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I wonder though, why would anyone want to switch to a google branded version of Firefox? There is already a toolbar for firefox that searches google.

Google could then use their expertise to build Mozilla apps. It'll be interesting to see whether this happens or not.

Yeah, imagine a Gmail web interface built with XUL. Something like this, but built with Google simplicity, speed and style.

Disclaimer: The link goes to a copy of xulwebmail on my web server sitting on my cable modem. If it gets hammered too hard I'll take it down. Also, note that I don't think xulwebmail actually works, so don't bother typing your real e-mail account and password. Still, use mozilla or firefox and take a look at it if you haven't seen it before. It certainly looks like it could be a very cool way to do webmail... and lots of other stuff, too.

yeah, and for that, a good XUL IDE would be needed. I tried xulmaker but it did not even start for me. does anybody know any _working_ XUL IDEs out there?

: XUL is cool, but so far I haven't seen MANY
: great applications done with it.

Apparently there are still quite a few restrictions on web applications that use XUL. That's a good thing (security wise), but hopefully beyond Mozilla/XUL2.0 the moz developers will implement something that will ease development as well, without re-inventing ActiveX hell. It _is_ possible to write working web applications if you invest a lot of time and can live with a somewhat disjointed documentation. xulplanet.com is a good start. The Amazon Browser is pretty impressive (but not that useful in real life, I admit that). Don't miss The games at mozdev, they're tiny XUL applications running over HTTP as well. And Nextls XUL is a somewhat weird frontend for a client/server mp3/ogg jukebox, also in XUL over HTTP. So what other XUL webapps are out there, anyone?

Does anyone know if someone is writing a webmail client in XUL?

That already exists! Ok, it doesn't let people buy book yet, but you can search. I wonder if the author of the article knew that. Check it out here and here. I've actually tried it out and it works really well.

Get the firefox extension here.

Eventually, most RSS programs are going to get folded into the browser anyway, so it's good to take the important pieces.

First, you might want to checkout the sage extension for Firefox as opposed to the builtin live bookmarks. It is very nice.

My guess is you are mostly right, the mass consumption of RSS will be a PC browser embedded function. My guess is the hardcore will use other apps, such as feedreader, feeddemon, etc. They are far more refined for the purpose.

I think it will be very intesting how all this shakes out, and what clever ideas people come up with to use RSS (I have seen very innovative ideas already). The beatuy of RSS, is it's flexibility and generic nature, leaving the display to the whims of the users.

Also remember, the applications will go well beyond traditional PCs. I worked on a fairly infamous product (spectacular failure, mostly an idea before it's time that cost too much) called Audrey from 3Com. It was a small Internet Appliance (aimed for the kitchen, family room, etc.) that could browse and check email, but it's really cool feature was programmable "channels" for content, selected by a rotary knob on the front. You would program in what you wanted each channel to be (say Chicago Weather, football news, etc.) for each channel. You can "change the channel" like a TV.

What was behind all this? RSS (or a close cousin, at least, it was early in the game). Had we had all the RSS content there is now, that would have made the feature that much more compelling (we had a hell of a time getting content at the time).

Other, non-PC apps could be customized news on a mobile phone, driving electronic marquees (think Times Square). Yeah, these things are done now, but mostly manually, with limited selection of content. RSS opens up this kind of application to the little guy (think Main Street in East Bumfsck, Iowa), and opens up custom content on mobile phones (rather than the small selection of canned feeds available now).

Anyway, don't restrict the application to traditional PCs, and don't restrict the application to just traditional web content. RSS has potential to do what the web has done on a larger scale, provide access to non-web outlets (phones, etc.) only the big guys could access before.

