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Jake

Why you should use Firefox

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I know people who pay attention know about this sort of thing, but aside from popup blocking, security, blah blah blah, the way Firefox integrates RSS into its bookmark system is absolutely amazing... If you bookmark a site in Firefox with a recognizible RSS feed, it becomes awesome. I can now for instance, track Thumb headlines from the favorites bar...

firefox.jpg

That rules.

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The only reason I still use IE is laziness. Should I then finally switch over? But IE is stil working fine here and I have so little problems with it... don't fix something if it isn't broken...?

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I'd use it if the Ebay toolbar was compatible with it, I need it...

There are just too many faux Ebay and Paypal pages out there and the Ebay toolbar is the only thing that can tell me if I'm at the real site... :shifty:

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Ok, I just switched. Sort of. I'm still trying it out, and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it. I've got a couple of questions. First, why can't I turn on the option to force all links that would open in a new window into a new tab? I looked at the help file and it said that there was supposed to be an option to do just that in the options menu, but it's not there for me. Everything else is there, but that. That bothers me. I've got a question about extensions, or whatever they call them, too. If you install more of them does it take longer for Firebird to load when you first run it? I ask because my computer is really slow and crappy. As it is it already takes Firebird at least twice as long to open as IE. Finally, does anyone else have trouble with their scrollwheel? For some reason it desides that it wants to start scrolling all the way to the bottom or the top of the page when I use it. This doesn't happen all the time, but it happens frequently enough to be rather aggrivating. Actually this problem alone would make me go back to IE. :frusty:

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That rules.

Cool... now make the RSS display the number of comments and it will be even better.

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You can, with Tabbrowser Extensions

TabBrowser Extensions is rather bloattastic - and bloated or too numerous extensions do indeed make Firefox take longer to load. If all you want is to force 'new windows' to open as new tabs instead, look around for an extension called 'Single Window' instead - unfortuately it's rather elusive at the moment, as every Firefox upgrade seems to break compatibility with it... one of the more annoying things about Firefox, but hopefully these problems will go away now that it's out of beta.

If you think the RSS feature in Firefox rules, have a look at using Thunderbird for your mail - it supports RSS too, and new posts pulled in via RSS appear in a similar form to new email, so you can treat them kinda like newsletters. Awesome!

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I figured out how to fix the tab thing. Set browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs to true in about:config. This will display another option under advanced where you can turn it on or off. The only problem is that it selects the tab instead of loading it in the background, so it really isn't that useful. Hopefully they'll fix that sometime soon.

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Ah, thanks Moos, that's really helpful. I'm trying to run with as few extensions as possible since my computer at work isn't exactly amazing.

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Tabbrowser Extensions is far better than SingleWindow, since it does a whole lot more. I was using 3 different extensions before to get my tabs the way I wanted, and TE does it all using just one now. It's definitely worth getting if you want Opera-style session saving, anyway, since SessionSaver hasn't been available since about 0.8 now...

And although I use an external RSS prog, the dynamic bookmarks thing is still pretty nifty.

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Jake, if you use that you should probably also do this.

They have some other good stuff there like making the cursor change when it highlights a link that will open in a new window (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips#beh_newwindows). For some reason that one doesn't seem to work of me though. Also, they got an ad blocker. I haven't used Firefox enough to be able to tell if it actually works though. That reminds me, does anyone else have trouble viewing IGN using Firefox? Also, why can't I highlight worlds and click the add link button and have the word highlighted pop-up in box here like I used too, or insert smilies in the middle of text? Does only IE support that?

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TBE gives you all kind of fantastical options, but it caused FireFox to crash all the time, a feature it's known for, so I had to uninstall it.

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I have a problem with timing-out in Firefox... the internet lately has been extremely sluggish and more often than not stuff times out, but if I opened the stuff in the new window or a new tab, the time-outed window would not display a link in the address bar, the address bar and the page would be blank, so I woul have to remember what link I clicked to open the new window and go click it again... which if I am opening 25 new forum messages to read is fucking tedious... especially the sedond time when the windows that didn't load the first time fail to load and I don't remember which ones didn't load....

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Also, why can't I highlight worlds and click the add link button and have the word highlighted pop-up in box here like I used too, or insert smilies in the middle of text? Does only IE support that?

I upgraded to Firfox 1.0 and that started working. (previously was using 1.0 preview release)

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I have a problem with timing-out in Firefox... the internet lately has been extremely sluggish and more often than not stuff times out, but if I opened the stuff in the new window or a new tab, the time-outed window would not display a link in the address bar.........

Yeah, that's one of the only flaws I've found with FireFox so far. It's kind of stupid.

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I have a problem with timing-out in Firefox... the internet lately has been extremely sluggish and more often than not stuff times out, but if I opened the stuff in the new window or a new tab, the time-outed window would not display a link in the address bar, the address bar and the page would be blank, so I woul have to remember what link I clicked to open the new window and go click it again... which if I am opening 25 new forum messages to read is fucking tedious... especially the sedond time when the windows that didn't load the first time fail to load and I don't remember which ones didn't load....
Ditto, and in any case displaying an alert box is STUPID and distracting.

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Oh, man! I'm sold. I love Firefox now. Why? Flashblock. Best extension ever. It blocks all of those pesky flash ads and displays a button for you to click if you really want to watch them. Brilliant. I love it. I love you Firefox!

So, what cool extensions do you guys recommend?

I currently have...

--Adblocker

--Homeland Security Threat Level (Totaly rocks. Now I can have the threat level displayed in the status bar at all times. Too bad Ridge is getting canned. Sucker.)

--fineFTP (FTP client. Haven't tried it out yet, but the screenshot looked nice.)

--Flashblock

I used to have the view in IE extension, but then decided to unistall it because I thought it was pretty pointless. Got any good recommendations?

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Mouse Gestures (if you've never used them, you're missing out, they make browsing so much quicker and more intuitive)

GMail Notifier (same as the Windows one really, but it sits in Firefox's taskbar)

Download Manager Tweak (makes the download manager open as a new tab that's less intrusive and generally better all-round)

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Web developer extensions. Let's you spy on other people's CSS, for example.

And you can open the search window by pressing /

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I thought about getting the Gmail Notifier, but I decided not to because I always have a Gmail open in a tab anyway and it auto-refreshes every couple minutes or so telling me if I have any new mail. So I really didn't see the point. The official one from Google doesn't work on ME. ME sucks, but hey, I'm getting a new computer this summer. Can't wait.

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I was using it until I tried to go to my own webpage, and instead of actually loading it, it tried to freaking save it. Piece of crap. Back to IE.

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