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the big ad you're forced to click through.

What ad?

Am I missing something? What is there to manage for a browser besides installation?

In the corporate environment (ie when the PC isn't yours and the company doesn't want to spend ages fixing messes you've made 'personalizing' your PC) you need to lock down some preferences (eg proxy settings, security settings, mail account details if you're using thunderbird/moz suite). This used to be really easy under the old Netscape suite (there was a GUI tool), and although there's some support still left in firefox/mozilla (you can lock down prefs manually in the .js files) it's not half as good as it used to be. Other stuff is rollout support with pre-populated profiles etc.

Check out the Mozilla Enterprise project for more details and how some of us have hacked together lockdown and other 'enterprise' requirements.

Konqueror could pretend to be another browser

So can Firefox. To do it on the fly in Firefox, use the User Agent Switcher.

Or Prefbar, which has some other neat features.

more of those annoying ads

AdBlock! http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Add MozGest.

I feel handicapped without it.
Some features:
Turn the wheel while holding it pressed - Horizontal scroll.
Hold wheel, click RMB/LMB - tab forward/backward.
Highlight an URL, drag up - opens in new tab.
"scratch" the page (right-left-right) - close tab/window.
Press left, holding right - history back.
Press right, holding left - history forward.
Up-left-up - one directory up :)

about:config

browser.xul.error_pages.enabled

Set that to true

Excellent. One annoying feature down, it's amazing they don't put config options for things like this in a place where people can find it (ie, not typing about:config or opening .js files)

Your response did motivate me to search for another fix to another major annoying Firefox feature, the fact it doesn't show failed URLs, and I found this extension that fixes it:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/showfail edurl

That's going to be immediately installed on all my machines.

Now, if only we can get more companies to make their pages Firefox compatible. CSC, Strayer University (eCollege.com), I'm looking at you two.

here they are:

Adblock
Session Saver
Web Developer
IE View
Target Alert

here they are:

Adblock
Session Saver
Web Developer
IE View
Target Alert

here they are:

Adblock
Session Saver
Web Developer
IE View
Target Alert

First, I had to click the FlashBlock icon to get it to play (since autostarting flash is a dumb idea when it's almost always an annoying ad). Second, my default Privoxy install helpfully blocked the flash movie from playing since there's a nasty "/ads/" redflag in the URL.

LinkPreview sounds interesting, but there is no documentation available over it on mozdev.org. Where did you get more information and that xpi link from? not much here...

This is one of those occasions I'm grateful I still have Internet Explorer (and the IEView extension). The authors of this page made the classic blunder of coding their HTML to the browser, not the the standard. Specifically, they used tables to encode non-tabular text. The result looks like a play script on whatever browser they tested it on, but Firefox doesn't have the smarts to deal with a table that long. And why should it, except to accomodate inept page designers? A goal that deserves some priority, but not an infinite amount.

I haven't seen a /. ad in months. Get adblock, and block http://ads.osdn.com

In my mind, this is the exact same dichotomy between Vim proponents and Emacs proponents. Emacs has a great deal of interepretted functionality. Vim has a small memory footprint. Some people like one, other people are partial to the other.

Not even close. The toolbar does much more than search Yahoo. You get links into all of the Yahoo tools like Bookmarks, Mail, Notepad, Briefcase, News, Finance, etc. Each of these are customizable.

Basically, Yahoo is releasing software for Firefox that emulates the Mozilla Companion, which emulates Yahoo Toolbar for IE. :)

I don't know how this compares to Bookmark Converter, but I use Bookmarks Synchronizer and it seems to handle Livebookmarks just fine. It does require an FTP server, though.

Bookmarks Synchronizer is a Mozilla Firefox extension that let you connect to an FTP server and synchronize your bookmarks that are stored in an XML file. Setup is easy; just write in your FTP server address, username, password and a name for the XML file (by default called xbel.xml). To start, press Upload to create the file on the server and set if you want to automatically download the file on startup or upload it when you close your browser.

Try BookmarksHome. It displays your bookmarks in an HTML page, customized through CSS, which can be set to be your start page if you would like. It can be configured to only show certain folders, including LiveBookmark ones.

From the BookmarksHome page:
BookmarksHome makes a pretty startup page out of your bookmarks. The layout of this page is highly customizable. Items high in the bookmarks tree (as you see it when you open the Bookmarks menu) will appear at the top of the page. Changes in your bookmarks will be visible after reloading the BookmarksHome page.

The search box in Firefox has many many engines other then just google. Yahoo (including it's many subdomains) has always been an option, even in the beta days. Visit mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/yahoo.html to add Yahoo! to your search box - no need to download and install anything from Yahoo...

Peter Buergner, Dave Viner, Brian Kennelly and a host of others have created an excellent alternative for folks who like the functionality of the Yahoo! Toolbar but prefer Firefox/Mozilla. The current version (0.54) is a bit out of date - a new version should be hitting the servers soon. It is much further along than the official version, with full internationalization support (including Chinese), disposable address support for Yahoo! Mail, the ability to remove the Search Box (a function the official version has apparently removed from both the IE and FF versions) and a few others.

I've looked at the official source code and it's nicely written - probably a bit cleaner than ours, truth be told. We've had quite a bit of discussion on the mailing list about adding features not found on any of the official toolbars (including dynamically folding the Yahoo! bookmarks into the Mozilla/FF bookmarks, the ability to redirect menu selections into new tabs, and a bunch of other stuff). Recent "nightly" builds (more like weeklies, but hey...) have included about:config support for some optional functionality.

