to change this, go to “tools” on the top menu and select the “main” tab. 4. Type in your new home page web add

If you wish to conceal your identity in real life, you need only to shove a paper bag over your head and alter your voice. Voilà, instant anonymity! But it’s not as easy to lurk in the shadows online a savvy surfer can dig up all kinds of information about you, from your name and address to your social security number. And it doesn’t take a sophisticated stalker to track you down; chances are, you’ve left behind a trail even a first year Boy Scout could follow. What You Need * Internet Connection * XeroBank Browser * Proxy IP Address 1. Surf with an Anonymizer In the online world, a web proxy acts as your Internet agent and requests information from websites on your behalf. The website in turn communicates with the proxy, which then passes the information back to you. Meanwhile, your IP address stays concealed and the website has no idea how to get in contact with you directly. The easiest way to run with a proxy is through one of the many free websites offering anonymous web surfing.

Firefox with its default configuration does not integrate well with kde . Now you will see how to setup firefox as default client in the following two cases 1 ) Clicking on a email link in a webpage should create a new email with kmail. Start firefox and type the following in the url bar: about:config A big table with configuration options will appear in the main browser window. Look for the item network.protocol-handler.external.mailto and make sure its value is set to true. The value is the right most piece of text in the row for that item. Right-click on that line and select “toggle” in the pop-up menu to toggle if necessary. Now, do a right-click again and select New -> String. A window will appear, asking you to set the name of the new config item, set it to network.protocol-handler.app.mailto and and click OK to confirm. A second window will appear to ask for the value of the config item. Type kmail into its text field and confirm again. Now, if you click on an email link on a

The IE Tab extension lets you switch between Firefox and IE rendering. Once installed, I had no trouble using the IE Tab add-on to run Microsoft Update. According to Mozilla’s Web site, the IE Tab works with Firefox versions 1.5 through 3.0a5. I used it with 2.0.0.6. To install the IE Tab, go to the add-ons site using the above link. Choose Install Now. The installer will restart Firefox when finished or prompt you to do so before the changes will take effect. To add the IE Tab button to your Firefox Toolbar, right-click the toolbar and choose Customize. Drag the IE Tab icon and drop it where you want it. When clicked, the IE Tab button will swap rendering engines. Once you’ve done this, you can use Firefox with Scheduled Tasks in XP; however, keep in mind that only administrators can install updates. The scheduling steps are slightly different from the ones provided in the last issue: Step 1: Choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. Step 2: In the Schedu