Computer FAQs & Tips

First of all, how many popular Web Browser are there at the moment?

As far as I observe there are 5 of them, and they are on the big race at the moment

• Internet Explorer (Windows)
• Firefox (Windows, Linux, Mac)
• Opera (Windows)
• Safari (Mac)
• Google Chrome (Windows)

According to W3Schools Browser Statistics

The result base on November 2008

From table above, you can see Firefox is ruling the market now. Chrome (by Google Inc.) is new and I would describe Google Chrome as young and dangerous to the browser war. It could take over the market in a very short time.

Browsing on internet could get frustrating sometimes when there are heavy load of ads on the website you are visiting. If you are on a slow speed connection, you’d just close the site go to an alternative one. However you might want to get some interesting information of that site, so you just have to put up with it! bad move..!

Not anymore…, if you are using Firefox “the web browser legend”, you can now block a certain ads that you don’t want them to load.

There are two ad-on available which has the same core function and does slightly different job, AdBlock and AdBlock Plus.

Here I am showing you how to use AdBlock Plus on Firefox and where to go when you need support or answer to the question you want to ask.

Get it

• Go to Firefox Add-ons website and click on Add to Firefox
• Accept and install it
• Restart your Firefox
• Now it will prompt with a filter subscription windows. Optionally you can subscribe one of them (I’d prefer the Easy List (USA) if I subscribe). However, you can do this latter whenever you wish.
• You will notice the red icon button on the top right corner of your Firefox browser. This is where you can and edit your ads blocking preferences.

Personally, I block the ads manually, and only block those heavy graphic ads such as over-size, flash video/animation. I don’t usually block text-base ads such as Google adsense or the like.

Read more…

It was a long wait for Firefox 3 reach its final release stage. It’s now time to rock your feet and move your mouse for a “Download” button.

This new version come with several surprises

• Enhanced User Interface
• Faster and more secured
• Smarter and more productivity
• Even easier for customisation

Apart from these enhancements, there’s a great

• potential for a Guinness World Record for the “most software downloaded within 24 hours”
• celebration parties are hosted in many countries all over the world
• passion of more than a million of people who will be waiting for downloading this new version

You might like to get out there and join the crowd :)

Firefox 3 is officially launched at approximately 10:00 a.m. PDT (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday, June 17th. So keep yourself tuned for the time.. hopefully you are not in the middle of you peaceful sleep. If you are in Australia/NSW like me, it will be about 3:00 AM. I know I won’t be waking up yet, but I will be surely download it at 6:30 AM right after I wake up!

Are you developer? or beginner to programming?
You can write you own starter program and produce a new fresh Firefox.exe and Thunderbird.exe to run your portable firefox and thunderbird. Please note, if you want to walk through this article you should have done the walk with the previous articles first.

When you are ready, continue on..

Requirements

• Minimal knowledge on csharp language
• Microsoft .NET framework installed
• Development IDE ( SharpDevelop ) installed
• Completed the walkthrough in previous articles

I wrote these codes with .NET framework 2.0 installed on my machine.
However it should work on .NET framework 1.0+ (not tested)

Ok.. let’s begin,

• Startup your SharpDevelop IDE
• Create New Window Application project, let’s call it PMozilla (Portable Mozilla)
• You should have Program.ch and a few other created automatically
• Add new class AppStarter.ch
• Copy and paste the following code and save it
  File: AppStarter.ch

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.ComponentModel;
 
namespace PMozilla
{
 ///
 /// Description of AppStarter
 ///
 public class AppStarter
 {
  Process proc = null;
  public AppStarter()
  {
   proc = new Process();
  }
 
  public void startFirefox()
  {
   try {
    proc.StartInfo.FileName = "./Firefox/firefox.exe";
    proc.StartInfo.Arguments = "-profile ./_profiles/firefox";
    proc.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
    proc.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
    proc.Start();
   }
   catch (Win32Exception e)
   {
    e.GetBaseException();
   }
  }
  public void startThunderbird()
  {
   try {
    proc.StartInfo.FileName = "./Thunderbird/thunderbird.exe";
    proc.StartInfo.Arguments = "-profile ./_profiles/thunderbird";
    proc.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
    proc.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
    proc.Start();
   }
   catch (Win32Exception e)
   {
    e.GetBaseException();
   }
  }
 }
}

