I thought I had found my answer in Tab Mix Plus - TMP allows you to set auto-refresh times for each tab but for some inexplicable reason, it refuses to work in Google Reader!

Anyone have any solutions to this conundrum? Or does anyone else know of a script that can reload certain Firefox tabs and leave the others alone?

Have you ever considered that Google perhaps looks a little bare, like Mother Hubbard's cupboard? Well, with the use of a Stylish script, Firefox users can now change the background colour of the Google homepage. Not only do you get a new background colour but the Google logo also reflects back on itself!

The dark blue colour which I have chosen also makes the Google logo look a lot brighter and a lot more sharper.

The only drawback is that it doesn't seem to work on the Google IG personalised page.

I really like it - aesthetic candy for the eyes! But no doubt, knowing my restless nature, I'll change it back after a few days......

I am a total fanatic about speed. I want computer / internet things to go fast. To quote Top Gun, "I feel the need, the need for speed!".

Nothing aggravates me more than something going as slow as a 56k modem. Since I have DSL broadband, I figure it isn't asking much for my Firefox browser to open within the next century or for Gmail to load before it gets out of beta. So I am constantly looking for hacks and tweaks to make things go faster. I am constantly tweaking the Windows Registry to disable non-essentials and to make other things go faster. When I re-boot the computer, I am sitting there with a stop-watch timing how long it takes for the PC to re-boot fully.

As a result, I have noticed the Windows OS speeding up more but three programs are still refusing to speed up for me - Firefox, Gmail and Microsoft Word (Word being the biggest offender). But I have found a few interesting tips that have helped to a certain degree :

Firefox : strip down all non-essential extensions first of all, including any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts. This includes anything that has no real practical use but only makes the browser look pretty (such as Color Tabs). Once that's done, right-click on the Firefox shortcut on your PC desktop and in the target box (where it says "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"), put /prefetch:1 at the end to now make the link "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" /prefetch:1 . What does this do? It makes the Windows operating system cache the Firefox browser to make it open faster (Windows normally does this with Internet Explorer so you're basically switching it around so Windows does it with Firefox instead). You will need to open and close Firefox a few times though to see any change but eventually I HAVE noticed Firefox speeding up slightly.

I also found this which is a tweak to the about:config browser feature. I did what the author suggested and nothing appears to be going wrong as a result!

Another thing which has helped is uninstalling any unnecessary toolbars and browser buttons. So choose your one favourite toolbar (mine is the irreplaceable Google Toolbar) and disable the rest. I strongly recommend avoiding the Yahoo toolbar which in my opinion is bloated and not as flexible as the Google Toolbar.

Remove any buttons from your browser which you don't need (right-click on the bar and choose "customise"). I eventually managed to get everything I needed onto one bar and the difference in speed is noticable. The appearance of the browser is also nicer and sleeker. Less really is more.

Gmail : This is a tough one which has annoyed me for ages. I love Gmail but its loading speed is embarrassingly long. But some things I have picked up in my speed quest. In the "settings", choose 25 conversations for your main view (you can choose to have up to 100 conversations in your main view which REALLY slows things down). Disable any unnecessary Greasemonkey scripts and any other unnecessary features in the Gmail settings. Install the Better Gmail extension and in the options, remove the invitation box (remove the labels box too if you feel you don't need it). The key is to not give Gmail too much to load up and to strip it down to the bare minimum that you need. Even with these changes though, it COULD be a lot faster.

Microsoft Word : I have NOT found anything about speeding up MS Word. If anyone can provide any tips on how to make MS Word open faster and load "doc" files faster, I would be grateful. I use MS Word a lot and so far it is really annoying me when it can take up to 15 seconds to open a document (which might not sound a lot but you sit at your PC for 15 seconds and you'll realise quickly what I mean). At times I am seriously tempted to install Open Office which does the same job as MS Office and is free.

Oh and before I forget, the award for the slowest installation ever goes to iTunes. I installed the upgrade to iTunes yesterday evening and it took a staggering 16 minutes to upgrade an already-existing program. It refreshed "registered components" 6 times, removed "security features" 5 times and by the time it announced to great fanfare that it was finished, I was blinking unbelievably at the PC clock, trying to work out if I had got the 16 minutes time wrong. But nope, it started at 21.41 and ended at 21.57. Then when I opened iTunes, I couldn't see any difference between that version and the last version!

Any other speed freaks here with tips on making the computer go faster? Put them in the comments!

Power users of Google Reader rejoice! Someone has finally grown tired of waiting for Google to get its act together and has written a Greasemonkey script putting a search box in Google Reader.

