User:Dmcritchie

From MozillaZine Knowledge Base
Revision as of 22:45, 31 January 2011 by Dmcritchie (talk | contribs) (Some updates for using Firefox 4.0 betas)
Jump to navigationJump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

David McRitchie, my main Firefox web page begins with

Another way of viewing my website is through

A few of my additional pages include: Toolbars & Context menus, Bookmarklets, Bookmarks, Keyboard shortcuts, Keyword shortcuts, and Tabbed browsing (includes target/link/cursor tests).

There are two companion pages to Tabbed browsing


My System: eMachines E627 (laptop). Running (pre installed) Windows-7 Home Premium (64bit), single core(AMD Athlon 64 TF-20), 1.6GHz, 512KB L2 cache, 15.6" HD LCD, ATI Radeon HD3200 Graphics up to 896 MB HyperMemory, 2GB Memory, 160GB HDD. Seen as Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2   More information on my Windows 7 installation. (also see my Infolister listings for more about my machine).

You can see what Firefox extensions, I am actually using. All listings are current from last start of Firefox and delayed as to when web pages actually get updated.

MozillaZine articles of particular interest to me

Additional Firefox pages on my website:

Some Styles that I have rewritten from my userChrome code for use in Stylish

Stylish extension has overcome it's usability issues once back to a standalone dialog apart from add-ons list. Use of Stylish-Custom no longer needed to overcome the ergonomically inferior user interface introduced with Stylish version 1.0. Will need Stylish - Manage Window beautified (Style 17571) though.

Advantage of styles over userChrome.css is you can instantly modify and see results, disadvantage won't work if extensions are disabled.

Most of the styles that I wrote have to do with overcoming bad user interface with Firefox that wastes valuable screen space. They may overlap a bit on toolbars but they work well enough for me so I don't have to put up with purposely wasteful toolbars as distributed.

Some Substitute Pastel Colors for gray dialogs (#F0F0F0) and toolbar backgrounds
#FEF5A8 #FFFF80 #F3E078
#DCFFDC #FFD8A0 #F3E0FF
#C5F19A #FFFFCC #F79494
#F5DDB7 #FBF4D4 #FFEEC2
#D3D7CF #EFA521 #CCCCFF
More colors: [1] [2]
See a full screen example showing multiple Firefox versions with coloring to help identify profiles.
Even though some parts of screens are hidden in pictures, basically Menu bar, status bar and dialog boxes show added color, but directions are include to color what you want of menu/search bar, Navigation/Location bar, Bookmarks bar, and Tabs bar.
Imperative changes to counteract AERO glass effects of Firefox 4 on Windows 7 are in the notes, not perfect but at least makes things readable.

These are some additional styles by others that I may use

Not working on Firefox 4.0b2pre are styles involving toolbar heights, icon heights. There small icons are not 16x16 so the toolbars are really large, about double height.

For more information install the "Stylish extension and see

Pet Peeve for Styles: No way to reduce height of title bar, which is controlled by Operating System though some extensions can change the wording of the Title Bar.

Multiple Profiles

Extensions

See a list of extensions on my home page where I have briefly documented summaries for extensions that I use (or have used), I currently use about 86 extensions that are shown on my InfoLister listing, which has dropped somewhat due to problems with new versions of Firefox, and perhaps a couple that may have been incorporated into Firefox.

Additional Description/Documentation

More information on Extensions than could be included in brief summaries on my home page

Facilities that should be built-in to Firefox as seen in these Extensions

Extensions that should be built-in to Firefox (with all of an extensions features included), see my home page for brief descriptions and links.

