Posts Tagged ‘firefox’
Firefox Aurora Android Screenshots – Looking Good
This is a great way to handle tabs on Android.
Of course this is a pre beta :-)
Very fast but there are checker boarding issues being worked on atm.
Firefox 12 Add-on Compatibility – a case in point: Tab Utilities 1.1.3
An example: Tab Utilities 1.1.3.
Some of the compatibilities reports say it is OK….
But how do I test it if its marked non-compatible?
Add-on Compatibility Reporter no longer allows the user to force compatibility.
Oh. Dear. Me.
This sound just like the bad old days :-(
Here is the fix:
extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0 = false
extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0a = false
extensions.checkCompatibility = false
I had uninstalled it and previously the site would not allow me to reinstall.
After the addition of the preferences above I was allowed to install and all looks OK so far.
HackTheWeb 1.1.3 Has Passed its Preliminary Review at Mozilla.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hack-the-web/
HackTheWeb. The Web. Displayed Your Way.
A Tool to let you Hack out all the stuff that annoys you.
- Images.
- Sidebars.
- Flashing text.
- Advertisements.
- Bad Page Layout.
Reduce the Noise. Increase the Signal.
User Empowerment (based on aardvark).
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11.04 Oneiric – Firefox Beta 8.0~b4 – Sound problem with Movie Player caused by npviewer.bin
I was experiencing issues when playing video with Movie Player and mplayer.
I initially thought it was caused by pulseaudio but traced it down to Firefox and npviewer.bin usage.
If I kill npviewer.bin the sound works.
Will look for a bug to report it under.
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Stylish-Custom and Friends: Cleaning-up The Web One Site at a time
In the the previous article on using Stylish I kept it simple by limiting the tools to just Stylish and DOMi.
But if you are using Stylish a lot, then you may find the following advanced tools of use.
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1. Stylish-Custom
This is a great add-on… once you have set it up, but be warned that it is initially confusing, as it has far too many options!
So to save you some pain I recommend that you set it up as per the screen shots “Normal” and “Toggled” below.
So lets jump right in and have a look at Stylish-Custom…
Stylish-Custom Setup
Install the add-on as normal, reboot then:
A Left Click on the Stylish Icon brings up Stylish-Custom.
Or instead, Right Click on an existing Style.
Configure the various toolbars and buttons for Stylish-Custom as detailed in the screen-shots. Its similar to Firefox – i.e. Choose “Customise”.
Normal (Toolbars Insert, Page and Text are off).
Note: if Scratch-pad is missing you need to click the little grippy just under “Url”. It should change to a little hand with a finger (like a web link).
Toggled (All Toolbars on except Scratch pad).

Useful items are the “Site Rules” and the “Insert Text”, as well as the “Page” Options.
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Although configuration is a pain and unnecessarily complicated, once up and running, Stylish-Custom is very useful indeed :-)
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2. Web Developer
A much simpler set-up than Stylish-Custom! Just install the add-on and put its Toolbar button somewhere handy.
The button acts as a toggle for the new Web Developer toolbar, so just hide it until its needed.
Now there are loads of useful tools on the bar so knock yourself out, but for our purposes… here are some of the most useful features.
Information > Display Element Information (Ctrl + Shift + F).
Click on an element in a web page and a note displays all of the elements details (A red box highlights the element selected).
Display Ruler.
View Colour Information.
View CSS.
View Style Information.
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Hopefully these tools will be useful to you, they certainly have been to me :-)
A Stylish How To – Alter The BBC News Site To Drop The Sidebar (5mins).
Dropping Greasemonkey for a more “Stylish” Add-on.
Stylish is better in the following areas:
- Speed, Stylish appears to be instantaneous, whereas Greasemonkey slowed page loads appreciably.
- CSS not JS so no security issues.
- A huge number of great ready made styles at http://userstyles.org/ presented in a nice clean manor.
- Fantastic extra tools to help you such as the DOM Inspector and the Stylish-Custom add-ons.
- Great developer support for both the main add-on and the extra tools.
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TBH now that I look at it I cant see how it took me so long to move :-)
That said the main issue with Stylish was a lack of an easy “How To” so …
Here you go ;-)
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A Stylish How To – Alter The BBC News Site To Drop The Sidebar (5mins).
Sidebar
No Sidebar
The basics:
Install Stylish.
Install the DOM Inspector.
Reboot.
Put the DOMi button on a Toolbar for easy access.
