While a page is loading, the button acts as a Stop button:

When it’s done loading, it becomes a Reload button.

I’m always up for 1 less unnecessary button. I think this feature is copied from Safari (I might be wrong).

As an example, here’s the Youtube webpage of the owner of Maru the Cat:

To open the thumbnail image of Maru in a new tab, right-click the image, and then middle-click the View Image item from the context menu:

It should open up in a new tab:

You can also do the same for background images (middle-click View Background Image from the right-click context menu).

Anyway, enough with all that self-indulgent background – I’m writing this today to rave about how cool this one particular feature, auto-completion in the Location Bar (or the Address Bar, you know, where you type in URLs), in Firefox 3 is. Yes, you probably have already read about it and all the other neat new features and changes in Firefox 3, but I’d love to single out this one because it was the one thing I noticed that made browsing so much better when switching from Firefox 2.

So what is it? First, a screenshot of it in action:

Yup, typing into the Location Bar brings up a list of matched webpages from your browsing history. You can see from the screenshot that I entered “javascript” and it brought up not just URLs that started with “javascript” (which is the current Firefox 2 behavior), it also brought up URLs that contained “javascript” anywhere and even pages with titles containing “javascript”.

What’s the big deal? Well, one of the worst (“worst” being a relative adjective, relative to my opinion) things that can happen while looking for a page you once visited is forgetting its URL. If I’m lucky I can find it by bringing up the History sidebar in Firefox 2 and searching for it by some keyword or dredging through my browsing history.

In Firefox 3, I just need to type in some keywords related to the page and most likely it’d come up! Here’s how I start posting a new blog entry to this very blog:

No need to type “blog.c” and then selecting the correct page from the dropdown while remembering that the new post page is “post-new.php”. Less typing, no need to remember URLs. Just page titles and website names. If that isn’t useful for you, “you’re doing it wrong”. What’s more, Firefox 3 uses adaptive learning to keep an eye of what you’ve typed and what you select. After some time Firefox will learn from your choices and provide better suggestions in the autocomplete list. Sweet.

If you haven’t tried out Firefox 3 yet, go grab the latest beta. And then come back to this blog to get Firefox 2 and 3 running at the same time. I’m quite sure you’ll thank me for it (because this is not the only great feature in Firefox).

Update: Phil Wilson pointed to this extension for Firefox 2 that has the same auto-completion functionality.

Well, if you wanna check out the proposed Mac OS X Firefox 3 UI for yourself, grab yourself a copy of Firefox 3 Beta 1 and go get the Proto theme.

If you want to try it, you’ll probably want to run Firefox 3 and Firefox 2 at the same time. Only this time you should remember to rename Firefox 3 so that it doesn’t override your install of Firefox 2.

I’d blogged about some of the changes previously if you care for some screenshots of some of the new features (Mozilla Links covers a good number of new Firefox 3 changes too):

• Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
• supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
• Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
• Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.

Try it for yourself with the text here:

First line.
Second line.

Well, all that is gonna go away in Firefox 3, which replaces newlines with spaces. Small change perhaps, but definitely needed in this fanboy’s opinion.

Oh and it works for the Address bar too, only the newlines get removed instead of getting replaced with spaces. Could be useful for multi-line URLs which appear quite often in emails!

What’s new? Download Resume – now you can pause and resume your downloads in the Firefox Download Manager. Implemented by a Summer of Code student, this brings Firefox’s Download Manager up to speed with Safari (which has a really nice download resume feature that leaves .download files that you can just double-click to resume the download).

You’ll notice the insane speeds (986GB/s) I’m getting too in that last screenshot. Nope it’s not a feature, it’s a bug. And a known one that’s probably fixed if you have a recent nightly.

For Firefox 1.5 or 2 users, don’t despair, extensions like DownThemAll! allow you to resume downloads. If you use an external download manager, you’d probably be more interested in FlashGot.

Unfortunately, some of us felt that there it had a flawed implementation. Here’s how you can see it for yourself:

Here, try this in a new Firefox window. Open up 4 tabs. Make sure that there’s nothing in these tabs that you want to remember to come back to later, especially the last 2. Now try using “Open in Tabs” on a bookmark folder with just 2 bookmarks. What just happened? Firefox has closed the last 2 tabs and loaded the first 2 tabs with the first 2 bookmarks. Well, actually this is not so bad for the first 2 tabs, because you can use the “Back” button to go back to your page should you want to, but the tabs that were closed are lost.

