Burad's Blog » firefox

Turn off beep sound in firefox

burad — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:24:11 +0000

I recently installed new firefox version on my ubuntu and was trying to find some text on a webpage. Suddenly, as I pressed next to search it, the searchbox turns red showing Phrase not found and started making beep noise. I was annoyed, So was thinking of way to disable / turn it off. To look for some preference to set, I typed about:config (special firefox about: pages) in location bar and searched for sound. I was lucky i found two related preferences.

So you can set accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound Value to false by double clicking it. And you are done. No more beep beep to annoy you.

View contents of Zip/Jar files using firefox

burad — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:19:02 +0000

With Firefox 3, you can use firefox browser to view contents of zip/jar files.
For viewing contents of filename.zip type following at location bar:

jar:file://< full path to filename.zip >!/
Example: jar:file:///home/user/Desktop/filename.zip!/
Also: jar:file:///home/user/Desktop/filename.zip!/dir/file1.js

This is specially very useful when you want to see contents (.js, .css, .html files) included in firefox extension’s jar file. After it list the contents, you can easily browse through the directory, sorting files etc.

Update: Security problems that come with jar: protocol
While serching for pages related to jar protocol in firefox, I found an interesting article at www.gnucitizen.org

In simple terms, it means that any application which allows upload of JAR/ZIP files is potentially vulnerable to a persistent Cross-site Scripting. Potential targets for this attack include applications such as web mail clients, collaboration systems, document sharing systems, almost everything that smells like Web2.0, etc, etc, etc.

Similar security concerns also arise in data: protocol in firefox. So one need to be careful to filter files you want to allow for upload. Actually, once I had similar situation with a website which allowed you to host image files, but the problem was they were not checking for file types. Thats means you are allowed to upload a php file too. So now you can do anything you want with that server (don’t ask me what I did ). So beware of such issues.

Tracking firefox crashes

burad — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:16:52 +0000

Firefox provides us with a special page, about:crashes (type it in location bar) to track all the crash reports that you have submitted whenever firefox crashes. Firefox crashes are being handled by Mozilla Crash reporter tool, BreakPad.You can also serach

Advantage of submitting the crash report is that if its a widely occurring bug then it will appear on Mozilla: Top Crashers, and chances are that it will get resolved in next release.

Read more about firefox crashes at MozillaZine. Also Standard diagnostic steps to take when firefox hangs or crashes.

Perfect password according to firefox

burad — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:03:02 +0000

I was going through bits of firefox code, and I found the algorithm used by firefox to measure password strength. You can find it in function setPasswordStrength() in this file : chrome://mozapps/content/preferences/changemp.js.
So point schema for password strength:

For length :       password-length*10 – 20 (Max 30)
For Numbers:    no-of-numerics * 10    (Max 30)
For Symbols:     no-of-symbols * 15           (Max 45)
For UpperCase: no-of-Uppercase * 10        (Max 30)

Your password strength is sum of all these points. So smallest password that would get 100 on password meter can be : AAA@@@ or something similar. But there should also be some criterion for the uniqueness of the characters.

Interesting read-on how to choose good passwords. that are also easy to remember. Please share your tips on choosing passwords [but yeah dont share passwords ]

Extra Cookie:
Type resource: in your location bar to directly go to firefox installation directory.

View page source trick in firefox, flock

burad — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:07:39 +0000

You may have read about firefox’s special about: pages like about:config, about:cache etc. Or you can go through Firefox about: pages to have an idea about them. There is one similar functionality in firefox which allows you to view page source of a page. You can type

view-source:http://www.google.com/

this in location bar to view page source of google.com.
So i have made this Bookmarklet to view page source: View Source (So you can drag this to your bookmark toolbar to have quick access).

Similarly you can type javascript: in your location bar to open java script error console.

Update1:
Key Board Shortcut: Use Ctrl+U to view page source

My Del.icio.us Toolbar 2.0

burad — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:55:44 +0000

Yesterday I was working late night till 3AM, to update my extension ‘My Del.icio.us Toolbar’ which I made long back in October 2006. Reason was to make it work for newer versions of firefox. But then I added some new features too :

I added a Explore feature which is similar to Stumble.
Checking Del.icio.us cookies to verify authentication. (You can find more details on how to read browser cookies from javascript here. Actually It uses nsICookieManager interface to iterate over all of the cookies.

Try My Del.icio.us 2.0 (Right now you may have to login to access the extension as it’s in Sandbox.)

I also noticed that mozilla has redesigned the extension page. They have also added a nice statistics Dashboard for extension, provided graphical representation of number of downloads, active daily users etc. I was surprised to see that older version of My Del.icio.us has reached a total download of 11,200 (not that a big number but still surprising for me) and number of active user around 1000.

Try My Del.icio.us 2.0 and provide feedback.

Also Try: Del.icio.us SearchER
Related Post:

Firefox shortcuts

burad — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:07:56 +0000

Today I learnt 2 new firefox shortcuts/tricks through this article 20 Amazing Firefox Shortcuts to Save You Time and Money.

Deleting Address: Highlight them and use SHIFT + DELETE to remove from drop down menu in address bar.
Get Instant Downloads : Just drag the link to download icon in toolbar which you ca get by customizing your toolbar.

Read article for more such tips.
Related Links:

Open webpages in sidebar

burad — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 09:52:00 +0000

Yesterday i found this great way to store some imp bookmarks in your sidebar. And you can create different sidebar for each such collection. Like for my bookmarks click here.
Now you can save this bookmark (may be in bookmark toolbar folder) and use it.

This link is a javascript :

javascript:window.sidebar.addPanel('title of sidebar','url of sidebar panel','');

So now you can point to any URL. and that URL will open in sidebar with given title.
atleast Works with Firefox

Update: Run google talk in firefox sidebar

A bookmarklet to bookmark websites to open in sidebar. click here

You can click here: Add google chat to sidebar
Add Digg|River
Update: 25-apr-2008
Add Facebook Chat

Web Development Tools

burad — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 17:34:00 +0000

Great listing of web developers powertools by Brennan Stehling.
I’ll starts with extension for firefox that comes very handy while web devlopment.

Web Developer : Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
Firebug: Allows you to edit debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
ColorZilla: Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
Live HTTP Headers

The list Web Development Tools for the Power Developer contains :

Validators

Javascript

Websites

Read More>> (also containing ASP.NET, Proxy tools)
And w3schools, a great place for finding tutorials realted to web development.

Updated(29 April 2007) : Tools for web-designers.

Paint Chat !!

burad — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:57:00 +0000

Now chat using a paint brush !!.

I had made this app which uses paint brush to express yourself and share with others. This uses HTML:Canvas for drawing graphics using javascript, so no sluggish java applet and flash. It uses XMLHttprequest to synchronize paint screen with server. You can share this url with your friends to have a chat with paint brush and use Refresh !! to update your paint screen with that of your friend.
Read about Paint chat.
Try It out : Paint Chat

Updated: I have added feature for filling up whole background with color and also the transparency feature.