Firefox Bookmark Tricks

Topic: Firefox|Level: Beginner|Type: Tips & Tricks

Bookmarks (a.k.a. Favorites in some other browsers) in Firefox have some really nice features and tricks you can do with them. Obviously Bookmarks are saved links to pages you're likely to want to revisit.

Types of Bookmarks
In the latest version of Firefox (Firefox 3 at the time of writing this), Bookmarks can be in one of 3 main groups or folders; "Bookmarks", "Unsorted Bookmarks", and "Bookmarks Toolbar Folder".
"Bookmarks" is the main library collection of all your bookmarks. These are the ones that show up in the lower part of the Bookmarks menu.
"Unsorted Bookmarks" are ones you've created but haven't specified a particular location in the full "Bookmarks" collection for the item to be in. Typically these are the ones created with the "Bookmark this page" address bar button (more on this next).
"Bookmarks Toolbar Folder" are ones that show up on a special menu bar you can optionally turn on or off (more on this later too).

Creating Bookmarks
The easiest way to create a bookmark is while on the page you want to bookmark click the white star image button at the right end of your address bar. That's it! This will create a bookmark in the "Unsorted Bookmarks" group with a single click. If the page is already bookmarked the star image button will already be colored in.

Or you can create a bookmark by clicking the "Bookmarks" menu then "Bookmark this page" (or press Ctrl+D) or click the star image button once to bookmark the page in Unsorted Bookmarks and then a second time to bring up a window with additional options for creating the bookmark. From this window you can specify a custom Name for the bookmark, a folder to create it in, or some Tags for the bookmark (more on Tags later).

You can even create bookmarks by drag-and-dropping about any obvious page-specific thing (the page Tab, the address bar, the item listed in your History, etc.) to about anywhere you can see your bookmarks listed (the Bookmarks Toolbar, the Bookmarks Library, etc.)

Using Bookmarks
Bookmarks on the Bookmarks Toolbar are the easiest to use (if you chose to have the Bookmarks Toolbar on) as you can just click the item on the toolbar to go to the page (or middle-click to have it opened in a new tab). You can toggle the Bookmarks Toolbar on and off by clicking the "View" menu -> "Toolbars" -> "Bookmarks Toolbar".
The rest of your bookmarks in the regular "Bookmarks" group can be accessed by clicking the "Bookmarks" menu and locating the bookmark in the lower part of the menu.

However, an even easier way to get to any of your bookmarks is to simply start typing the part of the name or address in your address bar. Firefox has a really great feature that as you start typing in the address bar it will automatically search your bookmarks' names and addresses (and even your browser history) and provide you with suggestions in a drop-down menu that you can then click (or again middle-click) to access the page. Also, from this drop-down menu of items you can easily tell which items are coming from bookmarks and which are from your browsing history because the bookmarks will show the yellow star icon listed with the item.

Organizing & Customizing Bookmarks
Firefox allows you to create Folders for organizing, reordering and grouping your bookmarks. Organizing bookmarks is very easy in Firefox. You simply click the "Bookmarks" menu then "Organize Bookmarks" (or press Ctrl+Shift+B). This opens the Bookmarks Library window. From here it's pretty intuitive and simple for creating Folders and reordering, organizing (by drag-and-dropping), deleting and creating new items.
You can also change the properties of the bookmark (Name, Location, Descriptions, Tags, Keywords... more on Keywords and Tags next) by selecting them here and changing the options in the lower-right pane of the window.
This window also has an option on the left for History. You can create bookmarks by drag-and-dropping items from this History item to your bookmark folders.

Using Tags
Tags allow you to provide additional quick one-word notes to bookmarks. These tags can be specified when creating the Bookmark. Firefox will automatically provide Suggested Tags when creating the bookmark that you can simply click, or you can type a comma-delimited list of your own tags.
These tags can be used to locate your bookmarks from the Bookmarks Library window under the Tabs item in the left tree, or by simply typing the Tag in the address bar and selecting the item from the automatic search suggestions.

