Childrens Ministry Online

App of the week: Firefox Home

Posted on20. Jul, 2010 by Kenny.

So I just found a killer new app. It’s called Firefox Home. I’m a pretty big fan of Firefox and it’s my default browser. I don’t know if any of you are like this, but I’ve got tab issues. I like to have lots and lots of tabs open at the same time. When I say lots of tabs, I really mean A LOT of tabs. It’s a problem I certainly need help with, but that’s a different blog post.

So, have you ever been on your iPhone and you can’t remember a site you need to go to that you even have bookmarked on your computer at home? Maybe that page is even open on your computer at the office right now. Wouldn’t it be great to actually easily pull up that page you were looking at yesterday on your home computer  on your iPhone? Well, with Firefox Home, you can and it’s pretty impressive.

You have to enable the Firefox Add-On “Firefox Sync” and setup an account. With this Firefox Add-On, you can sync your tabs, history and bookmarks across computers. With the Firefox Home iPhone app, you can have access to all of that data right on your phone. It’s absolutely beautiful!

So, it’s really simple. One page is dedicated to search. Type in any term that may have been on a page you were viewing in the past few weeks and you’ll be quickly given open tabs, history and bookmarks that contain that term. Another page is dedicated to tabs. The tabs are in a list. See one that interests you and it opens up. One more page is dedicated to your bookmarks. I don’t really use bookmarks anymore (which I think is why I have so many tabs open), but they’re all there. The settings page will allow you to sign in and out of your sync account and give you an overview of how many tabs you have open, how many bookmarks you have or how many pages you have indexed in your history.

Just to clarify though. This is not Firefox on the iPhone. Any tab, bookmark or indexed page you click on will simply open that page in a Safari browser within the Firefox Home app. I guess it’s the next best thing to having Firefox on your iPhone.

So, if you use Firefox (and you should) and you have an iPhone, download this free app today.

BTW, I’m laying down another preemptive ban on Smart Alec comments from Jonathan Cliff on how many tabs I have open. This is starting to become a regular thing here.

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App of the week: FireFTP

Posted on28. Feb, 2010 by Kenny.

If you don’t manage a self-hosted website, you can probably ignore this App of the Week.

If you do, let me introduce you to my App of the Week, FireFTP. Most people I talk to use Filezilla as their FTP manager. It’s free and it’s good. I have a copy as well, but I’ve only used it once or twice in the past year, ever since I started using FireFTP.

FireFTP seems to do it all. At least, it does everything I need when it comes to managing files on multiple websites I run. What I like about FireFTP is that it’s not a separate application like Filezilla. It’s a Firefox plugin. I go up to the toolbar and select FireFTP and it opens a full featured FTP client within a tab on my browser. It’s great and I’ve had not complaints in the last year.

The only thing I’ll caution you about is as any Firefox plugin. At times Firefox will release a new update and not all plugins are up to date. This has been the case with FireFTP on more than one occasion. During these times I might use Filezilla or wait to update Firefox until I feel most my plugins are updated.

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Browser Wars

Posted on15. Feb, 2010 by Kenny.

Yesterday I announced that Google Chrome was my app of the week, mostly becasue of the extensions capability. I’ve been using Firefox for the last several years and have been very excited to move to Chrome. However, I realized that most people generally use Internet Explorer if they have a PC. If they have a Mac, then there’s a good chance they’re using Safari. What browser you use is totally a personal choice, but I think that most of these people use these browsers simple becasue it’s what was on their computer when they got it and they’re just happy with it. The problem is that most of these people don’t know that there could possibly be a much better experience right around the corner. This blog post is simply to reveal some options you didn’t know you were missing.

So, here’s the basic rundown of the big four browsers.

Internet Explorer: Seriously, are you really using this? It’s slow and often riddled with security issues. Do yourself a favor and download any other browser. You’ll be glad you did. Internet Explorer is the oldest browser of the big four. It also has the largest market share, but that certainly isn’t an indicator of how good it is. In actuality, their market share has been decreasing to the other three big browsers simply because they’re better. IE has not been innovative in many years. It can do some of the “extra things” the other browsers can do, but mainly becasue it has adapted and copied over the years to remain relevant.

Safari: It’s a genuinely positive browsing experience. The basic, entry level Mac user tends to use Safari and be happy with it as a web browser and it really is good. It’s probably the dominant Mac browser simply becasue it comes with the Mac and new Mac owners don’t know any better. When you compare Firefox to Safari, Firefox usually wins when it comes to features and usability. Safari does include plugins which create extra functionality, but the number is limited mainly becasue of Apple’s iron grip on all Apple products which lessen development from outsiders.

