I’ve been using Firefox, Ubuntu and Thunderbird for years now and one thing that always irked me was the fact that the “Send Link” option in Firefox was totally non-operational. Ideally, I’d ALT-F - E and bang, a new email would open up in Thunderbird with the page title in the subject and the link in the body of the mail, but no go. Nothing.

This morning, I wanted to email a buddy of mine a link and got to feeling like there must be some fix out there for this, so I did some Googling and after hitting on the sweet search string, I found the answer.

To get Firefox to open a compose window via the “Send Link” option, do this:

1. Open firefox and in the address bar, type “about:config”
2. Right-click within the body of the page that opens and select “New” and then “String”
3. In the dialog box, where it says “Enter preference name”, paste: network.protocol-handler.app.mailto
4. In the next dialog box, enter your path to Thunderbird. Mine is /usr/bin/thunderbird.
5. Hit OK and restart Firefox. “Send Link” should now work with Thunderbird.

Sweet.

I’ve been waiting for an extension like this for years. FireGPG lets you encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify text using GPG from the context menu. Currently, it only works with Gmail, but that’s fine since that’s what I use for most of my important email.

At some point last year, I switched from Gmail’s browser interface to using it with Thunderbird, so I could make use of the Enigmail extension, as well as pull in all my other email addresses (work, domains, spam-pits) in one place and I think I’ll continue to use it, but the ability to just browse to Gmail and not have to copy, paste, fire up a terminal, copy and paste again is absolutely great.

FireGPG currently works with Windows and Linux. OSX is out of luck, but I see on that on the exension’s page that the developers are actively looking for help in porting it. Awesome.

I’ve decided to try and give up using Firefox for at least one week. In it’s place I plan on using Konqueror and in some cases where I’m using OSX, Safari or perhaps Camino. The real test for me though is to see if I can make Konqueror do everything I’m used to doing (and worry that I can’t live without) with Firefox.

I’ve been falling slowly out of infatuation with Firefox for a while now. Version 2.0 left me mildly underwhelmed and dealing with much of the same-old including an annoying memory leak. Since I use KDE as my desktop environment, I’ve always had Konqueror kicking around and have been very impressed with it’s abilities as a file manager. In my job, where I often have to migrate many files from server A to B, Konqueror’s view splitting features kick serious ass. As a web browser that I’ve had access to for almost two years, I’ve probably used it a handful of times, mainly because of my dependence on Firefox extensions.

This reliance on extensions bothers me. The fact that enough people use it now that exploits are starting to show up isn’t great news to me either. Granted, they’re generally addressed pretty fast, but whatever. Really cool people use fringe, obscure browsers like Konqueror or Lynx.

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Willing to risk browser stability at work, I’ve installed Firefox 2.0 Beta, just for giggles. It seems to be working smoothly. The huge downer is of the twelve extensions (now called Add-ons) that I use daily, only three made the transition while the rest are in limbo till updated versions are released. No big deal, this is a beta product anyway and I should have all of them back by the final release as they are all popular extensions.

As I type this post, I realize that I’m immediately sold on Firefox 2.0’s built-in spell-check. It fucking rules! All misspelled or questioned words are automatically underlined in red as I type. I have waited so fucking long and meddled with so many damn alternative extensions to manage my inability to type like a competent person. It’s great.

RSS feeds are better supported with most of the features of the LiveLines extension being integrated. When I click the feed icon on a website, I’m prompted to choose how I want to handle feeds such as staying with the old Live Bookmarks, which i never liked or adding to Bloglines, which I’m currently using as well as some support for other readers. It’s a small improvement—really I’d rather have the answer to all my RSS gripes, but at least I have spell-checking.

I also notice that accidentally closed tabs can now be recovered, and crashed sessions can now be restored. All good things, I guess. Anti-phishing measures have been built in and the close button for tabs are now placed individually for each tab—something I was handling with an extension previously. However, to be picky, I dislike the left-side placement for the close button on each tab. I’d prefer it on the right. As far as bloat goes, on OSX, it seems to be running pretty damn fast.

I’m not going to bother trying it on Linux until the final version comes out. All in all I’m happy, but perhaps a little underwhelmed. I guess with the big jump to 2.0, I was hoping for everything to be turned upside down, which is definitely not the case. It’s nicer, but still the same browser.

Whatever, I have spell-check now!

****Addendum****
The Nightly Tester Tools extension forces Firefox extensions to work with whatever version your currently testing/abusing. With this installed, I now have all my usual extensions running as normal. It’s great.

This morning I felt like I wanted to try something new, so I installed Flock, the plugged-in, oh-so-social spin-off of the Firefox browser. Flock is basically the same as Firefox, but with integrated support for Flickr, Photobucket, del.icio.us, Shadows and most popular blogging software. Lotsa whiz-bang fancy shit going on.

After installing, I went through the setup and hooked Flock into my Flickr and del.icio.us accounts as well as this blog (typing that word makes me feel dirty… go figure). Currently, I’m typing this post using Flock’s built-in editor. I write the post, click publish and the post should go live, I guess, we’ll see.

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I’ve become so sick of Flash-based websites that I’ve installed a Firefox extension that blocks all Flash by default, giving me the chance to voluntarily decide to play it or not. I’d used this extension, Flashblock a few years ago, but removed it after only a few days. I guess back then my temper for shitty Flash menus, complete with streaming and screaming soundtracks was a bit softer. No more. I can’t deal with Flash-based sites. I won’t deal with them. They’re retarded.

