FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

During the last year i expanded my plugin usage in Firefox. Some of them being really useful and some of them… well… was not even worth the time spent on installing them.

Here is my hot pick from 2009

Poster

This one is for those people who cant get their head around the classic cURL. The fact remains that there are still people who are into development/testing and doesn’t know about cURL and i’m not talking about newbies. So here is one tool that can save your day. Do any HTTP related work with this and i bet you will fall in love with this.

poster FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

Tamper Data

This lets you mess with the HTTP headers and parameters. But the best use of this i have found so far was that it can display the headers in a very neat way, that can be understood easily

 FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

Lazarus

This is a form recovery tool. I bet everyone of us has that frustrating moment after filling a form and submitting it, the data is all lost due to some insane wizardry behind the scene that we didn’t know about. Well not anymore. Lazarus helps to recover the form data that was entered and saves the frustration.

 FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

SQL Injection

Well do i need to describe what this is? In short this can run selected SQL Injection attacks on the fields on a webpage. Great tool identify similar vulnerabilities.

 FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

and last but one of my favorite -

Regular Expression Tester

Anyone who has worked on regex knows that, it would be great if they could see the regex in action on the test data, on the fly, as they are building it. This plugin is a dream come true.

 FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

Trust me you need this plugin.

For the layman, you dont need any of these plugins. But i assure you that the following is a must have for both geeks and non-geeks alike.

  1. Password Exporter
  2. ScrapBook
  3. Firefox Extension Backup Extension
  4. DeepestSender (for bloggers)

For the geeks and the web-developers here is my list –  FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

 FireFox Top 5 Plugins from 2009

The New Look and Year 2009

Phew!!! .. Yes Phew. Its the first word that i chose to start the first post of the new year. Well technically new year was almost a month ago, still from the ‘first post of the year’ point of view, its still new year. Oh crap, that line was awfully jumbled up. Hey but i dont mind that line being like that, i dont want to read through that line again and then rephrase it and make it more vivid. No i dont want to do that.

So what happened? I took my blog to the drawing board. 25th Dec ’08 christmas eve, i decide to redesign this blog. Though the previous design was very simple and required less than 3-4 hrs to come up with, this one took nearly 4 weeks. Shit! that was like a month.

Made a sketch of it on paper, then to photoshop, then back to the layout on paper, back to photoshop. I designed one layout and when i looked at the finished one, i almost puked. Then redesigned the whole thing and here it is the new look.

On paper this is how the design looked like

18012009001 300x225 The New Look and Year 2009

Then i decided to have the sidebar to the right. The first version on Photoshop looked like this and i hated it

v 1 246x300 The New Look and Year 2009

Then i struck the right note with this one.

v 2 300x292 The New Look and Year 2009

Then it was the wrestle with stylesheets and upgrading the then current SIM3.0 to this one,which i call SIM4.0. Lets talk about the changes,

1. Latest Twitter updates on the header – i basically took the HTML badge given by twitter and put the code there.

2. Sidebar will now sport the pages with a logo for each. I disabled the widget functionality of the sidebar.

3. The Footer -This is where most of the work went into. I mutated the footer to have 3 columns. Into these columns i can add the widgets. It was quite simple infact once i figured that out.

The main footer file is – footer.php. Each of the 3 columns are again separate php file. The main footer.php calls these files like this -

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/1-footer.php'); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/2-footer.php'); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/3-footer.php'); ?>

to make each of these accept widgets, this line was added -

<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar(3) ) : else : ?>

The ‘dynamic_sidebar(3)’ made it sidebar-3 in the add widgets page. It was joy when i figured this out. I know i could have referred the WordPress manuals. But then i wont get the joy of discovering things.

4. My CSS is split into two. Why? One for all the browsers and one for IE. I officially label IE as a pain. This is what i observed. An image was to the left in Firefox, but to the right in IE. “margin-left:100px” put something in the middle for Firefox and at the page boundary in Internet Explorer

Any way after all that pain, now i have the site up with the new look and it feels GREAT!!!

Happy New Year Guys…

- xxx Jerry -

Google Chrome – First Impressions

chrome 205 noshadow Google Chrome   First Impressions

What should i comment on this browser. First thing that caught my attention was the cool technology that went into this beautiful little app. Remember the days when we used IE, then Fx came along and just tripped and toppled our whole browsing experience. Fx came up with the idea of tabs, imporved browsing experience, plugins etc. etc. You name it they had it, or rather they were ready to include that in their next realease.

I feel the same when i see Chrome or Google Chrome. Its the coolest idea that we can have for a browser at this point. A browser that doesnt crash or rather does a good crash. It never affects any of your other open sessions.

(Read the Chrome story)

The best fact – its open source. That means that even my granny can get the source code and help Google imporve it or can come out with her own Hare-Rama-Rahe-Krishna Browser for the religious kind.

After the initial interations with other users over twitter. I found that people have some common issues, worries, concerns etc etc and not to mention a funny stuff too.

Prasanth a fellow Mutineer, found the shift to Chrome taking a toll on his mental heath, it was too mentally tiring for him.

Sivaprasad was able to download the online installer, but as he was sitting behing a proxy and had to authenticate the installer didnt finish what it had started. He was kind enough to send in the fix for the problem which he found here.

For all those who need a complete offline installer, i have uploaded the same in my site and is awailable for download at this link – Chrome Download. This was Allajunaki‘s idea

Interestingly Kiruba reported and error thrown by Chrome that read - “Google Chrome has encountered a problem and needs to close. Please tell Microsoft about it”. icon biggrin Google Chrome   First Impressions

Waiting for more reactions…

(first post on/using/with Chrome)

Chrome Offline installer Download

The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

How cool can it get. On the very first day at office you get to do things that you just simple love doing?

The Case : A page is displayed with a certain width in IE. But is taking the whole width in Fx … icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Sounds familiar ? They where about to tag it as an Fx bug. Wait a sec!!! That’s not a BUG in Fx. Its just the way Fx is handling things. Pop in some things i read at Joel’s blogMartian Headsets. Voila!!! all agree that its not a bug… icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!! . I’m happy, they are happy … icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Here is my simple explanation :

Its all with the implementation difference of the two browsers.

In US you drive on the right side of the road. Hence all cars are left-hand drive.

Bring the same car to UK/India where we drive on the left side of the road, things seem to be a bit mixed up. You car is not buggy nor is the law in place. Cars are always designed to place the driver towards the center of the road. in UK it has to be the right side of the car, but in US it has to be the left side. There is no way out.200px Orange McLaren F1 interior The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!

Why is there this problem? Coz all the countries doesnt have the same traffic rules. They have some basic guidelines in place and have the law built around it to match them. Simple!!!

To solve these confusions. Own a McLaren F1 car. It has a 3-seat setup, with the driver in the center. You never will have problem again. Just that you would have to be filthy rich .. icon smile The Case of a Firefox Bug!!!