The important thing right now is that we use this momentum, and that we continue to innovate. Here's some issues I believe are important:

• SVG support. It's incomplete - but I think it is unwise not to have at least some level of SVG support in mainline Firefox 1.0 builds. "Build it, and they will come": both web and Mozilla developers. SVG is really a key technology for next-generation web design based on open standards. As an example, Wikipedia has a nice extension called EasyTimeline for rendering graphical timelines. These are currently ugly, non-zoomable PNGs -- SVG would be perfect here, as it would allow timelines with a changing level of detail as you zoom in. Much of the stuff that is currently being done with Flash can be done with SVG.
• Leverage XUL. Whenever I show people demos like MAB and Robin, they tend to be impressed: easy, powerful, instantly deployable web applications. In my opinion, XUL should get a lot more exposure within Firefox - both the product and the website. Make a promise to XUL developers: If you use XUL to write open source applications, and it meets our quality standards, we will add it to the default Firefox bookmarks, and promote it on our website.
• New UIs. Tabs are great, but they're not the Holy Grail of UI design. For example, they don't scale - managing more than 20 or so open documents in one browser is not feasible because you just have lots of "..."s. At this point, I would rather have a vertical, scrollable list of open documents with a nice, dynamic (incremental) title search to instant-switch to a window of your choice, and some other cool navigation tools ("skip to next website from another domain than the current one" etc.). There's no reason why a modern browser shouldn't make it easy to manage 50 or 100 open documents.
• Better editing controls. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Keep Firefox lean. But having a good integrated text editor for things like wikis or even this form into which I'm typing into right now makes life a lot easier for the average user.

Now, if you really want a glimpse of the future, imagine, if you will, that a HTML textarea worked like SubEthaEdit and allowed you to invite other users to edit with your collaboratively, in real-time, a wiki page or weblog entry. But even this really just scratches the surface. The point is, the browser is an immensely important platform. With Firefox, we now have the chance to give an incredible amount of real power to end users. It's not "just a browser" - it's one of the key components of future information and collaboration devices.

Congratulations to the Mozilla project for getting us where we are right now. We still have a long way to go. I hope in 10 years, open source technology will be used by virtually everyone to access the rapidly growing digital commons.

You might try the MAF extension to Firefox.

RFC 2557: MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate Documents, such as HTML (MHTML)

There's a Mozilla KB entry about MHTML support and open bugs for load and save (IDs 18764 and 40873; bugzilla won't accept links from Slashdot). Plus the maf extension to support MHTML.

What about Windows users refusing (or in an increasing number of cases not allowed) to use IE?
I'd *love* to see a Mozilla/Firefox extension to integrate Gmail with the Win file system.

Preemptive response: (to save you the time)
-use Linux!

One option is a firefox extension called Bookmarksftp which basically uploads your bookmarks to a ftp server and downloads them as and when asked (or automattically). A version compatible with Firefox 0.10 is available here

To get the bookmarks in IE bookmarkstofav will do, but theres no proper version for Firefox 0.10

It's likely already been pointed out, but using Optimoz mouse gestures you can do every single one of those things, plus customize your own gestures to do whatever you want.

I'd give del.icio.us a try. It uses labels instead of folders, which are much more useful, and there's a Firefox plugin (and also an IE one, IIRC).

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/nukeanyt hing

...pretty straightforward, really. I've done some work on an art print site which uses most of the techniques suggested here. The simple fact is that you can only discourage people, not stop them, which is the first thing I made sure my friends knew when I took on the coding.

Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures. ;) Try Firefox optimoz mouse gesture extension, one handed browsing in your favorite browser

yeah, ok.

Grab the unofficial Google Bar plug-in it has many of the features of the IE Google Bar, works nicely.

Not to mention a clone of the Google Toolbar for Firefox, which is as good, if not better than the "official" version.

I have Gmail open in a tab. The text on the tab (the title) tells me when new messages have arrived. In case I really am in such a hurry to notice such. I always have a browser running anyways, so it doesn't cost any extra, actually it is less effort on both me an the computer. And it works on both Windows and Linux.

As for the toolbar, I've stopped using it. With bookmark keywords, the new type ahead bar and the "go up" extension (as well as "go up" mouse gestures), it is just so much lost space. I'm searching and navigating faster now without it, and most of the functions I never used.

I used to love the toolbar, but now I've come to realize that it was so great when I used it on IE, because on IE you need it. With firefox, it is just making you do stuff the slow and painful IE way. Try doing it the other way for a while!

I still would like the go up button to have a dropdown like the googlebar has though, that is the one thing still missing. ;-)

Get Firefox!

