Foxfire.exe: Who needs to be educated?

Using IE or Firefox, that’s your own choice. But calling a thing with wrong name that proofs you know nothing.

Who needs to be educated? Teacher or student? Who does teach? Who are willing to learn?

Story at Digg / The picture.

PS. Those diggers (first comment) stand with that child. I don’t have any comments on that detention, but that teacher needs to be fired for knowing nothing.

Updated: I got unimaginable hits on “Foxfire” or “Foxfire.exe” keywords. Okay, I admitted I did search for “Foxfire”, too. We all are curious.

Updated 2: New digg / Response of School. So the Foxfire.exe part is still true?

Firefox is the best, unquestionably

Ten minutes ago, I was posting a comment on Direct2Dell blog. While I was writing, I saw Firefox window became gray… I was thinking:

OH… NO… PLEASE DON’T DO THIS TO ME!

After 5 minutes waiting, I accepted the truth. I killed it, then ran Firefox with restoring sessions. I switched to the Direct2Dell tab, and scrolled down with very deepest blue mood. Preparing to write again. Suddenly, I saw the exact message what I wrote when Firefox was unresponsive.

No doubt! Firefox is the best. Other browsers might not crash or not be unresponsive, but that doesn’t mean safe.

Use Firefox profile well

Firefox is good web browser, however, it sometimes has problems in performance. So, I have two profile for it. One for surfing Internet, another for working on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.. If you don’t know how to have additional profile, try to run firefox -ProfileManager, then add new profile.

Although I can have different profiles for different purposes, but I can’t use them at the same time. Every time I try to run a new Firefox, that won’t bring new one just a new window at all. man shows no trace for it. This page lists Command line arguments of Mozilla’s applications. It says using -no-remote (requires Firefox 2+). That does exactly what I need. You can also specify a profile with -P <profile name> if you like typing more than clicking.

Firefox Download Counter

I wrote this JavsScript for helping promoting Firefox. It needs Google AJAX Feed API. There are some other methods that you can find in this page, but many of them are broken for a long time. This code can show the counter in pure text. Simple and clean, isn’t?

Example

Firefox has been downloaded times. (View the source of this page, you will find out how I use this JavaScript.)

Three steps to get your own

Get API key

Get your key here.

Generate the JavaScript code

Open Code Generator in new window. In this step, the first block of generated codes is probably what you need. The first one will show the number, but second doesn’t. You can use your own JavaScript code to keep checking it till FF_DL_CNT != -1, then you can do such alert(FF_DL_CNT);.

Insert code to your page

Paste the code to the place where you want to show the number.

Notes

The code is licensed under GPLv3, you can download the source through the links from generated codes.

Get Foxkeh’s wallpapers every month automatically

I saw a link of October Foxkeh wallpaper through del.icio.us. It led me to this post. Can you resist such cutest character? Because of cuteness, I wrote a script for automatic downloading every month in case I miss one.

It is written for GNOME. You can download the script here and save it as Foxkeh-changer.

Please run: ./Foxkeh-changer. If you can see your wallpaper changed, then open Foxkeh-changer, change FILE_FORMAT to one fits your screen and other variables as well. Run ./Foxkeh-changer install to setup things and crontab. It will be run at 4, 10, 16 and 22 o-clocks on 1st to 10th of each month. If you want to remove it, please run ~/bin/Foxkeh-changer uninstall.

The script (don’t copy from this, download through the link above):

Swiftfox

I installed Opera 9.23 yesterday. The speed of rendering is quite impressive to me. However, once you get used to something, you have some habits. Furthermore, I found an optimized Firefox, Swiftfox. Although it’s not as fast as Opera, but I still feel that it is faster than Firefox. Most important thing is I can keep all my old habits and without reinstalling all plug-ins/add-ons. Everything in your Firefox is in Swiftfox as well. You can’t feel any change except the window title(Firefox->Swiftfox).

Go to its download page, choose your CPU type, run sh install-swiftfox.sh.

I made two simple charts about the speeds of 4 browsers on Linux using Javascript Speed Tests: Firefox 2.0.0.5, Swiftfox 2.0.0.6, Konqueror 3.5.7 and Opera 9.23.

Enabling JRE in Firefox on Fedora 7

Thanks for r1pper’s comment (That solution is really long). I just upgraded Firefox to 2.0.0.5, and now I installed JRE 1.6.0 update 2. I simply ran

cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
ln -s /usr/java/latest/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

That’s all I did, just two commands. Then I can see it dancing.

