Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

Taken from Disable Smart Location Bar (Awesome Bar)

Mozilla Firefox 3 includes a new feature called the Smart Location Bar, also referred to as the Awesome Bar, that allows you to quickly access previously visited sites. While some will find this feature to be extremely helpful in saving time, others may prefer not to use it. Follow the steps below to disable the Smart Location Bar (Awesome Bar) in Firefox 3.

1. Type (or copy and paste) "about:config" without quotes into the address bar and press enter.
2. If you agree to the warranty message, click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
3. Type (or copy and paste) "browser.urlbar.maxRichResults" without quotes into the filter bar and press enter.
4. Double click on the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults listing that appears.
5. Delete the current value and replace it with the number "0" without quotes.
6. Click ok.

Songbird another media player/organiser you can download.

So why bother with this one, like I did? It's another open-source cross-platform Mozilla application. That means you get a basic application and all sorts of add-ons to customise it with (for example, I had to add System tray support in order to  minimise the app to the system tray). This one is focussed on web browsing to support downloads and such. However, I can view a shoutcast or other page directly within it, which is cute.

It's only version 0.7.0rc2 which means that it's still "pre-release beta" really. Still a bit buggy. I already reported a problem with one of the menus (see this screenshot) and for a while I lost the folder bar down the left and couldn't find the library, but it turned up again...

I've given up on Internet Explorer / Maxthon and migrated to Firefox.

Why did I finally give up on Maxthon? Partly because since I discovered YouTube, I found that I.E./Maxthon wouldn't show the flash films (and other media) properly, and Firefox would. Also, I'm still planning on migrating properly to Linux at some future date.

What had been holding me back was the same thing that held me back from moving from The Bat e-mail client to Thunderbird - functionality. However, I made the same mistake I made before. Firefox by itself is simple and unembellished. What you have to do is add extensions to get what you want. These are the ones I've found for my requirements

Enabled Extensions: [20]

• All-in-One Sidebar 0.7.1
• DiggiDig 0.43
• DOM Inspector 1.8.1.3
• Find Toolbar Tweaks 1.1.1
• Firebug 1.05
• fireform 0.4
• MetaTags 2.3.5.2
• MinimizeToTray 0.0.1.2006102615+
• MR Tech Local Install 5.3.2.3
• Password Exporter 1.0.6
• PasswordMaker 1.6.1
• PDF Download 0.8
• Preferences Mover 1.0
• Smart Link 1.2
• Smiley Xtra 4.1.1
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.5.2
• Talkback 2.0.0.3
• Tiny Menu 1.4.3
• UI Tweaker (Formerly Toolbar Cleanup) 1.7.0
• Update Bookmark 0.0.4.1

Disabled Extensions: [3]

Total Extensions: 23

Cool extensions are TAB MIX PLUS (which sorts out opening new tabs and things), SMILEY EXTRA (which allows you to insert icons and graphic smilies from an online database) and UPDATE BOOKMARK (which allows you to update directly the URL of a selected bookmark by the current page).

The later was important because that was how I read web comics - I'll load the last page I've bookmarked, read one or more pages, and then update that bookmark with the current page. It means the next time I use that bookmark, I'll return to where I left off. Simple things, but they make the difference.

Also, Firefox has a built-in password manager. No more Roboform!