The Firefox Mini Review – A Fresh Look At a Familiar Browser

Firefox took browsing to a whole new level. It offered a stable, open source, cross-platform browser with innovative features, such as tabs, extensions, and find as you type search. Granted, many of its features weren’t original ideas of the Mozilla Foundation. Nevertheless, Firefox introduced them to the masses, and meanwhile many features have been adopted by other browsers, demonstrating how much this browser has changed the game.

When Chrome was released, Firefox slowly lost market share. It was an old beast, struggling with performance issues. The unexpected competition pushed Firefox to return to old strengths and it has since been catching up. Firefox continues to be a unique, reliable, and progressive browser, not least thanks to its huge active user base.

Are you curious to see Firefox with fresh eyes? This brief review highlights some of Firefox’ great features and recaptures why it remains one of the best.

Firefox In Its Own Words

A better browser. For the greater good.

The Native Fox

The first tab you see when you open a native Firefox profile contains the above video. The second tab is the Firefox’ default home page. You may never see this because you restore a session every time you launch Firefox or maybe you have added a custom home page. The default start page contains shortcuts to everything that makes Firefox outstanding.

Firefox’ native home page contains shortcuts to your Downloads, the Bookmarks manager, your browsing History, Add-ons, Sync, and Settings. And if you left tabs open during your previous session, you will also see a Restore Previous Session option in the bottom right.

Note that you won’t see the native home page in case you set a custom home page. Find an explanation how to reset the home page here.

You can access all of these features via the orange Firefox control button in the browser’s top left.

Or click the [ALT] button on your keyboard to temporarily view the classic menu bar.

3 Reasons Why People Hang On To Firefox

The reasons why so many people still love Firefox and hang on to it are many. For some it’s pure sentiment. Others may share Firefox’ vision of an open source software, built based on the users’ needs. For some Firefox is more stable than other browsers. Many don’t like or trust Google or other corporations offering free browsers. The hardcore fans, however, stay for particular features, often implemented via extensions that no other browser offers. Let’s have a look at a few of those features.

1. Master Password

If you are the type of person who allows the browser to store usernames and passwords, you should switch to Firefox. It offers a master password to protect your privacy.

To activate your master password, click the orange Firefox button in the top left, select Options and switch to the Security tab. Check the box next to Use a master password and set your password.

To get even more secure, try these 5 Firefox Addons For Serious Password Management.

2. Vertical Tabs

The screenshots above reveal that natively, Firefox uses horizontal browser tabs in the same style as Google Chrome. Hardcore users crave vertical tabs. This isn’t a native feature, but it’s available as a browser extension.

Open the Firefox Add-ons Manager and search for vertical tabs in the top right search bar. Choose from one of the many results and enjoy the new feature.

Find a selection of the best extensions on our Best Of Firefox Addons page.

3. Firefox Sync

Many of Firefox greatest features were originally available as extensions only. The session manager or managing tabs are a good example, and so is Sync. With today’s mobile lifestyle, where people access the Internet via a host of different devices, syncing has become essential. Other browsers offer it, but Firefox does it equally well and may be easier to trust.

Go to Firefox Options and switch to the Sync tab. Click Set Up Firefox Sync in case you have not used it before. Log into your account or create a new one. Once you are logged in, complete the setup by picking what you would like to sync. You can choose from Add-ons, Bookmarks, Passwords, Preferences, History, and Tabs.

Conclusion

Firefox isn’t a naturally minimalistic browser like Chrome, but if you keep the tabs and extensions at bay, it can be. Some features still need to evolve to a level where they become intuitive to use, such as the profile manager. Nevertheless, Firefox remains a living and hopefully thriving legend.

Why do you hang on to Firefox?

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X-Mouse Button Control Lets You Bind New Functions To Your Mouse Buttons [Windows]

As a regular gamer, I know just how important of a peripheral the mouse is. The mouse offers so much control and, unlike certain areas of the keyboard, your hand is practically always resting on it. It’s a powerful tool!