For a better list of extensions than shown below for most users see my Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)

  • Add Bookmark Here ², customization of the Add Bookmark (Ctrl+D) dialog, Including keyword and Description
  • Addon Compatibility Reporter, but only for those testing beta versions, such as Minefield, and prerelease versions. My 3.6 Infolister listing can be used for links to Compatibility Reporter information.
  • Auto Hide, Hide/See the toolbars of your choice in Full Screen (F11/context) [Options] [Context]
  • CheckPlaces (experimental), basic checking of your bookmark URIs, with optional checks that the pages still exist (such use is not recommended, could take hours and is abusive to servers), checks for duplicate bookmarks, and for empty folders. Provides bookmark counts. Any check of a bookmark being valid wants an immediate answer keep/delete, you should always keep so it is usually a pointless test -- Use a keyword shortcut such as "archive:" or "a:" to research failed bookmarks when encountered in normal use.
  • Duplicate Tab, Duplicate a tab to a new tab (Ctrl+Shift+U) or to a new window (Ctrl+Shift+N), and it allows you to merge different windows (Ctrl+Shift+M) in one window. [Tab Context] -- See and use "Multiple Tab Handler" instead.
  • Go Parent Folder, takes you to parent folder of bookmark. Adds "Go Parent Folder" menu to context menu in The Library list view and Search result in Bookmarks Sidebar.
  • Headings Map (instead of Document Map), Displays the current page's H1-Hn heading structure (indented by heading level) in the sidebar (Alt+O)
  • Image Zoom, zoom individual image, compatible with Mouse Zoom (or when zooming only text to prevent miswrapping of lines)
  • Keyconfig (keyboard shortcuts) ++, view/change any existing keyboard shortcut to another shortcut, or remove a shortcut Fx3 Problems solved ++
  • KeywordManager, keyword shortcuts list and manager from button on "Organize Bookmarks"
  • Locate in Bookmarks, Adds Locate to the Bookmarks Manager context menu so you can tell what “folder” your selected bookmark is in.
  • Menu Editor, Hide/unhide/rearrange menu items and separators
  • Mouse Zoom, Zooming of page with mouse controls (some of this has been built-in to Fx3)
  • Multiple Tab Handler, Close/Move/Duplicate/bookmark selected tabs, or add URIs/titles of selected tabs to the clipboard [tab context menu]. For options see my text notes.
  • OpenBook extension, use Add Bookmark Here ² instead.
  • Open Profile Folder, Opens current profile folder in Windows File Manager
  • PermaTabs Mod, PermaTabs can't be closed accidentally no matter what you click [Experimental]
  • Quick Restart, partially done in Firefox 3, but no keyboard shortcut
  • Read Easily, Adds a toolbar button (toggles) to make hard to read sites readable by removing gaudy CSS usage
  • Show Parent Folder, show containing bookmark directory folder.
  • SortPlaces Sorts your bookmarks in a variety of ways, options: recursive, resort, bookmark toolbar. Option to leave the Personal Toolbar or any folders untouched. As with the built-in sort, you may use bookmark separators to maintain sorted groups within a folder. See Sorting and rearranging bookmarks - Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
  • Split Browser, Splits the content area of the browser window Top|Bottom |Left|Right by dragging a link to the edge of any frame or via context menu.
  • Tab Clicking Options, double-click on tab to close (compatible with Multiple Tab Handler)
  • Work Offline, Adds an icon to indicate and switch online/offline mode on the status bar.

In addition would highly recommend these extensions for almost General Usage

  • Add to Search Bar, Extension provides the ability to effortlessly add your own search engines from any search form you find. Make any pages' search functionality available in the Search Bar (or “search box”). Just make a right click in a search field and choose "Add to Search Bar...". (Fx3 has "Add Keyword for this Search..." built-in)
  • Copy All Url ++, Copies all URLs of open tabs in structured form (sorted or in tab order) to clipboard for pasting. Can work with title, url, order of tabs reported. Must double-check options in use text or HTML before using, has shortcut keys (multiple urls strictly from tabs)
  • Copy URL plus ++, Copy to clipboard a single link via context menu as a formatted link the document’s URL along with the title or the selection. Highly customizable. (single url from page or link)
  • Grab & Drag, when can't scroll otherwise due to scrolling problems
  • InfoLister, customizable list of installed extensions, themes and plug-ins, stiall a more readable than builtin addons/extensions, and Troubleshooting Information... // Not working in Firefox 4.0b2pre //
  • Launchy, Enable opening links and mailto's with external applications.
  • Linky, Open all or selected links or text links into multiple tabs (|windows); or all images or image links as images into one|multiple tabs(|windows).
  • Optimize Google, Enhance Google search results and remove ads and spam, has a nice streaming option as well so you can continuously scroll down.
  • Page Diff, a simple page differences application, compares of two HTML files identified from their web pages.
  • Stylish, Customize the look of websites and the user interface. Mostly snips that could be used in userChrome.css, but can be toggled on/off instantly.
  • Tab Counter, counts the number of open tabs.
  • Table Tools, Sort, filter or copy any table (Ctrl+Alt+click sorts, Ctrl+Shift+click shows filter, Ctrl+z+click allows copying in various formats.
  • Web Developer, Adds a menu (and a toolbar) with various web development tools. Mostly an arrangement of bookmarklets type material.

