tayker's blog

    I didn't contribute to any of Lifehacker's "Show Us Your Firefox" posts awhile back (you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).  Before I read those articles, I thought I had already determined what I wanted.  I still remember browsing through pages of extensions, trying to determine what I wanted when I took that leap into extending my browser experience, and the only one not listed was Freenigma's - which I now use alongside FireGPG (which I'll get into the "why" in another post).

    I use various operating systems for running my business: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and I have found at least 1 Firefox add-on that's specific to each OS.  The one that I found that I like for Firefox on a Mac is the 1Password add-on by Agile Web Solutions.  The only downside is you have to pay for 1Password, but you can download a trial, and there are deals online that can be found (like this one).  It stores passwords, serial numbers, credit card numbers, etc, and it integrates well with Firefox so a user can recall data, create passwords, etc. with a couple key taps or mouse clicks.

    There are 2 things that I really like about the add-on, in addition to the capability it provides (I'm not trying to sound like a commercial ... really):  1. a password generator, 2.  button and/or toolbar options.  The password generator is pretty simple to use; you can create a good password by working 3 sliders that determine length, character/number ratio, and how many symbols.  From there you can either copy it to the clipboard or have it automatically fill a password block.

    The add-on comes in 2 flavors: 1. button, 2. toolbar.  If you want, you can use both.  However, I'm anal about screen real estate, so my preference is with the button.  Clicking the button gives you a drop-down menu that has all the options available via the toolbar.  However, the toolbar gives you direct access to each function that you want to use.

     Lastly, there is 1 more option that I like, but seldom use - which is why I didn't say 3 things I like.  It's the Identity feature.  When there's a new site that I want to try for a while, but I'm not comfortable about putting too much info out there, I have an alias stored in 1Password that I use.  When I get to a registration page, I press Command-Option-(corresponding number) and it automatically fills all the information in (name, e-mail, location, etc), and it will store up to 3 different identities.

    Anyways, that's my "Mac only" Firefox add-on.

I don't know why but there's a graphical glitch when I use Bon Echo (Firefox 2) on Mac OS X. What happens is after I move my mouse cursor across the line between the drop-down menus and the window title bar, movie files flicker. I can duplicate the problem and I'm using the 2.0.0.1 Intel download from Furbism and this problem was captured on my Mac OS X 10.4.8 Intel Core Duo BlacBook. Here's the movie:

Link to movie

I don't know if the problem is because of Bon Echo, Mac OS X or even a Firefox plug-in.

Old news, I know. However, I'm not happy with Firefox 2.0 and have gone back to 1.5. I've tried the Mac optimized version from furbism.com and the Mac version from mozilla.org but they still crash on my Macs. Regardless of the platform (I have PPC, Intel Core Duo and Intel Core 2 Duo Macs) Firefox will crash. I don't know if it's because I have a lot of tabs opened, if it doesn't like sites that auto-refresh, or whatever, but after about 40 minutes surfing online, it crashes - so I went back to 1.5.0.7. I will miss some of the features that it has, like the spell checker and the tab focus copied from Opera, but I can't express how happy I was to see the release of 1.5.0.8. For some reason I thought that 1.5 development would stop because 2.0 is out.

I read an InformationWeek article stating that Firefox 2 beta 2 will be released today. I've been to the FF2B2 page but the downloads are still for beta 1.

I'm not devoted to a particular browser on my Mac right now. Safari's nice, but still has a way to go before I can even consider a decent contender to Firefox, IE or Opera. One of my main complaints is it always opens a browser window, instead of a new tab, when I click a link that opens a new window. When I'm updating a site, writing blog entries and working on graphics, it becomes a nightmare. There might be an easy tweak for this, but I haven't found one outside of installing another program.
I do like Opera, and mainly use it on my Windows based computers (I know, flame away), but I constantly jump to a different browser all the time on my Mac when I get annoyed at something that impedes me or doesn't make sense. Then I saw this blog entry, here on Spread Firefox, that pointed me to this site. I've already downloaded and started using it and I will say that I'm pretty impressed. One thing I've noticed right away is that it starts faster than it's Windows based version. I'm looking forward to seeing what more I can do with it and putting it through it's paces this weekend and am thankful for someone posting that URL. I'm currently using the G4 7450 2006.03.18 build.