Saturday, December 03, 2005
Upgrading to Firefox 1.5
...was extremely easy and only a few of my extensions were troublesome (but I found fixes). Total time from click-to-download to full, customized browsing experience: 23 minutes. Awesome! During the installation, the process checks to see which themes and extensions will be incompatible, and either doesn't even migrate them in or disables them after migration (it depends on just how messed up the extensions are in relation to the new architecture).
After the initial installation, my theme (Phoenity) was disabled as well as the TinyUrl, Google PageRank and Tab X extensions. This means all the other extensions were migrated and updated sucessfully without intervention on my part. Hooray!
Once I saw that Phoenty wasn't updated, I went to the author's home page to see if there was an updated version for 1.5 that just hadn't made it to the official Mozilla servers yet—but no go. So I spent a few minutes looking for a new theme, and found the Azerty themes for Firefox and Thunderbird. I dutifully installed both (because the themes for both have to match, of course!) and am pleased with the look of it all. Next, I looked at the individual pages for my other non-migrated extensions, at addons.mozilla.org. In the user comments for TinyURL I found a link to an updated version here. Similarly, in the user comments for the Google PageRank extension I found a link to an update. Finally, the Tab X extension didn't migrate over during installation, but the version downloadable at its addons.mozilla.org page is a 1.5-compatible extension, so I just reinstalled it. I like having x-icons on each tab, used to close the individual tabs instead of using a context menu or shortcut key. I still don't understand why this isn't the standard behavior. I also found a new extension, "new tab" button on tab bar, which does just that (adds a "new tab" button on the tab bar.
My personal Firefox roundup (below) looks a lot like it did when I wrote a similar post in July. It's not that I fear change, it's just that I know what I like and don't tend to add to it unless it really helps me in some way. I keep an eye on with the RSS feed of new extensions everytime it updates, just in case I see something cool and useful (for me).
Firefox Version: 1.5.0
Theme: Azerty, which I also use as my Thunderbird theme.
Extensions: (get some here, or keep up with the RSS feed)
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...was extremely easy and only a few of my extensions were troublesome (but I found fixes). Total time from click-to-download to full, customized browsing experience: 23 minutes. Awesome! During the installation, the process checks to see which themes and extensions will be incompatible, and either doesn't even migrate them in or disables them after migration (it depends on just how messed up the extensions are in relation to the new architecture). After the initial installation, my theme (Phoenity) was disabled as well as the TinyUrl, Google PageRank and Tab X extensions. This means all the other extensions were migrated and updated sucessfully without intervention on my part. Hooray!
Once I saw that Phoenty wasn't updated, I went to the author's home page to see if there was an updated version for 1.5 that just hadn't made it to the official Mozilla servers yet—but no go. So I spent a few minutes looking for a new theme, and found the Azerty themes for Firefox and Thunderbird. I dutifully installed both (because the themes for both have to match, of course!) and am pleased with the look of it all. Next, I looked at the individual pages for my other non-migrated extensions, at addons.mozilla.org. In the user comments for TinyURL I found a link to an updated version here. Similarly, in the user comments for the Google PageRank extension I found a link to an update. Finally, the Tab X extension didn't migrate over during installation, but the version downloadable at its addons.mozilla.org page is a 1.5-compatible extension, so I just reinstalled it. I like having x-icons on each tab, used to close the individual tabs instead of using a context menu or shortcut key. I still don't understand why this isn't the standard behavior. I also found a new extension, "new tab" button on tab bar, which does just that (adds a "new tab" button on the tab bar.
My personal Firefox roundup (below) looks a lot like it did when I wrote a similar post in July. It's not that I fear change, it's just that I know what I like and don't tend to add to it unless it really helps me in some way. I keep an eye on with the RSS feed of new extensions everytime it updates, just in case I see something cool and useful (for me).
Firefox Version: 1.5.0
Theme: Azerty, which I also use as my Thunderbird theme.
Extensions: (get some here, or keep up with the RSS feed)
- BlogThis: Adds a context menu option to blog a link to the current page and any selected text through Blogger's BlogThis form.
- BugMeNot: If you right-click in the username text field of a registration-required site, you'll (possibly) get a valid username/password for use therein.
- DictionarySearch: Adds a context menu option to search for a selected word at the dictionary site of your choice.
- ForecastFox: Displays weather information for a location of your choice; many customizable options.
- Gmail Notifier: An integrated GMail notifier; checks mail at customizable intervals or click to open GMail in new tab.
- GooglePreview: Inserts a thumbnail preview within Google search results.
- LinkChecker: allows you to check the links on a page, as it checks and then colorcodes all links: red is for broken links, yellow is for forwarded links, green is for good links, grey is for skipped links.
- "new tab" button on tab bar: Adds a wee icon on the tab toolbar to add a new, blank tab.
- Sage: RSS/Atom feed aggregator; this is my primary feedreader. As its description indicates, "It's got a lot of what you need and not much of what you don't." Exactly. I'm a huge fan.
- Tab X: adds an "x"-closes-tab button in each browser tab.
- TinyURL Creator: An interface for using tinyurl.com to convert long URLs into smaller ones (easier for pasting into email and IM).
- Translate: Adds a context menu option that allows you to translate (via Babelfish) selected text from [language] to English.
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