Google SideWiki

Its one more 'provide-your-comments' application from Google. Sounds interesting but as pointed out by many, it may be another way of adding stuff about stuff on web.

Webmasters do NOT have an option to enable / disable this feature for their website, as of now. So, people can misuse to generate spam or write nonsense about a website and give a wrong impression. This becomes more dangerous because if you have a SideWiki enabled browser, comments are available right-away (if any, ofcourse) when you visit a webpage. One consolation is claiming a website on Google Webmasters Tools and projecting comments on SideWiki as Owner. This way, owners' comments will always appear at the top of others' comments on SideWiki.

As of now, it does not provide feeds which can be trapped and fed. But its possible to publish on Blogger and also to Share (after commenting) on Twitter, Facebook, etc. People are using round-about-way to create its feeds by publishing on a new invisible blog and taking feeds from that blog.

A con for its usage is, every webpage takes longer time to show up. The browser (I was using FF3.5.5 GTB6. GTB stands for Google Toolbar) hangs for good 3-5 secs. I disabled SideWiki, and it works fine.

Site Identity Button

We observe favicon for a site and with new firefox, even some text next to it. Firefox calls it Site Identity Button. It has three levels each with a different color:

• Grey: No information from site
• Blue: The connection is secure
• Green: Not only the connection is secure but it also comes with the owners information

Chrome Malware detection

I had clicked to go to http://www.gmail-backup.com/gmail-backup-0-105 to download a freeware for Gmail backup. Chrome threw this screen up warning against malware from site my-dom.info on this webpage

It provides one link to know more about my-dom.info. On clicking Google gives this information

Cool! I mean, I am impressed by the amount of useful information they are providing.

I tried the same site with Firefox and it took me straight to the webpage without any warning :)

Dumb Microsoft!

Cant imagine that Microsoft can go so dumb. [Source]

HTML Signatures in Gmail

Now one can create HTML signatures in Gmail and insert them using a Greasemonkey script: User Script 


In Gmail, it creates a box (shown aside) where one can create a signature.





Firefox Add-on: Black Canvas Gmail Signatures

In their own words,
Automatically inserts HTML signatures into your Gmail messages based on which address you are sending from. Supports up to four signatures for each address you have set up. Works for Compose Message and Reply/Forward.

Greasemonkey

I am sure many of us heard a lot about the terminology Greasemonkey but did not understand what it is all about.

Greasemonkey is an add-on onto Firefox. There are reports of it working even on Opera, Safari, IE to limited extent though. This is the master add-on which is like a container for all the 'User-scripts' which gets installed into Greasemonkey.
User-scripts are javascripts (extended-AJAX too) created to customize look, feel and functionalities of a webpage.
There are thousands of existing User-scripts available at the official website of User-scripts
Greasespot is Greasemonkey's homepage

Popular list of user-scripts:
by online-tech-tips
by Firefox facts
by Life-hacker

Download Flash in Firefox, without any software

One can download Flash or for that matter any media element in a webpage when viewed in Firefox, without any additional tool, or software or add-on to Firefox. How?

Well, say there is a flash file (Shockwave File with extension .swf) on a webpage and you want to download it. Then,

• Open that particular webpage
• Click on Tools in the top Menu bar
• Then, from the list of options, click on Page Info. This option is one of the least explored option in Firefox. It gives all the information about the current web page that is open in Firefox.
  
• Go to the second tab - Media
• Under Address heading, it will show the location of the flash media object
• Below, on the same screen, there would be an option as Save As..., using which one can save the flash as it is from the webpage!

Ofcourse, this is useful when one wants to download only one Flash file from a webpage. Plus, one has to open the webpage where this Flash would be 'active'. If there are only links to Flash objects on a webpage, one cannot download them. Media info does not show them as part of flash objects, but as image objects.

If one needs to download multiple flash objects from a webpage, then one can download softwares which do this work for us.

P.S: Interestingly, found a site which details multiple ways of tweaking FF and IE to download flash objects.

Firefox Add-ons

Finally, this post has become a reality. I had mentioned in an earlier post that soon there would be a post on my favourite add-ons from firefox. There would surely be more than these, but currently these Add-ons are actively decorating my Firefox. In Firefox's own words:

"You spend more time online than on the road, but you probably think more about avoiding traffic than enjoying the best of the Web.

So, why not customize your Firefox for the things you really love to do? Take your browser from simple to spectacular.

Firefox add-ons are little extras that allow you to add a personal touch to your browser. Select your favorites from the categories to accessorize your Web!"

So, here is the list of 9 add-ons for firefox:

• Lock the Fox - password protect Firefox window
• Server Spy - know which brand of HTTP server runs a particular site
• Tamper Data - view and modify http/https headers and post parameters
• TestGen4Web - Record/Store/Play Firefox sessions
• FormFox - Displays the Form action
• Event Spy - can watch Javascript events as they occur
• Add n Edit Cookies - name conveys all
• Cache Status - Easy cache management
• Cookie Swap - Swap Cookies to log into multiple Gmail accounts
  

Hope you would find them useful, as much as I enjoyed in finding them and trying them out.

Update: Forgot to add one more add-on - PDF Convertor - convert any webpage into a pdf then and there.

Animated Favicons

Now a days, many sites are displaying animated favicons (like this site on Email trace). How do they do that? Its simple. Create an animated gif file but with the size of Favicon (i.e. 16px by 16px). Then rename this favicon.gif to favicon.ico (.ico is the extension for favicons). Firefox renders these animated favicons, but not IE. IE displays only the first frame

Tab cloning in Firefox

Now with Firefox 3.x versions, one can clone the tab. No more copying the URL and pasting them in a new tab. One can just 'center' click on the Refresh button of the Web-browser and it will clone the tab, viz. create one more tab with the same website/webpage.
Ways of do it: 

• Center click on Refresh button (history is lost)
  
• Ctrl + Refresh (history is lost)
  
• Drag (favicon onto the tab bar) (history is lost)
• Ctrl + Drag (tab into the tab bar) (history is not lost :) )
  

Tab tearing in Firefox 3.1

Mimicking Google Chrome, one can now drag a tab out of Firefox into a new window. But vice-versa doesnt seem to be existing as of now. It needs its own time to stabilize, nevertheless, finally it has taken shape after multiple earlier attempts.

More here

Mozilla in Guiness Book of World Records

Mozilla claims to have got maximum number of downloads of FF3 in 24 hours.

Inspiration came from this page of Mozilla with a view to host a party !

Complete details here

Gmail - Default Mail Client in Firefox 3

Many a times we click on a mail id, the ones with mailto: email protocol, and a wizard of the operating system opens up asking you to configure the mail-clients like Thunderbird, Outlook, etc. If you are like me, who does not use any mail-client but only webmail, and are also a fan of Gmail, then you might want to set Gmail as your default mail client for mailto: links. Earlier in Firefox RC1, they had included only Yahoo as a possible link handler. But now with Firefox 3, it can be extended to Gmail too, thanks to Gmail Blog and Lifehacker.

All the settings step-by-step are given at Gmail Blog who in turn picked up from Lifehacker.