This SIG was started Monday, January 15th, 2007 to be an open forum for ALL Firefox and Mozilla techniques
and technologies, to encourage the study and development of web sites of all kinds.
All the browsers will be considered and examined.
Anyone interested please contact the
Chairperson in charge.
Anyone interested in discussing problems and issues,
come to the meeting and announce / explain.
Provide as much detail as possible. One can also send all discussions to the ACGNJ
Newsletter
editor for inclusion in the next volume.
(click once more to rehide)
Monday, January 22nd 15th, 2007
The first meeting of the Firefox Activity will be led by David McRitchie
will discuss, argue and kick around many concepts and ideas.
All encouraged to "think out of the box" about new web site design.
All members and guests are invited to check out
the design concepts and voice their opinion.
Monday, June 16th, 2008 8:00 PM
Firefox 3.0 is due for release on Tuesday (2008-06-17), and is attempting to set a Guinness World Record for the most copies of a bit of software downloaded in 24 hours. Head over to
the pledge site, pledge to download, and then, when Tuesday comes, do so! The actual launch time will be Tuesday May 17th at 1:00 PM EDT according to
Download Day Live at Air Mozilla Backstage
Firefox meeting Monday June 16th, will go over some of changes in Firefox 3,
AwesomeBar (location bar autocomplete list) and bookmarking changes (places),
and changes to secure sites interface at the location bar. Firefox has made
additional big changes in faster speed -- which you will see, and what you
won't see but can take them at their word better memory usage, and security.
[-- http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm --]
[-- http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/places.htm --]
We can also look at using Firefox to access iPhone sites as an iPhone, highly
recommend using a separate Firefox profile just for this.
[article]
Opera just updated to 0.95 on 2008-06-12.
Monday, July 21st, 2008 8:00 PM
Firefox set a World Record
in number of downloads in 24 hours 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox on Tuesday June 17, 2008. Downloading of 3.0 is currently over 28 million copies downloaded.
Firefox meeting Monday June 21th, will go over several items like:
- Making some customizations to Firefox context menus, and toolbars.
- Creating and accessing multiple Firefox profiles for testing, or to run
different versions of Firefox at the same time.
- Comparison of Keyboard shortcuts between Firefox, IE7, Opera 9.5 and Safari 3.1.1
- Comparison of using Firefox, to compare text or source files, and
a stand along program such as CSDiff.
- Use of Split browser for Visual comparison or reference.
- Comparison of archived web files.
Monday, August 18th, 2008 8:00 PM
Some topics that will probably be covered to show what can be done
- Comparison of Keyboard Shortcuts between Firefox, IE7, Opera 9.5 and Safari 3.1.1
- Creation and Use of Keyword Shortcuts (not available in IE7)
- Tabbed Browsing (options)
- Installing an Extension, extensions are use to modify/customize Firefox
- Making some Customizations to Firefox context menus (right-click menus), and toolbars.
- Invoking other browsers, editors, etc. on your system from Firefox with the "Launchy" extension (Windows users)
- Search Engines, how to use, how to install
- Some "Chrome" changes via "Stylish" extension.
- Viewing a page without styling (View, Style, No Style), or with "ReadEasily" extension.
- Zoom Features (view, zoom options), and with "Mouse Zoom" extension
- Use of Bookmarklets
Options, and configuration settings
- Help Facilities, MozillaZine KB, newsgroup (mozilla.support.firefox)
Monday, September 15th, 2008 8:00 PM
Went over some styling changes including one for keyword shortcuts and importing a large set of keyword shortcuts.
Main Meeting -- Friday, October 3rd, 2008 8:00 PM
Presentation on Firefox features will basically follow an outline
found at Firefox 3 Introduction
Monday, October 20th, 2008 8:00 PM
Went over some things covered in main meeting for
those who weren't at the main meeting earlier in month.
Monday, November 17th, 2008 8:00 PM
There will NOT be a November Firefox SIG meeting.
Will resume in December.
Monday, December 15th, 2008 8:00 PM
Interesting Firefox Extensions, can go over most things in Firefox anyone wants to bring up, or go into greater depth of any aspect of Firefox 3 Introduction Presentation made on Oct 3rd at the ACGNJ Main Meeting.
Monday, January 19, 2009 8:00 PM
topic:
Probably will be covering setting up and using
multiple profiles.
