Turn off beep sound in firefox

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.

May 15, 2008 | Filed Under firefox, hacks | Leave a Comment

View contents of Zip/Jar files using firefox

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.

May 13, 2008 | Filed Under firefox, hacks | 2 Comments

Tracking firefox crashes

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.

May 6, 2008 | Filed Under firefox | Leave a Comment

Perfect password according to firefox

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.

May 3, 2008 | Filed Under firefox | 4 Comments

My Del.icio.us Toolbar 2.0

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:

April 15, 2008 | Filed Under firefox, programming | Leave a Comment

Firefox shortcuts

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:

February 26, 2008 | Filed Under firefox, tips | 1 Comment

Firefox about: pages

Special pages available in firefox :

about: A simple prompt without any parameter will display the Mozilla “about” information.
about:logo Displays firefox logo.
about:licence Informaion regarding licencing, Mozilla Public licence, Source code licence
about:buildconfig It shows the build platform configuration and parameters.
about:blank — A blank page. Useful for setting as your homepage.
about:cache Displays info and statistics regarding memory cache device and disk cache device including the number of enteries, name of your cache’s directory and a list of the entries you can find there. From there ou can view cached webpages and images.
about:config It provied you an nice interface to tweak firefox settings. It allows you to modify firefox preferences. Read About:config entries to more about it. These entries are stored in pref.js folder in your profile.
about:plugins provides information regarding installed plugins (plugins help your browser perform specific functions like viewing special graphic formats or playing multimedia files.) like flash, quicktime, realplayer, adobe reader and java plugin
about:credits This is an alphabetically sorted list of all the people that gave their contribution to the development of Firefox.
about:Mozilla from Book of Mozilla, 7:15

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

Works with Flock too but with different Quote:
from Book of Mozilla, 11:1

And when the Beast had taken the quarter of the Earth under its rule, a quarter hundred Birds of Sulfur flew from the Depths. The birds crossed hundreds of mountain views and found twenty four wise men who came from the stars. And then it began, the believers dared to listen. Then, they took their pens and dared to create. Finally, they dared to share their deed with the whole of mankind. Spreading words of freedom and breaking the chains, the birds brought deliverance to everyone.

Update: (12th April 2007)

chrome://browser/content/browser.xul To open firefox inside firefox

Update: (13th April 2007)

Editing configuration files..

Update : (4th April 2008)

javascript: - opens the js console
view-source:www.google.com/ view source for given url

Update: (22nd April 2008)

about:robots (Works with firefox versions later than v3 beta5) Message from Robots

Update: (2nd May 2008)

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

Update: (5nd May 2008)

about:crashes (type it in location bar) to track all the crash reports that you have submitted whenever firefox crashes.

About protocol links >>

Read The Book of Mozilla

Firefox: The Jewel of open Source, from xkcd

January 31, 2007 | Filed Under firefox, tips | 14 Comments

My Del.icio.us Toolbar

Update: Noticed some changes made by mozilla in extesnion’s page
I developed this toolbar that provides you all functionality of del.icio.us website with a quick access right in your toolbar. It helps you in searching bookmarks and tagging new websites and lot more functionalities. Try it
Download it from here : My Del.icio.us

Try Newer Version : My Del.icio.us 2.0

Try : Delicious SearchER

Related Post : Del.icio.us Bookmark Search

October 31, 2006 | Filed Under firefox | 2 Comments

Greasemonkey script to Replace URLs in webpage

Yesterday night i made this script which replaces urls with their alternatives in a webpage. What r its usage :

Ad blocking (Replacing such URLs with blank so that clicking them will result in nothing.
Unblocking some sites . At many places sites are just blocked by url names so it replaces them with ip.(for example i did same for youtube as its blocked in my college). you can modify script to include more such urls.

You will need firefox with Greasemonkey extension installed to use this script.
Here is the script : Right Click to install

Resources : Dive into Greasemokey

October 6, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Speed up firefox

HOW TO SPEED UP FIREFOX

Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed up Firefox :

1.Type ‘about:config’ into the address bar and hit enter. Scroll down and look for the following entries: -
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set ‘network.http.pipelining’ to ‘true’ (double click to change)
Set ‘network.http.proxy.pipelining’ to ‘true’ (double click to change)
Set ‘network.http.pipelining.maxrequests’ to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. (double click to enter number)

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it ‘nglayout.initialpaint.delay’ and set its value to ‘0′. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!”
Find more firefox tweaks here

November 18, 2005 | Filed Under firefox, tips | 2 Comments