Your average mouse isn’t very flexible on the software end, though. For the typical user, a plug-and-play mouse is all you’ll ever know. Just because you aren’t willing to drop $80 on a mouse doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have full control, however. While there are a lot of Windows applications that specialize in rebinding keys on the keyboard, X-Mouse Button Control is the king of tweaking your mouse. You just have to know how to use it.

X-Mouse Button Control

X-Mouse Button Control is described as compatible with Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2003 R2, Vista, 2008, 2008 R2, and 7. I’m currently using it on Windows 8 Pro and not encountering any issues at all.

XMBC does not come with a portable version, unfortunately. The installer itself is just 4 MB in size and should take just a second to download.

While the program cannot be installed portably, it’s good that XMBC gives us the option of storing all of our data and log files in a folder outside of the Program Files folder. This will essentially allow you to save your XMBC settings on a flash drive and immediately load them on another system’s installation. It’s not complete portability and it’s far from perfect, but it works.

The application’s main interface is very plain and straightforward, as I’d prefer it would be.

Already set up for you is a default profile. If you intend to rebind mouse buttons globally, just make the appropriate changes to this profile. Otherwise, the default profile will only apply to applications that don’t have their own settings set up beneath it. We’ll get into that in a moment.

XMBC allows you to force mouse buttons to do things that you probably thought were never possible:

• Activate your screensaver.


• Launch your email.


• Lock the entire workstation.


• Control all media key functions.


• Print screen.


• Run an application.


• Show/hide desktop.

These are just a few. There are plenty more that you can see for yourself.

Adding a new application/window profile will first ask you which process you’d like to save these settings for.

This is a really great feature, most especially for those of us who play games! It’s nice to be able to set specific binds for games that won’t interfere with our most casual and professional activites (assuming you do all the same from one machine like I do).

As you can see in this example, I’ve got two binds set up for when the Notepad process is active.

There are even more extensive options in the Scrolling & Navigation tab.

X-Mouse button control is the kind of software that Windows ought to take into consideration when improving their OS. Wouldn’t simple features like this be awesome in Windows’ integrated settings for the mouse? This application is a must for gamers and requires very little explaining. Install, launch, set up default binds and binds per process, and you’re good to go.

What do you guys think of X-Mouse Button Control? Is it the best third-party application to manage your mouse button binds? Let me know in the comments!

The post X-Mouse Button Control Lets You Bind New Functions To Your Mouse Buttons [Windows] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Official Dropbox App Now Available In The Windows Store [Updates]

Dropbox has arrived on the Windows Store, and is now officially available for both Windows 8 and Windows RT. While retaining all the basic Dropbox functions we all know, the app’s interface is quite different from its iOS and Android counterparts, and has adopted the “Modern” look and feel of a Windows 8 app, complete with tiles, typography and all.

According to the app’s description, you can use it to browse and preview all your files and photos on Dropbox; open, edit and save files from other Windows 8 apps; share Dropbox files on other networks; and find your files using the Search Charm. The new Dropbox app is compatible with both Intel/AMD machines running Windows 8 and with ARM-based machines running Windows RT such as the Microsoft Surface.

This is an initial release, and at this point the app seems to include only basic functionalities. As WPCentral points out, you still can’t use the Share Charms to upload files to Dropbox, and you’re pretty much limited to accessing your files and folders, and sharing them.

While Windows 8 and Windows RT come with pretty tight SkyDrive integration, the new Dropbox app is still good news, especially for Windows RT users who are limited to apps from the Windows Store and can now use Dropbox on their devices, if the wish.

Download Dropbox for Windows 8 from the Windows Store.

Is this a good addition to the Windows Store, or will you stick to SkyDrive?

Source: Windows Store via Windows Phone Central

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Make New Firefox Tabs More Useful With These Add-Ons

We all like to customize our things – it’s nice when they feel really ours. This is true for many aspects in life, and naturally, doesn’t skip computers, phones and software. If it’s possible to customize things even a little bit, someone’s going to do it. It doesn’t matter if the default is great – the default is what everyone has. So out go the defaults and in come hundreds of different customizations. Now it’s only a matter of choosing the best, coolest, most useful one.