Keywords
Keywords are a feature of Firefox I just recently discovered and love! Keywords allow you to type a particular keyword in the address bar (i.e. dict), hit Enter and be immediately taken to the indicated page (http://www.dictionary.com).
Additionally, you can make Smart Keywords that take whatever you type after the keyword and provide it as part of the page address. That is you can type "dict schadenfreude" and be immediately taken to a dictionary.com look-up on the word Schadenfreude, or "wiki firefox" and be taken to a Wikipedia search results page for Firefox, or about any other searchable website.

To set up a Keyword on a bookmark go to the Bookmarks Library ("Bookmarks" -> "Organize Bookmarks"), locate the bookmark you want to put the keyword on, click the "More" button if you see it and you'll then see the "Keyword" field. Type whatever keyword you want to use for the bookmark here and that's it. You can now type that keyword in the address bar, hit Enter and be taken to that page.

To set up a Smart Keyword first go to a search results page on the website you want to use, for example, try doing a search for "Decatur" at http://maps.google.com/ (this is easiest to set up if you only use a single word for your initial search). Now bookmark the page, then go to the Bookmarks Library and locate the bookmark you just created. Again click the "More" button if you see it, and provide a keyword in the Keyword field (i.e. "map"). Now, in the "Location" field you should see a portion of the address that contains the text you searched for. Change your search word here to " %s " (that's percent sign and lower-case 's', without the quotation marks). So based on the example you'd see "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Decatur&output=html" and you'd want to change "Decatur" to "%s" so your Location property is now "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s&output=html". Now you could type in your address bar something like "map Orlando, FL" and you'll be immediately taken to a Google Maps search results for Orlando, FL.

Here's a page that has 15 Smart Keyword bookmarks you can download and instructions how to import them in to Firefox: http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-fifteen-firefox-quick-searches-129658.php

Xmarks
http://www.xmarks.com/
I've mentioned Xmarks (previously known as "Foxmarks") before but it's worth bringing up again here and giving some more detail on it.
Xmarks is a Firefox add-on that you create an account with and it automatically synchronizes all your bookmarks (including all the properties, Keywords, Tags, etc), and if you chose even your Firefox saved website passwords, to their server database. This way you can have Firefox and Xmarks on multiple computers (home, work, laptops) and you have the same bookmarks available from them all. It also servers as a back-up of your bookmarks, this alone makes it worth the download.
Also, Xmarks uses the large collection of bookmarked page data to help rank and provide similar page data. This information is available from Google search results page (which adds an Xmarks icon to the right of the search results that you can mouse-over for more information), or it's available by clicking the Xmarks icon it adds to to the right end of your address bar.

Installing Firefox Add-Ons

Topic: Firefox|Level: Beginner|Type: How-To & Recommendations

As mentioned previously, one of the coolest parts of Firefox is its support for 3rd party developed add-ons (a.k.a. change-arounds or extensions). Add-ons are small bits of programming script made in a particular structured way that they can fit in to Firefox's modular design. The standard Firefox interface handles installing, running, listing, and removing the add-ons. Much beyond that the add-ons can change nearly any part of how Firefox operates.

Add-ons commonly do things like add additional tools to the main Toolbar or Status Bar, they can add completely new Toolbars, or they can change the way the actual HTML of a page is processed and displayed, among many other things. Add-ons also can automatically update themselves when updates are available. Firefox will even typically prompt you with a small nofication window when updates are available and in 1 click have them all downloaded and installed.

If you haven't already tried Firefox I encourage you to go ahead and download & install it now (http://www.firefox.com)

Types of Add-ons
There's actually a few components collectively referred to as "Add-ons".
Extensions - These are the add-ons that add or customizable your web browsing experience with selective tools. Extensions are the ones that are typically thought of when speaking of "Add-ons"
Themes - These are the ones that customize your browser's colors, toolbar graphics, and appearance. Only one Theme can be enabled at a time. Themes allow you to make your browser look like other types of browsers, or reflect things that represent your personal taste (animals, places, sports teams, etc)
Plugins - These are applets that run completely in the background and allow other applications to interact in the web browser. These are components that allow your browser to use PDF Documents, Java, MS Office documents, Windows Media Player, etc. Plugins you about never need to install or manage in any way; they're automatically downloaded and installed when needed.

