Firefox Tips | Technology Blog

Firefox Password Revealer

January 1st, 2009

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Use long secure passwords. That’s what they say. Did you ever try to type in a secure password with a length of 25+ characters several times because the web form would not accept it? Since you do not see what you type you cannot easily identify what went wrong. Even more so because the password will obviously be removed when the form pops up again. It could be related to several things. A typing error, numlock, shift-lock, a wireless keyboard with problems or site problems. Most tech savvy users try to enter the password again thinking that they made a typing error before they start investigating why it is not accepted.

One of the easiest ways to do that would be to compare the entered password with the correct password. To do that the entered password has to be revealed and that is what the Firefox password Revealer Show Passwords does. (another way to make sure the right password is entered is to type it the address bar in Firefox and copy paste it into the password field).

Load Websites With Hotkeys In Firefox

December 25th, 2008

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Web browsers usually offer several ways on how to access websites quickly. Users can type in the url, assign keywords to urls or use their bookmarks to do that. Something that has not been on the radar yet is the ability to use hotkeys to launch websites. It is actually a very good question why no web browser is offering that feature yet. What’s easier and faster than opening a website with a keyboard shortcut?

Site Launcher is a Firefox add-on that adds this functionality to the web browser. It does that in two ways. The first is by proving access [via CTRL SPACE] to an overlay menu which displays the configured websites that can be launched from there. Each website is assigned a single key on the keyboard which has to be pressed to launch it.

The second method [via ALT SHIFT KEY] is there for keyboard junkies who prefer to press one hotkey for the same effect. Adding websites to the Firefox extension is easy. It is possible to open the Site Launcher Manager right away and add websites manually or add websites directly when they are loaded in the active tab.

It is furthermore possible to change the default hotkeys if other combinations suite you better.

Automatically Discover New Greasemonkey Scripts

December 17th, 2008

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If you like to test and install Greasemonkey scripts on a regular basis you might be regularly hanging out at the Userscripts website which contains the largest collection of Greasemonkey scripts on the Internet. It is not that practical as you have to always head over to the site to search for Greasemonkey scripts for a particular website but it was the only way to discover new scripts. The checks would have to be performed regularly as scripts are added and updated regularly.

The Firefox add-on Greasefire changes this to the better. It integrates itself nicely with the Greasemonkey extension and becomes active on every website for which Greasemonkey scripts are available. The extension maintains a list that gets regularly updated so that new and updated Greasemonkey scripts will be listed when the user takes a look at them

All available Greasemonkey scripts for that specific website will be displayed in a new window that opens when the user right-clicks on the icon in the Firefox status bar and selects the line telling him how many Greasemonkey scripts are available for it.

Page Bookmarks

December 15th, 2008

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Bookmarks are references to websites that are stored on a computer system. They are usually stored in a web browser to make it easier to open a website at a later time again. They also aid the user by storing the relevant information like the url so that those do not have to be remembered by the user.

A page is usually displayed from the top on which is problematic on very long pages. Maybe the relevant information are stored somewhere in the middle instead of the beginning. It could also be that you were not able to work yourself through all of the page and bookmarked the page to continue reading at a later time. You would need to scroll and search for the place where you stopped in both scenarios.

Page Bookmarks aid Firefox users by providing the means to save a bookmark that does not only remember the url of the page but also the position of the scroll bar on the page. All functions are available through the right-click context menu. Whenever you want to save the position simply right-click that page and select the Page Bookmarks entry from the menu. The extension does not only save the position of the website but also the zoom level which is great for users who regularly zoom in and out of websites.

Fix: Cannot Delete Firefox 3 Bookmarks

December 12th, 2008

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Something strange happened today. Deleting a Firefox bookmark in the bookmarks toolbar or in the bookmarks folder removed that entry from Firefox. It did however reappear after a restart of the browser which was puzzling and annoying as it was not possible to remove old bookmarks from the computer system.

The best way to start the analysis of the problem was to create a backup of the Firefox 3 bookmarks to be on the save side. A quick search on the Internet suggested to delete the files places.sqlite and places.sqlite-journal which contained the bookmark information. Deleting them would force Firefox to rebuild the bookmarks from the last backup. The best option is to simply move them from the profile folder into another folder for safety purposes.

Firefox did recreated both files but it did not solve the problem. It was still not possible to delete bookmarks permanently. Next option was to remove both the files and the bookmark backups so that Firefox could not recreate the bookmarks and would have to start with a new blank bookmarks file.

Change The Location Of Close Button In Firefox

December 11th, 2008

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Firefox is displaying a close button on every open tab by default. The active tab is displaying that button in red colors while the rest is using gray to distinguish active and inactive tabs. The close button adds to the length of all tabs which might be a thorn in the eye of users who like to optimize Firefox menus to use as little screen estate as possible.

There is also the kind of user who likes to use the keyboard to close tabs instead of clicking on that button. The keyboard shortcut [CTRL W] will close the active tab as long as Firefox is the active window. That’s convenient and making the close button more or less superfluous.

Another problem that arises when displaying close buttons on all tabs is that the tab size changes dynamically. This becomes apparent when you open many tabs. If you start closing tabs you will sooner or later notice that the close button shifted because of changed tab sizes.

But what are the options that the Firefox developers have implemented in the web browser? The parameter [browser.tabs.closeButtons] in [about:config] handles the close button in Firefox.