This is not one bit different when it comes to browsers. Back in the days of Netscape 1.0, all browsers looked pretty much the same, but the advent of add-ons brought hundreds of customization options, and these days they look different on every computer. One of the best and most useful ways to customize your browser is through the new tab page. We’ve told you about some great ways to do it with Chrome, but apparently, we’ve turned a blind eye to Firefox.

About 4 versions ago, Firefox finally added a default speed dial feature to its new tab page. The speed dial shows 9 of your most visited pages, and while it’s useful, it’s far from perfect. For starters, the thumbnails don’t always load; in addition, you sometimes see duplicate tiles for the same website, which is inconvenient and a waste of space. If you too feel that it’s time for an upgrade,or just want your browser to look different than the rest, read on to find some really great options.

New Tab King

New Tab King is a versatile, multi-featured new tab page that comes with a to-do list, a recently closed tab list and even shortcuts to launch desktop apps. It goes without saying that each element in your new tab page is customizable, collapsible and removable, and the entire left sidebar is collapsible as well, so you only see it when you need to use it.

As for the main section of the new tab page, this is a list of your most-used websites, and can be viewed in a list format, as seen above, or a traditional tile format.

The background image and colors are customizable as well, and you can connect it to an RSS feed, a Picasa community search, your own local images, and more.

Bottom line: Has many useful features and works well, but is far from being minimalistic.

FVD Speed Dial

With a strong focus on the speed dial options, FVD Speed Dial is another solid start page with multiple tile groups you can customize and switch between. Each tile group can also be viewed as a list, and everything from tile size to background and font colors is configurable. By default, FVD Speed Dial comes with 7 speed dial bookmarks (two of them promotional) which you can change and add to.

Additionally, you can view your most popular pages and your recently closed tabs in lists or tiles, each with its own custom settings.

FVS Speed Dial also includes a synchronization feature, so you can access your favorite websites and settings on multiple computers. In order to use this feature, you’ll have to create an account.

Bottom line: Slick, fast and useful. With a white background, also quite minimalistic.

Super Start

Super Start is a simple, do-it-yourself type of start page, in which nothing comes ready made. Unlike the previous two options I mentioned, opening a new Super Start page for the first time results in a blank page. It’s your job to populate this page with tiles of your favorite websites, including a link, a name, and even an icon – none of these is automatic.

The add-on makes it easy to find popular icons online, but if you want to add a more obscure website, you’ll have to find one by yourself. That being said, adding tiles is super easy, and it does feel nice to start from a clean slate.

Super Start comes with a built-in notes feature for little to-do lists, a list of recently closed tab page, and four different themes.

Bottom line: Perfect for the minimalistic, DIY types.

Moment

Do all these tiles seem like useless clutter to you? Meet Moment – a completely different start page option. With Moment, there are no tiles, no lists and no bookmarks. All you get is the current time, date and local weather. That’s it. The layout is simple and beautiful, with Weather Underground providing the local weather. Want to customize it? You can change the background color, font color, and temperature units.

Everything else is static. So if you don’t like the layout you see above, feel free to skip to the next option, but if, like me, you find its simplicity quite fetching, I highly recommend that you give it a try.

Bottom line: A different, successful take on new tab pages.

New Tab Plus

Let me come right out and say it: New Tab Plus is tacky looking. In fact, it reminds me most of old programs from the days of Windows 95. As you can imagine, it took some thinking before I decided to include it here, but the fact is that New Tab Plus is so powerful and easy to use, it really can be a perfect solution for quite a lot of people. By default, your new tab page will be populated with 10 tiles, including a useful quick search widget for Google, Bing and Yahoo! search.

Want to change things around? Here is where the fun truly begins. Access the Settings to start playing with different layouts – you can either choose one of the preset ones or create one of your own. The “Cloud” button includes dozens upon dozens of different backgrounds you can choose from, organized by category. You can also choose a local image, or one of the 10 available background colors. The “Site Nav” button includes heaps of useful shortcuts, also organized by category.