Getting Add-ons
So to get started customizing and enhancing your web browsing experience in Firefox click the "Tools" menu at the top, then "Add-ons". This will pull up the Add-ons window where you can review and change options of your add-ons.
From the "Get Add-ons" tab, you type an add-on name in the Search box if you're looking for a specific add-on. Or you can click the "Browse All Add-ons" link (or just go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox) to peruse the vast catalog of available add-ons.

Installing Add-ons
Installing the add-ons is incredibly easy. Unlike when installing regular applications on the computer, Firefox's modular design allows it to manage the entire install process.
Whether you searched for and found an add-on from the Add-ons window or from the Firefox Add-ons web page, simply click the "Add to Firefox..." button. The add-on will be downloaded, set up, and you'll be prompted to restart Firefox. Do so and that's it. And remember Firefox can even automatically reopen all your previous tabs when you close and restart it.
You also can install multiple add-ons all at once, and then restart Firefox when you're finished. Although, you'll typically only want to install a couple at a time and restart so that if something changes in a way you don't like you can more easily determine which add-on made the change to customize or remove it. And frequently following the browser restart the add-ons will open new windows or tabs the first time to get any necessary options set or provide usage instructions.

Recommended Add-ons
Some of my personal favorite add-ons and recommendations are:

• Adblock Plus - This one can block nearly all advertisements from site as you visit them. It places a little "Block" tab in place of the ad that you can click on to allow the ad to show in case you want to or it incorrectly blocks something you don't want it to for some reason. This one's a near essential.
• Answers - Alt-click a word or some highlighted words on a page and get a pop-up definition or description.
• Better Gmail 2 - All sorts of enhancements for Gmail if you use it.
• Cooliris - Pages that list collections of images that are set up for it (Google image search, Flickr, Myspace/Facebook people's photo pages), you can click an icon that appears in the corner of the images when you mouse-over them that will open a kind of 3D-ish wall of images that you can quickly and easily drag and slide around to view the images. Hard to describe, but work looking at.
  
• Download Statusbar - The built-in download manager for Firefox opens a small window with all downlads listed in it. The thing I don't like about it is it is a stand-alone window that will move behind your browser or other windows and you can't see the progress of the download. Download Statusbar adds a new status bar along the bottom of the main browser window that shows the progress of all downloads across it. It also allows you to pause and resume downloads from most hosts, and has various options for things like having some file types automatically disappear from the status bar when done downloading (images) while others remain until opened (application installers). Another near-essential.
  
• FaviconizeTab - This one allows you to set particular websites to have their tab reduced down to only show the page's icon (removing the full page title from the tab). This is handy for reducing the size tabs I always have open (work homepage, iGoogle homepage, gmail) to take nearly no room. It also allows you to set a hotkey like Ctrl+Click'ing a tab to reduce it down to only an icon.
• FireFTP - Very nice built-in FTP browser & manager for those that use FTP.
• FireGestures - This one allows you to set up gestures where you hold the right mouse-button down and draw something that indicates an action for the browser to take. For example right-click drag a straight line from right to left to go back a page, or left to right to go forward a page, etc. Many gestures are set up by default and you can customize all sorts of additional gestures.
• Forecastfox - Puts local weather and forecast in your bottom Status bar. And can even provide slide-in notifications and and additional icon "!" for severe weather warnings.
• FoxTab - Provides a Vista-like interface for switching between multiple open tabs.
  
• Google Toolbar for Firefox - All sorts of Google related searches and tools from a new dedicated Toolbar.
• TwitterBar - If you use Twitter, this one allows you to type a tweet in to your address bar and click a special Twitter icon to have the text you just provided there sent to your twitter page.
• Wizz RSS News Reader - This is the one I mentioned in the previous blog about RSS Readers. Opens your RSS Feed list in a new window or side-bar.
• Xmarks (previously named "Foxmarks") - This one allows you to synchronize your Bookmarks to an on-line database. That on-line database can then be synchronized to other computers (same bookmarks on work pc, home pc, and laptops) and it can be browsed from your own my.xmarks.com web page from any computer.
  Additionally Xmarks uses it's huge collection of bookmark data to extend Google search results with a special icon showing similar sites and various details of pages right from the search results page, and similar information from a pop-up window access from the Xmarks icon added to the address bar of a page.
  One more near-essential if you use Firefox on more than one computer.

