DiPot: Ice Tea tech » browser

FEBE :: Firefox Add-ons

ageor — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:18:11 +0000

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. In fact, it goes beyond just backing up — It will actually rebuild your extensions individually into installable .xpi files. Now you can easily synchronize your office and home browsers.
By ageorg

This bookmark links to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109

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Clipmarks :: Firefox Add-ons

ageor — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:58:19 +0000

“Instead of copying and pasting links, Clipmarks is like adding a pair of scissors to your browser, letting you capture exactly what you want others to see (text, images or video). Your clips are saved on clipmarks.com and can easily be syndicated to FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook or other sites. You can also post anything you clip directly to your blog (supports Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and more) or send it directly to friends or co-workers via email. …”
By ageorg

This bookmark links to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1407

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Optimize Firefox with 9+1 Must Have Add-ons

ageor — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:27:09 +0000

During my early days as an IT support person (well before USB flash drives, external hard disks and recordable CDs), I picked up the habit to not be dependent on anything not included in Windows (v. 3.0, at the time) if I could help it. So I got used to working on the setups my clients did.

I rarely support people this way any more. Although old habits die hard, I increasingly get used to my own, optimized setup. I am a Windows person wishing for a Linux future, so, I keep trying to use software also available for it in an effort to prepare for the switch at some point. I also prefer portable applications, ones that can run fully configured from a flash disk. Firefox is my browserfits these specs plus there is a plethora of great, value-adding add-ons to optimize it.

This is the list of the Add-ons I can’t live without (in alphabetical order):

Better GReader

As the name implies, Better GReader is a collection of scripts (also available for GreaseMonkey) that improve the Google Reader experience. I use the ones that bypass the GReader-iGoogle choice, color-code the list items, massively mark the items above the current one as read, show the feeds’ favicons and make better use of the window real estate to fit more items in each page. Among other choices, there’s also the preview item within GReader choice I know people like, but I don’t use it. Better GReader does not require GreaseMonkey to work.

DownThemAll!

“The mass downloader for Fireox”. GetRight is better, but it’s not free. The only item in my wishlish for DownThemAll is ability to change the saved name of the document.

FireFTP

Not everyone uses FTP any more. If you do, FireFTP covers all the bascis: local and remote “explorer” windows, permissions change, synchronization, initial folders after logon etc.

Google Toolbar for Firefox

Firefox does support several search engines out of the box and a lot more by customization. The Google Toolbar is very versatile and Google is my search engine of choice. I don’t use all of its features but those I do use save me a lot of clicks and data entry.

IE Tab

IE Tab is still one of the first add-ons I install, as it allows use of Internet Explorer’s rendering engine within a Firefox Tab. Furthermore it can remember IE-specific sites and kick-in automatically. I would prefer such sites did not exist (and they do tend to become extinct) but if you are a web developer, you need it anyway.

PDF Download

Earlier versions of Firefox did not work very well with acrobat documents. I think both Firefox and the acrobat plug-in have now improved but I’m still used to choosing whether to save or to just view a .pdf up front.

PlainOldFavorites

Windows and IE Favorites are not as compact as Firefox Bookmarks. I don’t like importing them, though; I prefer using PlainOldFavorites that adds a “Favorites” menu entry that works almost exactly like (Internet) Explorer’s. If only Shift Organize worked the same, it would be perfect! This is a must-have for people whose primary browser is IE.

Shareaholic

If you like to post sites you visit on an extensive list of supported services (including my favorites Delicious, Facebook, FriendFeed, Google Reader, Twitter and many more), this is the tool of choice. Many sites use widgets for that but why not be prepared?

Split Browser

I can live without Split Browser, except when I can’t. Like on US election day and Obama’s inauguration, when I had a tab split into 3 or 4 panes to follow several video etc. streams at once. If you need it, you need it.

