I have been resisting using any of the Firefox 3.0 beta’s because of my reliance on Firefox extensions not yet ready for 3.0  but it seems like my Firefox 2.0 keeps bogging down (Perhaps due to my inability to close old tabs). With all the hype about the speed of Firefox 3.0 I decided to start using the release candidate.

However my dependency on extensions was to much to bear so I decided to look for some way to defeat Firefox’s extension checking.

1. In the URL bar type about:config which will result in the following warning box:
2. Click, “I’ll be careful, I promise!
3. Next you see a list of parameters, right-click on the screen and select New>Boolean from the menu dialogue.
4. Name the configuration extensions.checkCompatibility then click the false value.
5. Right-click again and create a new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false again.
6. Restart Firefox

Now the reason there are checks is so that you don’t have a fatal error which is exactly what I got after doing this hack. Some extensions are innocuous and others aren’t I guess my favorites fall into the aren’t category.  Luckily you can restart Firefox in safe mode. You’ll get the following dialogue:

Check the Disable All Add-ons box and then click Continue in Safe Mode. Type extensions.check in the filter box which should give you the two keys you set in the earlier procedure. Reset the values to defaults. Then restart Firefox. When you restart you should have all the “safe” extensions activated.

You could then uninstall extensions one-by-one, then repeat the procedure to find the ones that were causing the problems depending on your need for certain add-ons. Oh well, let’s hope there are updates for my favorite extensions soon after next week’s release.

Technorati Tags: 2.0, 3.0 Extensions, Add-Ons, Firefox, Hacks

The community powered marketing engine for the Firefox project, SpreadFox is pushing to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in 24 hours. So far they have over 1.1 million pledges to download Firefox on the June 17th launch date. Show your support and pledge today.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Guinness, Spreadfox, World Record

Recently, I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on two laptops. One of my first tasks after updating all my software was to install my favorite Firefox extensions. Unfortunately I was unable to do so. I didn’t receive an error message the download and installation process just stalled.

I wondered if the problem was Ubuntu specific so I scoured the Ubuntu forums and tried numerous fixes to try to get my extensions to install.  I changed permissions in my plug-in directory, reinstalled, and deleted directories and preferences. I discounted network problems because I could easily download and install on Mac OS X. I then went and looked at the Ubuntu Forums for help.  

I was getting suspicious so I rebooted from the Ubuntu live install CD and had the same problem running from the liveCD. This was puzzling I figured I did something funky during my installation.  

Read the full story

Technorati Tags: extensions, failure, Firefox, Install, IPV6, Mozilla, Ubuntu

Mozilla Corporation, CEO Mitch Baker posted to the Mozilla blog this week a review of 2007.

SheHe cites the number of Firefox users have grown to 125 million. Earlier this year Mozilla announced $66 million in revenues which makes the Mozilla Corporation a serious software business as well a developer of free software.

Baker also announced that she he will be stepping down as CEO and allowing John Lilly to take the reins but will still remain involved as an employee:

As a result I’ve asked John to take on the role of CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, and John has agreed. In reality John and I have been unconsciously moving towards this change for some time, as John has been providing more and more organizational leadership. It is very Mozilla-like to acknowledge the scope of someone’s role after he or she has been doing it for a while, and this is a good part of what is happening here. I expect this transition to continue to be very smooth. 

Could there be further announcements coming from the lizard wranglers coming?

Technorati Tags: Firefox, John Lilly, Mitchell Baker, Mozilla

I was a little surprised today when I woke up and had all this activity from last night’s 10 Reasons Not to Use Ubuntu I was reading through the comments and saw a note about it’s ironic that I posted a YouTube video that requires Flash, a non-free as in freedom technology.

Okay, fair point and at one point in time I would have been the guy jumping on that bandwagon. However, last year I started using Automatix2 and it’s part of my Ubuntu install ritual now, it automates the installs lots of things many users might go out and grab after they get a new machine include Flash Player and Sun Java (which is on it’s way to becoming free). Once you have support for that in your Firefox or SwiftFox browser you don’t (or at least I didn’t) think about it again. I also read about but have yet to try out – Easy Ubuntu which is somewhat similar in automating the installation of additional software. Automatix2 is shown below:

Also, you can play flash with free software and not the Flash Player for Linux from using Gnash :

Gnash is a GNU Flash movie player. Previously, it was only possible to play flash movies with proprietary software. While there are some other free flash players, none support anything beyond SWF v4. Gnash is based on GameSWF, and supports many SWF v7 features.

So hopefully that helps, for anyone who’s trying to watch the Ubuntu/Beryl movie I posted earlier they won’t have any trouble installing a Flash player.

Technorati Tags: Automatix, Beryl, Easy Ubuntu, Firefox, Flash, Gnash, Java, Linux Desktop, Ubuntu