++ See my main page for links to extensions, working versions are not always available at add-ons, and I have customization and usage notes for the extensions that I use.

Decrapify Firefox 4.0 beta versions

The status bar may get restored in final version -- don't hold your breath, it will probably still be crap with permanent impairment.

  • Bring back Menu Bar and Title bar, Alt+V → Toolbars → checkmark both "Menu Bar" and "Add-ons Bar", move the search bar up to the menu bar with customize.
  • Bring back function of the Status bar, install Status-4-evar (my link/directions)
  • Restyle toolbars to save space, the main problem is the two styles for tabs bar are not working properly in 4.0 so will be twice as tall as it was in 3.6.13 and without color underscoring but still better for me than 4.0 native though. Install styles seen above, particularly for toolbars.

Problems and Pet Peeves

  • Solutions to problems created by Firefox 3.6 that affected me can be found in Firefox Customizations (Notes) under topic #fx3p6 and for 4.0 under topic #fx4
     
  • Addons_2007 New Format major problems (Bug: 372841), some improvement in that it more conspicuous than the originally dumped search, but I personally prefer and rely on well understood Google (site:) search.
  • Profile location problems finally simplified. In Firefox 3.6 you can now open your profile folder from a link in your Firefox HELP → Troubleshooting Information... → "Open Containing Folder", or from "about:support".
  • Selecting profile to be used, doesn't tell you which Firefox version and in which folder is asking you to choose a profile, also want to know what application asked to start Firefox.  Selecting a wrong profile with an unknown Firefox version can cause serious damage to a profile. For Windows users, [Using multiple profiles - Firefox | using multiple profiles] suggest having a decent launchy.xml and a properly set up quick launch
  • Bloated extensions or extensions where a simple user configuration change would have sufficed Options (Tools menu), about:config, userContent.css, userContent.css, user.js) Most of my userChrome.css changes have been converted into styles (see earlier topic).
  • Big Toolbar or Status bar icons, McAfee SiteAdvisor uses about 10% of status bar instead of 16x16 pixels, Launchy toolbar icon useless drop down arrow making icon too high for toolbar. (For Launchy can remove the useless dropdown arrow with Launchy button remove space wasting drop-down, and can squeeze buttons such as the McAfee SiteAdvisor button down to unreadable compact button with a user style StatusBar Minimal Height. (Warning: SiteAdvisor is not currently working properly with Firefox)
  • Changing color of BACK and FORWARD buttons from Green to Blue, with difficult visual effects. Have minimized problem by severely downsizing the combined back/forward button with either Navigation/Location Bar Minimal Height or Navigation/Location Bar Presentation Height styles.
  • Inability to lock a Tab (Bug: 392313) without an extension such as "PermaTabs" or with the very questionable "TMP" (bloated, poor - reversed naming usage). Strange to have an outright rejection as Opera has some of what is wanted. Very difficult to work with validating a lot of links when invoking a link can hide the page you are working on then get it refreshed, so you have to start all over again.  You can use a bookmarklet so that any link on page will open in a New Tab ("NT:) or in the Same Tab ("ST:"). "Perma Tabs Mod" working in 3.6.& but not in 4.0.
  • Again Firefox is trying to change the order of tabs on the tabs bar, rather than letting them get created in order at the far right. [4]. Tab order was changed in 3.6.4 see link at left to fix.
  • I do not like the Firefox 3.7 (now 4.0) mock-ups for Toolbars that will apply only to Windows Vista and Windows 7 at first, I very much dislike Window Aero effects and do everything I can to eliminate them, yet Firefox foists them on me anyway along with massive toolbars with less information on them. See my pages for Windows 7 including turn off transparency I also have pages on Vista.