Customising Mozilla Firefox 4

The development cycle of the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 4 is coming to an end. Few days ago, a great number of bugs mysteriously disappeared from the blocking list. Does this mean that the new iteration of the world's favourite alternative browser is getting released soon?

Firefox 4 features many improvements, including better compliance to web standards, quicker startup, hardware acceleration and over 600% faster JavaScript speed. However, one change is attracting all the attention -- the User Interface (UI) overhaul.

The default User Interface of Mozilla Firefox 4 for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Much of its appearance can be modified.

While most people prefer the new, clean look to the clunky old Version 3.x interface, there's no satisfying everyone. If you find some of the changes rather annoying, it's fine -- Mozilla Firefox is the world's most customisable browser, and a lot of the changes can be (at least) partially reversed.

Firefox 4 is still not ready yet, but Mozilla have made good beta releases. Download the latest beta at http://www.firefox.com/beta.

Restoring tab bar below navigation bar

Mozilla has decided to agree with the rest of the world by placing tabs on top of the navigation bar. If you don't like it that way, however, you can always undo it.

Place your cursor between the URL Bar and the Search Bar so that it turns into a two-way arrow. Right click, and click on "Tabs on Top". Voila! Now Firefox 4 looks THAT much like Firefox 3.6.

Firefox 4 with the tab bar below the navigation bar.

Restoring the menu bar and bookmarks bar

In Windows 7, Firefox 4 hides the menu bar and the bookmarks bar by default. To re-enable them, right click on the little space between the URL Bar and the Search Bar, and click on "Menu Bar" or "Bookmarks Toolbar".

Firefox 4 with both Menu Bar and Bookmarks Bar.

Restoring old-style Reload and Stop buttons

Two buttons you may struggle to locate in Firefox 4 are the Reload and Stop buttons. That's because they have been combined with the Go button and integrated into the URL Bar (AKA AwesomeBar), in addition to shrinking in size.

This means that the Reload button is missing when a page is still loading -- you'll need to stop the page first before reloading it, that's two clicks away.

To split the buttons apart again, right click on the little space between the URL Bar and Search Bar, and click "Customise...". The buttons will (temporarily) separate, and a window will popup. In the popup window, look for the "Separator" item and drag it to between the Stop and Reload buttons. Click "Done" on the popup window and tada! The buttons are no longer combined.

Firefox 4 with split Stop/Reload buttons.

You can use the same technique to move the buttons to the left of the URL Bar, a la Firefox 3.x. In addition, the Esc key acts as the stop button, and you can reload by hitting Ctrl + R on your keyboard.

Duplicating tabs by overriding Switch-to-Tab

One new feature of Firefox 4 is Switch-to-Tab, implemented in the URL Bar (AKA AwesomeBar). Should you need to switch to a tab, just go to the URL bar (Ctrl + L) and type in the name (or URL) of the tab, a "Switch-to-Tab" option will appear among the results. Choosing the results will bring you to that particular tab. This feature is particularly useful for those who have countless tabs open in multiple windows in any time.

But what if you want to duplicate that tab? Use your arrow keys to navigate to the results you want, and hold down the Shift key -- the Switch-to-Tab feature will be temporarily disabled. Hit the Enter key with the Shfit key still down to duplicate that tab.

The "Switch-to-Tab" function is disabled even though the tab is opened (second tab) if the Shift button is held down.

Checking state of hardware acceleration

Hardware acceleration means the use of your GPU (the cool term for graphics card) to paint on your screen. With it turned on, HTML elements can be drawn much faster (depending on your GPU) while keeping CPU usage low.

To check if hardware acceleration is turned on for you, open a new tab, and type "about:support" without the quotation marks into the URL Bar and hit Enter. Scroll to the very end and look for the entries labelled "Direct2D Enabled", "DirectWrite Enabled" and "GPU Accelerated Windows". If all three are enabled, congratulations! I recommend you to enable smooth scrolling (click on the Firefox button, "Options", "Options", "Advanced" section, "General" tab). If it's not, well, you can try updating your GPU driver.

Firefox 4 with hardware acceleration (mainly) turned off.

What happened to the progress bar?

In Firefox 3.x, a progress bar was placed at the status bar. In the new Firefox, however, the status bar has been removed altogether, and the progress bar has not found a new home.

The progress bar was removed because it was never accurate -- there is currently no way of calculating the size of a webpage without loading it first, and hence the progress shown are just crude estimates. Opera displays progress as a fraction, with both the numerator and denominator changing constantly as the page is loaded -- this proves just the point.