It was then rather unfortunate that this bug was closed as WONTFIX. I was thus surprised to see a patch for a similar bug land in the Firefox 3 trunk about a week ago (I haven’t had time to blog about it until now!)

This change in Firefox 3 means that “Open in Tabs” is no longer a destructive proposition – a “use existing tabs and append” strategy is employed.

Here’s how it looks like graphically (which I expect would be easier to understand compared to aforementioned “use existing tabs and append” strategy). Let’s start with 4 tabs, with the Google, Ruby on Rails, Facebook and jQuery websites loaded:

I have a bookmark folder with 2 bookmarks (to the Firebug and Prototype websites) in them:

If I click on “Open in Tabs” in Firefox 3, I end up with this:

Notice how the Back button is enabled on the Firebug tab (allowing us to go back to the Google webpage), and the Prototype bookmark is loaded in a new tab after the Firebug one.

Small little tweak you may say, but it’s all these small usability tweaks (like the recent Password Manager improvement) that promise to make Firefox 3 a much better browser.

Anyway, in simpler words (and some screenshots to follow), what this means is that whenever you login to a site that requires your password, Firefox will no longer wait for you to tell it whether it should remember your password. I bet this looks familiar:

Its usability is lacking because of 2 things:

• if I entered the wrong password told Firefox to remember my password, I’d have to go to the Password Manager to delete it, and
• Firefox doesn’t submit your login until you tell it what to do with your password, annoying for 2 reasons:
  1. Sometimes I’m not sure if I entered the right password – but I’d be pretty sure of that if I get to the next page (i.e. if my login request was submitted).
  2. It’s just plain faster if Firefox submitted the login and asked about my password together/later – blocking the submit is just a waste of time (i.e. a non-modal dialog would make more sense).

So, especially since I’ve used used Firefox for 156 hours at work since a month and a half ago (my most used application apparently), it’s pretty cool to find out that Firefox 3 will come with a non-modal “Remember my password” dialog. Here’s what it looks like:

The dialog appears on top right after Firefox submits the login form. One more thing to look forward to in Firefox 3!

The problem with playing around with Firefox 3 is (by default) you can’t run both Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time since they both insist on using the same profile and insist on running only 1 copy of Firefox at any one time.

Want to get in on checking out the new features but still want good old Firefox 2? Here’s how:

• First, you should create a new profile just for testing Firefox 3. You should do this to keep your precious Firefox profile safe from any problems in Firefox 3. Otherwise, Firefox 3 will use your current Firefox 2 profile by default. You can create a new profile easily with the Profile Manager, which you can access by running:

  /path/to/firefox -profilemanager -no-remote

  (Thanks to Jeff for pointing out that there is no need to close Firefox first before creating a new profile.)

  

  
  

  Create a new profile (I gave it an obvious name, ‘minefield’, which is the codename of the current Firefox trunk). If you get confused, the official Firefox website has more detailed instructions on how to create a new profile.

• Now, you should already have one of the Firefox nightly builds. If not, you can download the latest nightly build from the Firefox nightly build directory. You can start up Firefox 2 normally (just so you can see Firefox 2 and 3 running side by side). For Firefox 3, we’re going to start it differently.

• We’re gonna run Firefox 3 using our newly created profile. I’d written earlier on how you can run two Firefox profiles at the same time, and you can still do the same with Firefox 3:

  /path/to/firefox3 -P minefield -no-remote &

  The ‘minefield’ in the command is the name of the profile we created earlier. Windows users should leave out the ‘&’ (on UNIX-based systems, this just runs Minefield in the background so that you can exit your terminal).

• Firefox 3 should start up with your new clean profile!

  

  
  

  That’s the Firefox 3 (Minefield) icon living right next to my Firefox 2 icon in my dock (yeah, I use a Mac).

Andy Croll (who works at Bezurk too) has written a convenient little AppleScript so you don’t have to repeat these steps.

Just so I can put up another screenshot (as if I needed to prove that this really works), here’s Firefox 2 and one of the recent Firefox 3 nightly builds running side by side:

Have fun! I think I’ll get back to watching the development of the trunk (now that it’s getting more exciting) like I used to in the build up to Firefox 1 and 2. I may even make some posts!

Get a nightly here: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

To test Firefox 3 nightlies without possibly messing up your existing profile (preferences, extensions, what have you), use the Profile Manager to create a new profile just for testing. Way less stupid then trying to load up 48 tabs from your current profile in Firefox 3 and then seeing most of the extensions fail to work (which was what I tried to do, once).

