Abduction! - Take Screenshots Much Easier In Firefox

To take a web page screenshots, users normally had to installed a screen capture applications such as WinSnap or Snagit into their computer. To have a good screen capture programs, you need to use a commercial one but of course you have to buy it. There are some free programs available but with a limited of functions, it does not give you any satisfactions.

Even with the best screen capture programs installed in your computer, when you're found something that interested you while browsing the website/s and want to take a screenshot, you need to launch that program, set it up and a few things has to do before you get that shots. How about just do a right click, drag and drop and save the image as easy as 1 2 3 ....

Rowan Lewis has developed an add-on for Firefox called 'Abduction!' a right click option to take screenshot of an entire web page or just part of a web page to save as an image.

Two More Good Firefox Add-Ons Worth To Try

For Firefox users, here is two more add-ons you can put into it.

Easy YouTube Video Downloader

Easiest Youtube video downloader ever, single click direct download buttons for FLV, 3GP, MP4 and HD qualities.



To use it, simply click on the file format that you desired and the download begins.

Easy YouTube Video Downloader is now in version 1.6 and supports Firefox 2.0 - 3.5

Easy YouTube Video Downloader

FireDownload

The FireDownload extension for Firefox and Wyzo lets you manage and accelerate your web downloads up to 10x faster! With FireDownload, download acceleration is seamlessly displayed within the downloads window. Try the ultimate download accelerator!

Before



After



See that!!! From 44.4 KB/sec and it boost-up to 105 KB/sec after installing FireDownload. Download test was made using the same server with the same file .. amazing isn't it.

The current version of FireDownload is 1.1.7 and supports Firefox 3.0 – 3.6a1pre.

FireDownload

My Personal Best Configuration To Speed Up Mozilla Firefox

In default Firefox configurations, Mozilla configured Firefox to suite-in on average computer specifications and internet connection speed. Meaning that, either you have a low-end computer with a slow internet connection or mid/high-end computer with a fast internet connection, Firefox will runs well, at the same speed. These setup is too conservative on nowadays computer specs. and internet speed, so, with fast computer and fast internet connection, you can change the configuration setup to get most of what Firefox has, to make it even more faster.

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for a quite some time now, and always trying to find an extra speed of it, of course speed is the major thing when we choose to use any browser, isn't it? After searching through forums, blogs, websites and also from Mozilla Knowledge Base Article, learning and experimenting, here is my best Firefox preferences I'm going to share with you all, I'm stick with these settings even after upgrading Firefox and it work's well and fast.

Want to try it? First, you need to disable or uninstall all add-ons related to speed up Firefox such as FasterFox, FasterFox Lite, etc. and also if you have tuned Firefox using some software like FireTune, please restore to the default value. We need to do this, otherwise the add-ons will change back to it configuration after Firefox restart.

Here is the preference values:

HTTP Connection Prefs:

pref("network.http.max-connections", 96);

pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 32);

pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);

pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);

Note:
"network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy" is only take effect when browsing through proxy.

HTTP Pipelining Prefs:

pref("network.http.pipelining", true);

pref("network.http.pipelining.ssl", true);

pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);

pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);

Note:
Secure HTTP always enabled whenever "network.http.pipelining" is set to "true", no matter if "network.http.pipelining.ssl" is set on "true" or "false".

Rendering Prefs:

pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);

pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);

pref("content.notify.interval", 120000);

pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);

pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 360000);

pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);

Note:
To use "content.max.tokenizing.time" - "content.notify.ontimer" and "content.interrupt.parsing" must be set to "true". The value is, triple the value of "content.notify.interval".
To use "content.notify.backoffcount" - "content.notify.ontimer" must be set to "true" for this preference to take effect.
To use "content.switch.threshold" - "content.notify.ontimer" and "content.interrupt.parsing" must be set to "true".
To use "content.notify.interval" - "content.notify.ontimer" must be set to "true".

You could either change the settings through about:config, you have to add a new value because some of it does not present in default or by editing Firefox "pref.js" file that can be located at:

C:/Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\zpkmkczk.default in Windows Vista and 7.

C:/Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\zpkmkczk.default in Windows 2000, XP & Server 2003.

The "zpkmkczk.default" might be named differently from mine but it's the only folder in there. Open it and locate the "pref.js" file, right click on it, choose edit and edit with the above values. Before that, make sure you have exiting all Firefox windows and also please backup the "pref.js" first.

Start Firefox and do a test drive. I hope you can feel the different and also wish you'll like it.

