kdmurray.blog

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Tag Archives: firefox

Turn off URL Trimming in Firefox

With the latest release of Firefox, Mozilla has decided that we don’t need to see the “http://” at the beginning of a URL. While this may be true for day-to-day browsing, it makes copying and pasting URLs a bloody nightmare.

Most applications detect a URL based on it starting with some sort of protocol directive (http://, https://, ftp://, mailto:). By removing that directive from the beginning of the URL Mozilla now forces us to type them in as we go, reducing productivity and generally being a pain in the behind.

For the record, this portion of the URL is still visible for https:// URLs to help everyone know that pages are encrypted using SSL/TLS. This somehow makes it even worse in my eyes, since this non-security related behaviour is different based on whether or not the application is encrypted.

You can, however, correct this abhorrent behaviour with a trip to the Firefox about:config page.

DISCLAIMER: Read the disclaimer on the about:config page.

1. Go to the about:config page in Firefox

2. In the filter box, type in: browser.urlbar.trimURLs

3. Double-click on the value to change from true to false

After making the change, that line will show up in bold to indicate that it has been changed from the default setting. This is helpful if you want to restore settings to their default at some point in the future — though in this case I can’t imagine why.

Happy linking!

Firefox Shortcuts for Bookmarks and Searching

It’s not new information, but since I just figured this out recently, I thought I’d punch it up here.  When you add a new bookmark in FireFox there are a few fields that you get prompted to fill out:

These fields are only a portion of the information that Firefox can keep for a particular bookmark. Among the most useful of these is the keyword field.

For people like me who prefer to use the keyboard over any form of pointing device, this is fantastic.  I can open a new tab and type in the keyword of the bookmark I want, in this case ‘kdm’ and firefox will load the bookmark in question.

Even though most browsers have a built-in search bar, that’s another toolbar that eats up real-estate in your browser. If you’re screen-space-challenged or you have a disdain for toolbars.  Take your bookmarks to the next level with a parameter.

By adding in the string %s you can create search bookmarks for your favourite searching sites. As a helper, I’ve included a few search links below which already contain the %s. Just right-click the links below and use the ‘Copy Link Location’ or ‘Copy Shortcut’ options.

Google (ca, au, de, jp)

Bing

Yahoo

Wikipedia (de, fr, pl, it)

Stack Overflow

Memory Alpha

FasterFox? Pfffftt! RAM-Fox!

ramfoxYou wanna speed up your browser? Get your browser into memory.  I posted a couple of weeks ago about creating RAM disks on your system to offer some high-speed storage on your computer.  Now the question is: what should I do with it?

RAM Fox!

RAMFox is an implementation of Firefox Portable which is based out of a RAM drive. By loading the application onto the RAM drive, all of the I/O operations that write to the disk are vastly sped up.

The implementation itself is pretty simple: copy the contents of the portable Firefox to the RAM drive and load it from there.

@cls

if "%1"=="bak" goto bak
xcopy c:systoolsramfox /e /s /d /y r:ramfox
call r:ramfoxFF.lnk %1

goto end

:bak
xcopy r:ramfox /e /s /d /y c:systoolsramfox
del c:systoolsramfoxurlclassifierkey3.txt
del c:systoolsramfoxurlclassifier3.sqlite
goto end

:end

The batch file is pretty simple.  It just uses xcopy to transfer the files.  The key is the second option, the “bak” option which copies the files back from the RAM disk to the permanent storage on the hard drive. What this does is copies back all of the files that were updated during the browsing sessions including passwords, cache and history.

Give this a shot if you’re wanting to find some ways to speed up your browsing experience or ways to make use of your RAM disk.

Image credit: RaeA on Flickr.

Five Step Guide to Restoring Your Computer

broken_computerThere are lots of reasons that we fall out of love with our computers.  Slow performance, viruses. spyware and just plain too-much-crap-all-over-the-place syndrome.  The only way you can be sure to solve these issues is to wipe and re-load your system.  If you have all the install disks for Windows (or your OS of choice) and your software, the process is fairly straightforward.  Mac/Linux fanboy warning: I’m going to use Windows examples and software in most cases… deal with it.

After the tutorial, I’ve included a list of applications that you can use to make your computing life better.  The list contains free and open-source software from the original developers that you can trust on your newly cleaned system.  I highly recommend reading over the list, and even trying a few of them out on your current system before installing any of your old apps and tools.

