Tag Archives: Firefox

Take A Quick Glance At Firefox 4 Beta 12, You May Like It So Much That You Skip Using The Stable Version Of Firefox

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Recently, I’m testing out Firefox 4 beta 12, and I’m quite happy with it.  I feel that Firefox 4 beta 12 is actually better than the current stable version of Firefox which is Firefox 3.6.15.  In term of speed, Firefox 4 beta 12 is quite fast.  In term of eye candy, Firefox 4 beta 12 is indeed gorgeous.  Honestly though, there is one problem that Firefox 4 beta 12 has which needs to be fixed is that Flash tends to crash unexpectedly.  Then again, when the official version of Firefox 4 comes out, I think Flash will be secondary to HTML5.  I think eventually HTML5 will overtake Flash in various major functions such as playing videos and playing games inside browsers.  Can’t go too deeply into the topic of HTML5 vs Flash, because the topic in itself could fill up an entire  article.

In Firefox 4 beta 12, the tabs are more visible and prettier.  In case you don’t already know, Firefox 4 beta 12 has a feature that is catering to help you in organizing your tabs better.  This feature is known as Panorama or Tab Groups.  The Panorama (Tab Groups) button is a button/icon on the very top right, above the feedback button, and you can click on it to begin grouping your tabs.  It looks like a tile button.  If you’re using Mac, you can use the combination of buttons of [Shift + Command + e] to fire up the Panorama view.  For Windows 7 users, I think it’s the combination of buttons of [Shift + Ctrl + e].

How about multi-touch?  Yes, Firefox 4 beta 12 is supporting multi-touch, but your hardware must also support the multi-touch or else the feature is pretty useless.  Nonetheless, check out the video right after the break to see how one goes about using multi-touch with Firefox 4 beta 12 or whatever beta version of Firefox you’re using.

Even though Firefox 4 beta 12 is indeed a beta version of Firefox, it probably is more secure than Firefox 3.6.x.  It utilizes Compartments feature so memory is managed better, and in this sense it may offer better browser security.  Also, website owners can make use of HSTS feature so users of Firefox 4 beta 12 or later versions can automatically connect to https protocol for security purpose.

Yes, Firefox 4 beta 12 isn’t ready for prime time, because there are few bugs that need to be squashed.  One noticeable bug is Flash tends to crash unexpectedly.  Still, I think using Firefox 4 beta 12 is a lot more enjoyable than Firefox 3.6.x.  What do you think?

Using Mouse Gestures With FireGestures Extension To Control Firefox

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Using mouse gestures to control a browser is not new, but many people aren’t yet familiarized with this capability.  Browsers such as FireFox, Chrome, and many others have the ability of letting you add extensions to them.  These extensions extend the browsers’ capability in many ways such as using mouse gestures.

In this blog post, I’m talking specifically about FireGestures extension of Firefox browser.  FireGestures allows you to use mouse gestures to control Firefox such as navigating to the previous website.  Installing FireGestures is easy as going to Tools >> Add-ons >> Get Add-ons, and inside the Search All Add-ons search box, type in FireGestures.  Click Add to Firefox to install FireGestures extension.

Modifying the Mapping of FireGestures to customize the mouse movements to your liking, but you can always use the default Mapping.  As long FireGestures is installing inside Firefox, you can right click your mouse and drag it accordingly to FireGestures’ Mapping.  For an example, right click my mouse and drag to the left, I would be revisiting the previous web page.  Checking or modifying the available FireGestures’ Mapping, you can go to Tools >> Add-ons >> Extensions >> FireGestures >> Options.

ChameleonOS Makes Linux Looks Like Other OS In A Flash

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Are you a Linux user?  Have you look around for skins to make your Linux box’s GUI/desktop to look like Mac and Windows and so on?  Let say you have done all that — been there and done that — you probably know the pain for going through the steps to get your Linux box’s GUI/desktop to look like another operating system.  Let take those pain away!  ChameleonOS is here to rescue you from such a pain!  With this new Linux distribution, within a few clicks and seconds, you can switch to different skins to make your Linux GUI/desktop to look like Mac and Windows and others.  Check out the video below to see it in action.

