Okay, I'm really enjoying Firefox. It's got some great features, and I've become addicted to tabbed browsing. I can get all new BBS posts loaded up and skimmed in half the time it takes me to do a similar pass in IE.

It's got a lot of advantages over IE, namely:

- Doesn't crash nearly as much as IE.

- When a link uses the "#" symbol to link a point later in the page (like the BBS does for new posts in flat mode), opening a new window with the Shift or Ctrl key properly scrolls down to that post. In IE, this only works if you say "open in new window from the rightclick", it won't scroll if you use the shift key.

- Fast. When loading up tabbed browsing pages in the background, it doesn't seem to slow down the foreground window.

- No popups.

- Cleaner user interface. Configuration screen is simple and clear.

- One button in its UI cleans all your cache, history, and cookies.



However, I still find myself needing to go back to IE for a few things. I'd like to figure out how to get these things working in Firefox, does anyone have any tips?

- Java applets won't play. I've reinstalled the Sun JRE about a dozen times attempting to get java to work on this thing and it still won't.

- In IE, I had a registry tweak which allowed for me to type a bunch of words (with spaces between them) into the URL bar and it would do a google search on those words. This works in Firefox by default, except that it does an I'm-feeling-lucky and opens the first page. I want it to give me the full google search result instead of I'm-feeling-lucky. (Yes, I know there's a separate bar for google search in Firefox. I prefer the UI all cleaned up so that I *just* have the URL bar.)

- I can use IE as an FTP client that can upload and modify files on the server. I can even make a link to my favorite FTP sites as "ftp://username:[email protected]". When I try to do this in Firefox, it says something like "Operation not supported".

- There is a registry tweak to make new instances of IE run in a separate memory space so that crashing one doesn't bring down all of my IE windows. Is there a similar setting for Firefox?

- http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/ is down. WTF?? There are some things there that I'm pretty sure I want to get. But it's been down ever since FireFox was released. How am I supposed to like Firefox and switch to it if their main support page is down? Guys, you need to plan for capacity with your releases, sheesh...

By the way, that last thing was just a rant rather than a complaint. I'm getting the extensions from mozdev now.

I had a registry tweak which allowed for me to type a bunch of words (with spaces between them) into the URL bar and it would do a google search on those words

Create a bookmark. Doesn't matter what, as you're going to edit all of it. Pull up the properties on the bookmark. I believe you have to go through the bookmark manager to get to this. Change the location to ``http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%s''. Set the keyword to `g'. Edit the rest of the stuff as you see fit. Close out all the bookmark editing stuff. Now type into the URL bar ``g all the words you want to search for''.

Actually, the UTF-8 part may not work right under Windows. Just do a regular search from Google's front page and replace that stuff with whatever it uses. It should be obvious.

Interesting workaround, thanks Bitt!

Drakino showed me that the Java fix is a simple one:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org\Mozilla]
"CurrentVersion"="1.5"

Java works now.

Okay, how about FTP?

Java applets won't play. I've reinstalled the Sun JRE about a dozen times attempting to get java to work on this thing and it still won't.

I FAQed Tony via ICQ on this, he installed via ZIP and needed the registry entry.

One other thing...

When I install extensions and skins, it does the installation "live" directly via some kind of remote installer process. What if I want to save off those installers so I can put them on another computer without re-downloading them? Is there a procedure for that?

More info on the Keyword bookmarks in Mozlla and Firefox here

What if I want to save off those installers so I can put them on another computer without re-downloading them? Is there a procedure for that?

Right click, download to disk. The extensions should be a .xpi file that you can later drag and drop onto Firefox to install. Themes, seem to be a jar file and the same trick doesn't work.

I can use IE as an FTP client that can upload and modify files on the server. I can even make a link to my favorite FTP sites as "ftp://username:[email protected]". When I try to do this in Firefox, it says something like "Operation not supported".

What gives you that error? Entering that in the URL line? Creating a bookmark? Using the bookmark? Trying to upload something?

Clicking link with that URL is what gives me the error.

I have a right-hand HTML frame that contains commonly-used links, and I have links there that target the left-hand frame.

I just messed with it some more, and only some sites produce an error, sometimes the error is "the document contains no data". The sites which don't give me the error merely browse the site without letting me upload.

Honestly, I don't think that you'll be able to upload at all. I suppose that the client built into IE had more features, but both suck. I wonder if there's some way to associate url types with different programs.

I dunno about uploading, but the "operation not supported" error is one that you will see if you use a Gecko browser (Mozilla, Firewhatever, ...) to FTP to the Hijack kftpd. Hijack doesn't implement passive FTP, and Gecko implements ONLY passive FTP. An impasse (Hijack is the bad boy here, but has prehistory on its side).