• Replace Program.ch with the following codes
  File: Program.ch

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
 
namespace PMozilla
{
 ///
 /// Class with program entry point.
 ///
 internal sealed class Program
 {
  ///
  /// Program entry point.
  ///
  [STAThread]
  private static void Main(string[] args)
  {
   AppStarter ast = new AppStarter();
   ast.startFirefox();
  }
 }
}

• Save project
• Build project, make sure there’s no error
• Now go to your project debug Directory (ie. PMozilla\bin\Debug)
• You should see PMozilla.exe
• Copy this file and paste it in your portable firefox directory. Put it outside directory containing firefox.exe
• Rename PMozilla.exe to Firefox.exe
• Now double click on a new Firefox.exe
• A portable Firefox should start.

Create another one for Thunderbird

• Go back to your IDE and open the same project if it’s closed
• Modify Program.ch
• Replace ast.startFirefox(); (line 18) to ast.startThunderbird();
• Now, Save project
• Build project, make sure there’s no error
• Now go to your project debug Directory (ie. PMozilla\bin\Debug)
• You should see PMozilla.exe
• Copy this file and paste it in your portable thunderbird directory. Put it outside directory containing thunderbird.exe
• Rename PMozilla.exe to Thunderbird.exe
• Now double click on a new Thunderbird.exe
• A portable Thunderbird should start.

At some instance, you were browsing Internet elsewhere and wishing you could have your version of firefox (installed at home?) with all your settings at that time so you could do what you ‘d want to do with the browser or just want to use it in the way you were used to be.

OK, there are some guys out there made it possible by recompile or rebuild firefox into a portable version by making a few modifications to the original software. However they are not officially available through Mozilla website. I guess a lot of people are happy with it, but there might be “minority people” would preferred the version downloaded from official vendor (Mozilla) like myself.

“minority people”! I’d like to welcome you to this blog and have a read on “Do It Your own” article. It is possible to make your own portable version and it is very simple to get it done.

Did I say “simple”? Yes it is, and here is how.

Below instruction is basically for Windows users.
Linux users, I am sure you can translate this instruction into a linux a version.

Setting it up

• First, download a copy of firefox from http://getfirefox.com
• Install it to your computer as per normal
• Complete the install with default wizard prompted
• Create these foldersC:\Portables\Mozilla\Firefox
  C:\Portables\Mozilla\_profiles\firefox
  
• Go to your firefox installed directory
  (ie. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox)
• Select all files (Ctrl + A) and Copy (Ctrl + C)
• Paste them in C:\Portables\Mozilla\Firefox
• Now open Notepad
• Paste the following lineSTART Firefox\firefox.exe -profile _profiles\firefox
• Save as Firefox.cmd into C:\Portables\Mozilla directory
• Done!
• Now take a deep breath to release your concentration before you start your new fresh portable firefox…
• Double click on Firefox.cmd and enjoy

You will notice all your thunderbird profile and inboxes will be saved under C:\Portables\Mozilla\_profiles\firefox folder

Bring it with you

• Get yourself a USB Flash Disk or similar. I personally called it PDD (Portable Disk Drive)
• Copy entire Portables folder (created in previous step) from your C: drive to your PDD
• Use it anywhere by double click on Firefox.cmd
• Your Firefox profile and inboxes will be loaded from [drive_letter]:portables\Mozilla\_profiles\firefox where drive_letter is your PDD drive ( eg. F: )

The installed version of firefox is not needed anymore, you can now uninstall it from your computer and forget about it.