Firefox Features for the Firefox Challanged

Lifehacker has an interesting feature on getting Firefox’s best features in Internet Explorer — which kind of leaves aside the fact that for many of us, Firefox’s BEST feature is that it ISN’T Internet Explorer.

If however, you absolutely have to live with IE (I won’t shame you by name, you know who you are), you might be able to find a few tips here…

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Firefox 1.5 - Show us your extensions

Have you found any great extensions to make your Firefox experience all it can be? Leave a comment, and let us know.

Here’s what I’m currently using (list via ListZilla 0.7):
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Fix Broken Adblock in Firefox 1.5

Adblock has been one of the most popular extensions for Firefox since day 1. Unfortunately, if you’ve upgraded from a previous version of Firefox to 1.5, and had Adblock installed, your Adblock is probably broken.

The usual symptom is that Adblock appears to be running, and even blocking ads, yet when you pull up the Adblock dialog, it will tell you that there is nothing blockable on the page.

The fix for this is to uninstall the Adblock extension, restart Firefox, and then go here and install Adblock Plus. (It’s in the quote at the bottom of the top post on the page)

Your Adblock (Plus) should now be working again.

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Make Mac Firefox Faster

Sure Firefox 1.5 is faster than the 1.0x releases, but if you really want to squeeze the last few drops of speed out of Firefox on your Mac, you’ll want to go grab a release optimized for your particular CPU.

G4 users will want the G4-optimized Firefox 1.5 , while those with a G5 will want the G5-optimized Firefox 1.5.

If you’re not sure what processor you have, your Mac privileges will be revoked just take a look at “About This Mac” under the Apple menu.

As an added bonus, these already have the more Mac-like form controls that Firefoxy enables pre-installed — install this and grab a copy of the GrApple Eos Pro theme and you’re on your way to a browser that’ll make Safari cringe in fear.

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Make Firefox More Mac-like

Over at “But she’s a girl…” the author has decided to give Firefox 1.5 a try, but is a little bit peaved about the level of Mac-ness that Firefox offers… Fortunately, she also offers a fix -

the main problem I’ve always had with Firefox is that it just doesn’t look very Mac-like.

After a little bit of digging, that particular problem was solved by the GrApple Eos Pro theme; very simple, stylish, and a bit like Safari without the brushed metal. Firefoxy makes form widgets a little smoother and more Mac-like, rather than the boxy Firefox-native widgets, which always seem too large to me.

These are both excellent finds — Firefox feels much more like a native Mac application with these running, without losing any of it’s other great features.

(Caution — The GrApple Eos Pro theme carries a warning about running it on anything other than a Mac — don’t. It’ll apparently tear up your Firefox if you should try it on a Windows box.)

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2.8

OS X Firefox Users - Don’t Hold That Button!

There is an article causing a bit of a ripple this morning claiming a “major bug” in Firefox under OS X.

There is a major bug in Firefox where if you hold down the mouse button to select text, or scroll, or anything inside the browser window, the Firefox CPU usage shoots up to nearly 100% and hogs your entire system until you let go. I just tested it using top and can verify that the CPU usage jumps to between 75-95% depending on the other applications in use at the time. For Powerbook or iBook users this is a major issue, considering your fans will probably turn on and you’ll battery will drain much quicker.

This is real, but it’s apparently a bug in Carbon (one of several methods of writing applications for OS X) in general, and not just Firefox.

It’s also been there from the beginning, and appears to be slightly better in 1.5 than it was in 1.0x — I’ve noticed several times running Firefox over the past few months that holding down the mouse button and selecting text would occasionally cause the machine to slow up for a few seconds.

The good news is that the problem goes away when you let go of the button — which makes this more of just an annoyance than anything.

Which is not to say it shouldn’t be fixed (apparently there are some coding fixups that would allow Firefox to improve this behavior somewhat, even while remaining a Carbon app), but more to say that if you are a Mac user, you shouldn’t let reports of this “major bug” keep you from enjoying this fine new release of Firefox.

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2.8

Love Firefox, Hate Thunderbird

I have a confession to make…. As much as I love Firefox, I just can’t handle its sister application, the Thunderbird e-mail client.

I’d really like to get Entourage out of my life. It has a ton of baggage I don’t need, the whole calendering and scheduling system, etc. Worse, the “junk mail” feature just wasn’t cutting it for me.

I’d given Thunderbird a try awhile back, and it just wasn’t ready for prime time. Some time has passed though, and some improvements have been made, and I figured it might be time for another try.

Unfortunately, it’s still not there. I’ve given it a good, honest week, and I’m sick of the thing.
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Firefox 1.5 Released

Firefox 1.5 is now officially released. As I mentioned the other day, this version is a substantial improvement on the 1.0x versions — which were in turn quite an improvement over most everything else.

If you’re currently using Firefox, you need to hop over and download the new version.

If you’re not currently using Firefox, then you’re in for even more of a treat.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, you may wish to take a few minutes to have your head examined and rescan your machine for viruses and spyware first…

Firefox 1.5 - Rediscover the web

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Firefox 1.5 Rocks

I’ve been biding my time about saying anything about Firefox 1.5 — I’ve been playing with it since RC1 (”Release Candidate 1″), and it’s currently up to RC3, and looking rock solid.

Rumor has it that the formal release will be around the end of the month, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty close. PC Mag must think so too, since they just did a review of RC3.

Of course, I haven’t fooled much with the PC version (which they review), but I’ve spent a lot of quality time with the Mac OS X version, and I’ve got to say, Firefox 1.5 rocks.
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FoxiPod - Bank Shot to iTunes

It’s only for Firefox and Mac OS X users (hey — a demographic I fit in for a change!), but FoxiPod is a rather slick Greasemonkey script that automatically identifies links on websites to downloadable media that is playable in iTunes (mp3s, for example).

When it finds such links, Foxipod puts up a special icon next to it — click on the icon, and not only is the media downloaded, it’s automatically added to your iTunes library.

Slick!

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2.8

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