A duplicate profile can be set up to help determine what may be wrong in
your main profile, so that you can essentially leave your main profile intact.
If you want to test with Beta Firefox versions then you would want to
use a separate profile.
Some Extensions you might want to include in a profile are
Launchy, Load Profile Folder, Nightly Tester Tools, and Stylish.
You can find links for them
User:Dmcritchie article or on my Firefox Customizations page.
Friday March 6, 2009 (MAIN Meeting) 8:00 PM
✯
presentation by ACGNJ member -- David McRitchie
The main topic will be "Firefox Keyword shortcuts" (bookmarks) used as
aliases, with or without substitutions, and mainly known for use in
personalized searches.
Will also include some coverage on keyboard shortcuts, and the creation
and use of search engines for Firefox.
Guests are always welcome, we have Wi-Fi connection for laptops.
Some links of interest:
Also a reminder that the Firefox Sig meets on the third Monday of each month.
Monday, March 16, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
✯
Probably be an informal workshop based on Main Meeting held on March 6th.
Many of the keyword shortcuts I used as an example of their creation have to do
with Google searches. I should have pointed out a page on searching that shows
how you can do the advanced search things from the search box in Firefox if you
know the tags to use. http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/search.htm
Keyboard shortcuts (as opposed to keyword shortcuts), more information
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/keyboard.htm
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/tabs.htm (as related to tabs)
Context or Right-click menus in Firefox
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/rightff.htm
Monday, June 15, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
Firefox Sig will meet Mon June 15th at 8:00 PM.
Topics will include Shortcuts and Searching and
any other topic someone wants to bring up.
This meeting may also touch on some aspects of backing up and restoring Firefox user profiles from your backup device using XCOPY with /D for date checking, and some problems you may encounter when there is more data on the backup than there was on the HD because because the backup copies only files that are not already on the backup or that are newer than on the backup, and does not delete files from the backup. Result is you have a lot more bookmark backups than 5, and you end up with additional extensions that you had gotten rid of. Having InfoLister listings for comparisons is helpful.
Firefox 3.0.11 is the current version, Firefox 2 is no longer supported.
You can update from an earlier version 3 to 3.0.11 via Help, check for updates.
Fractal Art - Gallery 13 (definition of Fractals)
https://www.fractalus.com/paul/thirteen.html
As a Firefox user you can install and use the "Linky" extension to select the
24 Galleries and then open them all in separate tabs. Closing each one
with Ctrl+W after viewing. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/425
Monday, July 20, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
- What’s New in Firefox 3.5?, video by Mike Beltzner
There were a couple of things in there that are not new in Fx3 involving
deleting History items, see Deleting history items.
- If you downloaded Firefox 3.5, you should update to 3.5.1 to bring Firefox startup down to about 15 seconds through
the Help menu then Update. Firefox 3.5 when first made public was very slow on Windows systems.
- No particular format for this meeting bring your questions, as usual I will be around about 7 PM, is you want to come early.
Monday, August 17, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
From Firefox Help --
"Security notice: Due to a critical and widely exploited vulnerability in Flash, please install the newest version of Adobe Flash (version 10.0.32.18 also called 10.0 r32) from Adobe's download page.
To check your version, go to Tools > Add-ons select the Plugins pane and select the Shockwave Flash item." (ref)
The current Firefox version is 3.5.2, use Help -> Check for updates.
Anyone with a free Geocities site should find another hosting site now, as Geocities
will cease on October 26th, 2009. Help in relocating files to another free site.
001 Tab Capacity Test, test tab packing, stacking, scrolling and extensions involving links.
Extensions (main table)
- Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper, Element Hiding Helper is a companion extension for Adblock Plus meant to make creating element hiding rules easier.
- Multiple Tab Handler, Provides feature to close multiple tabs. Also install Tab Clicking Options to be able to close a tab with double-click.
- There are a number of spellcheckers that work in editors, and in web forms, but the
"SpellCheck" extension
uses Firefox's spelling checker to check the spelling of web pages, invoked from the Edit Menu
(good start, but can't add extension marked words to dictionary).
- Text Area Resizer & Mover, Allows to easily resize or even move textareas. (see resize)
- GoogleEnhancer, Light-weight Google enhancement. Use with Customize Google,
use icons via CG, use pos numbering via GE, so can work when signed into Google.