When adding a new tile, you can choose from the multitudes of already available tiles, and if you can find it, just add it yourself. New Tab Plus will find the tile image for you automatically, unless the website is really obscure.

Deleting or editing a tile is note entirely intuitive: right click anywhere on the new tab page for the delete and edit icons to appear.

Bottom line: For those who don’t like working hard, and don’t mind the slightly tacky appearance.

New Tab Tools

If you actually like Firefox’s default start page and just want to tweak it a little, you might want to try New Tab Tools. All this add-on does is add some customization features to Firefox’s existing ones, but the start page and the tiles stay exactly the same. With New Tab Tools, you can change the background image and the tile images for your start page, and also add a launcher that gives you quick access to your downloads, bookmarks, history, add-ons page and more.

From the add-on’s options (accessible only through the Extensions page in the settings), you can change the number of rows and columns of tiles, and toggle the launcher on and off. The size of the tiles is set automatically according to the number of rows and columns, and you can’t change it.

Bottom line: If you really like Firefox’s default, this makes it slightly better.

Do you know of other awesome start page options for Firefox? Is there an add-on on this list you particularly like? Tell us in the comments!

The post Make New Firefox Tabs More Useful With These Add-Ons appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Download Project Gutenberg ebooks to your Dropbox

Project Gutenberg, if you are new, is the Internet’s oldest site for downloading free ebooks. They offer a collection of more than 40,000 ebooks (and growing) that you can either read online or download them on to your computer in various formats. →

The Gutenberg website has recently added support for Dropbox meaning you can download ebooks directly to your Dropbox account in the cloud. Once you authorize access, it will create a new “gutenberg” folder in your Dropbox and the ebooks will get saved directly in that folder.

This is quite a handy feature, especially for iOS users, as they create a download request in the mobile browser while the full ebook magically appears inside the Dropbox app.

Also, if you are on the Kindle Reader, you can either email these MOBI ebooks to your personal Kindle email address or connect the device over USB and put the files in the Documents folder of Kindle. They do not require conversion.

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This story, Download Project Gutenberg ebooks to your Dropbox, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 07/01/2013 under Amazon Kindle, Dropbox, Internet.

7 Windows Frustrations You Can Quickly Fix

Windows might be popular, but it isn’t perfect. There are a number of frustrating things that can occur while using a Windows desktop – from windows disappearing off your screen to annoying pop-ups and notification messages. We’ll show you how to quickly fix these common Windows frustrations and get back to work (or play).

This article doesn’t cover the frustrations you might experience while using Windows 8. If you’re craving a Start menu or a way to boot directly to the desktop, be sure to check our our list of Start menu alternatives for Windows 8. To learn more about Windows 8, download our free guide to getting started with Windows 8.

Wandering Taskbar

If your taskbar has become untethered and is moving around your screen, from edge to edge, you can quickly fix this problem. Click the taskbar, hold the mouse button down, and drag it to the bottom of your screen. Right-click it and select Lock the taskbar – this will prevent the taskbar from moving around on your screen.

Of course, if you want to move the taskbar to another edge of your screen, you can right-click it, unlock it, and drag it to another edge. Be sure to lock it when you’re done.

You can also change the taskbar’s location from the taskbar’s properties dialog. Right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and use the Taskbar location on-screen option.

Extra-Large Taskbar

If your taskbar is too tall, you’ve probably accidentally resized it. To shrink it, first make sure it’s unlocked (right-click it and ensure Lock the taskbar is unchecked).

Move your mouse cursor to the top of the taskbar. You’ll see an arrow cursor appear. Click and drag to make the taskbar shorter. Be sure to lock the taskbar when you’re done.

Hidden Taskbar

If your taskbar is hidden and only appears when you move your cursor to it, you can prevent it from hiding itself. Right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and uncheck the Auto-hide the taskbar checkbox.

If you want the taskbar to automatically hide itself so it won’t distract you, you can instead enable the Auto-hide the taskbar option from here.

Rescue a Lost Window

Application windows sometimes manage to escape from the screen. You may see part of a window but be unable to grab its title bar and drag it back onto the screen, or you may not see any part of the window at all.