Most of us on the Companion team are happy to see official support for Firefox by Yahoo!. It shows that FF is really gaining traction, and will help a lot of Yahoo! users to migrate to the FF platform. Hopefully, most the of the newbs will use the official version (saving us some headaches on the mailing list), and when people want to step up to a more feature-rich version, they can upgrade to our version. One thing the team has been very concerned about is making sure that our version works on all Mozilla platforms, and in both Firefox and Mozilla Suite. Early word is that the official version works best on Firefox on WinXP - there seem to be minor problems using it with the Mozilla Suite, alternate themes and non-XP platforms (the code is all generic Javascript, so I expect those issues to be easily fixable). Our 0.54 build has some issues in Linux due to an improper set of permissions added to a directory it creates to store the Yahoo! feed. This has been fixed in the nightlies, or you can fix it by modifying the permissions of the yahootoolbar_saves directory in your Firefox profile (chmod 666 should do it).

Of course, our version could end up dying in the shade of the official version, but that's competition for you!

p.s. I know a lot of /.ers prefer the Google toolbar, but lots of us have already invested a lot of time in the Yahoo! version and don't feel like switching. Besides, Yahoo! as a portal (currently) has a lot of things Google just doesn't provide - I track my portfolio there, have a My Yahoo! portal page with a lot of localized content, like the quick links to my local sports teams, etc. And, at this point, you've at least got to give Yahoo! credit for being the first to officially support the FF platform (though I have a feeling Google is going to come on very strong, given the recent hiring of Ben Goodger.)

It's a third-party extension, from googlebar.mozdev.org/.

I havn't used it, but this is meant to emulate that.

I use it for the bookmarks, which are then common on any firefox or IE computer with the toolbar, but it also has shortcuts to useful Yahoo! tools like briefcase, calendar etc.

Using a nice news aggregator will also take care of that problem. I use Sage (firefox plugin). It bolds articles you haven't yet read, and refreshes the list each time you click on the site name. You can also use it to render the RSS list directly into a browser page, which is handy for sites with long article summaries.

If you develop websites for a living then you might be interested in the editcss extension. It's lovely.

I find that sage is the perfect way to view 10-30 sites using firefox. It allows you to see articles, summaries, or just titles in a simple and easy to use way.

That looks really slick. I'll have to give that a shot. Thanks!

I find that sage is the perfect way to view 10-30 sites using firefox.

It allows you to see articles, summaries, or just titles in a simple and easy to use way.

I know this may be off-topic, but I find those sponsored links horribly distracting. To see the page (and many others) as it is supposed to be:

1) Install Adblock
2) Add the filter: *intellitxt.com

what about

• 4. Use alternative web browsers, i.e.:
• firefox ( with the ieview extension for "ie only" pages )

  ?

wow. that's not a problem with any mozilla software. that's what extensions are for. http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/

I've just checked my Firefox search box, there isn't even an MSN option.

Not by default, but you can add it, if you like: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html.

Scroll down to "General" and follow the link.

I want the rot13 in my right-click menu, though.

http://mnenhy.mozdev.org/
Translates
D0n'+ 40r63+ +0 p4y y00r $699 \1c3n51n6 433, y00 c0ck-5m0k1n6 +3484663rz!!!!
to:
Don't aorget to pay yoor sgqq \lcenslng aee, yoo cock-smoklng teabaggerziiii

Vg nyfb qbrf ebg13

pointing out the obvious:
Instead of selling your soul to read this, use the bugmenot extension

It was a reference to a bug regarding the incorporation of code to allow a kiosk mode. The patch was rejected. However the patch was re-implemented as an extension. I can't see how this is an important bug that is being ignored as there are readily available extensions to perform this function.

I find that prefbar works well for that in the full Mozilla.
http://prefbar.mozdev.org/

I like the X on the tab too. The "Tab X" extension does the trick for me. I'm sure there are others.

-Mark

It's a shame that on Linux and Windows the Mac paradigm is not possible: of having an application loaded with no open windows.

There's a nice plugin called Minimize to Tray for Firefox and Thunderbird that, by using it's -turbo option, can keep a window loaded in the background for you.

For number 2, check out Session Saver.

> I'd like to see them put the tab close "X" on the tabs themselves like Safari.

Just get the TabX extension and they'll be on the right place. It's the only extension I really need, actually.

If you use Firefox, try Adblock: http://adblock.mozdev.org/

How long until someone writes a plugin similar to adblock for your favourite rss reader?

Who's going to invest their time in such a thing? Not Firefox enthusiasts, who donate their labor because they love the software, not because they want to make life easier for people who can't ditch Internet Explorer.

Hey, at least one of us is trying to do just that :-)

Seriously, this is a frequently-requested enhancement to the IE View extension. About the only thing keeping it from happening so far is my complete lack of free time. It's top of the list, though. It's almost certainly doable, but requires a good bit more additional work than some earlier posters have assumed.

The Preferential project has a web page listing a lot of the settings. The downside is that it hasn't been updated since 2003.

Ye, there is. Its called the Google Toolbar extension for Firefox.

Now if Firefox had a version of the Google toolbar, which up to now it does not, I would switch in a hot minute.

Now if Firefox had a version of the Google toolbar, which up to now it does not, I would switch in a hot minute.

Now if Firefox had a version of the Google toolbar, which up to now it does not, I would switch in a hot minute.

Firefox has always (since 0.1) had a Google Toolbar extension--not that find you need it as its built-in search functionality is so good.

Now if Firefox had a version of the Google toolbar, which up to now it does not, I would switch in a hot minute.

This is the plug-in you're looking for

It's still kinda buggy, do a clean install and it should be ok.

The newspost is correct when it says K-Meleon is lightweight for using Windows natively, but it does include XUL.

Examples of XUL in K-Meleon include about:config and Aggreg8, which can be found in Tools > Mail and News > RSS News Feeds.