Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with web and firefox

Alternative Browsers

bluelight — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:59:11 -0800

What superior/alternative web browsers to Firefox do you use? I have been using firefox with NoScript and most cookies disabled. When it gets too annoying to enable scripts and cookies, I switch over to Internet Explorer (non-updated version). I really dislike using IE but lately, Firefox has been crashing a LOT.

I was wondering if you had any good experiences with other web browsers such as Safari, Chrome, etc. I plan on keeping firefox but I'd like to explore other options.

I use a PC running Windows XP.

Thanks!

Help in rendering Gmail 'Last Accounty Activity' useless.

passtehbrainz — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:19:08 -0800

Automatically login / logout of Gmail at a specified interval As you know, gmail lists the latest activity at the bottom of the page, and shows the last few ip's and the times they logged in by clicking details.

I need to 'fool' this log, by automating logging in, and logging out at a specified interval. Some ideas would be through a firefox extension, applescript, a mouse clicking recording program, etc, but I haven't found any such solution.

Without going into details, I need to render the gmail activity log useless.

Firefox Frustration

chrisalbon — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:47:59 -0800

WebDesignFilter: Why is Firefox resizing my images? My site displays a random image to visitors in the top right corner. When I view the image in IE (in Windows) or Opera (in OSX) the image displays correctly. However, when I view the image in Firefox (in OSX), it is smaller (and therefore blurry).

You can see the problem by following these steps:

1. Visit the homepage: http://warandhealth.com/.

2. If you are in Firefox, the image in the top right is resized (slightly smaller) than it should be. If you are not in Firefox, the image is displayed correctly.

3. If in Firefox, right click on the image and select "View Image". This displays you the non-resized image.

4. Click the back arrow navigation bar.

5. Click the forward arrow in the navigation bar. Now are seeing the resized image.

6. Click on the image once and firefox will display the image in the correct dimensions.

It does not matter if I specify the image dimensions in CSS or even html, Firefox always resizes the image.

Why is this? How can I make firefox display the image correctly?

Marquee Tag 2.0

gum — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:59:30 -0800

What do web designers call the slideshowy flipbook of stories that appears in the upper left corner of these news websites? Are there effective ways to block or replace these (browser plugins, Greasemonkey scripts, etc.)?

Firefox update hosed my No Squint

mikeand1 — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:52:36 -0800

[Firefox Filter] The latest Firefox update seems to have hosed my No Squint add on. How to repair? I rely heavily on the No Squint add on. Unfortunately, when I updated to Firefox 3.0.4 today, No Squint stopped working. In fact, trying to manage the add on from the Options window causes the window to freeze.

Is there any way I can revert to the previous version of Firefox, preferably without having to re-do everything?

Thanks

Retaining Firefox as default web browser

ozred — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:49:47 -0800

Firstly I am elderly,and not computer experienced..I have set Firefox as my default web browser,and yet I constantly receive messages from Firefox saying they are no longer my default. Please in simple terms could someone advise how I can set Firefox without interruption.Thank you

Help, visited messages within Gmail won't change colors.

debu — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:05:57 -0800

I have Firefox 3 color options set so that visited links turn a dark Grey when clicked, every site seems to work with this but the sender and subject lines in Gmail.. What's strange is the links on the left hand side of the Gmail page (Inbox, starred, sent mail, drafts, etc ) go dark when clicked on. Does anyone know if Google uses some special CSS or something on the right hand side, can this be overridden so the visited links will turn the Grey I have checked?

Firefox extension for long URLs?

neustile — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:29:14 -0800

Is there a Firefox extension that will let me edit long URLs on multiple lines, or do I have to keep editing them in text editors and copying them over? I work with some web services that have huge URLs. Scrolling horizontally in the URL field is a nightmare, especially when everything looks the same. I currently compose my testing URLs in a text editor and copy them over, but it would be nice if I could do it in the browser. I'm looking for something that expands the URL field to multiple lines and then it'll parse out tabs and newlines when I finish the request.

Where does autofill come from?

M Edward — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:38:34 -0800

Firefox Filter: Is there any way to view the autofill lists outside of Firefox? Where does Firefox store the autofill information? Like previous google searches? Is there a way to view them with a text editor?

I am looking for something I googled a long time ago but going through the entire history of my searches line-by-line with only 4 at a time showing is driving me batty.

How does one commission a Firefox Extension/ Greasemonkey script?