For example, being a paid member of Crunch Gyms, occasionally, I need to look up some information concerning the particular gym I frequent in Brooklyn. In sane circumstances, I’d have no problem, but the idiots that designed Crunch’s site, aside from being semi-defective in non-mainstream browsers, use Flash to find and display specific gym information, turning what should be 5 seconds of searching into an annoying ordeal of dealing with an inefficient, bullshit site, filled with whiz-bang eye candy that I could give two shits about. It’s a waste of my time. I get better results just calling the gym on my phone.

I can admit that only four years ago, this very website was 90% flash-based. I’ve since learned the errors of my ways, along with most everyone else with half a brain. Why people still pay for second-rate Flash sites that actively annoy and retard the dissemination of whatever information they built the site for in the first place is beyond my ability to understand.

There’s a time and place for Flash when used properly. Youtube is a great example of it being integrated into a site in a sane and constructive way. Building a website using Flash menus is wrong. Delivering text content via Flash is wrong. Automatically streaming sound or video with no warning, especially for a non-music or video oriented site is brain-damaged. I hate it and now, I’m blocking it.

I was checking out an article about various keyboard shortcuts with KDE and I was blown away by a feature in Konqueror. When viewing a web page in Konqueror, holding down CTRL highlights every link on the page with a letter or number that you type in and hit enter to navigate without having to use a mouse. I don’t know how long I’ve wished for something like this. I hate having to use a mouse and especially with a laptop, it’s a really big bitch.

Unfortunately, I’m addicted to the various extensions that I depend on with Firefox and I just can’t switch over to Konqueror. So, I immediately started scouring through available Firefox extensions on mozilla.org and after a good long while (Mozilla’s extension organization sucks), I finally found the equivalent. NumberFox does the exact same thing. Using only numbers to tag links, the font is a little too small and there’s no options to change anything, but it does the job. On a web page, hitting ALT-w activates NumberFox for both Windows and Linux (APPLE-e on Mac) and you’re off, leaving that mouse in the dust. I find that some links and some pages do not respond to the extension&8212;links in Flash are obviously a no-go, but I find that it works in 95% of the pages I’ve tried so far.

Web filters are retarded. The only times I ever butt against a company’s web filter seem to be when in search of legitimate, non-offensive information. I’m not into breaking the law. I’m not into downloading porn at work. Why penalize me when I try and look up some technical information because an application like SmartFilter or SonicWall considers some geek’s tutorial on getting an Open Source application up and running, “Free Software/Downloads—Forbidden”, even though no actual software or source code is stored on the site? Or blocking a website as pornography because the author of the page has the unfortunate last name of “Dyke”. SmartFilter kind of seems like one big oxymoron. Perhaps StupidFilter is more appropriate. I could give a rat’s ass whether it kept kids away from pornography, all I know is that it often keeps me from accessing harmless, legal and innoffensive information—usually technical in nature. Fuck that.

Sick of being hamstrung by obtuse internet filters I set up a proxy on my server using squid that I tunnel to via SSH. Once connected, I bypass all web filtering wherever I am and as a bonus, all information sent to and from my browser and my server is encrypted and therefore private to anyone snooping on the local network. Here’s how.

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While I’ve known that Gmail uses SSL to log in, someone recently pointed out to me that while my password is sent to Google fully encrypted, once logged in, all pages that I view are sent via http, meaning that all the emails I read and send can be scooped right out of the ether at any open hotspot.

One remedy I found is to manually change the address from
http://mail.google.com/mail/ to https://mail.google.com/mail/
and for that session, you should be using https and all the pages you view in Gmail will be encrypted. Very cool, but I have to remember to manually check this every time I log in. I smoked way too much weed as a teenager. Half the time I don’t even know what day of the week it is. No lie. How am I supposed to consistently remember this?

Looking further, I found this great extension for Firefox that takes care of the problem for me. CustomizeGoogle lets you set a whole mess of options for a variety of Google services. I won’t get into most of the details since they don’t apply, but check them out because a lot of them are pretty cool. One option that is relevant is that once installed, you can set an option for Gmail to always use https by default. Just check off that one option and from that point on, you have worry-free, encrypted Gmail sessions as a default. Pretty damn useful. CustomizeGoogle also lets you set an https default option for Google Calendar as well. Even sweeter.

Unfortunately, Safari, Konqueror and other browser users are out of luck (IE users, you deserve what you get.) with this extension, so unless there’s something else out there, they have to manually check the session every time or set a bookmark using https in the URL and be consistent about accessing Gmail through that bookmark.

Thees murneeng, vheele-a I ves perooseeng thruoogh edduns.muzeella.oorg und sloorpeeng doon cuffffee-a in bleery fug ierned frum steyeeng up vey tuu lete-a, I nuticed a Fureffux ixtenseeun celled Bork Bork Bork! vreettee by Unthuny Hooe-a thet elloos yuoo tu trunslete-a zee text ooff uny veb pege-a intu bork-speek, in oozeer vurds tu meke-a it reed leeke-a it ves vreettee by zee Svedeesh Cheff frum zee Mooppet Shoo feme-a.

Zee Svedeesh Cheff hefeeng beeeng my ell-time-a fefureete-a mooppet, I ves cumpelled tu instell it immedeeetely und seence-a zeen hefe-a beee borkeeng ell murneeng lung in geeddy deleeght. Thees ixtenseeun rooles. Bork Bork Bork!

Translation:

This morning, while I was perusing through addons.mozilla.org and slurping down coffee in bleary fog earned from staying up way too late, I noticed a Firefox extension called Bork Bork Bork! written by Anthony Howe that allows you to translate the text of any web page into bork-speak, in other words to make it read like it was written by the Swedish Chef from the Muppet show fame.

The Swedish Chef having being my all-time favorite muppet, I was compelled to install it immediately and since then have been borking all morning long in giddy delight. This extension rules.