Monday, September 21, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
The current Firefox is 3.5.3
Monday, October 19, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
The current Firefox is 3.5.4
Monday, November 16, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
The current Firefox is 3.5.5
Monday, December 21, 2009 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
✯
Firefox is expected to update about Dec 16th so the current Firefox
for this meeting should be Firefox 3.6. You can check for updates
in your Firefox Help (F1) for Firefox itself.
If there are problems with the way things have changed with Firefox 3.6,
take a look at http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm#fx3p6
- Adblock Plus, companion "Adblock Plus: Element Hiding Helper" allows you to eliminate specific features
such as text advertisements on a webpage similar to Platyplus.
- Multiple Searches with bookmarks, see topic below
- Firefox Introduction (was covered Mar 6th, 2009, see Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
- Google (options) has added a preview option
- Google sites: Pompei has been added to Street view.
- Spell Checking of documents see Spell Check
- Stylish and User Styles see User:Dmcritchie - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
- Tabs opened from links, change in Firefox 3.6, if implemented with feature turned on, see Tab Order
- TV-Fox extension, Watch TV directly from your Firefox Browser, 2780 Live TV Channels sorted by country & category, the TV-FOX allow you to watch thousands of TV channels freely available on the internet. powered by a large database.
- Yahoo TV listings, must be customized (cookies), provides current listings up to 11 days (but not 12) into the future as provided by TV Stations.
Mark Streitman (Previous speaker for ACGNJ Main Meeting) prefers a payfor listing which goes further into the future so he can set his recorder.
Multiple Searches -- Black Friday type searches -- online retailers and local stores
Template for creating bookmarklet for multiple stores:
javascript:void(window.open('http://www.google.com/search?q=%s'));
void(window.open('http://www.altavista.com/web/results?q=%s'));
Bookmarklets: Multiple Search as described on Keyword Search, look for javascript_h4 or open multiple pages.
These bookmarklets will search multiple retailers on a search
argument, each store opening into its own page so you can refine your search arguments
from the generic one you used when invoking the bookmarklet. For best search urls, right-click in the store's search field, and choose "Add a keyword for this search" then copy the properties into notepad, substituting %S for %s in your pattern. (This will work much better than trying to modify a completed search url). Drag the completed bookmarklet to a folder in your bookmarks toolbar, and provide a Keyword shortcut (search name) in the bookmarks properties. Any keyword you want, perhaps "shopping:online" and
"shopping:local" might be better names. These are just examples.
To use: type the keyword you assigned, and your search argument.
TBS: Tech Bargains, etc, lowest prices TBS: GPS
local:stores (big box) -- local:stores GPS
More up to date versions are available on Keyword Shortcuts page.
Monday, March 15, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
✯
Monday, April 19, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM
Most likely will start with what I will present at TCF-NJ on the week-end.
Then go into what might have been presented March 15th, had anyone shown up.
TCF-NJ, Sat April 24, 2010 and Sun April 25, 2010
Trenton Computer Festival 2010 (35th year)
Firefox presentation Sat April 24th 10:15AM - 11:10AM Room SSB-1
Firefox presentation Sun April 25th 2:35PM - 3:30PM Room SSB-2
Monday, May 17, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM
This will be the first Firefox SIG meeting after TCF 2010. Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Monday, June 21, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Monday, July 19, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Firefox gets its robustness not from what is installed when you install Firefox from mozilla.com but from the extensions that you add in later.
I like to work with a lot of tabs open in the window, so I have changed a number of tab related options and have added a number of
tab related extensions, and styles.
One annoyance that many users faced is that Firefox tabs were changed in Firefox 3.6 to be more like those in Opera by opening to
the right of the parent tab instead of at the end of the tabs bar. To disable this feature
enter about:config into the location bar then filter on insertRelatedAfterCurrent, which will probably show nothing, so
right-click under preferences and choose New -> Boolean then for name enter (without any spaces)
browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent then for the value set to False. The current version of Firefox is 3.6.4.
You can change Firefox styling (chrome) with changes to userChrome.css, but an easier way is with the "Stylish" extension. A
style to add color below the tab's title is "Tab Color Underscoring active/read/unread (Fx3.6)"
(http://userstyles.org/styles/24728) that colors the bottom border of a tab with RED for active tab, BLUE for a normal tab, GREEN
for a still unread tab, and MAGENTA for loading/reloading tab activity. In other words distinguishes tabs as active tab, viewed
tab, or unviewed tab.