That's it .. thanks for visiting my blog.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 Released

We talked about "Why Firefox 3.5 Startup So Slow?" recently, today, Mozilla has released the update version of Firefox 3.5. It's 3.5.1 version that fixed the issue and some major security also stability improvement.

This is the release note of Firefox 3.5.1:

• Several security issues.
• Several stability issues.
• An issue that was making Firefox take a long time to load on some Windows systems.

And if you want to see the full changes in this version, please read HERE.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1

Why Firefox 3.5 Startup So Slow?

Let's see what mozillalinks.org says:

If you find yourself with very long startup times after upgrading to Firefox 3.5 (from say 10 seconds to the order of minutes), you may be experimenting a bug due to a change in how Firefox 3.5 gets the randomness it needs for security purposes on Windows.

The procedure involves scanning some temporary folders looking for bits normally added by OS and other applications operations. Firefox 3.5 looks for more files and deeper (more subfolders) for increased randomness, but it has led to unexpected results for users with too many temporary folders or files resulting in slow startups.

Try builds are still being generated with fixes to this bug, but users report a noticeable improvement after deleting their temporary folders and Internet Temporary Files (generated by Internet Explorer). Read more .....

And from support.mozilla.com:

It has been proven there is definitely something wrong with the startup of Firefox 3.5 as it is too slow. Bugs have been filed and a fix is in the works. I'm also trying to get a test build with the problem backed out to see if it loads fast for you guys again. So please no more threads about the issue and stay tuned to this thread for updates on the issue.

Currently, the workaround that helps a lot of people is to clear your Internet Explorer temporary internet files & Temp folder files. It may or not help you but its worth a shot. Read more .....

That's why.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Final Released

Finally Mozilla has released the final version of its web browser Firefox 3.5. If you are using Firefox 3.5 RC3, you don't need to download or install this final version as both are absolutely the same.

What's new in this 3.5 version:

• Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
• Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
• The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
• Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5

Download now, be among the earliest to use this new version and enjoy.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Final

How To Backup And Restore Your Firefox Passwords

Firefox has a built in password manager that helps you store usernames and passwords for the sites you need to login and use. Once the username/passwords are saved by the password manager, you can visit these sites and login without having to remember the login details.

If you came across an issue with your computer causing it not to start properly and you're afraid that Firefox would crash due to the repeated restarts and sure it enough it did. But before it did crash, you might want to make a backup of the passwords list so that you can use it when you reinstall Firefox.

Backing up the passwords:

1. First, download the Password Exporter Firefox Extension.
2. Install the add-on the usual way.
3. Go to Tools -> Options -> Security and click on Import/Export Passwords to get the window below.


4. Now click on the Export Passwords button. Select a location and name for the file to be saved.
5. You can save the passwords in the XML (eXtended Markup Language) or the CSV (Comma Separated Values) format.
6. You can also choose to encrypt the passwords and usernames in the exported file. But the encryption is crackable if somebody else accesses the file and imports the passwords.
7. Thus, you have successfully backed up your passwords.

Restoring the passwords:

1. Ensure that the the computer to where you are exporting the passwords has Firefox with the Password Exporter extension installed.
2. Go to Tools -> Options -> Security and click on Import/Export Passwords.


3. Click on the Import Passwords button.
4. Choose the file (xml or csv) where you have stored the passwords and click OK.
5. Your passwords will automatically be imported into Firefox.
6. Not only that, it will automatically be entered into login forms into the websites without you having to prompt it.

The current version of Password Exporter is 1.1 and supports Firefox from 2.0 to 3.5 version.

10 Best Mozilla Firefox about:config Tweaks

I only using two kinds of web browser, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is a good default web browser for Windows, but, since it hard to tweaks and lack of customization functions, I switched to Mozilla Firefox that much easier and faster too.

I did not having a hard time arguing on memory usage made by Firefox like most of users had, the thing is, please install CleanMem to manage the famous "Firefox memory leakage", yes, CleanMem does the job, Firefox only took ± 20MB of RAM after 2 hours surfing on my low specs. PC with 1 MB of RAM and Windows 7 installed.

The point is, we are not talking about Firefox resource usage here but it's only a little bit of "commercial break" .. haha!! .. Ok, from a various tutorial on tweaking Firefox "about:config", here is the best 10 tweaks that you can use for a various function on Firefox.

1: Speed up Firefox

This hack requires a few steps. Search for pipelining in the filter and you should see:

network.http.pipelining: Change this to true.
network.http.proxy.pipelining: Change this to true.
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests: Change this to 8.