Source: Bug 362685 – Growl Integration for Mac OS X (nsIAlertsService)

Today’s recommendation: get Firefox to clear the list of downloaded items in the download manager to keep your Firefox speedy. You’ve probably read about how cleaning up your download history can help speed up Firefox (on Of Zen and Computing or on Mac OS X Hints), but do you really want to remember to clear up your download history manually?

Unsatisfied with a manual solution, I went looking for an about:config preference (not familiar with about:config? Enter ‘about:config’ into your Firefox address bar and hit Enter – read more). Sure enough, there is a browser.download.manager.retention preference when I used ‘download.manager’ as a filter:

But what value should I set it to? The default value is 2 but there’s no clue what another value would do. There’s only one place to find out: the about:config entries page in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base. Search for retention and there you go:

When to remove downloaded files’ entries from the Download Manager
0: Upon successful download
1: When the browser exits
2 (default): Manually

Set it to 0 or 1, whichever behavior you prefer. I like 0 since I use the Download Statusbar extension and never get to see the Download Manager.

That’s it for today’s tip (and a pretty low-key tip at that)!

If you’re a Google Reader user like me, you’d probably like Jon’s theme. I don’t have to say that it does look very much better than the original Google Reader theme (oops, I said it). Amazing what a talented designer can do with user style sheets.

One of the things I noticed was how Gmail POP integration is baked right in when creating a new accounts:

Step 2: tell Thunderbird your Gmail ID.

Step 3: there isn’t really a step 3, just confirm your Gmail settings.

How’s that for time-saving? Gone are the days of looking for POP client configuration documentation on Gmail. My only gripe is that there isn’t a similar wizard interface for Gmail for your domain.

Oh and there’re tons of other nice features in Thunderbird
2: Advanced Folder Views lets you configure “Favorite Folders” and has a view for unread folders as well, tags (a la Gmail labels or GTD organization) and of course, a well-tuned Saved Searches feature (which has been there since version 0.9).

I’m back to using Thunderbird again after a brief fling with Apple Mail, for no particular reason actually. Well, actually, I did reinstall Mac OS X Tiger (it got really crappy in terms of performance – must be the tons of software I was installing) and found it much less work to get a satisfactorily working email client with Thunderbird than with Apple Mail.

I was at the 2nd WebSG (Web Standards Group Singapore) meetup (read about the recap of the meetup) on Wednesday (28 Feb 2007) where I hosted a short session on some Firefox tips. It’s all thanks the urgings and encouragement of Lucian (the organizer) that I finally got down to publicly sharing my Firefox knowledge ever since I wrote Firefox Secrets.

I was asked to blog about this (since I didn’t have any presentation slides), so here it is, for those of you who missed anything in my mumbling or frantic keystrokes.

Keyboard shortcuts you should know

Note: Mac users should replace Ctrl with the Cmd key for any of the keystrokes listed below.

• Ctrl-L puts your cursor in the address bar, Ctrl-K puts your cursor in the search bar.
• Ctrl-T opens a new tab and puts your cursor in the address bar, but
• I forgot to mention this during the session, but I personally prefer using Ctrl-L or Ctrl-K, typing in the new URL or search query, and hitting Alt-Enter open the new page or search result in a new tab – it just feels more accessible than Ctrl-T. Most people I observe still use Ctrl-T though.
• Ctrl-Shift-T re-opens closed tabs. Keep hitting it to reopen more closed tabs in your history. This is a big time saver. Newly built into Firefox 2.0.
• Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab brings you to the next and previous tab. If you’re having trouble remembering both, just remember that the usual convention is a Shift does the reverse. So all you need is to remember Ctrl-Tab, and adding a Shift modifier does the reverse (i.e. goes to the previous tab instead of the next).
• Ctrl-F brings up the Find bar, and you can start typing in whatever you want to find on the page and in any input fields. Use Ctrl-G and Ctrl-Shift-G to go to the next and previous occurences respectively. The Find bar is good, but…
• I forgot to mention (as Zul mentioned to me after) during the session that Quick Find is much better. Just hit / and start typing as you would for the normal Find bar, and the Quick Find bar will go away after several seconds. Much better in most cases than the Find bar which likes to stick around until you close it. And why is this important? Because the Find bar takes up screen real estate, especially for those of us using wide screens.