To rescue a lost window, bringing it back onto the visible area of your screen, hold the Shift key, right-click its icon on your taskbar, and click the Move option. Press the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the window around, moving it back towards the visible area of your screen.

Disable Popup Tips

Many windows programs use “balloon” style tips that pop up from your notification area (also known as your system tray). If you never want to see any of these balloon tips, you can disable them completely. This won’t affect programs that implement their own tips, only the ones that use the balloon-style tips included with Windows.

If you don’t want to see any tips, you’ll need to disable them in the registry. Press the Windows key, type regedit, and press Enter. Browse to the following key in the registry editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Right-click in the right pane, point to New, and select DWORD Value.

Name the DWORD value EnableBalloonTips. Double-click it and enter a value of 0.

Log out of Windows or restart your computer. Your changes will take effect when you log back in.

Disable Action Center Notifications

The Action Center included with Windows provides a variety of messages, including ones about available Windows updates, your firewall, and whether you have antivirus software installed. There are also messages that prompt you to run regular backups and troubleshoot problems with Windows or your applications when crashes or freezes occur.

If you never want to see these messages, you can disable all Action Center notifications completely. First, open the Action Center by clicking the flag-shaped icon in your system tray and selecting Open Action Center. Click the Change Action Center settings option in the sidebar and uncheck all the types of notifications you don’t want to receive.

If you’re still encountering other annoying desktop notifications, read 5 Distracting Desktop Notifications & How To Turn Them Off.

Restore Hidden Notification Area Icons

The Windows notification area was once a simple place for long-running applications and system icons. However, it’s been abused by so many programs that there are now multiple ways to hide and show the icons that appear here. If an icon is hidden, you’ll generally find it hidden behind the little arrow icon.

However, system icons can be hidden in two ways. A system icon – such as the volume, power, or Wi-Fi icons – can be hidden behind the arrow or disabled entirely. To control which icons are displayed in your system tray, right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and click the Customize button under Notification area.

Use the options here to control which icons are displayed. You can enable or disable system icons by clicking the Turn system icons on or off link. We’ve covered managing and tidying your system tray icons in the past – check out that article for more details and tricks.

Have you run into any other common frustrations while using Windows? Leave a comment and share any solutions you’ve found!

Image Credit: Frustrated Man and Computer via Shutterstock

The post 7 Windows Frustrations You Can Quickly Fix appeared first on MakeUseOf.

A More Effective Way of Posting Links on Facebook Pages

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Your Facebook Page has thousands of fans but when you share a link on that page, however interesting that link may be, it gets little or no attention. Why?

Well, your fans aren’t checking your Facebook Page and for them to see your link, it has to appear in their respective news feeds. The big challenge is how do you make that happen?

Facebook obviously has algorithms in place that decide what content should be highlighted in a user’s news feed but here’s a quick tip that may increase the likelihood of your content appearing in your fans’ news feeds.

The idea is that you should avoid posting links as links. Instead, upload a large-sized photo and put the original link in the description of the picture. You may see some examples on the Digital Inspiration Page.

Earlier, around 10K Facebook users would notice links posted on the labnol.org Facebook Page. Ever since I switched the posting style from link-only to picture+link, the average viewership of posts has jumped north as is evident in the above screenshot.

It maybe a good idea to put the link at the beginning of a photo’s description as Facebook will only display the first 3 lines of the description in the news feed. Also, consider using short URLs as you then get more space for the putting text in those 3 lines.

The other advantage is that your Facebook Fans can switch your page’s Photo Stream and get a visual archive of all your recent posts.

And this approach works on Google Plus as well (see example).

Related tutorial: How to Create Custom Facebook Pages

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This story, A More Effective Way of Posting Links on Facebook Pages, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 04/01/2013 under Facebook, Internet.

Get the Most Out of your Kindle Reader with Free Tools

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Essential Tools for your Kindle Reader

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This story, Get the Most Out of your Kindle Reader with Free Tools, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 03/01/2013 under Amazon Kindle, Software.