Adblock Plus

Due to the debate whether blocking ads is hurting the Internet, I scruple about such add-0ns. Having said that, I asked about the most valuable Firefox add-on in Twitter and FriendFeed and the answer I got was Adblock. I am presenting Adblock Plus, which knows how to block many ads and is easily further configurable. Additionaly, four expansions, Adblock Plus Filter Uploader, Adblock Filterset.G Updater, Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper and Adblock Plus Watcher help share our filters, update them automatically, hide text ads and debug Adblock Plus for even better results.

There go my most valuable of around 35 Firefox add-ons I use. Which browser do you use and how do you optimize it? Please do share!

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Firefox 3 Add-ons Updates Wishlist

ageor — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:22:04 +0000

Now that Mozilla Firefox 3 RC2 is out, it’s about time all add-ins are updated.

My personal favorites (therefore wishlist) that are not working yet (in alphabetical order): Firebug, FireFTP, Google Browser Sync, Google Toolbar for Firefox, PlainOldFavorites, SEOpen, AddThis.

In all fairness, I am also thankfully mentioning the ones that are already working: BlockSite, DownThemAll, Facebook Toolbar, Forecastfox, IE Tab, IE View, iMacros for Firefox, MySocial 24×7 Bar, PDF Download, Shareholic, Web Developer.

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Microsoft IE and Standards Compliance

ageor — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 08:17:12 +0000

There is an indirect update to my December 16, 2007 “Web browser standards: Opera Software vs Microsoft” post in the “Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone” IEBlog post. The way I see it, Microsoft effectively confirms allegations about not complying with standards (by, at least, not seriously updating IE6 in over 5 years and creating lots of problems with IE7) promising it will do so with IE8:

“… IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode. …”

“… With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7’s CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. …”

If you wonder who made the “existing web” prone to “breaking”, I don’t. In my mind, it was Microsoft. When IE was dominant, it never completely adhered to standards, while extending HTML in all sorts of ways. When standards emerged or caught up, was IE updated accordingly? No.

Is Microsoft finally entering a standards compliance era? How, by adding a “Standards mode” in IE8? I still have my doubts and for good reason. You see, past experience says otherwise.

Web developers, Microsoft hasn’t and won’t ever do it for you. If you are interested in every computer owner being able to fully utilize your sites, please do us all a favor and comply to universal, not Microsoft standards. Windows percentage in the PC market is still very large but dropping. Make them build a decent browser; or not, who cares? Firefox, Opera etc. are excellent, compliant and multiplatform browsers. Don’t build the Internet depended on ActiveX and anything else non-standard enough so only IE (therefore only Windows) users can view.

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Your home on camera, live

ageor — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:06:09 +0000

Two weeks ago I was asked again to install a couple of cameras to watch a newborn baby at home (with the sitter…).

Provided there is an ADSL in the premises, the task is trivial, tech-wise. In this case, the heart of the system is an AVM Fritz ADSL modem, 4 port switch, wireless Access Point with SIP, complemented by 2 VIVOTEK PT7137 wifi IP pan-tilt (but not zoom) VGA cameras.

The first problem in serving content from a non-static (dynamic) IP address is how to hit the correct IP, which is a moving target (I recently came across the fact that, in Greece, ISP OTEnet actually disconnects dynamic ADSL connections every 54 hours, just to change IP address!). The solution to this is dynamic DNS, in this case in the form of the free service DynDNS (other such services also exist). What dynamic DNS does is have a client program automatically update the current IP address of an ADSL connection to a host of the form .dyndns.org. In this case (lucky me), both the router and the cameras have dyndns.org support built-in. If this wasn’t the case, I could set up a dyndns.org client in a windows or linux pc to do the job. I could, alternatively, buy a static IP address, which I do not prefer for security and cost reasons. More than one dynamic DNS client can be set up for redundancy, if needed.