Customizing Add-ons
Most add-ons have various customization options. Frequently you'll be prompted for various settings after the add-on is initially installed and the browser is restarted, but you generally have various more customization options beyond those.
Select the add-on from the "Tools" -> "Add-ons" window, and if you see an "Options" button, clicking it will pull up the add-on's options window.

Disabling / Uninstalling Add-ons
Once an add-on is installed you may want it temporarily disabled for some reason or you may decide you don't like it. Disabling or Uninstalling them is just as easy as installing them. Select the add-on in the "Tools" -> "Add-ons" window and click the "Disable" or "Uninstall" button. The "Disable" button is replaced with an "Enable" button when it's disabled.

What's this RSS / Feeds / Subscribing stuff?

Topic: RSS|Level: Beginner|Type: Informational & How-to

What Is RSS?
You've probably heard of "RSS" or "Feeds" or "Subscribing" (in terms of web stuff), but didn't know exactly what that all meant. They're all basically referring to the same thing. "RSS" stands for "Really Simple Syndication". RSS Feeds are content that you selectively subscribe to and get it when and how you want it.

Email is a push service; senders actively distribute stuff to you. If you want them to stop sending stuff to you, you have to explicitly tell them to do so. RSS, however, is a pull service; you selectively retrieve your content and the senders don't necessarily know who all is pulling what they're providing. RSS has quickly become a very popular and effective way of providing content. This content can be anything from news, store promotions, comics, weather forecasts, people's blogs, really anything that is provided on a continual updating basis is a good candidate for RSS.

With RSS you generally use some kind of RSS Reader application. In your RSS Reader application you create a list of the "RSS Feeds" (a special web address that is where the content is published) that interest you.

The magic of RSS is that content is always published in the same consistent structure. They have a Feed title, and each item in the Feed has a published date & time, title, body content and usually each item links to a web page containing additional content. Your RSS Reader application can take those pieces of information and display them to you in a consistent way, regardless of where they're actually coming from or what they contain.

How To Use RSS
So to use RSS, the first step is to figure out what you want to use to subscribe to them. Most web browsers have built in components for reading and subscribing to RSS Feeds. But these components are frequently pretty simplistic, and many many more sophisticated and more customizable Readers are available.

Some RSS Readers are web-based and others are local applications on your PC or web-device. Web-based readers have the advantage of feeds you subscribe to are saved on the web-hosting service and are thus available from any PC. On the other hand local pc readers have the advantage of generally being a bit more sophisticated being that they do not have the limitations of what a web page can do.

My current reader of choice is the web-based one, Google Reader. This service saves your Feed subscriptions with your Google account and the reader page itself is sufficient for my personal needs.
Alternatively, another Reader I've used and is quite nice is a Firefox add-on called "Wizz RSS". Wizz RSS opens its feed list in a new browser window or a side-bar window and provides various features like searching and all the standard Firefox tricks like being able to middle-click an item and have it open in a new Firefox tab.

Subscribing to Feeds
So how do you know when a page or some content is available via RSS? Usually you'll see an icon similar to this somewhere on the page:

Also, most pages that are available via RSS are coded so that you'll see the RSS Icon right the address bar of most browsers. For example, you probbly see the RSS Icon at the right end of your address bar on this page.

Clicking the RSS Icon from the address bar, or usually from elsewhere on the page, will then take you to the actual RSS Feed page. This is the page you want to provide your RSS Reader the address of.
Sometimes there are different versions of an RSS feed available. Clicking the RSS icon from the address bar or in some way elsewhere on the page, you might be prompted for which version of the Feed you want. RSS and Atom are two slightly different types of Feeds. Given this option I'd recommend just selecting the RSS one for now.
Also, the same content might be available in a few different way such as when subscribing to your news website's Feed you may be able to select All News or only Technology or Celebrity News, or you may even be able to select between things such as including images in the Feed items or not. All these types of options are up to the feed's author on how they want it to work.

Now from the actual Feed page you generally have two options. Most more sophisticated browsers give you a way right at the top of the page to Subscribe to the feed using various Readers the web browser is aware of. Firefox has the built in "Live Bookmarks" which is a special type of Bookmark for reading RSS.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the address of the page and use the option in your Reader of choice to add a feed. Generally other Readers have a kind of "Add a Subscription" button that when clicked will ask for the address of the Feed.