One of my web pages, "Tabbed Browsing in Firefox" (http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/tabs.htm), has additional suggestions
for tab usage and some help for debugging link target usages.
One of the extensions I've recently started using is "Multiple Tab Handler" which you can find at addons (addons.mozilla.com),
and it allows you to make selections among tabs, and to close selected tabs, close tabs to the left or right of the active tab,
and also adds a "close all tabs" to the tab context menu. You will also find this extension useful to add tab selections of
titles and urlnames in formatting of your choice to the clipboard for use in HTML files, wikis, blogs, and email. For single tab
use where you an include a selection of webpage text the "Copy All Urls" extension is any of my favorites.
One of the most frequent problems users have with Firefox is installing extensions that are not compatible with each other or even
with Firefox, so a good place to start is with "Problematic extensions" (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions), where
you will find suggestions for making changes to modify options, or to disable a conflicting extension, so that you can use what is
most important to you.
I have an introductory page Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline) for new Firefox users.
Monday, August 16, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Monday, September 20, 2010 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Friday, October 1, 2010 (Main Meeting) 8:00 PM note meetings in 2012 will be starting at 7:30
The current version of Firefox is 3.6.10 which you can verify in your Firefox Help → About, and can update through Help if it is not.
For those that are not using Firefox already, you can get Firefox at mozilla.com, if you are already using a different browser then do not make Firefox your default browser at this time. Your email and other applications will open webpages with your default browser.
For Firefox users that want to see the future Firefox in progress, install Minefield which is currently Firefox 4.0b7pre, which will install by default in a separate directory than your normal Firefox.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/minefield then use "Download" button.
( http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ )
In your main Firefox install "Launchy" extension and the launchy.xml file which
you will find directions for at http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm#launchy
change the launchy.txt file to just "Program Files" if you are on a 32 bit system.
Whatever direction this meeting takes many of my
Firefox Keyword Shortcuts will be used. You can install my shortcuts and Firefox documentation entries by importing a local copy of my k.html file and placing some bookmarks and bookmark folders on your Firefox bookmarks Toolbar according to directions found in the Keyword shortcuts topic within
my Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline).
![[+ < > gg:fix GV H Pz Sp tacc]](../../icons/k_additions.png "portion of Bookmarks Toolbar showing additions, Styled with Stylish using style 9091 to show folders in blue, and bookmark(lets) in red")
Additional installation and customization information can be found in
Monday, October 18, 2010, Nov 15, Dec 20, Jan 17 (Firefox Sig) 8:00 PM doors open 7:30PM note meetings in 2012 will be starting at 7:30
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Monday, February 21, 2011 (Firefox Sig) 7:30 PM doors open by 7:15 PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 3 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
Recent major modifications to User:Dmcritchie personal page on Mozilla wiki.
Firefox 4.0 is getting close to being ready
If you don't have Firefox installed, come in around 7PM to install
Firefox on your laptop and get setup. I'm usually there by 7:00PM. The library is across the street if lights aren't
yet on on the second floor.
- Firefox install
- Hosts file your system
- Suggested extensions: Adblock Plus with added "EasyList" subscription,
Add Bookmark Here ², HeadingsMap, Linky, oldbar, SortPlaces, Stylish, Table Tools,
Go Parent Folder, Show Parent Folder, QuickRestart (or in 4.0 Restartless Restart).
Monday, March 21, 2011 (Firefox Sig) 7:30 PM doors open 7:15 PM
Bring questions
to meeting, or email me first. Contact information is at the bottom
of Firefox 4 Introduction (Presentation Outline)
This is will be the last Firefox SIG meeting before TCF 2011 (Apr 2nd and 3rd).
◄rehide the Past Meetings
Guests are always welcome, we have Wi-Fi connection and tables for laptops or whatever you want to carry in.
![[ACGNJ image]](http://www.acgnj.org/images/acgnj2.png "ACGNJ is the oldest personal computer club and user group in the world.")
![[ACGNJ logo]](../../icons/acgnj-6.gif "ACGNJ is the oldest personal computer club and user group in the world."){kind=icon}
Firefox Group Event Calendar