Of course to have Greasemonkey, you need to have the Firefox browser. Then just download the script and refresh your Reader page.

I wonder what millenium Google will finally bring out their own official search engine for Reader?

Bookmarking websites takes up quite a bit of my day as I do a lot of research for the freelance writing assignments that I take on. So I often find myself bookmarking 30, 40...maybe even 50 sites in one day if they are relevant to what I am working on. So when my Firefox browser refused to let me bookmark anything today (and would crash if I persisted) then I knew I had a big problem on my hands.

It was giving me an error message saying that there was an "app incompatibility" and enquiries on the Mozilla Firefox user forum were no use (it suggested deleting the "localstore.rdf" file in the profile which may be corrupted). So on a whim (and rapidly running out of ideas), I decided to deactivate the "Add Bookmark Here" extension and see what happened. The problem immediately went away and bookmarks started being saved again. So there's your culprit. :-(

First the Skype extension and now this - two of my favourite Firefox extensions down the tubes! What's next? Please Lord, not the Google Toolbar or the "copy plain text" extension! Mercy please!

For months now I have been testing the German beta version of Firefox's eBay extension. I have been extremely impressed by its stability and features and it has rapidly become one of my "must-have" extensions. I buy (and sell to a lesser extent) on eBay all the time and that extension is extremely handy. You get a pop-up notification when you have been outbid, when the auction is about to end and much more.

Now it seems that the extension has come out of beta as eBay is now advertising it. I can only find the British version and the German version. If anyone can find a US version, please post the link here.

If you use eBay and Firefox, this extension is a must-have.

** This blog post has been edited since it was first published earlier today **

update : 13.25 - after discussing the issue further with Peter Kalmstrom, he has made me realise that I am confusing the toolbar with the extension. So I have updated the post accordingly. Apologies for the confusion.

update : 14.05 - it appears I may have to uninstall the extension! After 15 minutes of running, my Firefox browser is hovering around 50% of CPU usage (at one point, it shot up to 81%!). It hasn't been like this since I uninstalled the toolbar. I have informed Peter at Skype and he is looking into the situation. I'll update the blog post if I learn anything new.


I previously commented that my Firefox browser was crashing due to a crappy Skype toolbar and so I had to uninstall it to rescue my Fox. It looks like the blog post quickly came to the attention of the right people because this morning, I received a Skype chat message from Peter Kalmstrom who is the Skype manager for toolbars. He and the German Skype forum moderator, Claudius Henrichs, both informed me that the Skype toolbar is not a Firefox feature that automatically updates and that you have to manually update it yourself. Not manually updating the Skype toolbar, it appears, can cause some compatibility problems!

It seems you can update the toolbar in the following ways :

1. From the menu of the toolbar - there is an option there to check for newer versions.

2. By downloading and installing the latest version from the website.


This begs the question why the Skype toolbar is not automatically updated by Firefox (just like most other FF features). I mean, if you're busy, who remembers on a regular basis to update everything? Mr Kalmstrom replied that this is because "we have not done it strictly according to the FireFox framework". OK but why is this fact not widely advertised on the Skype website / forum? I wonder how many Skype users uninstalled the toolbar in disgust, not realising that the problems they were experiencing could easily be removed by manually updating the toolbar? If you don't openly advertise this issue then no-one will ever know - all it takes is a short message on the Skype download page, something along the lines of "please be aware that when you upgrade your Skype program, it's a good idea to upgrade the toolbar too". One sentence that could remove headaches from a lot of annoyed Skype toolbar / Firefox users!

So if your Skype toolbar is playing up, you can update it using one of the two methods outlined above. Or instead you can install the alternative Skype Firefox extension. If you would prefer the extension, here's what to do. I did the following and it appears to be OK so far....(fingers crossed).

1. Download the latest version of Skype from the Skype website.

2. When it is downloaded, run the "Skypesetup.exe" file. The following window will open. Click on "options"



3. Then this next window will open. Make sure the box "Install Skype Plugin for Mozilla Firefox" is ticked (or the Internet Exploder one if you use that.....uuurgh!). Then click "install".




4. The Skype program will then be re-installed on your computer along with the current version of the Firefox extension. But a warning - doing this install will require a re-boot of your computer! So make sure you're not in the middle of anything important when you're doing this!


Kudos to Skype for taking the time and effort to help me out with this toolbar issue. They really do look after their users.

So if your Firefox is doing a dying swan act everytime you open it (and you also have the Skype toolbar), you now know who the culprit is!

I am really pissed off because that was one of my favourite extensions!