Now search for max-connections and you should see:

network.http.max-connections: Change this to 96.
network.http.max-connections-per-server: Change this to 32.

2: Disable antivirus scanning

This is only for the Windows version. If you're downloading large files, this scanning can seriously slow things down. And since you will most likely scan the downloaded file anyway, you'll probably want to disable this. Of course, if you are uber paranoid (not a bad trait for computing), you might want to leave this entry alone.

To disable antivirus scanning, search for scanWhenDone and you should see:

browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone: Change this to false.

3: Open Javascript popups as tabs

If a popup window lacks the features of a browser window, Firefox will handle it like a popup. If you would prefer to open all windows, including popups, as new tabs, you need to tell Firefox in about:config. Search for newwindow and you will see three entries. Of those three entries, you will want to modify:

browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction: Change this to 0.

4: Spell check in all fields

By default, Firefox checks spelling only in multiple-line text boxes. You can set it to check spelling in all text boxes. Search for spellcheckdefault and you should see:

layout.spellcheckDefault: Change this to 2.

5: Open search bar results in new tab

When you use the search bar, the results display in the current tab. This can be a nuisance because you will navigate out of the page you're currently in. To make sure Firefox always opens search results in a new tab, search for openintab and you should see:

browser.search.openintab: Change this to true.

6: Auto-export bookmarks

In Firefox 3, bookmarks are automatically saved and exported for you. The only problem is that by default, they're saved as places.sqlite instead of the more convenient bookmarks.html. To change this setting so that they can be easily re-imported, search for autoExportHTML and you should see:

browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML: Change this to true.

7: Disable extension install delay

One of the few gripes I have with Firefox is the silly countdown you must endure every time you want to install an extension. Fortunately, this can be disabled. Search for enable_delay and you should see:

security.dialog_enable_delay: Change this to 0.

8: View source code in an external editor

When you need to view the source of a page, it opens up in browser popup. Most developers would probably like to have that opened in their favorite editor instead of having to cut and paset. To do this, there are two entries to modify. Search for view_source.editor and you will see:

view_source.editor.external: Change this to true.
view_source.editor.path: Change this to the explicit path to your editor of choice.

9: Get more add-on search results

When you do a search in the Add-on window, you'll see just five results. You might find it more efficient to increase this number. Search for getAddons and you should see:

extension.getAddons.maxResults: Change this to 10 (or higher, if you want to see even more).

10: Redefine the Backspace button

Did you know you can configure Firefox to use the backspace button to either go back a page or go up a page? This keeps power users from having to go back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse. Search for backspace and you will see:

browser.backspace_action: Change this to 0 for previous page and 1 for page up.

There you go, the 10 best tweaks (I thought so), happy tweaking and enjoy your new tweaked Mozilla Firefox ..

How To Backup/Restore Firefox Bookmarks, Web Browsing History, Extensions Or Other Add-ons When Planning To Re-Format Harddrive (OS)

You can make Firefox opens and browse as usual even after you do a fresh OS reinstallations or formatting the harddrive (where the OS were installed), no dialog box appears as you use the browser for the first time and most importantly, your bookmarks, passwords, web browsing history, extensions or other add-ons still intact and functioning.

Follow this simple guide on how to backup and restore all those important and useful items. For this, I'm going to use Windows 7 but it's all the same with other operating systems, the differences is only the file path that I'll list it later.

1. At Windows explorer > Organize > Folder and Search Options > View > tick at Show Hidden Files, Folder and Drives radio button > Apply > OK (you have to enable the hidden options because the file path that we're going to backup are hidden).


2. Go to C:/Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox copy and save the Firefox folder to removeable media or another harddrive partitions. If you open the Firefox folder, you can see all of your previous settings, add-ons, extentions etc. in it .


3. To restore the backup after you've done with reformatting, install Firefox as usual and copy/paste the backup Firefox folder into C:/Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ , overwrite the folder if the Firefox folder already exist, make sure you've show hidden files and folder options enabled first in Folder Options.

That's it. Open Firefox and surf as usual.

Below is the location list of Firefox folder path in different Operating Systems.

Windows Vista & Windows 7	Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox
Windows 2000, XP & Server 2003	Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox
Mac OS X	~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
Linux and Unix systems	~/.mozilla/firefox

Customize Your Firefox Skin With Personas

Today Mozilla labs has announced the official release of a new skin engine "Personas" for Mozilla Firefox.