See also http://mozcreator.mozdev.org/, and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/vixen/. Neither of these appear to be very far along though.

Google hasn't "infiltrated" Firefox. The search bar has Google set as the default but you can add virtually any search engine you want in addition to or instead of it. It's not the "Google search bar" it's simply "The Search Bar"

The folks at Mozilla just recognized that Google is the best search engine out there (and the most popular I believe) and decided to make it easier to access it. I believe this is also true of the Safari and Opera browsers as well.

At the bottom of the page:

Contributors Wanted

If you are interested in contributing to the XULMaker project please contact me, Franklin de Graaf. In particular, I would especially appreciate some help from a graphic designer to do/redo the element icons, etc.

You are also invited to join the mailing list and read the newsgroup. This is where most of the discussion about XULMaker will take place.

That should take care of most questions, or at last Mr. de Graaf can answer them. I didn't post his email, but the link for it is on that mozilla page at the bottom.

What, you mean like this?

I dunno about your company, but where I work, and a number of other places I know of (friends work there, ex-employment, etc...) there's a lot of stuff on the web-- time cards, change management systems, computer-based training, employee locaterators... and it all requires MSIE. It's either ActiveX, or uses proprietary MSIE broken HTML, or what-have-you, because the webmonkeys that created it know everyone has a Windows box on their desk so they could do it the easy way instead of the right way.

Three words for you, my friend:

Make a link.

;-)

You don't need to search from the default engine in Firebird. It's really easy to add additional engines from Mycroft

Laziness not necessary. Install prefbar (by kicking that kickable clink, in Groklaw lingo) and choosing your preferred language. When done you are (in Yoda lingo), you have a little dropdown menu asking what referrer you want to have, with a choice of a few common ones. Far easier than importing bookmarks. All sorts of other (fully customizable, in PHB lingo) goodies too.

This extension allows you to easily open any link in IE without having to copy/paste or even manually start IE. For those few pages that do require IE, it's saves alot of time.

Under Windows by default the profiles are stored in C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\.FOO\extensions\ (where FOO is 3 random characters). Just set the entire FireFox profile directory to be archived/read-only, and extensions, cache, bookmarks, history, etc will all be unmodifiable.

Preferential contains documentation of most of the Mozilla and FF preferences, but it's almost a year out of date. And you'd of course want to block about:config, which I have no idea how to do.

You might also want to check out this FF build, which is designed for use on a USB drive. It includes an extension that allows you to install XPIs on the drive, but that could be removed. It nixes cookies, bookmarks etc in much the same way.

If she likes the big blue "e", then give it to her. Copy the icon to Firefox, and install IE Skin. I believe there's another XPI that will change the Windows titlebar string, so a casual user would be completely unaware that the browser isn't Explorer.

• CSS Wiki! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Centering advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Fix crappy MSIE support! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• tips, tricks and good practice techniques! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Box model Illustrated! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• links collection! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Tutorials, Demos, and Hacks! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices Crib Sheet! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Best Practices! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Holly Hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• 3 pixel hack! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Firefox webdev plugin! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Mozilla CSS editor! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Debugging Advice! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Page Building Process! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• selectutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Lists

• listamatic 2 (nested lists)! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listamatic! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• listutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• Piped List! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Floats

• floatutorial! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• float-theory! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Filtering

• Explorer! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• safari filtering! - + - this is extra copy so this would post
• filters! - + - this is extra copy so this would post

Type Issues

The Camino Localization project, aims to translate and release Camino in non english languages. If you want Camino to be available in your language please join the project.

Why doesn't someone make a plugin for FF that allows windows to be opened up in ie if not displayed properly ...

Yea, what ads?

I'm hesitant to say this, since I don't want to crush your newfound hope...
but I'm running Adblock on my iBook with 1.0PR.

Hopefully it's just a case of having an outdated version (or a problem with upgrading when Adblock was previously installed?).

I got my Adblock here a couple days ago:
http://adblock.mozdev.org/

Good luck!

Don't like the personalization features? Then use the generic search page.