The other day I realised that I hadn't updated the Portable Firefox program on my USB stick for quite some time so I went ahead and did that. It was then that I thought about installing Google Browser Sync on the portable Firefox so I can take my Firefox settings with me. But GBS stubbornly refuses to install.

GBS works fine on regular computers but on USB sticks, it kicks up a hell of a fight. First you have the battle to get it onto the USB stick in the first place (it seems impossible to download the "xpi" file directly to your computer and then drag it to the USB stick which would be the easiest solution) and when it finally gets on the USB stick, it says it won't properly install until Firefox has been re-started. When you do that, it tells you that Firefox didn't close in the first place! Several re-starts later, it sits there uninstalled as if to ask "so when are you planning on re-starting Firefox then?".

Does anyone have any clue how to make GBS work on a USB stick? If I can't get it to work, I may switch to Foxmarks.

I've spent a lot of time getting my Firefox browser just the way I want it. The last time my browser crashed and I had to re-install it, it took me months to find all my extensions again on the web. So for quite some time, I have been looking for some kind of a back-up tool to make a security copy of my Firefox profile. Today I found it.

The Firefox Extension Backup Extension (FEBE) will make a copy of your entire Firefox profile and will store it locally on your hard-drive. You can set the extension to update itself either daily, weekly or monthly at a certain day and time.

Then if the worst should ever happen, and you have to re-install Firefox (or even if you just buy a new computer) then you can load the FEBE and your Firefox profile will be re-loaded in a snap.

Perfect.

My roll of creativity continues without a hitch! Hot on the heels of re-designing this blog, I decided to finally tackle getting a HTML signature into my Gmail. Normally this is not possible but with the help of a Firefox extension, you now can. Instead of plain text in your signature, you can have an interactive linky signature instead.

First you need to install the Firefox internet browser (if you haven't done so already). Then you need to install the Firefox extension Better Gmail, which was made by Gina Trapani over at Lifehacker. Better Gmail basically takes all the other scripts that have been invented for Gmail and combines them into one extension. So if you have the same scripts installed as Greasemonkey scripts then you can remove them. This extension covers all those scripts - and more.

When the Better Gmail extension is installed, go to your settings in Gmail and in the signature section, you will now see an option which says "Allow HTML in signature". Tick that and write your HTML code inside the signature box in your Gmail settings. When finished, save everything and you're done.

One blogger suggests writing in a combination of CSS and HTML as well as enclosing everything in a table, but I disagree. I think you can get just as good results using plain HTML code. Plus it is much easier and less of a headache concentrating solely on HTML. I even managed to get a Skype call button included too!

I've been sitting here for the past few weeks wondering why my Firefox browser was slowing down so much and why it took so long to start up. I mean, Internet Explorer was going faster and when that happens then you know something is really up! But then a friend pointed out to me all the Firefox extensions I have installed. I mean, it's only 30 or so extensions, nothing to get worked up about. But he looked me in the eye and said "you want Firefox to be fast again? Then choose your best ten extensions or less and get rid of the rest!". He went on to explain that the more extensions that are installed, the longer it takes Firefox to load them all then fire up the browser. It kind of made sense when he said it that way. I suddenly felt silly having all these gizmos and gadgets built into the browser.

So I had to ditch a lot of the extensions but truth be told, most of them were crap anyway. I installed a lot of them because I was curious about them but after the initial try-out, I never used them again. So deleting a lot of them was easier than I thought.

Now I have ten or so extensions and Firefox is faster. So the moral of this story is - don't go crazy with extensions otherwise Microsoft Internet Explorer will overtake you and laugh at you on the way past. And you don't want that.

Just over a year since I promised to do it, I have finally written the Auctionbytes search plug-in for the Firefox browser. I plan to submit the plugin to "Mycroft" which is Mozilla's central website for search plug-ins. But I have also put the plug-in on my website for people to download.

Just right-click on the following link and save to your hard-drive :

http://camelotonline.net/creations/auctionbytessearchplugin.zip

Unzip the folder then place both small files in the "search plugins" folder of your Mozilla Firefox browser which is located either in a hard-drive folder called "Program Files" or "Programmes". Then re-start Firefox and drop down the menu of search engines in your top right hand corner. Auctionbytes should now be there.

Firefox users can use the plug-in to directly search the Auctionbytes archives. I have tested it thoroughly and it seems to work perfectly.

My first search plug-in! My ego is swelling to gigantic proportions right now. I am not a natural at this kind of thing - in fact it has taken almost a year of cursing and tempers to get this far. But I am hoping that now I have managed to do number one that the next ones will be much faster. I have the template so now I can alter it for other websites.