Teknovis

I just discovered two great new ways of using the mouse wheel in Firefox besides scrolling!

• Clicking the mouse wheel while the cursor is over a link opens the link in a new tab! That is great, because I normally right click on links, and then select Open Link in New Tab.
• Clicking the mouse wheel while the cursor is over a tab will close that tab! This is very useful for me, because I changed the location of the close tab button as described in Browser.tabs.closeButtons.

For more Firefox mouse tips see Mouse tips!

Tags: Firefox

I discovered some really great new ways to use new tabs and windows in Firefox this week!

I normally like to use a separate window for each web site or topic that I am viewing, and multiple tabs within each window. For example I might use one window for my web mail containing a tab for each web mail account, another window for my favourite news web site containing a tab for each story that I want to read, and another window for something that I am researching containing a tab for each relevant article.

However, sometimes I open tabs in the wrong window and I need to move them to another window. There are two ways of doing this depending on what is required:

• To copy an existing tab to a new window simply drag the tab to the New Window icon in the toolbar
• To copy an existing tab to an existing window drag the tab to the window’s Taskbar Button (without releasing the mouse), wait for the existing window to gain focus, and then drag the tab to the New Tab icon in the toolbar (or to the address bar to replace an existing tab)

I also came across a Firefox add-on called Tab To Window that allows users to move existing tabs to new windows. I think that the advantage of using the add-on is that the tab history is also transferred to the new window.

Tags: Firefox

I remember that when I first read that Firefox was going to introduce a spell check option I thought that it was a bad idea because it was just unnecessary bloat. Now I use the spell check feature all the time, and I think that it was one of the best enhancements ever!

I have installed several dictionaries from Dictionaries & Language Packs, and I normally use English (British) as my default language.

However, recently I have noticed that the spell check is not always catching all of my mistakes :( Sometimes, if I change language to another, and then revert back to English (British) it correctly identifies the misspelt words. However, this does not always work :(

I do not know why this is happening, but it has caused me to edit a number of my posts to correct the spellings :o It is really annoying!

Since I am writing about the spell check in Firefox I will also highlight a really useful tip! Firefox does not by default spell check text in text fields (single line text boxes). However, this can easily be changed as described in either Quick Tip: Spell Check Firefox Text Input Fields or How to Enable Spell Check in Text Fields in Firefox.

Tags: Firefox

The latest versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu will be released tomorrow. These will be version 9.04, and they are known as Jaunty Jackalope.

I have never used Linux as my main desktop operating system before, but I have had limited experience of using it on servers. My main reason for wanting to try it is that I am getting tired of all the bugs, security weaknesses, and limited functionality of Windows. My reasons for choosing Ubuntu or Kubuntu are that they both come ready for use, and I know that they are configured securely! So I think that now is a great time to try them!

My initial plan is to install both operating systems on my computer using VMware. I will then start using them as my main operating systems until I can decide which I prefer. At that stage I might format my hard disk, and reinstall ;) The main applications that I will need are:

• Thunderbird
• Firefox
• Word Processor (OpenOffice)
• Spreadsheets (OpenOffice)
• Presentations (OpenOffice)
• PDF Viewer (No preference)
• Skype
• Java (JRE and JDK)
• Eclipse
• Text editor (No preference)
• ZIP compressor/decompresser (No preference)

My understanding is that the main difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu is the window managers that they use (GNOME versus KDE). However, reading the documentation they both seem to come with different application sets. This is confusing me slightly. I am also not clear why they both need to reinvent the browser!

Hopefully, all will become clear over the following weeks ;) I will keep writing about my progress here!

Tags: Eclipse, Firefox, GNOME, Java, KDE, Kubuntu, OpenOffice, Skype, Thunderbird, Ubuntu, VMware

News about the latest security issue in Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer has made it into mainstream media, such as Security alert over Internet Explorer and Serious security flaw found in IE. More details about the security issue can be read in MS issues brown alert over unpatched IE 7 flaw and Microsoft issues emergency patch warning for IE.

I think it is great that users are being encouraged to switch to other browsers! Internet Explorer has been far too dominant for too long. I think that this caused browser innovation to be stifled.

It is times like this that make me feel happy to use Firefox :) Of course, I am not naive enough to believe that it never suffers from security issues!

Tags: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft

Google published the Zeitgeist 2008 earlier this week. This shows the most popular searches on Google during 2008.

The results are broken down into separate results for each country, which is probably more useful than the overall results. One of the interesting things that I noticed is that the term Google is in the top 10 in many countries! I do not know why people search for this using Google, but my guess is that these people are not searching directly on the Google webpage. For example, I have Firefox configured so that I can type my Google search terms directly into the address bar.

It is also very interesting to see that certain terms that are directly related to well known websites, such as YouTube, appear in all of the EU results. Yet nearly all of the EU results have terms that are specific to the country or language. I do not recognise a lot of these ones!

The most popular search terms in Ireland were:

1. Bebo
2. Youtube
3. Hotmail
4. Yahoo
5. Google
6. Games
7. You tube
8. News
9. Map
10. gmail

Unfortunately, none of these search terms relate to Irish websites :(

The fastest rising search terms in Ireland were:

1. Facebook
2. utube
3. google maps
4. Youtube
5. Nasza klasa
6. Wiki
7. RTE
8. Maps
9. Irish Times
10. Yahoo! mail

Perhaps the most interesting search term on this list is for the Polish social networking website Nasza-Klasa. (This is the most popular search term in Poland.)

There is also an interesting observation about the list of most popular politicians in Ireland in Politician Declan Ganley more popular than Bertie says Google.

More details about the popular search terms in Ireland can be read in “Sarah Palin” the most searched query on Google. Unfortunately, Ireland is not included in the Google Zeitgeist page, and I am unable to find the official source!

The results presented by Google have been filtered to remove terms related to adult searches. I recall hearing that pornography related searches are by far the most popular. However, it seems that Google did not get the filtering totally right this time for the UK results. The original list (see Palin beats Obama in Google’s ‘zeitgeist’ rankings or 2008 Year-End Zeitgeist Around the World until the mistake is noticed) contained the term cam4 under the Fastest Rising category. Let me say that cam4 is certainly not suitable for viewing in work :o For more about this see Ooops, Google Zeitgeist lists a porn site.

Tags: Austria, Belgium, cam4, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Firefox, France, Germany, Google, Ireland, Italy, Nasza-Klasa, Netherlands, Poland, Pornography, Spain, Sweden, UK, YouTube