Getting rid of the close button on all tabs

I’ve been told how annoying Firefox 2.0 is when it insists on putting a close button on each tab.

Accidental closing of tabs when you try to select them is one big complaint. Well, you can turn it off and go back to the good olde Firefox 1.5 days of a single close button on the extreme right of the tab bar. Enter about:config in your address bar, filter for browser.tabs.closeButtons, double click on the preference entry that shows up, and change the value from the default of 1, to 3. If you don’t want the close button on the right of the tab bar, enter a value of 2 (this assumes you’re going to close tabs with either Ctrl-W or middle-clicking on the tab – this is my prefered setup).

Backing up your profile

MozBackup is all you ever need if you use Windows exclusively. This neat little (Windows-only) application backs up your profile into a single file – all you need is to use a very simple wizard. And of course, you can restore your profile just as easily. I loved this when I was still using Windows.

Like I said, people using other operating systems can easily DIY – just read Mozilla’s official documentation on Firefox profiles. You’re probably using either Mac OS X or some Linux distro – you can do this without any hand-holding ;)

What about backing up extensions?

Some people asked me during and after my session about backing up extensions. FEBE is one extension you can look at unless you use a Mac (I tried the beta version that supports Mac OS X, but gave up when I couldn’t get it to use the correct binaries for zipping and unzipping.)

My personal take on backing up extensions: don’t back them up. I prefer to dump a list of extensions (I use the Extension List Dumper extension) that I have installed and just re-install them again. This is no big chore for me now since I have significantly fewer extensions installed than back in the day. I just like starting clean, after having had bad experiences with restoring extensions from backup before.

Still, if you really want to back up your extensions, I say just go ahead and see if it works (MozBackup and FEBE should work).

Profiles and “why is my Firefox so damn slow?”

This is one thing I had planned to mention but I got kinda threw off kilter when the slowness of the wireless internet connection made me worried about quitting Firefox (didn’t want to quit Firefox, load up another profile, only to find that it’d take another 5 mins to get my demo tabs loaded again).

Anyway, some questions I often get is, “why is my Firefox so slow?” and “why does Firefox use up so much RAM/CPU?” The first thing I suspect is a busted profile. Whenever I experience intolerable slowness in my Firefox setup, I dump and restore my profile into a newly created profile, minus all the tab history information (and of course, never restoring backed up extensions). Sometimes I even start clean new profiles, importing only bookmarks. You’ll very likely notice immediately that Firefox is back to its old speediness. And if anything happens, you still have your old profile with you.

I’m not that certain of what exactly causes Firefox to get too slow over time, but my suspicions lie with:

1. Firefox saving browsing history in all the bazillion tabs you have open – that’s a lot of data to be carrying around
2. broken/bad extensions
3. a busted profile

Profile management for productivity

Firefox hides its Profile Manager from you. You can access it by passing the -profilemanager switch to your Firefox executable. For Windows users, it’s actually –profilemanager.

The Profile Manager is really handy for people who need to remove distractions. For me, I setup different profiles for work and for play so I don’t become distracted the “play” tabs I have open while I’m working (I’m beginning to like the Tab Groups extension for segregating tabs more though). Also really handy for setting up clean profiles for running user demos (I setup a WebSG profile for my presentation and installed specific extensions I wanted to talk about) – don’t really want to have your naughty browser history showing up in some autocomplete heh.

Some extensions I dig

I also demoed some extensions that I find essential.

• Download Statusbar for unobtrusive downloads.
• All-in-One Gestures for easily accessible Back and Forward gestures when you happen to have your hand on the mouse. Like I said, I don’t use any of the other gestures because they all require memorization (I use too much of my memory storing keyboard shortcuts).
• Super DragAndGo for drag and drop searching. Great time saver when you are doing online research.
• Web Developer toolbar for its convenient Disable Cache, browser resizing, and HTML validation shortcut (Ctrl-Shift-A).
• UrlParams for easy viewing and editing of GET or POST parameters.
• And of course, Firebug – godsend for web developers, web designers, and especially AJAX developers like us.

Oh, and Mousepose was the application I used to get my keystrokes to show up on the screen. It’s simple yet extremely helpful for presentations, though I probably should have used the mouse spotlight feature more. Oh well, I did just buy the license for it a few hours before the meetup – goes to show how unprepared I was heh.

It’s late and I’ll blog more on the event and the people I met another day.