Instead, the throbber (the small rotating icon of tabs) has been split to two -- a black one, rotating anti-clockwise, and a green one, rotating clockwise. The former shows that the browser is trying to connect to the server, while the latter means the browser has started receiving data.

Disabling taskbar preview

In Windows 7, you can now preview each of Firefox 4's tabs by clicking on the Firefox icon on the taskbar. Clicking on the preview of each tab will bring you to that particular tab.

However, this means switching from a non-Firefox window back to Firefox requires an extra click, which may be annoying to some people. To undo this, open a new tab, type in "about:config" without the quotation marks and hit enter. Agree to be careful, and a long list of configurations should appear. Type "taskbar" into the "Filter" field, and look for the entry called "browser.taskbar.previews.enable". If it is enabled, double-click it to disable it. The change is instantaneous -- clicking on the Firefox icon on your taskbar should now minimise or maximise the browser without asking you which tab you want.

Use the URL Bar as a Search Bar

The URL Bar is also called the AwesomeBar for many reasons. Not only does it search your bookmarks and history to complete your typing, it can also search using your favourite search engines, eliminating the need for a Search Bar.

How does it work? Well firstly, you have to do a bit of setup. Click on your search engine's icon in the search bar, and click "Manage Search Engines..." in the dropdown box that appears. There will be a popup. Choose a search engine, say, "Wikipedia (en)". Select it and click on "Edit Keyword...". Set "WK" as the keyword, omitting the quotation marks, and click OK all the way.

Now, open a new tab (Ctrl + T), and type in "WK firefox" (without quotation marks) and hit enter. The search result for the term "firefox" in Wikipedia appears, which happens to be the Firefox page.

Repeat this procedure with the rest of your search engines, make sure to use unique keywords for each of them. Once you're done, you'll probably never need to use the Search Bar again.

What happened to Back/Forward dropdown box?

In earlier Firefox versions, there's a little dropdown button beside the Back/Forward buttons. Clicking on it will bring up the history of the current tab. This little dropdown button, however, is missing in Firefox 4. Instead, try right clicking on either the Back or the Forward button.

Back/Forward dropdown menu on Firefox 3.6.


Back/Forward dropdown menu on Firefox 4, invoked through right-clicking on the Back or Forward buttons.

Also, there's a handy shortcut for Back/Forward -- try Alt + Left and Alt + Right.

By the way, right-clicking on the Back/Forward buttons in Firefox 3.6 will also bring up the dropdown menu. Didn't know that, huh?

What are App Tabs?

Right click on a tab, and click on "Pin as App Tab". This reduces the size of the tab and moves it to the far left. To undo this, Right click on the tab and hit "Unpin Tab".

App Tabs are meant for Ajax intensive webpages. These webpages are generally left open for long periods of time, with the URL Bar and the Back/Forward buttons unused. Examples are Facebook, GMail and Twitter pages. By moving App Tabs to the far left of the window, they are easy to locate, and with the close button missing, accidental closing of such tabs are rather improbable. The size reduction clears up more space for other tabs in the tab bar. Mozilla are also planning to remove the navigation bar altogether for App Tabs in the future, freeing up more space for the webpage.

This feature is here to stay -- if you don't like it, just don't use it. No harm done.

Firefox 4 doesn't ask me to save my tabs before quitting?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature. I have long enjoyed the "Save and Quit" feature of Firefox, allowing me to save all my tabs and shut down my computer, but should the shut down be initiated without a user sitting by the computer, the "Save your tabs?" window may cause the shut down to pause for long periods of time.

Should the "Save and Quit" be missing from your Firefox 4, open a new tab (Ctrl + T) and type "about:config" into the URL Bar. Promise to be careful and type "quit" into the "Filter" field. Look for the entry called "browser.showQuitWarning", and if its value is "false", double-click on it to toggle it to "true". Firefox 4 should now ask you if you want to save your tabs when you quit with multiple tabs opened.

What happened to the RSS button?

In Firefox 3.6, whenever a website has live feeds available to be subscribed, an RSS icon will appear in the URL Bar. This is removed in Firefox 4. So how do you subscribe to live feeds?

First way is to click on the orange Firefox button, hover over the "Bookmarks" button and click on "Subscribe to This Page...".

A second way is to place a Subscribe button to your Navigation bar. Place your cursor on the space between the URL Bar and Search Bar so that it turns into a two-way arrow. Right click and hit "Customise...". Look for the "Subscribe" icon in the popup window, and drag it to anywhere in the navigation bar, say, to the right of the Search Bar. Hit "Done" to close and now you have a permanent "Subscribe" button that activates when the current tab has live feed available.