Smarson — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:04:11 -0800

How does one go about hiring someone to create a specific Greasemonkey script or Firefox extension for them? As per a previous post, I'm in the market for a web browser with gray-scaling abilities (a la ghostzilla). Ghostfox wasn't the answer and searching through numerous Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox extensions yielded nada. So how does one go about commissioning a script or extension from the developer community? Anyone have experience contracting or being contracted to work on a such a project? What kind of fee is associated with this kind of labor? Does it matter that I would want this script/extension to be available to everyone?

Mac or Firefox solution to download local copies of web sites?

dripdripdrop — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:12:10 -0800

I'm looking for Mac OSX software or a Firefox plug-in that will allow me to create local copies of web sites to be viewed later. I will be without web access for about a week and I want to do some work on few php and css projects. To do so, I will need to have tutorials handy. I'd like something for the Mac that will allow me to download a page including all graphics and download all the pages it links to (1 to 2 links deep).

Cant see preview thumbs with FireFox or IE!

slowtree — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:14:48 -0800

Unable to view preview pictures on webpages I recently noticed that on some web sites that have preview thumbs like iGoogles "add stuff to your home page" i can not see the previewed thumbs, only the text link and add it now buttons. I have noticed this on other websites as well. This seems to be like this on both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I reinstalled Java and have flash installed as well. but no go. What else should I check?

Mac right-click problems with firefox 2.0

BigBrownBear — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 11:53:10 -0800

Mac right-click problems with firefox 2.0 I used to be able to open links in a new tab by holding down the mouse button on my mac mini. Since i upgraded this feature seems to have disappeared. is there a way to make it come back?

Viva la web revolucion!

Smarson — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:23:44 -0800

What is this web revolution I see before me? Over the course of the past year I have had a lot of time to surf the web and have come to the conclusion that a new era of web based communication is unfolding before my very eyes. It started when I stumbled across Lifehacker.com, which showed me a whole new side of the internet that I had never conceived of. From that point I began to discover websites that re-oriented the way I've come view information creation, distribution, and storage (Ask Metafilter being one of those discoveries). Some examples of websites I lump into this category are:

*Del.icio.us
*Metafilter
*Ask Metafilter
*Lifehacker
*Wikipedia
*Firefox
*Google (and it's all it's applications including Gmail and Gcal)
*Flickr
*Blogger/Wordpress/etc.
*Bloglines

The list goes on and on and is constantly growing (thanks largely to Lifehacker discoveries). Obviously Google and Wikipedia were known to me prior to my new found web exploration, but only as straight forward tools. It's only in the last 8 months that I've come to understand the potential of their design (e.g. Google Map Mash-ups and wiki-technology as a whole).

Among the above listed websites and others I identify in my "web revolution," I see common themes. The use of tagging is widely present as well as the concept of the blog (In reality Lifehacker and Metafilter/Ask Metafilter are just widely popular blogs with no single author and Flickr is essentially a collection of thousands of photo blogs). I guess even deeper than that is the theme of individual empowerment through the web. Most of these sites were not generated by large corporations (although they may later have been aquired by them), but rather created by a single individual or small group of individuals in order to address an existing need they percieved.

So my questions. Does anyone else see the watershed that I speak of, or is this normal web progression and my "revolution" is simply a personal one? If this is an actual distinct movement within the internet, does it have a name or other identifying characteristics similar or different to the ones I listed above?

Alternate Alt-Key Behaviors Drive Me Mad

Robert Angelo — Thu, 11 May 2006 07:45:31 -0800

Web page access keys are driving me crazy! How can I turn them off? I'm using Firefox on XP. I visit numerous web sites which have implemented their own accesskey shortcuts. Some of them do it the way Wikipedia does. It drives me crazy because it overrides the Windows keyboard shortcuts. I keep typing Alt-E to bring up the "Edit" menu (like I do in other Windows apps) and it takes me to the Wikipedia editing page. Arrrgh!

I understand that, for the Wikipedia, I can edit that user.js file to disable this. However, other sites also use this wiki software, and I don't want to have to do this for every site. Some other sites also implement their own accesskeys without giving me a way to turn them off.

Is there a setting in Firefox that I can set to prevent this from happening? Or maybe an extension that I can download? I tried searching at Mozilla, and I found extensions to create my own keyboard shortcuts, but that's not what I want to do -- I just want to keep the ones that are already there, without having them changed arbitrarily by whatever web site I'm visiting.

running firefox with outlook web access

yonation — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 12:51:53 -0800

is there a way to make firefox work with outlook web access, in "premium" mode? my company just switched to the incomparable outlook web access, which looks quite nice in internet explorer but gives you a shitty, feature-poor version in anything else. i want to use firefox, as IE obviously sucks (i had no idea you couldn't even right-click and save the page, for example), and it doesn't seem like there's anything inherently special about IE that would make it run better with outlook premium; just regular M$ stuff. anyone have any suggestions? familiarities with the program?