ChameleonOS is built upon Unity Linux and Unity Linux is built upon Mandriva.  ChameleonOS uses Smart package manager to manage its packages.  It ships with Chromium browser (i.e., Chrome in Windows), but you can always use this command “smart install firefox” without using the double quotes to install Firefox browser.  The live CD for ChameleonOS is pretty light as it’s only 500 MB or less.  I’ve found installing ChameleonOS is pretty easy too!

To install ChameleonOS, you need to either burn its ISO file into CD or DVD, and then boot into the burned CD/DVD.  You can choose Live CD or Copy to RAM option at the first screen.  At ChameleonOS login box, you can enter username as guest, and password as guest.  After logging in, you need to double click onto the install icon.  It will pop up a box that asks you to enter an administrator password, and the password would be root.  From that point on, just follow the installation instruction as it’s pretty self-explanatory.  Install a Linux once, you know how to install the rest, I think!

So, you ask — why should we use ChameleonOS just to have the looks of other OS(s) when we can actually use the other OS(s)?  It’s about taste and security at the same time I think.  For some people, they just hate Windows for its insecurity or having too many exploits and bugs and long delay patches.  Other people just don’t have money to buy expensive Macs.  Many people can install Linux onto their PCs for a cost of zero dollar.  This is why I think ChameleonOS can give these people an operating system that is secure as it’s Linux and the looks of other operating systems.  In short, it’s because we can do it!  Get ChameleonOS by go to http://chameleonos.wordpress.com.

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A Look At Firefox 4 Beta’s Features

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Firefox 4 is still in beta, but it’s already building up nicely!  The list of new features is awesome!  Let jump right into what it has and can do…

It allows you to modify a tab into an app tab — which means right click on a tab that you visit often and make it into an app tab will forever make the the tab sticky and will not go away, but you have the option to demote an app tab into a normal tab which will go away.  This is an awesome feature, because it saves you time from reopening the frequent tab that you will visit often.

It allows you to organize tabs!  How?  Hundred of opened tabs won’t confuse you anymore since you can drag and drop each tab into a virtual box, and in this way each virtual box acts as a group of different kind of tabs.  Let say you have 20 tabs that are opened, five tabs belong to news, five tabs belong to music, five tabs belong to technology, the last five tabs belong to miscellaneous stuffs, and you can put each five tabs of the same niche into the same box.  Group them that way, you’ll find open hundred of tabs a little easier to navigate than a stream of tabs across the browser’s top portion.  If you incline to ask, how can I tell which box of tabs stands for what?  Don’t worry, Firefox 4 allows you to name each box, and so you will know what tabs are in which kind of box.

It allows you to use a new feature known as Firefox Sync!  With this feature, your browsing history, saved encrypted passwords, RSS bookmarks and so on are constantly being updated and synced with all computers in your network and abroad as long you remember your Firefox Sync account’s user-name and password.

It allows you to install new add-ons without restarting the browser!  This is a minor improvement, but it’s important.  No longer one has to be annoyed by restarting the browser just to see a new installed add-on works it magic.

It is fully support HTML5.  We all know how HTML5 will change the game when it comes down to what will run within your browsers!  For an example, videos may not be played in Flash but in HTML5 since HTML5 is fully compatible and is a standard with all browsers and less resource hogging than Flash (a theory which needs to be tested).  HTML5 is the next generation of HTML, and so many websites will upgrade to HTML5 and abandon HTML’s previous versions.  This makes the more compelling reason to have Firefox 4 as a browser choice since nobody wants to stare a the computer monitor and  to sigh at the incoherent display of a website, because a browser is not supporting HTML5, right?

It allows you to use multitouch on Windows 7!  This feature is still blurred to me, but I think a smart person like you will get it before I do!

It allows a whole lot more, but my mind is already overwhelming with the new features above!  Smoke is coming out of my head!  Don’t laugh, it’s steaming!  Put an egg on, you won’t see it droops, but it’ll cook nicely!  Not overwhelming like me?  Head over to here to see additional new features of Firefox 4 beta.

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