Things you’ll need

  • Infected (or otherwise underperforming computer)
  • OS re-install disks (and product keys!!)
  • External hard drive (strongly recommended) -or-
  • Backup media (CDs, DVDs)

Step 1: Backup your data

backupYou should already have a backup process in place to keep all of your data secure.  If you do, good for you but that doesn’t mean you can skip this step.  If you have, or have been able to purchase an external hard drive use that to backup the data. It’s much faster, and far more convenient than trying to backup to external media like CDs and DVDs.  Make sure that you take everything you want to have on your new system. Often overlooked folders include your bookmarks (favourites) and desktop.  These won’t be captured in your Documents folder by default.

Step 2: Reinstall your system

This is the part that makes everyone queasy. The “delete everything and re-install” part.  But fear not, it isn’t as daunting as it sounds.  Once all the data has been backed up, put the Windows (or other OS) disk in the drive and reboot the computer.  Once the system comes back up, follow the prompts.

Select the partition to install Windows on.  In most cases, if you want to restore the system the way that it was, you can select the C: drive where the old Windows  install was located.  If you want to get into partitioning strategies that’s for another post.

If you’re in doubt format the drive using the NTFS system. It’s the default for most contemporary Windows systems and will work for 99% of people.  Yes, Mac/Linux fanboys, I realize that it’s a Windows specific file format.  You guys can use HFS+ (Mac) or ext3 (Linux).

Believe it or not that’s the “tricky” part.  Follow the remaining prompts through the text portion, and GUI portion of the setup to choose your username, password, time-zone settings, network settings etc.  These are pretty well all common sense.

Step 3: Patching and Packing

Unless you’ve learned the secrets to Slipstreaming prior to this re-install (in which case you probably don’t need this tutorial) you’ll need to install all the latest updates, patches and service packs for your system.

The majority of these can be installed through the Microsoft Update (Windows Update) site.  The updater can be run from your Start menu, or by pointing a browser at http://update.microsoft.com/.

It’s really important to get these updates in as quickly as possible because typically the CD you’re using to install the system is a couple of years old (particularly with Windows XP disks) and will be missing a ton of important security updates.  You may need to run this process a number of times before it catches everything.  Just continue the process until the update program tells you that there are no further updates available for your system.

Step 4: Re-install your applications

Here we go. Putting back all that was lost.  The first step is to install your heavy hitters installed.  Office, Visual Studio, Adobe Creative Suite — the things that take up Gigabytes of space on the disk.  After that, the smaller things, utilities, tools, games.  Check out the software list at the bottom of this post.

Once everything else is done, install your anti-virus or security software. This may be a controversial decision for most but I base the logic on the following: AV programs make software installation painfully slow.  The chances you’ll be infected while you’re doing the updates are minimal, so save yourself a bunch of time and do this last.

Step 5: Restore your data

Copy back all of the data you backed up in step 1.  This includes your bookmarks (you did back those up, right?), and anything you wanted to keep on your desktop.  Putting these pieces back is the last step to making the system your own again.

Realistically you’re looking at killing a full day with the whole process, depending how much data you have the backup/restore can take a few hours, but the process is pretty straightforward if you stay organized.  :)

Free software to help you out

Once you’re in the application re-install stage, there are lots of free tools that you can use to get your system working the same, or better than it was before.  The other reason is that these applications are great alternatives to trying to find pirated applications off the Internet.  Here they are, in no particular order:

  • 7Zip – an archiving / compression utility supporting a wide range of formats
  • ISO Recorder – Write ISO images directly from Windows explorer
  • Avast – Free anti-virus application with regular updates
  • Paint.NET – Photoshop-like image & graphic editing program
  • Firefox – Alternative (?) web browser
  • Thuderbird – Email client
  • Feed Demon – Powerful full-featured RSS reader & aggregator
  • FileZilla – FTP/SFTP/SCP client
  • Open Office – Alternative word processor, spreadsheet, presentation & database
  • VLC – Media player that supports nearly every format known to mankind
  • Evernote – Note taking/keeping application that sync’s with the web
  • Notepad++ – Tabbed notepad application
  • Visual Studio Express – Free versions of the Microsoft development tools

I hope this guide has proven informative, and will help you to move forward with your computing life.  Bring back that computer that has lost its lustre and make it uber-useful again.

Photo credits: wysz, S Baker on Flickr.