Firefox: For many years now, Firefox has been the open browser that people came to when they got tired of a poor browsing experience or being told how they should browse the internet. The stigma for quite some time was that if a person really wasn’t very computer savvy, they used Safari or Internet Explorer, but once they moved beyond what was handed to them, they moved to Firefox. Firefox is very customizable from aesthetics to functionality. Thousands of developers are constantly creating new plugins to allow you do to all kinds of cool stuff. Personally, I moved to Firefox about 3 years ago and my experience has been amazing. The plugins make all the difference in the world. As a result, my browser experience is always changing and getting better.

Chrome: I don’t know that anyone saw Chrome coming when they jumped in the browser war a little over a year ago. Chrome was designed to push browsers to the next level. Changes were made to the way Chrome operates as a browser to make it faster. We all want a faster experience and Chrome has taken big steps to make that happen. Another really cool thing Chrome did was to make each tab it’s own individual process. That means when the page your surfing fails and locks up, it doesn’t lock up your entire browser. Just close out of that tab and you’ll see all your other tabs work just fine. Like anything new, the layout is a little different and it may take some getting used to, but the experience is better. Like I posted yesterday, Chrome just added extension functionality so you can customize your browsing experience. However, what Chrome did differently is to separate the extension processes from the browsing processes so your speed experience isn’t minimized as a result of extensions. Firefox users have always known that when more plugins are installed, the slower the browser ran. Not true of Chrome.

So, that’s an overview of the current browser war. Yes, it was my opinion. It’s based on my experience of using all four browsers. So what do I use? Well, since I’m a Mac, I don’t even have access to Internet Explorer anymore. I use Safari about once a week and it’s usually just as a backup. Sometimes I come to a web page that doesn’t display correctly, so I’ll open Safari just to see what it looks like there. That’s really the only reason I use Safari. Primarily though, I’m still a Firefox user; however, Chrome may have just swooped into the lead with all the extensions. Chrome for the Mac is still technically Beta and I’ve occasionally encountered it’s bugginess. Until the glitch I run in to while editing blog posts on Wordpress is fixed, I’ll probably still use Firefox primary. After that, I see a switch in the works.

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Mac OS Firefox tweak

Posted on24. Aug, 2009 by Kenny.

Maybe it’s just me. I’m not talking to everyone out there, but just the Mac users who are using Firefox. Firefox in my opinion is the best web browser out there (pushing innovation in web browsing to a new level and the add-on features make certain sites and certain tasks come to life). However, Firefox has done this buggy thing for me ever since I moved to the Mac. When filling out an online form (usually entering my address) I begin typing in the first field and when done typing the information I “tab” to the next field. No need to mouse over and click when I can type, tab, type, tab, type. However, whenever I would get to a pull-down tab, like the state, the tab button just skipped over this field. Frustrating. Several months ago I heard in passing that there was a fix for this and yesterday I finally was frustrated enough to fix it myself. I spent a few minutes looking for the fix and had things working a few minutes later.

Essentially you go to system preferences and to keyboard and mouse. Once they’re click on the top tab “Keyboard Shortcuts.”At the very bottom of the window you will see “Full keyboard access:” The default selection seems to be “Text boxes and lists only.” Instead, select “All controls.”

That’s it. Now you can tab to every filed. When I tab to the state pull-down I just hit the “t” key twice to pull up Texas (I’m jealous that those of you from Tennessee only have to hit “t” once, but I figure it’s becasue Texas is twice as awesome).

The site where I found this fix is here. Hope this helps you if you’ve been frustrated with this Firefox bug.

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ScribeFire: A blogging tool add-on for Firefox

Posted on01. Jun, 2008 by Kenny.

Are you a blogger? Do you use Firefox?

May I recommend a pretty cool blogging tool?

I have a Wordpress blog. Initially I would log into my Wordpress admin page to write posts. I don’t any longer.

For the past 5-6 months, I’ve been using Windows Live Writer. It’s a great little program. It has some bells and whistles that make is stand out from the rest. However, the other day I came across Tony Morgan’s list of favorite Firefox add-ons. One of them was the ScribeFire add-on. It’s so cool! I’ve now written 6 or 7 new blog posts using it. It manages multiple blogs and is still much better than the Wordpress admin editor. I still think Live Writer is a better program with more options (a lot of great photo effects and scalers). However, I’m really enjoying ScribeFire for quick posts that I may write without a lot or pictures.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Mozilla , Firefox, ScribeFire

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