From the stylish statusbar icon:
Left Click > Write new style > For bbc.co.uk…
Add the code below:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("bbc.co.uk") {
.layout-block-b { display: none !important; }
.layout-block-a { width: 100% !important; }
.story-body { width: 816px !important; }
.story-header{ width: 120% !important; }
}
Save, close & you are done!
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The Stylish Trick (Use the DOM Inspector)
To find which elements to use e.g. “.layout-block-b” I did the following:
Clicked the DOMi button on the Toolbar. (Firefox > Web Developer > DOM inspector).
Clicked on the Top Left Icon. (Magnifying glass with white mouse cursor) “Find a node to inspect by clicking on it”.
On the BBC web page I clicked on the sidebar that I wanted to remove… (A red box surrounded it).
The DOM inspector now displayed a tree view of the web page and the item “hyperpuff”.
I moved up the tree a little and saw that “.layout-block-b” is the element that I wanted to hide and “.layout-block-a” the one I wanted to maximise (A red box surrounded it).
How cool is that!
Once you have this trick down, you have the keys to the city!
No ugly website is safe :-)
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Note: The element selector “name” can be a LOT more involved, especially if its in a table, but the solution is the same.
Right click the element and choose “Copy Selector”.
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More examples of my newbie fumblings here: http://userstyles.org/users/98352
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Ubuntu PPA for Firefox 4.0b2 – Tested & Working :-)
The latest firefox without the update hassle.
One daily a month from ubuntu-mozilla-daily.
- One update a month.
- Firefox and xulrunner only.
- Tested in a virtual machine.
Firefox has its own PPA so nothing else gets updated.
You don’t get swamped with updates.
You do get the latest Firefox each month.
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Firefox-4.0 – One Daily A Month #1 – Lucid
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:silverwave/one-daily-a-month-1 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install firefox-4.0
Firefox-4.0 – One Daily A Month #3 – Karmic
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:silverwave/one-daily-a-month-3 sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install firefox-4.0
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All tested and working
Based on:
4.0~b2~hg20100712r47317+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~umd2
2.0~b2~hg20100712r47317+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~umd1
Enjoy!
Details here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1352580
Platypus Workaround for Firefox 3.6* – Use a Firefox 3.5 profile
What Platypus is.
Platypus is a Firefox extension which lets you modify a Web page from your browser — A Tool to let you Hack out all the stuff that annoys you — and then save those changes as a Greasemonkey script so that they’ll be repeated the next time you visit the page. (here).
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The Praise.
I have tried using the net without Platypus but it is just too painful.
None of the alternatives are anywhere near as easy to use or as powerful.
(One rather neat possibility is Readability, which I now use for day to day stuff).
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The Problem.
What to do when Platypus will no longer work with Firefox 3.6?
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The Solution.
- Platypus works fine with Firefox 3.5.9.
- So create a profile and install platypus with Firefox 3.5.9.
- Now upgrade to Firefox 3.6.
Yeah! It still works!
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Quick Hack Here.
Or you can just use the profile I have created for my own use here.
Then you can install whatever else you want on top :-)
Profiles:
The command below allows you to start up profile manger.
firefox -P
Warnings:
If you don’t see Platypus then check that the old firefox process isn’t still hanging round after you have closed it.
If it is kill it.
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Notes:
Platypus works fine with Firefox 3.5.9 so create a profile and install platypus and greasemonkey first, then upgrade to Firefox 3.6.
Workaround1
Use the 3.5.9 profile, then “make compatible” with Mr Tech Toolkit)
Workaround2
Use the 3.5.9 profile, then “bump version to 3.6*” open the xpi (with a zip manager), alter the “max version” line in the file “intall.rdf” (with a text editor), then save changes, restart firefox.
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Last Thoughts:
This is a workaround but it buys me some time.
Hopefully someone will update Platypus for Firefox 4.0 or I will need to run 3.6 in tandem just to create the scripts – ugh :-|
Note: Dashboard for mozilla and chromium daily builds
Note: Proper font smoothing in Firefox
This setting is key, by default (20) its almost never used.
As I wanted text to be optimized for display quality I set
browser.display.auto_quality_min_font_size = 0
Possible values and their effects
A non-negative integer, specifying device pixels. Text rendered at this size or larger is optimized for display quality rather than display speed. Default is 20.
Caveats* Text in chrome (the UI) is always rendered with the high-quality path.
* Web pages can override the effects of this preference by specifying the text-rendering CSS property.Recommended settings
To use the highest quality display and legibility settings for all rendered text, set this preference to 0. Conversely, setting this preference to a very high number will cause Mozilla to use the fastest rendering methods for all text.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.display.auto_quality_min_font_size





