ChromePlus browser

I am a huge fan of SRWare’s Iron browser. It’s based on Google Chromium but without all the Google reporting going on in the background. It’s fast but it has it’s quirks. Namely, in order to use any of the plugins, you have to use a buggy beta build.

Another Chromium based browser I found that seems to do a better job with plugins is called ChromePlus. Like Iron, it has all of the background Google communications stripped out. By default, it comes with the following plugins:

• Super Drag & Drop
• IE Tab
• Mouse Gestures

Info about these addons, as well as a couple of other special settings, can be found on their product page. So far, all of the themes and addons that I’ve tried have worked without having to do any kind of configuration editing like I did with Iron.

I have been testing this browser out for a couple of days now. In that short amount of time I’ve found that the only thing keeping me from making it my number one browser is the lack of plugins that I enjoy using in Firefox. This is based mainly on the fact that almost all sites feel as though they load faster compared to IE and Firefox. I’ll post a comparison if I can find a good way to show if ChromePlus actually is faster (and by how much).

09.Jan.10 Browsers, Internet Comment (1)

Firefox: Wrong bookmark icon

For a while now, I’ve had one bookmark in my list of favorites that had the wrong icon. The site the bookmark was for did not have a favicon so it should have just had a blank page icon next to it. Instead, it was showing the Fark icon. It’s a minor issue but it bugged me every time I opened my bookmarks.

The answers I found almost always involved installing an extension or deleting and recreating the bookmark. Instead of doing that, I decided to look at the bookmarks.html file. That is where I found the answer to removing the icon.

The steps are fairly simple:

1. Open the directory containing the Firefox profile.
2. Open bookmarks.html with a text editor.
3. Find the line starting with <DT> that contains the link to the site.
4. Delete the ICON href tag
   • <a href=”….” icon=”123″> would become <a href=”….”>
5. Save the file and start (or restart) Firefox.

If you want to disable bookmark icons all together, check out the instructions here.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. – Golda Meir

02.Nov.07 Browsers Comment (1)

Foxmarks keeps Firefox bookmarks synched

Do you have multiple systems running Firefox? Want an easy way to keep your bookmarks synchronized? The best way I’ve found to do it is by using Foxmarks. I’ve been using it for over a month now and it works great.

Foxmarks synchronizes with the Foxmarks server in three ways:

1. Automatically while using Firefox
   • Every minute if changes are detected
   • Every hour regardless of changes in order to synch changes from other machines
2. When Firefox is opened or closed
3. Manually by clicking Synchronize Now in the Foxmarks options (Bookmarks -> Foxmarks)

If you are concerned about sending your bookmarks via plain text over the Internet, you can set Foxmarks to use HTTPS.

1. Open the Foxmarks options
2. Click the Other tab
3. Select the radio button for HTTPS under Advanced Server Settings

The current release of Foxmarks on the Firefox Add-ons page is 0.89. It is compatible with Firefox 1.5 and 2.0. Their privacy policy can be found here. The full FAQ can be found here.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. – Ambrose Bierce

22.Feb.07 Add-ons, Browsers Comments (0)

Firefox won’t open maximized

It all started after hitting a website that tried to open a pop-up. For some reason, instead of opening a new window, it opened in a tab and resized the main window. I would estimate that the browser window went to about 90% width (full height). Clicking the Maximized button opened it back up to full size.

After that happened, Firefox would not open fully maximized. It would only open to the size that it was changed to after I hit the site (can’t remember which site). I searched through the settings in the Firefox configuration (about:config) but couldn’t find anything to set the size of the window upon startup.

The fix was to go into the Firefox profile directory and delete/rename the localstore.rdf file. Firefox recreates the file when it starts. I don’t know what caused the file to get changed. I do know it has to do with this entry in the RDF file:

width="994"
height="705"
screenX="0"
screenY="0"
sizemode="maximized" />

The width and height entries were somehow changed to 950 and 718 (respectively). I deleted the newly created RDF file, edited the two entries in the backup I had made, renamed the backup to localstore.rdf and restarted Firefox. Firefox opens fully maximized each time now.

26.Dec.06 Browsers Comments (4)

Firefox: Backspace = Page up?

While using Firefox 2 on my Ubuntu laptop, I noticed something strange. It would scroll up the web page (if possible) every time I pressed the Backspace key. This is completely different than what it does on my XP system (back one page in history).

I went into about:config and typed backspace in the Filter: field. The value of the entry was one (1). I checked the value of the entry on my Windows machine and it was set to zero (0). Since it was working right on the Windows system, I changed the value to zero on the Ubuntu system. Now, Firefox goes back one page when the backspace key is pressed.

I didn’t know why the default on Ubuntu was different until I went to the MozillaZine page concerning browser.backspace_action. It turns out that Mozilla made the defaults different for Windows and Linux. The reason can be found here.

A Bugzilla entry was created to request the behavior be changed back but, according to one of the comments, it looks like it was abandoned. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to take the whole 8 seconds required to go into about:config and change it manually.

27.Nov.06 Browsers Comments (2)