The other problem in serving content this way is that the Internet IP one’s router uses is different from the local IP address of this same router and each of his local network devices (yes, it’s too technical). The router takes care of back-and-forth IP translation for the outgoing connections (browsing, email reception & transmission, Instant Messaging etc.) automatically (using NAPT, Network Address Port Translation). However, when a local server needs to listen to Internet incoming traffic, this must be routed to it in a way that cannot be automated (not until UPnP, anyway, which is another story), so port translation must be manually programmed to the router and the method is called “port forwarding”. What this does is tell the router what to do with any incoming traffic, depending on the Port it uses: drop it or forward it to a different internal IP and Port, where a server is standing by.

When similar content is served by more than one servers (in this case all the IP cameras transmit audio & video using the http protocol which by default “listens” and “transmits” on port 80), we have the third problem: We need to reference two (or more) different servers serving the same service (http) using the same single external IP address.

The solution here is in the way protocol calls are made: when our browser shows it connects to http://blog.dipot.com, it is actually connecting to http://blog.dipot.com:80, where 80 represents the connection’s port number (which has possible values from 1 to 65535). The port value of 80 is implied, because it is the standard port number for the http protocol (other protocols by default, but not necessarily, connect to other ports). This essentially means that we can reference ~65000 different services (protocols) on the same IP address. So, what we do is agree between ourselves and the router to use these two (or more) addresses to call our two (or more) IP cameras (the “http://” prefix is important, because the specified ports are not usually intended for this protocol):
Camera 1: http://.dyndns.org:12001
Camera 2: http://.dyndns.org:12002
Camera n: http://.dyndns.org:1200n

So, assuming the cameras addresses are 192.168.1.21, 192.168.1.22 (& 192.168.1.2n) and all transmit to port 80 (the default) we program the router to forward calls to ports 12001, 12002 (& 1200n) to 192.168.1.21:80, 192.168.1.22:80 (& 192.168.1.2n:80). It is important for the cameras IP addresses to be static, so we don’t have another moving target to cope with.

In case the router didn’t support forwarding to a different port than the incoming, we should then program the cameras to listen and transmit to ports 12001, 12002, … 1200n, which is perfectly possible, if not simpler.

This came out larger and more technical than intended. All these, however, can be implemented in about 30′ and are applicable to other services as well.

For router-specific instructions to program port forwarding, refer to the excellent guide “Free Help Setting up Your Router or Firewall“.

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Web browser standards: Opera Software vs Microsoft

ageor — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:45:08 +0000

Don’t you just hate it when a web page won’t show correctly in Firefox or any non-Internet Explorer browser?

I have always wondered why any web developer would block all Linux & Mac OS users out of their sites and frustrate a good portion of Windows users, those who prefer Firefox. On top of that, some sites don’t even look the same in IE6 & IE7 due to incompatibilities of their own, which recently forced Microsoft to decide to make IE7 available to illegal Windows owners as well!

Over time, it is a well-known fact that Microsoft won’t respect standards very much. Java has been a good example and HTML compliance is no different. So, what’s new about any of that? This extract from the Friday, December 14, 2007 8:00 AM PST Paul Meller and James Niccolai’s PC World article “Opera Seeks Tougher Remedy in Microsoft Case“, describing the “… antitrust suit filed with the Commission this week …” by browser maker Opera Software, which I find especially interesting and long overdue:

“… In addition to the bundling charge, Opera also complains that Microsoft does not follow Web standards, putting rival browsers at a disadvantage. The issue is significant because if all Web browsers do not use the same standards, Web site developers are likely to design their Web sites to work with the most widely used browser, which is Internet Explorer. That gives people a disincentive to use other browsers.

Microsoft often takes part in debates over Web standards, and says it will implement them, but ultimately does not, Opera’s Lie said. He pointed to CSS, XHTML and DOM as areas where Microsoft does not comply with or is inconsistent. …”

I will follow up on this with great interest. I would prefer users and the industry to force Microsoft (and web developers) to comply by (prefferably open) standards (the cornerstone of the Internet), but a court might as well do it…