Lastly, amazon's offering a discount to all a9 users

Firefox doesn't have Quick Launch. (You can add a shortcut to start Firefox into the Windows Quick Launch toolbar the is by default next to the Start button; however, it does not have the Quick Launch feature as in Mozilla suite where the app is loaded on Windows startup and hidden in the systray).

I'm working on MinimizeToTray which can fake the feature (install extension and add "-turbo" to the end of the shortcut that launches Firefox), but it is currently buggy and interacts badly with single window extensions such as Tabbrowser Extensions.

Heh, now I did find an "Up" button that lets me put it where I want it, great! Would sill like the dropdown that the google bar has, but this is indeed good enough!

http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/goup

First, set the browser.xul.error_pages.enabled to true in your about:config. Than, install Show Failed URL Extension.

That should fix things like this.
--

Mozilla/Firefox already has fully customizable mouse gestures (using the nightly build).

My friend once got into a debate with me over Opera and Firefox, and it got down to him finally saying that despite how wonderful Firefox was and everything, he'll stick to Opera because he liked the ads! Well, I promptly directed him to a site where you can install ads for Firefox as well.

Here's a clickable WeatherFox.

This is potentially the beginning of a huge change in the way advertising works on the internet. As people get turned on to Gecko, they will get turned on to features like AdBlock. If Gecko captures 50% market share, you can bet many of those people are viewing neither ads nor unwanted Flash content, if they're anything like me.

Does this mean an huge impending change in the way advertising works on the internet? Will companies like the NYT, who make a lot of money from ads, start embedding advertisements in ways such that AdBlocking them with regexp filters would also block out the non-ad images?

This is potentially the beginning of a huge change in the way advertising works on the internet. As people get turned on to Gecko, they will get turned on to features like AdBlock. If Gecko captures 50% market share, you can bet many of those people are viewing neither ads nor unwanted Flash content, if they're anything like me.

Does this mean an huge impending change in the way advertising works on the internet? Will companies like the NYT, who make a lot of money from ads, start embedding advertisements in ways such that AdBlocking them with regexp filters would also block out the non-ad images?

The number one reason I switched to Firefox is the LiveHTTPHeaders extension. This handy little gadget docks in your sidebar and displays outgoing HTTP requests and incoming responses in real time. It's a must for anyone who works with server side application technologies, load balancing, content switching, or caching. Good stuff.

Oh, yeah, the pop-up blocking is great too, so is tabbed browsing.

Hope not because Firefox makes it extremely difficult to upgrade if you want to keep your extensions.

Only one I had problems with was IE View; FF told me it couldn't install it becaue of version conflicts.
I went to the homepage , (just on spec..) and tried installing it from there. Despite the fact the link said Install IE View v0.81, my extensions now include ieview 0.82.

of course by now, the project owner (who's name isn't that obvious..) may have the 'official site' updated.

Try Compact Menu (direct link) It can shrink the menu area down to one entry. After installing it, click View, Toolbars, Customize, then drag the entry named Menu up to the toolbar. It's similar to IE's File >> feature.

For those smart slashdotters who have made the switch to Firefox, you can get integreted firefox search for a9.com

Search for a9, then add it to your list of search engines!

And if your still unfortunate enough to use IE, download Firefox now!

I'm finding myself quickly leaving sites that are built, either intentionally or out of ignorance, as IE-only.

With tabbed browsing, fantastic bookmark controls (add bookmark here and synchronized bookmarks), great content tools (bugmenot, adblock), the browser goes almost everywhere.

Folks who are reading this and who made the plunge, but still use Outlook, SWITCH TO THUNDERBIRD! While I wasn't very happy with the seemingly random way my old emails were imported (messages with multiple mime parts dont have the correct items displayed on the pane, and others meant to be displayed as shown as 'part1.1' attachments), I was incredibly happy with the abilities and extensions of the program.

Specifically, I found Thunderbird very happy to deal with my POP3 and IMAP accounts, interface very easily with GnuPG (via Enigmail)

Mozilla really sucked for quite awhile, but these days I'm surprised when I find people who still only use IE. How 2001.

I look forward to the work being done on calendaring.

The Session Saver extension will do what you want, I think.