Thanks for that info. I don't need passive, I just want my FTP client to be built into my browser like IE. Maybe someone is making a firefox plug-in that'll be better than the IE feature.

Glad you switched, browsing the bbs is much much better with tabs!

Remember that you can middle click (press down your mouse wheel if you have one) to open links in a new tab, even if that link should open a new window. Then you can middle click on the tab to close it. I'd reccomend the TabBrowser Extension, it's great.

(Yes, I know there's a separate bar for google search in Firefox. I prefer the UI all cleaned up so that I *just* have the URL bar.)

Damn I wanted to post that link up a third time

Okay, next wish.

In IE, I was able to make a setting change somewhere which allowed me to create a desktop shortcut to a web page, and double-clicking on that shortcut would open a new instance of IE instead of re-using the existing IE window to open the shortcut.

The option, in the Advanced properties of internet explorer, was called "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts". By unchecking this box, I got the behavior I wanted.

Now, Firefox behaves the way IE did when the box was checked. Is this a setting I can change?

Note: I am aware that I can achieve the same effect by editing the shortcut so it points to "firefox.exe <website>" instead of just pointing to "<website>" by itself. I want to have it work without the need for this edit.

Thanks for letting me know about that setting, Tony. I've been wanting to change that behaviour for a long while

I hope there's a solution in Firefox, because this is quickly going to become a deal-breaker for me. I have other programs which launch shortcuts (such as mail software) which invokes the default browser. If I get an email while I'm browsing the web and click on a link in the email, it kills whatever I had in my browse window in favor of whatever link the person emailed me.

Next firefox issue:

Frequent inconsistency and unpredictability in handling of the closing paragraph of blockquotes and indented lists.

Let me say first of all, the original basic HTML-rendering behavior of putting an extra blank space after the closing of a blockquote or a list is stupid. If I wanted a blank line, I would have put a tag there to make it so, don't enforce one one me like that.

But since I know the above behavior is true, then I make sure to format my HTML so that it renders properly. I make sure to expect that blank space after the blockquote/list and work around it.

But Firefox only renders this blank space some of the time, even with identical code. Here is an example from the empeg FAQ:



Note that the HTML code is identical for both:

and if so, remove them.</li></ul>

Here are three excellent documents

(...)

Now turn the player back down before you hurt your ears.</li></ul>

In real life,

I have also seen this happen with the blockquotes used for the <q> tag here on the BBS. Frequently it will happen within the same post: Someone will quote somebody twice in the same post, and it'll render two different ways.

In IE, all instances render consistently and identically with the blank line coming after the close of the indented section.

This is just a really sloppy and irritating bug. And if I recall correctly, this bug has been around since the Netscape days. I can't believe they haven't fixed it after all these years.

In Re: external links opening new windows: http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html#beh_reuse

Also, Tony, try making your posts so that I can quote a snippet for context. There's nothing in your post that actually says what you want, even though I can infer it.

Thanks, Bitt, that was exactly what I wanted. And I'll try to remember to ask explicit questions rather than just rambling.

Huh. I went to the exact same place in the FAQ that you're showing that error and I don't see it. That is, I get a blank line between ``them.'' and ``Here''. Weird. The only thing I can think of is try going back to the default theme. I don't know why that would make any difference, but I don't know why we'd be seeing different things.

Is it consistent for you?

They keep hiding stuff it can do, making them only accessible via the various .js files instead of putting them in the config UI. I hate that. Put an advanced switch in there somewhere.

Is it consistent for you?

Not completely, no. For instance, if I view the page from the top level and scroll down to that entry, I don't see the problem there. But if I go to just that section, then it shows the problem.

I will try the theme change, thanks.

Nope, same problem after I switch themes back to the default.

Re: external links opening new windows: http://texturizer.net/firefox/tips.html#beh_reuse

Hang on. That site says to add a line to user.js. Only I just searched my entire hard disk for said file and it does not exist. I specifically did a file search for all local hard drives and it's not there.

Nice. They're good about documenting it. You'll probably have to create it with just that one line, but I don't remember where it should be, much less under Windows.

Yeah. Just click on user.js in that doc. It's a link to how and where to create it.

The documentation on creating the file was, in fact, sub-linked from that page you listed. I just hadn't clicked on it before copying the relevant data to the clipboard and closing the window.

This one looks interesting:

Speed up page rendering
By default, Firefox doesn't try to render a web page for 250 milliseconds, because it's waiting for data. If you add the code below to your user.js file, Firefox immediately tries to render the page, even without complete data. The drawback is on slower machines where doing a "reflow" may actually cause the total page load time to be longer.