Stephen’s Untold Stories

This has been one of my favorite Firefox tools.

It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

Link to announcement from Google.

Mashable has a great list of ways to integrate these two great technologies.

I’ve never been a big fan of using different themes in FireFox because it was always necessary to restart the program to see how the new theme would look. Now, there is an option that doesn’t require a restart. Check out FireFox personas.

So teachers, what do you think? Seems to make good sense to me.

More information here.

Mashable has a list of 30 pretty good themes for Firefox. Okay, some of them are hideously ugly, but most are pretty decent.

Here are some pretty good recent finds. I usually put these in my shared blog, so you might want to take a look there. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for my shared items. If you have your own shared blog, let me know and I’ll check it out!

• Firetune – Tweak your Firefox settings to try to speed things up.
• Differences Between Google and Yahoo - Just in case you couldn’t tell the difference.
• 6 Online Photo Editors Compared - I haven’t used online image editing very often, but it’s nice to know it’s there if I need it.
• Some good 3-column themes for WordPress – 3 columns is all the rage these days.
• Two solutions for copying songs off of your iPod to a Mac - not that any of you would really consider doing anything like that.
• Blog workflow tools wiki – For those of you who want to get things done and get them done quickly.
• Windows Desktop Search - Maybe the best way to search your own computer for files.
• Download Your Favorite YouTube Videos - This one’s straight from the folks at Google, so it must be okay, right?
• 6 Firefox Extensions for Web Workers - Because you want to be more productive, don’t you?
• Make eBooks, webpages, quizzes and other content iPod-mobile! - Trust me. You don’t have enough stuff to put on your iPod.
• 100 open source tools templates and resources - There might be one or two of you out there who actually use open source software. Enjoy!
• How to Do Email and RSS Just Once a Day … and Boost Productivity in the Process - This one made me laugh.
• Top 10 Unofficial Gmail Apps and Add-ons - Your Gmail is just waiting to be hacked. Why make it wait any longer?
• Download Published Documents and Spreadsheets - For times when you are really bored.
• The Best Free Blogging Tools for Power Bloggers - Just in case any of you consider yourselves to be “power bloggers.”
• How to Get Started with Google Reader - If you aren’t using it, you can’t sit with the cool kids at lunch.
• Useful Google Bookmarklets - Because “bookmarklets” is such a neat word.

There. That helped to clean out some of my starred items. Hopefully some of those will help you in your quest to conquer the world.

If you are a Firefox user (and you should be!) here is a great list of tools you should investigate.

This is another one I’ve been waiting for! There is now a plugin which will let you play those wmv files and streams in FireFox.

Get it here!

I have to give a big shout out to Rick from the Another Storm blog for this one. The Performancing for Firefox extension allows you to post to your blog right from within Firefox. It couldn’t be easier to use!

Thanks,Rick!

I downloaded it and I like what I’m seeing so far. It does seem faster, and I like the fact that the “close tab” is now on the actual tab I want to close. Here is a much more in-depth review.

The first thing that stands out in the new Firefox is the more modern, snappier look and feel. Everything is more shinny, more playful and more clickable.

Tabbed browsing was a major browser innovation that Firefox popularized – and in version 2.0 there are further improvements to this. By default, the links now open in a new tab instead of a new window and each tab has its own close button. There is also a new handy way of switching between the tabs, via a pulldown list of all open tabs.

Link to complete review

I keep seeing more and more people using FireFox, and that is a good thing. On the other hand, I have been testing IE7, and Microsoft has made some nice improvements.

Both Firefox and Safari are seeing their highest numbers for the year, apparently at the expense of Internet Explorer. Firefox passed the 10 percent mark just under a year ago and has been enjoying continued success on Linux, Windows, and OS X. It has even become the browser of choice for many savvy users. Safari, while holding much smaller numbers than IE and Firefox, is also becoming nothing to sneeze at. A year ago, Safari had less than 2 percent of the browser market but has almost doubled its numbers since then. Netscape and Opera both carry under 1 percent of the market and Mozilla is dead last, just above “Other.”

Link to article

Very cool, but it just goes to show that some people have a lot of free time.

Link to article

Here is a great article on the evolution of web browsers. They aren’t just for surfing anymore!

The major Web browsers are getting facelifts as they increasingly become the focal point for handling business transactions and running programs over the Internet rather than simply displaying Web sites.

The upgrades are the latest skirmish in the browser war that started in the mid-1990s and led to Microsoft’s triumph over Netscape. The battles reignited in 2004, when Mozilla’s Firefox launched and revealed new avenues of development.

On Tuesday, Opera Software ASA is releasing its Opera 9 browser, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox are in line for major overhauls later this year.

Today, e-mail, maps, word processing and other traditionally standalone applications are migrating online. Major Internet companies such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and even Microsoft are devoting tremendous resources developing these Web applications and browser developers want them to run well.

Opera 9 sports “widgets” Web-based applications that run off its browser but appear detached as standalone tools. Anyone knowing Web coding can develop widgets for Opera to check weather, soccer results or the status of eBay Inc. auctions; others can download existing ones.

“Most end-user applications being developed today have at least part of their functionality running on the browser, which is completely different from the way it used to be 10 or 15 years ago,” said Christen Krogh, Opera’s vice president of engineering. “In the old days, browsers were like printing presses” displays for static pages.

Link to complete article

IE continues to dominate, but I still love Firefox! (And I’m warming up to Opera)

Amsterdam – May 15 2006 – OneStat.com, the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported that Microsoft’s browsers have a total global usage share of 85.17 percent. The total usage share of Microsoft Internet Explorer decreased 0.65 percent since January 2006. The total global usage share of Mozilla is 11.79 which is 0.56 percent more than at the of of January.

Link to Stats

I must admit that this comes as a complete surprise. This is from the Microsoft Team RSS Blog

This seemed like a very good idea, so in November, Amar and I took a visit down to Silicon Valley to meet with John Lilly and Chris Beard from Mozilla to get their thoughts on it. We all agreed that it’s in the user’s best interest to have one common icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features in a browser. And the winner is…

I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

We’ll be using the icon in the IE7 command bar whenever a page has a feed associated with it, and we’ll also use it in other places in the browser whenever we need a visual to represent RSS and feeds. Look for more details on the look and feel of IE7 when we post the public pre-release build next year.

Thanks again to the Mozilla team for making the icon available and helping us do the right thing for all browser users. Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback on our earlier post; your comments and thoughts were very valuable!

Link to article

Get Firefox Now!!

Good news!!

More than one out of 10 surfers use Firefox as a browser, according to a study by web analytics firm OneStat.com. Although Mozilla-based browsers have a total global usage share of 11.51 percent – an increase of 2.82 per cent since April 2005 – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the global browser market with a global share of 85.45 per cent. Its share has slipped 1.18 per cent from the end of April.

Link to Article

Check out Gmail Delete Button for Mozilla Firefox

The University of Florida is recommending Firefox, and included it on their software disk for students.

David Carlson, director of the UF Interactive Media Lab, is one of the estimated 64 million people who have switched to Firefox.

“A lot of people are looking for an alternative to Internet
Explorer,” Carlson said. “To me, it is really the enhanced security and
the tabbed browsing that sets Firefox apart.”

Link to Article

Here is an interesting article about the Microsoft/Netscape Issue regarding how Netscape 8 is causing problems for Internet Explorer.

According to figures from w3schools.com which is a
site frequented by the Browser elite, Netscape is not even a pimple on
a mole. For them, the real browser battle is between Microsoft IE and Firefox. Microsoft makes up 65% of use while Firefox is now up to 25%.

Link: BayouBuzz.com