Most Essential Firefox Addons

I tried to find a useful tool so can manage my firefox addons next time i happened to Reinstall my system or set it up freshly on a new machine... something similar to what the Foxmarks can do to your bookmarks.

Till some halo heads develop it for lazy guys like me, I thought I will keep this blog so I can come here back and install it .. all from one page !

Ok Here is Mozilla Firefox to install

These are my list of Favourite Addons



1. Foxmarks : Manage and synchronise your bookmarks effortlessly. Get it here
2. AdBlockPlus : these nasty Ads may bring in Trojans and viruses too. Block all Ads
3. BetterFlickr : I spend lot of time in Flickr so I need this :)
4. ColourZilla: Helpful to pick up colours from the webpage. Very useful for web designer . Get it here
5. Download Statusbar : This is cool stuff, You dont need Ctrl+J to know how ur download is progressing. Get it here
6. FireFTP: Cool FTP program that acn run from firefox itself. 99% working for me ..get it here
7. FireShot: screen capture addon. Capture add text and markings upload or email .. One of the most useful stuff ! Download
8. FoxClocks: Get world timing. sits on status bar . Get it here
9. Web Developer: Check where ur DIVs have gone wrong! Download from here
10. GreaseMonkey: No Monkey Business here

There are lot more stuff which can help you enable mail clients to music programs, Grease Monkey, Skype, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, SeoQuake, .NET , JAVA, stuff that you need to get later

Better Keep firefox light and dont add unnecesary stuff

Offline messages on Gtalk !

Google talk finally has offline messages !
i dont know why it took them so long for that

Just type to ur offline friends
they ill get at the next login.
similar to yahoo.
and with the advantage that this one will have it in ur mailbox too in hte chats section if u have enabled it.

I had lost some offlines of yahoo since i hadnt enabled hte archiving and messener crash/windows carash those occured sometimes durng hte startup of system.

its better coz they are archived in hte mailbox . safe and quiet.

"Better late than never".

Gtalk - Know where to hide ! ? ! ? !!

Google is known for making thigs easyand simple.
But one thing i have to say about hteir messenger.
Gtalk was designed for voice chat may be.
But with no hiding feature , you are absolutely in NOWHERE TO RUN - NOWHERE TO HIDE situation.
Just cant hide. Everytime u acces ur gmail, everyone knows you are online.

At times you really need to hide. the way out: logout of Gmail.
C'mon, talk about somthing practical !
:)

A step too far....

This was when some day before christmas this year. I tried on a new stuff. My goal was to send a new greeting card I did in Flash 8 to my friends. Last time I had sent them some images with my name hardcoded and got few requests, to remove my name from it so that they could forward it. So I had my idea so that anyone could reuse it.This time i wanted to implement this in my flash card.

So good of me, the Saint Intruder ?? Not really , that is just a marketing tool. I just want some publicity to my website. nothing I would gain from it though, but I love getting new visitors from places far and even mail :)

As ActiveX is not supported in email, it was virtualy impossible. But I broke through with help fo the HTML forms. I added a new page to my site www.mohanraj.net/greetings where I had an input form. You can enter your mail ID and your friends ID name and all stuff there, and it sends a mail to your friend with a 'click here to view your card'. This was not the one I wanted. Ideally I wanted my card there. The flashy one. BUt there was no way before me as flash was not loaded in email. This may be due to the security issues.


When your friend clicks in the link in email, it takes them to the greetings display page in my website (done in ASP)which also recieves the info about you and your friend to whom you have sent it. That is displayed in the greeting card.

Then you have a greeting card sent from your mail ID to you friends, where you have his/her and yours name dancing its ... so beautifully engraved.

oh... what a nice story. But this was not the thing that happened in hte real world.
I had a few mistakes from My part. May be I went too far adead of time to implement the Flash 8 based greeting card.

Problem no 1
I made use of all the filters and effects in flash 8. With the beautiful dropshadow and glow effects that are in no way visible , except in flash player 8, people without it would see just a blan red rectangle ! If I had published for flash player 7 or lower, they would have atleast seen their name and the greetings wordings !

And to add to that, it will take some time to load

Problem no 2
I made use of the form tags in hte HTML email I sent. If the user had seen it through an email client like MS Outlook or Outlook Epress or Mozilla Thunderbird,they wont be able to see the name from whom they had recieved the card. But those are present in the mail.

And more funny thing is , if they had disabled HTML mail or viewed the email in plain text mode, they could never see that! the mail looks like this :

Hello John Smith


Please do ensure that you have Macromedia Flash Player 8 installed! You
can get it from www.macromedia.com/go/getflash

- Mohan


Had I placed some alt text for the click ehre image, it would have been sensible!

Problem no 3
I had set the mail settings so that the email is recieved from hte sender directly, say you@yahoo.com send the mail to me@hotmail.com , the mail will be send as such. But it is using a mail server thats not from Yahoo.com !. So wat ? the mail will be treated as Junk by some, others like rediffmail, just ont accept it. As a result you cant send the mail to your friend@rediffmail.com. and your friend@yahoo.com will see the message, if he has a habit of seeing what all are there in the junkbox before he deletes it !


So there is still a long way to go to implement my version of flash card.
Is there anything to be taken as a Plus point in this ?
I dont feel so.

My sincere appologies to all of you whom i sent this.
Forgive me :D

Lets hope things will get beter by the New yr. Watch for it.

I promise

- No flash8
- No plain text email
- No mail server problem

for the new year edition

Launched !

Its done !

