computer online tips & tricks

I discovered the FEBE Firefox extension a few months ago on Digg. Essentially giving the ability to backup all of your extensions into one file for transfer to a new machine. I liked what it had to offer, but it was in a lot of ways useless to me, because it didn’t backup all of the options one would apply to each of the individual extensions. Such as, my SearchWith Extension, my GMAIL extensions, or my GSPACE. The newest version not only does this, but it backs up your ENTIRE profile. Bookmarks, Cookies, Passwords, etc…Something Firefox definitely needs to implement with version 3.(Roaming Profiles) Nothing is more annoying then going to another machine with Firefox, only to find that it doesn’t have any of the extensions you love. Of course you can plug in a USB stick with mobile Firefox, but I find annoying too. As of right now, FEBE is the choice. Backup your Firefox Extensions, Bookmarks, Cookies, Passwords and everything else. Get it now: FEBE – Firefox Extension Backup Ext...

You may not have realised this until now but Mozilla Firefox has its own version of the Windows Registry, where all your preferences are stored. In the browser, it can be accessed by typing in the address bar about:config But what, in the future, if you have to re-install Firefox from scratch? You may have spent a long time tweaking Firefox to get it the way you want it and if you subsequently lose all your preferences, then you would have to start again from the beginning. This would throw me into a fit of rage but I discovered recently there is a way to make a backup of your “about:config” preferences in case anything goes wrong. Just navigate to your Firefox profile folder in your Windows Explorer. For me, it’s under Documents and Settings -> Mozilla -> Firefox -> Profiles However, it may be different for you, depending on how you installed Firefox on your system. When you have located the profile, locate a file called prefs.js. This is the file containing all your settings...

Since ActiveX applies only to the Windows platform, it is unsuitable for Firefox which is available across multiple platforms. Currently, there is no mechanism by which you can use ActiveX controls in Firefox 2.0 or later. Until recently, a third-party plugin provided ActiveX functionality for Firefox. The Mozilla ActiveX Plug-in provided partial ActiveX support for Firefox 1.5 and earlier versions. By default, these ActiveX plugins were configured to execute only the two Windows Media Player ActiveX controls, which enabled the playback of video content through the Windows controls. There is a configuration file that can be used to enable other ActiveX controls. The plugins for Netscape, Mozilla Suite, and Mozilla Firefox were created by Adam Lock and are maintained on his site, which has not been updates since 2005. These plugins do not work with Firefox 2.0 or later. For more information, see Adam Lock’s Mozilla ActiveX Project.

What if you were downloading something late night, but you are feeling sleepy? Most probably, you’ll leave your PC turned on all night and spend more on your power bill. Fortunately, Firefox has a nifty add-on which automatically turns off your PC when you finish downloading, saving both power bill and environment. The extension adds a checkbox to the download manger and an icon to the status bar. Clicking on the icon or checkbox will turn the auto turn off feature. It doesn’t turn off as soon as all downloads are completed, but instead it has a one minute countdown. However, some dialogues and windows which prompt unsaved document might prevent your PC from turning off. Auto Shutdown your PC after downloading with Firefox Unfortunately, the extension adds an obtrusive dialogue box whenever you activate it to auto turn off. And closing the dialogue box will deactivate auto turn off. Nothing earth shattering actually, most torrent clients and download managers have this feature built-in...

If are a frequent firefox user, you must be wondering how you can assign small easy to remember shortcut keywords to your mostly used bookmarks. But why shortcuts for bookmarks ? Well assigning shortcuts to your mostly accessed bookmarks could save lot of your time and increase your productivity. How Productive? A small keyword could be used to locate the website address, instead of typing full address or clicking the bookmark in the bookmark toolbar. Lets see how can you set shortcuts for different bookmarks 1. Open Firefox 2. Right click on the bookmark for which you want to set keyword shortcut and select properties. 3. Type the small easy to remember keyword for accessing that bookmark(as shown in the image below) and click Ok. 4.That’s it, now you can type the keyword in the address bar to access the bookmark location or the web site to which bookmark points. Tip: You can also use Google bookmark service to synchronize your unmanaged list of bookmarks which got lost in the crowd a...

Firefox 3.6 has yet another secret feature that could significantly improve your web browsing on Windows: scroll acceleration. By default, when you scroll the mouse wheel, the web page is scrolled the same number of lines no matter how many times you have already scrolled it. But, if you have scrolled the page a certain number of times in a short period, probably you are looking for something far below or above, and accelerating may be helpful. Scroll acceleration was implemented by Mozilla intern Margaret Leibovic, very early in Firefox 3.6 development, but finally turned off because it could conflict with mouse driver based acceleration, detecting it was out of scope. So it was postponed for next versions. But the feature is there, and I have found it very useful, and have become used to it. To enable it, go to about:config to access the advanced preferences. Then look for mousewheel.acceleration.start, and set it to the number of successive mouse scrolls that will trigger accelerati...

Firefox 3 one of the maximum downloaded open source browser which has set a Guinness world record. Their were Over 8,000,000 downloads in 24 hours!. Along with Firefox 3 Spreadfirefox also got new cool look. Firefox 3 about:config file is the core configuration file of Firefox. By editing about:config file we can get amazing hacks for Firefox 3. Firefox allows the users to change many preferences in the about:config file so it’s totally ethical to do it.Here is list of 21 Firefox 3 hacks & tweaks. To get the Firefox 3 configuration file type “about:config” at address bar. Here is List of about:config hacks for Firefox 3 1) Disable Extension Compatibility Checks extensions.checkCompatibility = False extensions.checkUpdateSecurity = False 2) Location Bar (Set number Auto Complete URL at Address Bar) This is a good hack to trim down that huge auto-complete list on your URL bar. By default it displays maximum 12 URL browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = # Enter Number at # (3,10,...