JRE 1.5.0

I don’t know why Java can not work with in Firefox after installation of Fedora 7. I thought JRE should work by default. I simply run

cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.5.0_12/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

In this java.com’s installation instruction, it uses ns7-gcc29. That makes Firefox crashes on my computer. I didn’t download the rpm package from java.com. I use Fedora’s jre-1.5.0_12-fcs.i586 package.

Surfing more secure with Firefox

The websites

Yesterday, I found a website made by McAfee called SiteAdvisor. It may give you some information about the site you are visiting or will visit. It provides information about

• email – It checks all forms in target website, if there a possible signing up form with email address. It will sign up with a email address, and count the emails to that email address.
• files – It downloads files from target website, and do scan on files.
• affiliations – A links-map about websites to be linked by target website.
• annoyances – Pop-ups, etc

Here is a sample report. And there is a extension for your firefox. That allows you distinguish websites directly from search engine’s result page are safe or not. If you use Internet Explorer, you can install a plugin, too. But I strongly suggest you use firefox, at least other than Internet Explorer.

And SiteAdvisor taskbar icon shows current website is safe or not. Right now, the number of website SiteAdvisor has already tested is not so many. But you can ask it to test websites you want. But I don’t know when would you get the report.

The passwords

google, yahoo, digg, del.icio.us, myspace, msn… There are hundreds of website you use in daily life. Do you use different password for each website? Do your passwords are strong enough? Will you change your passwords regularly? If your answers for those questions are all YES! I think you are an incredible person.
I will give you a safer solution for your passwords. It’s a extension for Firefox called Password Hasher. Basically your password for a website is generated by two elements, Site tag and Master Key. Site tag is different for different websites. And Master Key could be a single strong password. That is you only need to remember one strong password. Then you can use it to access many website safer. It will add a # button next to the password field for inputing password easily.

P.S. But you must understand strong password doesn’t mean you are really safe. A trojan horse can steal your password, hacking website can get your information(or password). There is no really safety in this world.

Extensions can make your FireFox better!

This post will tell you how these extension to make me surf on the net easily.

FlashGot

This is good. But it’s not a download manager. It integrates download managers into firefox, like (FlashGet, Free Download Manager, GetRight, LeechGet, Mass Downloader, Net Transport, NetXfer (Net Transport 2), NetAnts, ReGet. So, you need one of them to make FlashGot work. I recommend Free Download Manager for two reasons. First, it’s free. Second, it has all the functions you need.

No Script

It can protect your firefox(maybe your system) to keep away some bad intentional scripts.

IE Tab

Tired to switch browsers. You can you use this and delete all IE icons. Before this, I used IE View. Now droping View to get Tab.

PDF Download

I forgot why I installed it.

Tabbrowser Preferences

Gives you more controls about Tabs.

Blogger Web Comments

It shows you who has blogged on blogger.com this website you are reading or you can leave yours by an Blogger account.

Google Toobar

I use it instead of default search bar in FireFox(I even removed it). Google is the only search engine I would use.

Fission

Showing page load progress in address bar. If you want to change the color, type about:config in address bar. Searching for extensions.fission.color and double click it. Enter the color you want.

CuteMenus – Crystal SVG

It’s only for visual…

Add Bookmark Here

If you are a some kind of psycho of categorization, you need this definitely! You don’t bookmark by one small dialog anymore. Just find the right folder and add bookmark.

del.icio.us

You can tag a website easily.

Mozilla Calendar

When I didn’t use Outlook about one year ago, I started to find another. Mozilla Calendar is the solution. I can also view my calendar online, even I am not at home. It has same data format as iCal. That’s good benefit. Because there are more users can share their own calendars. Why SHARE their calendar? For example, I like movies. I want to know when I can see a specific movie in theater or DVD will be released. You can just subscribe Movie Openings and DVDs at iCal Library. Yes SUBSCRIBE. It’s weird. Believe me. If you try this, you will know you can’t miss any important thing. Calendar is not Calendar anymore. It can be a TV program schedule, sports game schedule and even more.If you want to publish you calendar, go to iCal Exchange. Actually, I don’t have an account of this website. I have my own calendar site(using PHP iCalendar 2.2). And you can share your calendar at iCalShare.

FoxClocks

If you have many friends all over the world. I think you might need this if you don’t want to ask "What time is it there?" each time in you chat box in order to get right starting topic.

GooglePreview

It gives you snapshots about what websites you are searching.

ScrapBook

Need preserve some important pages, e.g. electronic transfer result, registered finished pages, etc. But you just don’t want to waste papers for printing them. Then install ScrapBook. You can make some notes on pages you saved.