Didier's Blog

For my support work, I use several machines with different operating systems:
a desktop with Windows 2000 and a laptop with Windows XP and Red Hat Linux (dual boot).

I use a very useful extension - "Google Browser Sync" - to synchronize my different browser settings.
This extensions synchronizes:

• the bookmarks
  
• the history
  
• the persistent cookies
  
• the saved passwords
• the tabs and windows
  

The extension requires a Google Account, and you have to provide a PIN to protect your information.
You can encrypt the information (cookies and passwords are encrypted by default).
The extension increases the start-up time of Firefox, but it's minor compared to the benefit of using it.

I had not time to install and test it yet, but I see that Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 is available since yesterday - click [Here] to download

Some features added in this version:

• Spell Checker
• Session Restore
  
• Tab Improvements
• ...
  (Google to have a full list of new features)

Firefox 2.0 has been released.

From a first quick look, there is no major difference with 1.5 for those using Extensions intensively.
At least all my frequent pages behave correctly, what's not the case with the version 7 of its main competitor (luckily there are blockers for its automatic installation).
But let see after a few days of intensive usage ..

Most of my 1.5 extensions seem to work correctly with FireFox 2.0, except "Tab Mix Plus", "Colorful Tabs" and "LiveHTTPHeaders" that don't install under FireFox 2.0
The first one is to enhance the tab browsing. This has improved in FireFox 2.0, but I still miss some features like 'Close Right Tabs' (I always open links in a new Tab so I end up with many tabs in only one FireFox window).
The second is is to improve the look-and-feel of the tabs, by - I suppose you guessed it - adding colors to the tabs.
I use the latter very often for my Support job to analyze the HTTP traffic. The fact I can't use it in FireFox 2.0 is a sufficient reason for me to keep 1.5 installed on my machine, until the extension is compatible with 2.0.

If you want to manage two Firefox installations side-by-side (1.5 and 2.0), see Keith M. Swartz's blog "In Depth: Try Firefox 2 Beta without Breaking EBS".  Keith is a contributor for the book "FireFox Hacks".

Finally, while I'm typing this blog, FireFox highlights my typos, underlining the incorrect words with a tiny red line.
Currently, I have the words LiveHTTPHeaders and ... FireFox :) underlined

In Firefox, you can associate keywords to your Bookmarks.
For example, you can associate the keyword otn to the main page of JDeveloper on OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html
by filling in the Keyword field in the bookmark's Properties:



Typing otn in the Location bar (that you can access quickly by pressing CTRL+L) will bring you to that page.

You can define various keywords, f.ex. to access your favorite blogs

Keyword	URL
Duncan	http://groundside.com/blog/DuncanMills.php
Frank	http://www.orablogs.com/fnimphius/
Steve	http://radio.weblogs.com/0118231/
Didier	http://blogs.oracle.com/Didier/
...	...

There are also some keywords defined by default as wp for Wikipedia - see the full list [Here]

But the most powerful is that your bookmark's URL can include parameters %s
They will be replaced by the words you type in after the keyword.
For example wp JDeveloper will bring you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=JDeveloper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s with %s replaced by JDeveloper)

If you have a Metalink account you can define some useful keywords/bookmarks pairs like:

Keyword	URL
Note	https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=%s
Bug	https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=Bug&id=%s
...	...

With these pairs defined on your bookmarks, typing Note 395980.1 in the Location bar, f.ex., will display the Metalink Note 395980.1 directly; and Bug 5615982 will bring you to that bug reference.


For more information about the Keywords in Firefox, see the following links:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches
• http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained.html
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/List_of_keyword_searches

In case you haven't heard about it yet....

... Firefox 3 is available for download, with the intention to set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours.

The initial announcement was

Download Day is here!
Set a Guinness World Record
Enjoy a Better Web

Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do to help us set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours is get Firefox 3 now
it's that easy. We are not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.

Please download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008. That's 10:00 a.m. in Mountain View, 1:00 p.m. in Toronto, 2:00 p.m. in Rio de Janeiro, 7:00 p.m. in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome and Warsaw, 9:00 p.m. in Moscow, and June 19, 2008 at 1:00 a.m. in Beijing and 2:00 a.m. in Tokyo.

but now, I see the deadline slipped a bit by 1 hour and 16 minutes:




Waouw - days of 25 hours and 16 minutes - I want these :-)