Check THIS out

The earth is being shot at ! Now you are in the firing range. where ever you be.

This is my vision on Google Earth.
Lots of controvorsies. Its good or bad or ugly, doesnt matter. you can never stop technology. See the case of comupters, the mobile phones, cable TV, all were the same. Google this time brings another version of this.

The massiveness of our Earth was nothing that you have ever thought of, if you might have thought it then too, I'm sure you will realise it only when you see GE.

I spent a lot of time 'browsing the earth'. Navigation, as always with Google was so easy. And with the complete information avaialable, as presently in any state of US, Best thing I found was you just need hte address to find out the place. Just imagine how easy it would be when you are planning a trip to a place for the first itme. You can pin point the shops , can plan your stay, even show the cabbies the shortest way!. Thats ewhere it is going to reach.

Its really necessary when u are in some cities like Chennai, where the autowallas will take you round and again.

And if you dont have the address, go through the streets and find it out yourself ! :)

The Negetives : Terror attack. But I dont think banning GE will help this. You can get a good map, well enough for you to make a plan, and of course you are assumed to know your own targets for such an attack.

I dont think anything like that will be able to stop Google. Afterall we are familiar with their marketing skills. And those who oppose this move are all politicians.

Rediscovering Opera

Yes.. the Old lady singing.

If u said that, i will kill you. Its Opera .. the Fastest Browser, that i am taking about.

I was using Firefox for some time now. You can always feel the weight of hte browser.. the scroling make us feel as if u were pulling the heavy cart, and there was of course the delay. The time taken for rendering. I donno if my hardware has to do much about that.

Recently I came back to opera. I felt the pace.. some effect that the Guyz in the TATA Safari Ad. tried to say. It is really fast, and that is the charm of the browser. I was rediscovering somthing.

Occasionally youu may need some tables to appear or scripts to run fine. So a Switch to IE is always necessary. Still, IE Opera and Firefox, they are different . None can ever be same, and Ever be an Opera.

Google TALK

FAST - thats wat it is.

strange thing ! i just can't say when i found this. i was really stunned.

1. I kept it open .. the Talk stuff..
2. typed TH .. to invite a friend of mine in the search window. The search window has the typical google dropdown of ur addresslist. The gmail account wasn't there.

3. I did ALT TAB where the Firefox had the gmail opened. i went to Contacts and added the gmail address there.

4. Again pressed ALT tab.

5. Clicked on search. Typed T... H.. and there came the name ! in the window.
the time may be 2 sec. max the data was retrevied !!!

is ther anything faster online ???
i cant say can u ??

Browsers ! I hate them

Its weird.. You do people use different browsers.. Stick on to IE guys.. you know how tough it is for us web developers to deal with these.

Ok you'll say its IE isn't safe or we don't want Microsoft's @@#$#%# !!!.

I agree. But that's the way things are, Then we have to take another option.. Netscape?? Firefox ?? Opera ??? Which one??

I like opera.. Its so user friendly but I need to give height to very cell I draw else my site will be hanging from the top of the browser.

so what next ?? The good old Netscape ???? Well may be, but it looks at website in totally different way. And if we need the extra boosted JavaScript to run, NS may make u run 100 times around your computer table scratching your head to figure out whats wrong !

I had a big problem with the frames... you will say its an extinct variety. But frames are pretty handy. All you should know is when and where to use them.

the problem is I made a page of 2 frames - top and bottom.
and I needed the pages in both frames to align centrally. Everything went well till the scrollbars came. I dint want the top frame to bear them. And with it went my alignment..
nothing worked.. Instead of 20 pixels as the difference we saw in screen shot, it needed about 80 px for IE to set it right. Firefox needed something else.

well , Netscape.. I don't use it. I had the 7.01 which made me sit for 2 days and figure out what was wrong in the XML that I used to load data in Flash.

NO idea.. It was working fine in each and every browser.. Even in opera ! NS says they support all kind of XML (Most kind.. UTF Unicode....)
couldnot figure out. But the same worked when I upgraded to 7.2 . Wired , is it!!!

I have a hope on Firefox. Its coming up well. All they need is to pull back the NS and try more on FF. So we can get it down to 3 - Opera, Firefox and IE.

Well now its a clear choice between 2 - FF and IE. I don't think Opera has lot of fans like me or the FF fans.

the future??? I heard IE 7 wont be available for free... may be bundled with OS. If so, its way down to MS to decide the future of IE and I don't think it will be as good as what it is now.

Now u get it.. Its Firefox that wins.. And we get finally to a Universal Browser !!1

Cheers!!!!!!
and Of course ..atleast in my dreams !

Well Here is a "Photoshop" for Icon making !

The search for hte best icon maker is still going on. But I feel this is more than enough.

Just think of a package that can make u all sorts of icon files..
- from 16x16 to 64x64 or more ..
- monochrome to 32bit with Alpha for XP
- All painting tools
- Keyboard Shortcuts similar to photoshop
- Easy interface
- And Free !

check the ICONOMAKER 1.0 ... grab a copy before they release the paid version and pull back all the older.

This is really a GEM!
http://www.aha-soft.com/iconomaker/

Of course there are some scope for improvements.
One that I noted was, htere was no option to import an image. Even if u can get the effects, and u can import from clipboard by the traditional "copy-paste", this one seriously lack an "import from image" option.

Well, I missed the IconLover from the same place.. maybe its more that what i expected. Le me check how this one goes!
I wish i cud pay them, somday for their efforts.
Keep up the great work!