There you go! I hope you find these tips useful in making Firefox 4 a browser you can call your own. Also make sure you drop by http://www.getpersonas.com/ to skin your browser (try some animated personas like this one!) and get some cool addons at http://addons.mozilla.org/.

I hope you enjoy Mozilla's latest browser as much as I am. All the best.

KetamGuys Reunited

Something tells me I'm gonna end this year with a happy note after all.

I hope you enjoyed 2010 as much as I did.

A very happy new year to everyone.

The Run

There was this one time at Kuala Lumpur KTM station.

I bought a ticket to Klang from the counter, which I fed into the ticket barrier. Upon retrieving the ticket spat out from the barrier, I noticed a blue train with yellow ends pulling towards the platform, a red sign reading "PEL. KLANG" behind its windscreen.

That's my train! I thought, and my feet immediately started moving.

I squeezed past the crowd on the escalator, taking two steps at a time, cursing the uncilivised Malaysians who took up the entire width of the escalator stairs.

"Excuse me!" I snapped at a fat lady blocking my way and she jumped aside. She must've been annoyed by me, but I paid no attention to her after shooting past her humungous body.

Jumping the last three steps of the escalator and landing with a crash, I quickly picked myself up again and got into a full-speed sprint, as the train pulled to a stop some 150 metres ahead of me.

Bloody hell, that was a long platform! Well not surprising, considering the KL station was used as a intercity railway station until relatively recently, and those KL-Singapore trains were darn long, often amounting to 25 individual cars or so.

So I ran. And I ran. I dashed so fast the contents of my bags were ratting within their containers. I'm sure if I strained my ear, I could hear water splashing in my bottle. Wind rushed through my face, brushing my forehead in a fruitless attempt to dry up newly formed drops of sweat before moving on to my (unfortunately) short hair. My old, faded jeans were complaining at their seams, but I paid no attention.

I could even imagine a video of me running in slow motion. My eyes wide open, staring straight at the doors of the train, hands clawing the air as if swimming. Every couple of second saw my feet stretched out before falling to the ground in turn to the beats of Chariots of Fire playing in the background. Pushing a man dressed in blue aside with a quick, rather insincere apology, I was gliding -- flying through the crowd in the heart of the railway station towards my goal, sweat and smoke trailing behind me, and nothing was going to stop me.

Just a few more steps, it's so close now...

But the door snapped shut before my very eyes.

Fuming with disappointment and rage, I jabbed at the "Open" button, hoping it'd work. This is it, I thought, I'm doomed! The giant lady and the guy in blue suit are all gonna get me, all because of this lousily maintained train with buttons that don't work! I stabbed the button again, breathing fast, blood pounding against my temple.

Suddenly, to my utter amazement, the doors slid open in one smooth action.

I squeezed in quickly, and the doors fell close again a couple of seconds later. As the train left the station, I pulled a face to the blue-guy and waved farewell.

Selling Myself

So this is a bid for me to sell myself. You know, after graduating I'll have to try to increase my personal value. So...

I Have an Android Device!!!

Yes, you heard right. I have an Android device.

Android's boot up screen!

Without spending a single penny. Literally.

Android 2.2 Froyo's locked screen.

Did I get lucky? Well, no, not really. It's actually a simulated Android device that runs in my computer, under Ubuntu. And it's actually part of my Final Year Project.

Android 1.6 Donut homescreen.

Cool, eh! Aw come on, a Linux device running in another Linux device, that's cool!

Ah well. I DO have another Android device.

Oh it's real, with hardware and all. Wait and see.

JavaScript at Owl-Order!!!

Since March, I've been adding bits of JavaScript code to my blogs. These codes really make this blog a true dynamic website.

Some features you may (or may not) have noticed include
1. Random background image on load. Refresh the page to randomly load a new image!
2. Time-based background colour. Bluish in the middle of the day, and dark gray at midnight. Changes automatically at the tick of the hour -- no reloading required!
3. A certain surprise for an hour every day...
4. A digital clock, at the top of the page. My very first piece of JavaScript code! (Though it was refined and updated some time later.)
5. Blogpost images with silver frames that glow when you hover your cursor on them! On some browsers, this happens with a smooth dark-to-light animation.
6. Also with animation (on some browsers), "Hi-Res on Flickr" tags overlay images with high resolution copies over at Flickr upon mouse-over. Clicking on these images open their Flickr pages in a new tab.

Unfortunately, some of these features don't work on all browsers.