"Personas" are lightweight skins that change the look of Firefox web browser. You can easily switch between Personas with just a few clicks. There are hundreds of Personas to choose from, with more added every day. You can even create your own and share it with others.

Personas allow you to skin the top and bottom areas of Firefox only (the header and footer of the browser chrome) without any change to the look of the navigation buttons or menus.


You can install it by visiting GetPersonas.com and click the download button. After installation, you will be asked to restart Firefox.

Once Personas are installed, you'll be able to choose and change your selected Persona any time simply by clicking on the little fox mask in the lower left-hand corner of your browser window or by going to "Tools -> Personas for Firefox" menu.


You can also create your own Personas skins. All you need to do is create two graphics files in your favorite graphics editing program (e.g., Photoshop). To get started read more about how to create a Personas. But remember that the persona that you upload may not exceed 300KB for the header or the footer image.

Get Personas from here.
You can also browse the gallery from here.
Or if you want to create your own Personas skins from here.

Thanks to Vishal for this news.

Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 - Faster Than Before

If you don't mind to use or testing the beta softwares, try this one, Firefox 3.1 Beta 3. After a day installed and test it for hours, I've found that this beta version is trully faster than recent released final version 3.0.7, and it even faster after you install Fasterfox Lite 3.0.15 add-on. It's nearly over 1 or 2 times faster ... wow! amazing ... You can try it too because Firefox developers consider this release to be “stable”.


Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 9 months. Firefox 3.1 is an incremental release on the previous version with significant changes to improve web compatibility, performance, and ease of use:

This beta is now available in 64 languages.

Improved the new Private Browsing Mode.

Improvements to web worker thread support.

Improved performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

New native JSON support.

Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.

Support for new web technologies such as the |video| and |audio| elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Please take note that there will be add-ons incompatibility problems and Firefox will prevent you from using it unless the plugin has proven compatible but, you can search the compatible or similar add-ons to add from here.

Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 3

Tweak Firefox about:config The Right Way Manually

As we know, about:config page stores all Firefox browsing configurations.The common tweaks that usually made from that page was:

user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 8);
user_pref("network.http.request.max-start-delay", 0);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

Pipelining does multiple data requests at once and should speed things up. I believe IE did this before and this was partially attributable to the speed advantage that IE had over older versions of Mozilla/Netscape. Initial Paint Delay actually slows down the rendering of the ENTIRE page but since users tend to start reading before the entire page is rendered, setting this to a low value gives the impression that the page loads faster.

Not everyone can speed up Firefox by following those settings, it's because you need the following requirement to suite your settings.It is:

1. Computer processor
2. Computer memory (RAM)
3. Internet connection type (DSL, cable, etc.)

Below are the detail settings for different requirements:

Fast Computer, Fast Connection

Definitions:
Fast Computer: is a machine with a CPU greater than 1.5Ghz and with memory installed of at least 512MB RAM
Fast Connection: is a DSL, cable or a better connection

user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 24);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Fast Computer, Slower Connection

Definitions:
Fast Computer: is a machine with a CPU greater than 1.5Ghz and with memory installed of at least 512MB RAM
Slower Connection: is slower DSL / Cable connections as well as double line ISDN connections.

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 24);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

Fast Computer, Slow Connection

Slow connection means connections through an analog 57k modem or slower.

user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 8191);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);

Slow Computer, Fast Connection

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 3000000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 1000000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 1000000);
user_pref("content.maxtextrun", 4095);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 1000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 48);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 24);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 16);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

Slow Computer, Slow Connection

user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 750);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 32);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 8);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 4);
user_pref("dom.disable_window_status_change", true);

There you go, use which configurations that suite your system requirement.But how to test it? Ok, below are the steps how you going to test which setting is the best.

• Clear the cache of Firefox from the Firefox settings dialog - this is very
important!
• Before you optimize Firefox, navigate to http://www.numion.com/stopwatch/ and do a speed test on url that given there
• The time needed to load the site completely will be displayed to you in the
browser window. Write down the time
• Clear the cache of Firefox from the Firefox settings dialog again - this is very
important!
• Start Firefox again, and repeat the speed test on the same url
• Compare the displayed result with the result from the test before the optimization
• Repeat from the first step if you want to try the next setting and make sure you restart Firefox for changes to take effect.

That's it..on the next post I will review on application that was made exactly according from these settings.It's the same tweak but you don't have to do it manually, let the app. tune it for you and it's called FireTune.