Push and Pull Subscriptions
Many content services however provide support for both push email notifications of new content as well as RSS pull support. For example, this blog is published through blogspot.com. Blogspot.com handles setting up the RSS feed as well as providing a way that if you chose, you can have it send you an email when an author creates a new post.

Web Browsers

Topic: Firefox|Level: Beginner|Type: Informational

Some people tend to think "the Internet" is that big blue "e" icon and the only thing the computer is for. That "e" is actually "Internet Explorer" (not "the Internet"), a product from Microsoft commonly referred to as "IE", and it's just one piece of software that may be used to access the Internet. The problem is since it's preloaded with Windows it's the only application most people use, and it is far from the best.

People using a Mac computer get there's preloaded with "Safari", which is now also available for Windows. And there's also "Chrome" which is a relatively new product by Google that may be worth keeping any eye on since Google puts out amazing stuff all the time. I haven't done much with Safari or Chrome yet, so nothing really to them at this time.

This post though is about another option, Firefox ("FF") from Mozilla. Firefox (available for free download here: http://www.firefox.com/), and it's quickly becoming one of the most popular browsers in use even over IE! And once you've tried it you'll likely see why.

So some of the quick things that make Firefox my browser of choice and reasons for anybody else to check it out...

Open Source
The Firefox source code is all open source. This means there's a lot more people in the development community who can find bugs and security holes and get them fixed.

Innovation over Replication
Firefox (to the best of my knowledge) was one of the first browsers to support multiple tabs for different pages as well as several other features they have that others are just now implementing.

Auto Crash Recovery
If the browser crashes for some reason (whether because of corrupt code on pages, the operating system, or some generic memory problem), when you open the browser back up it can restore all the tabs and pages you previously had open.

Customizable Themes
Themes are the images, colors & font styles of the browser's toolbars, statusbars, and buttons. 3rd party developers are able to create new themes that you can easily pick one you like and in a matter of just a couple clicks have implemented.

Add-Ons (a.k.a. "Extensions" or "Change-Arounds")
This is the most impressive part of FF in my opinion. FF supports 3rd party development of add-ons. These are what turns a good browser in to an amazing tool! You can easily peruse the catalog of available add-ons and select the ones you want to install, try them out, and if they don't work for you then you can just as simply remove them. I'll provide a list of some of my favorite and more essential add-ons in my next blog, but it's still worth checking out right away for anybody still using IE or some other browser.

Automatic Spell Check
Any text box you can type in automatically has misspelled words given a little squiggly red line that you can then simply right-click to get spelling correction suggestions

Middle-Clicking (or Wheel-clicking)
If you have a middle mouse button or your mouse wheel can be 'clicked', this is a wonderful thing with Firefox. You can middle-click a link to have that page link opened in a new tab, you can middle-click your tabs to close them, or you can middle-click your navigation buttons (back, forward, home) to have them opened in new tabs too.

Automatic Self-updates
Firefox as well as any installed add-ons can even automatically check for updates and download them so all you have to do is restart the browser after it prompts you and you're up-to-date.

So download & install Firefox (http://www.Firefox.com/), then once started go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons -> Browse All Add-ons and start seeing what looks good to you. ("Adblock Plus", "Download Statusbar" are must-haves!)

Also, I plan on customizations and tweaks to Firefox to be the subject of some blogs yet to come.

Blog Intent

I'm a tech-gamer-geek. I spend a lot of time reading tech articles, playing with software features, and working in the IT field. Through these I learn lots of various pointers and things that I use to make technology work better for me. I thought some of these pointers would be good to share to hopefully make some others people's lives and use of technology a bit easier for them; that is the intent of this blog.

I intend to keep the postings somewhat selective. Much of the information I read are about systems I never use or have tried and didn't like (or just don't like or use Yet). There's no point for everybody to be overwhelmed with such information.

However, I'm sure it will also include various other things that occur in my life that I feel relevant enough to share, but the primary focus is on the tech tips & tricks.

Also, a lot of people I know who are likely to read this are a bit of tech-gamer-geeks too, and maybe they'll be able to share some of their own know-how and tricks with me through this.