Feature	Mozilla Firefox 4	Google Chrome	Mozilla Firefox 3.x	Apple Safari	Opera	Internet Explorer 9	Internet Explorer 8
Random Background	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Time-based Background Colour	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Midnight Event	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Digital Clock	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Glowing Image Frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Buggy	Yes	No
Image frame with Animation	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Buggy	No	No
Hi-Res Tag	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Hi-Res Tag with Animation	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No
Feature	Mozilla Firefox 4	Google Chrome	Mozilla Firefox 3.x	Apple Safari	Opera	Internet Explorer 9	Internet Explorer 8

For this reason, I heavily recommend Mozilla Firefox 4, Google Chrome or Apple Safari to unleash all features at my blog.

Download them here:
Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta
Google Chrome
Apple Safari

Have fun!

Qn: Am I Geeky Enough?

Never once in my entire life do I have to ask myself this question.

Or did -- I immediately questioned my geekiness once I heard about the search for the World's Coolest Intern over at http://breeze.standardchartered.com/blog.

You see, Standard Chartered is looking for the World's Coolest Intern, who has a particularly strong online presence, is a strong communicator and someone who "knows how to build and engage with online communities".

Many of my closer friends may think I have the shot, but I was still rather paranoid. Standard Chartered's Breeze team may have extremely high requirements and expect no one to perform any worse than Barack Obama.

Besides, I have reasons for my doubt. Born into a family of visual artists, I was in no way born nor made the next Mark Zuckerberg (nor will his successor arrive that soon, but that's another story). Sure, no one's surprised when they discover my passion for music.

People naturally expect me to inherit some of my parents' skills in fine arts. Well I do... to a limited extent, barely enough to give me the courage to embarrass myself by putting my pictures up at my blog.

Having practiced Chinese calligraphy since the tender age of 9, I am also very adapt when it comes to typography and visual designs.

Those, coupled with my love for photography really should have defined me as an "arts" person.

To make things even more confusing, despite my parents owning a private art business, I knew from a young age that I would not take art as my full-time job in the future. At least not directly. Instead, I favour science, especially Physics, and chose to get a Master's Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering instead. And I think I'm doing quite OK as an engineering student.

But then again, my CV is telling a totally opposite story.

Of course, I am one of the people who have so many online accounts they have trouble remembering their passwords. Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, I have them all, but well, that's of course -- I haven't been living in Mars for the past 10 years.

The thing is, unlike a big majority of the people I know, I have three Operating Systems installed my computer -- Ubuntu and Windows 7 are in dual-boot configuration and Windows XP runs virtually in Ubuntu. My 640GB hard disk is split into so many partitions if my laptop could talk, it would complain.

I also happen to have a large number of browsers installed -- two versions of IE, three of Firefox, three of Google Chrome, and one each of Opera and Safari. And I haven't even started on my mobile phone's yet. A sure symptom of the web-programming addiction I've been developing for the past few months.

And while I'm not the fastest, I can type at over 110 words per minute, easily placing me among the geekier ones out there.

Think I'm geeky? Not so fast, Tiger, I'm not done.

I'm probably one of the very, very few people you know who does programming as a hobby. Yes. Some people sleep after their exams. Some people get drunk to de-stress. Some people game for hours non-stop after their final paper. Me? I'd just sit down in front of my computer after the conclusion of a good semester. I'd be there, typing JavaScript programs away, for so long I'd miss dinner and the sun comes up before I turn in.

Yes. Never have I found a game or drug even more addictive than programming. I'm so addicted I'm prepared to learn even more languages despite already knowing five.

I have to admit, I haven't owned a single iPhone (or any Apple devices, for that matter) so far. Nor have I queued for hours waiting to be the first Malaysian to own a PlayStation3. Nor do I own a prosumer DSLR, three high-end mobile phones, a desktop with Blu-Ray drive, a gaming laptop and a dual-core netbook. But I remain fully updated and informed about their specifications and features, thanks to the many gadget sites I follow on daily basis. And xkcd.com. Well that site's not exactly a gadget site, but it's so cool I just have to mention it.

"A geek without an iPhone?!" This you may utter in disbelief. In my defense, having one doesn't make you the king of the web, and I prefer open-source software to proprietary ones. Trust me -- you can rarely find someone who has so much to complain about Microsoft.

"Well I don't see you holding an Android device either!" Well yeah, I don't, but having an Android emulator running in a Linux-based operating system is THAT much cooler.

And I DO have that.

Oh wait. They said "World's Coolest Intern". And that's the exact opposite of "World's Geekiest Intern".

Argh. Got carried away with all the fun. Hit me with the right topics I talk non-stop. Yet another point in the Geek-o-meter for me.

Either that or I've succeeded in embarrassing myself yet again.

Yeah that makes sense too.