Internet

In last month's Ides I talked about downloading Firefox 3 on Firefox 3 Download Day.  If you've done so, you might find the Field Guide to Firefox 3 useful. 

Here’s a list of the features covered; just click on each link to go right to that section of the Guide:

• Add-on manager
• Bookmarks
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Color profile support
• Download manager
• Font and text rendering
• Full page zoom
• History
• HTML Canvas
• Location bar UTF-8 support
• Malware protection
• Microformats API
• Offline web application support
• Password manager
• Performance improvements
• Phishing protection
• Plugins
• Site Identification button
• Smart Location Bar
• Tabs
• Themes
• Video and audio feeds
• Vista parental controls support
• Web application protocol handlers
• Conclusion

P.S.  Yep, Mozilla set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. With your help, they reached 8,002,530 downloads on Firefox 3 Download Day!

How often do you get to part of a team who's setting a Guinness World Record? Now's your chance!

On Tuesday June 17th Mozilla will release Firefox 3, and today you can pledge to download your copy on Firefox 3 Download Day 2008. Mozilla wants your help to set the record fo most software downloads in 24 hours. What a deal -- get the updated version of a great web browser, and be part of a world-wide community effort to set a Gunness World Record!

Pledge now at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord.

Update: Firefox 3 will be available at Noon CST on June 17th; download yours at getfirefox.com or http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/?p=downloadday.

New features in Firefox 3 include:

• One-click bookmarking
• Smarter address bar: just start typing in the Location Bar to search your bookmarks and history; it adapts and learns as you use it.
  
• Phishing and malware protection
• Pause and resume downloads, and search through your download history by file or web site name using the new Download Manager
• Firefox 3 is 2-3 times faster handling complex web apps like Gmail and Google Docs

And if you download your copy from Download Day Headquarters, you'll received a customized certificate of thanks.

If been using the pre-release beta version of Firefox 3, and can attest to how fast it handles Gmail -- it's great!

Source: Mozilla Developer Center http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2008/06/11/coming-tuesday-june-17th-firefox-3/

When I need the spelling or the definition of a word, I usually use my Merriam-Webster Dictionary Firefox addon. But when I saw Definr demo-ed at the "Have You Heard?" program at the WAPL conference I was wowed!

Definr is a single-page, super-fast dictionary lookup tool that suggests words as you type.

Start typing a word, and definr uses their word-completion algorithm to suggest possible word matches as you add letters.

To make it even more useful, you can add the Definr search extension to Firefox, and add a Definr link to your Firefox bookmark toolbar; go to the Definr Tools page for details.

Definr's free dictionary is based on Princeton's open WordNet 2.0.

I could have used this tool a few months back when I had trouble figuring out how to spell the word "apropos" (as in "apropos of nothing"), and when Firefox's built-in spell checker didn't have it, and after trying every spelling alternative I could think of, I IM-ed a colleague who knew how to spell it. (Thanks again, Karla!)  read more »

If you like to visit the same web pages at the start of each day (like the Winnefox Extranet, your newsfeeds in Bloglines, LISNews, etc.) you can set Firefox so every time you start it, those same web pages open in tabs and act as your “home” page.

Watch this tiny (it's only 13 seconds!) screencast that shows how to do it: http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjfoDVVYI

Here's a text description of how to do it:

1. Click "Tools" on the Firefox menu bar
2. Click "Options" on the "Tools" dropdown menu
3. Click the "Use Current Pages" button on the "Options" window
4. Click the "OK" button
5. And you're done! The next time you open Firefox, the same web pages will open up in tabs.

You may have already noticed, but the upgrade to Firefox 2 quietly added support for text search inside text boxes.

That means that next time you write a long blog post or email, and you want to search for a bit of text inside your entry, you don't have to skim the text in its entirety to find what you're looking for.

You know the scenario: You've accidentally entered some wrong username or other information into a form field and now Firefox always suggests this wrong data in the grey auto-complete dropdown too.

It's easy to delete a single entry from the grey autocomplete dropdown:

Just start to type in into the form field until the grey dropdown appears, then use the cursor keys to move to the entry to be deleted and press the Shift key and the Delete key

Just for completeness: In IE (Internet Explorer) just press the "Del" key to clear the selected/highlighted string.

Google’s "define" operator allows you to look up the meanings of words and phrases without having to jump to an online dictionary. Just enter define followed by a colon followed by a word or phrase. For example, define:library or define:"library card".

Search for Exact Phrases  read more »

For those of you who have a blog for your library, here is a tutorial on how to create entries. If you don't have a blog, and would like
one, just let me know.

A Beginner's Guide to Blogging with MovableType

Posting Entries
From the Main Menu select the blog you would like to add an entry to, then select:

Add the entry Title and Main Entry Text.

Optional:  read more »

If you're subscribed to a mailing list, you've no doubt been subjected to the 'thread that just won't die!' If you're part of a long message conversation that isn't relevant, you can 'mute' the conversation to keep all future additions out of your inbox.

Read the full article here.

The cache, or Temporary Internet Files contains a kind of travel record of the items you have seen, heard, or downloaded from the Web, including images, sounds, Web pages, even cookies. Storing these files in your cache can make browsing the Web faster because it usually takes your computer less time to display a Web page when it can call up some of the page's elements or even the entire page from a local folder. But, all those files stored in your cache take up space, so from time to time, you may want to clear out the files stored in your cache to free up some space on your computer. This is called clearing the cache.

Mozilla Firefox  read more »