manage Gmail accounts in Firefox

Not content with getting the Windows Media Player in Spaces working with Firefox I've also added an extension to manage my Gmail accounts from the browser too.

It's straightforward. Download from here. Install. Close and re-open Firefox and set up your Gmail accounts in the Gmail Manager extension by clicking where you see the Gmail icon.

Now if I could find an extension to deliver a woman to me and a bowl of hot stew I'd never have to get up off my arse.

Will it rain , will it pour ?

Fiddling with Firefox today I contacted the Arkansas Oracle , juncquedujour , whereupon I was made aware of a Firefox add-on ( they call them extensions ) named Forecastfox .
Now , there are no prizes for guessing what this does but suffice to say it sits discretely in your browser and lets you know whether to iron your shorts soon or bring the washing in .
I've added it to the Firefox list down the page .

I've been experiencing some problems with Firefox lately , but predominantly on MSN pages . Updates from 1.04 to 1.05 to 1.06 didn't solve it . The versions immediately before 1.06 disabled some of the functionality of some of the extensions due to a security patch (I was using 20 and most were not verified as being compatible) so I backed up my profile , went through a diagnostic and finished up re-installing 1.06 from scratch which was painless . All my settings and bookmarks are still there . Seems to be a lot faster now , but obviously I couldn't leave it there , what with it working O.K. and all that so , at the risk of breaking it again tweaked some settings which should render pages faster - link also in the list .

It's going to be a roaster for me tomorow folks - 17 degrees - already stocked up with the factor 60 .

new Rich Text Editor for MSN Spaces

Some of you will be already aware of the new RTE released yesterday . If not , here's an excellent article by Overdo including some points on use with Firefox .

I've amended my articles on using Firefox with Spaces to bring them up to date .

automatic RSS feed display in Firefox

No sooner am I blagging on about "live bookmarks" in Firefox and how handy they are and I come across a fantastic extension that's probably even better .

It's called "RSS panel" and can be picked up here .

What it does is automatically check a page for an RSS feed . If it finds one it places a thin banner neatly in the top left of the web page - see pic 1 .

The banner can be rolled down to reveal all of the page's entries ( see pic 2 )- i.e. lists , photo albums or whatever . It can also be dragged and dropped on the screen to suit .

Now , this extension is just the dog's nadgers - works on all pages and does it all behind the scenes without any input necessary from you and it's small and pretty .

You've just gotta try it !

more for firefox users ...

If you've arrived at this entry via an internet search involving Spaces and Firefox you'll find a series of entries about Firefox and MSN Spaces in a list accessed from the home page of my blog.

just thought i'd add some more useful things for those of you who read the big entry on Firefox and msn spaces and wanted to try more Firefox convenience .


first , some useful extensions I've added to customize Firefox and make it do tricks that I.E. just can't do . also how Firefox automatically copies your I.E. favourites across .

link preview - this extension brings up a thumbnail of the link you're hovering on allowing you to get some idea of what the content might be before you click through on it . it's generally handy but extremely useful when you do a www search as you can hover on the links of the result .


translate - this extension allows you to place a button on your tool bar which automatically translates the page from several languages into English . much handier than having to open up a separate tab / window and feed the url into babelfish or altavista .

if you use Firefox already why not give these extensions a go . if you don't ....... download Firefox anyway and next time you've got a free half hour fire it up and see what you can do with it .

Firefox will automatically import your current Internet Explorer favourites by a feature already built in - shown here . so there's no excuse not to !

to link from your space to this entry simply use this url to make a link or hyperlink button .

http://spaces.msn.com/members/tinyworldreview/Blog/cns!1pLVLzOn88oeNLedTZIby8-g!549.entry

using Firefox browser on msn spaces

If you've arrived at this entry via an internet search involving Spaces and Firefox you'll find a series of entries about Firefox and MSN Spaces in a list accessed from the home page of my blog.


to those of you who have recently become aware of me , thanks for visiting . due to time commitments with starting a new job my blog entries have been a bit poor of late . if you want a better read go back to my archived stuff for December and January .for now i'm going to cut the sarcasm and stupidity to do something I've been meaning to do for a while ...... which is cover the topic of the advantages of using Firefox browser instead on Internet Explorer for your msn spaces browsing .if you already use Firefox you are probably aware of a lot of what i will say , however , there might be an odd nugget in there even for you .

i'm not anti Microsoft , i just think there are some advantages a modern browser like Firefox has over I.E. .

1. it's a multi-tab browser rather than a single / multi window browser . just click the tab to see the other pages you've opened . no minimizing / maximizing windows like in I.E. .
2. it's faster loading for most pages .
3. it's configurable , meaning you can customize it to suit how you work .
4. as it's open source it's continually being further developed and enhanced
6. it's a lot more secure than I.E.

it's not the only browser i use . i do still use I.E. sometimes ( spaces has been designed to dove-tail perfectly with I.E. ) and i also use Avant browser which is like a multi tabbed version of I.E. . each has it's own advantages and disadvantages . i know Firefox doesn't work perfectly with msn spaces so I've found workarounds where possible . i'm going to cover the advantages / workarounds in turn below .

advantages

multi tabbed - you can open multiple pages at a time , each in it's own tab . this makes cutting and pasting address urls easy , for example if you want to leave a comment . it's quicker to copy and paste than type it in .
also - you can click on a comment with the middle mouse button ( provided your mouse has been set up to do that ) and open someone's page url from a comment they left . this will open in a new tab ( or the same tab if you prefer ) .

spell checker - this is a problem with spaces , no spell checker , and if you type like i do you probably need it . with Firefox you can customize the browser by adding a spell checker to it called " spellbound " . simply highlight the text and click on the spell check tool bar button and away it goes . saves so much time on long entries .

bookmarks ( favourites in I.E. ) - in Firefox i save all the blogs i like to 1 folder ( which i've called blog spam - don't be taking offence anyone ! ) . as the browser is multi tabbed i can open all these pages with one click " open all tabs " for that folder . i also have a folder for blog tools which amongst other things contains the Google translation page and several url submission pages to submit my blog to various search engines . again these can all be opened up with 1 click , i then copy and paste my blog url into each of them .

workarounds

Firefox will only let the entry be typed in 1 colour - black , 1 font and size . I've tried using a special add-on for Firefox called " cuneAform" which i thought would get round this , simply draft my blog entry in cuneAform and cut and paste it into Firefox .


when making a new blog entry in Firefox directly ( i.e. not using cuneAform ) spaces between paragraphs and sentences written on different lines aren't respected when the blog entry is submitted and published . again the workaround comes from an add-on for Firefox called "FEdit" . it simply gets added to your tool bar and when you've finished typing your blog entry click on the FEdit button . line breaks will be added to the page , click publish and voilà .

#### UPDATE - 27 June 2005 - MSN Spaces adds an html editor that works with Firefox so no need to use cuneAform or FEdit any more . #####

some page layout formats available in msn spaces look different in Firefox and Internet Explorer . this is just a trial and error thing . i now use a layout that suits me AND looks ok in both .

adding photos or customizing layout by moving elements . both of these work differently in Firefox , but there are no problems , it's simply a different way each has of doing the same task .

summary

i could go on , but that 's plenty for now and covers most of what anyone would need . if you intend to try Firefox and need help with anything just leave a comment . if you know something i don't do the same , all comments and tips welcome . I've tried to include links throughout the entry of anything I've mentioned and screen shots which should help explain .

if you want to re-direct to this entry simply hyperlink to this url ......

http://spaces.msn.com/members/tinyworldreview/Blog/cns!1pLVLzOn88oeNLedTZIby8-g!512.entry