IE pukes on my page

spartacusroosevelt — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:20:36 -0800

My main page opens fine in Safari and Firefox for Win and Mac, but acts like I am trying to download a file in IE. Any suggestions?

IE doesn't display gifs, but FireFox and Safari have no problem.

Wild_Eep — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 09:35:07 -0800

WebDevFilter: Why do some gifs GIFs *not* appear in Windows/IE, but do appear in Win/FireFox Mac/Safari and Mac/FireFox? Specific example inside. The site I'm working on seems to appear just fine in 3 browsers, but not in IE for Windows. I get white boxes with red x's in them instead of the gifs I expect.

This output was given to me from an export from Quark XPress, which produced the CSS. I'm a CSS newbie (but I understand the concepts).

Google returns a boatload of results, mostly relating to making changes to the registry and deleting temporary files. Before I do anything that drastic, could I have another set of eyes look over my code?

Gullible is not in the dictionary

ludwig_van — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:56:34 -0800

I'm using FireFox 1.07 for Windows XP. Previously, when I typed "dict [word]" into the address bar, FireFox would take me to the dictionary.com definition for [word]. Now typing in the same command just takes me to the first result of a Google search for "dict [word]," the same as if I typed anything into the address bar. Recently all my Firefox bookmarks disappeared as well. I haven't updated Firefox or changed anything that I know of. What happened, and how do I restore the old functionality?

Short cut to "Printer Friendly Format" on news sites?

de void — Mon, 09 May 2005 10:17:09 -0800

I'm really tired of all the advertising and dancing crap that clutters up most news/magazine web articles. I find myself constantly searching for a "Printer Friendly Format" link so that I can read the article in a column wider than 1 inch and not paginated in such a way as to maximize ad views. Is there any utility, web site, firefox extension, something, that can take me to the "PFF" right away?

Firefox problems loading a specific website

mr_roboto — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:33:52 -0800

I'm having a strange problem with Firefox in relation to a single website. When I start the program, the site loads with no problem. I can reload the site several times, but after a few times, rather than successfully reloading, Firefox will just sit there, spinning the "loading" icon in the tab in question. This continues so long as I have this particular instance of Firefox open, but if I quit and restart the program, I can access the site with no problems. OK; the site in question is Metafilter, but I decided that this was more of a Firefox-related question than a Metafilter-related question, so I posted here. There is no similar problem in IE. I tried deleting all Metafilter cookies and logging out but neither action made a difference. No error messages or timeouts occur; the browser will sit there "loading" all day if I let it.

This is annoying the hell out of me, as I don't want to have to quit and restart my browser each time I'm trying to reload MeFi (which, as I'm sure you all know, is often).

Who's eating my Firefox cookies?

caddis — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 13:26:37 -0800

Firefox question: Why do my cookies for sites such as the Washington Post or New York Times keep disappearing? I can not say for sure, but it seems time related - if I do not visit the site in a few weeks all of a sudden it is asking for my login info. Is there some way to prevent this?

Camino runs much more slowly on my G4 667 TiBook than on the Lombard 333 Mhz Powerbook. I need a good browser.

weston — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 21:55:46 -0800

MacBrowserHell: I just updgraded from a Lombard 333 Mhz Powerbook to a G4 667 TiBook with 1GB RAM. Camino now seems to run dog-slow. And the others have their troubles... Firefox .9 has the same problems it had with .8 -- namely that periodically, it just decides to stop responding to typed urls and/or dialog boxes become permanent fixtures -- and also seems a little less responsive. IE is, well, IE, and Safari, while nice, still has its CSS and Javascript bugs. Also, I can't run it when I have to boot into 10.2.8 instead of Jaguar to do some compatibility checking.

I'm particularly grumpy because the waits have all the signs of being a rendering-related: the progress bar fills up, but then the page doesn't appear for another 30 seconds or so, and in the meanwhile keystrokes slow down, and occasionally the spinning beachball of death appears. Yet I can't imagine this is due to the change in hardware -- I've upgraded processor, processor speed, and memory.

So I'm wondering: does anyone else see this? Does anyone else recall Chimera and Firefox being truly zippy amazements, and now find them burdensome and clunky? Did I just forget to check some box appeasing the cocoa/quartz demidieties? In short, what is going on here?