15 days later

The title refers the number of days this blog last updated. Lots of things has happened in the last two weeks.

1. Swine flu is now officially an epidemic. Malaysia currently has more 90 cases of swine flu and the reaction from the Malaysian newspapers has managed to over exaggerate the severity of the swine flu. In fact, many of my friends who are going back to Malaysia for winter holiday are quite worried that they will be under home quarantine too, since few cases of swine flu in Malaysia originate from here. Go read this; Swine flu's not that bad.
2. Riot in Iran. I wonder what will happen to Iran in the next few months. Hopefully, if there is any chaos in the future, it won't lead to lots of unnecessary killing among the citizens and disrupting the petroleum production. Petrol prices has already been increasing and we don't need another riot to push up the petrol price.
3. New operators for tram and train in Melbourne. Hopefully this will improve the quality of public transport in Melbourne in the future.
   
4. Exams. I have finished two written exams and will be sitting for OSCE next week. Will write more about those written exam later.
5. Firefox has released the third Firefox 3.5 release candidate. I am patiently waiting for the next version of Firefox . Read this; Firefox 3.5 memory usage, Top 10 features in Firefox 3.5

Favourite Firefox extensions

These are my favourite Firefox extensions in Firefox 3.0.

1. Adblock Plus. I certainly recommend my reader to install this popular Firefox add-on. It blocks 95% of website advertisement and this also includes flash ads. It certainly helps me on having faster loading of any websites and have better internet surfing experience.
2. DownThemAll. A useful download manager. It contains download accelerator and help me to organize all my downloads.
3. IE Tab. I used this for any websites that stubbornly have to be displayed using Internet Explorer. This add-on is also useful if you are a web designer.
4. Web Developer. It helps me whenever I'm designing this blog layout. It also help me to gain further understanding on how each website works.
5. Greasemonkey. This allows me to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.There are various JavaScript available to be used with Greasemonkey. It certainly useful if you would like to try various JavaScript available on Greasemonkey
   

Related: My favourite Firefox extensions [2007]

largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.

It is official. With more than 8 millions download, Mozilla Firefox 3 is the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.

Few interesting things that I have found in the current version of Firefox :)

Type about:config in the address bar and you may get something like this. about:config is used to change advanced setting in Firefox and this warning is cute.

Type about:robots and you will get this :)
I am proud to be part of this world record.

Related link: Mozilla blog

Download Day for Firefox 3.0

The official version has been released. Download now and get the latest version of firefox :)

Firefox 3.0

I have been using Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 2 for few weeks now. I can proudly say that this version is faster, safer and snappier than Firefox 2.0. There are several big changes in the user interface and I think they are quite useful. They have also managed to fix the problem with memory leak. As a web designer, I am also happy to know that Firefox 3.0 has passed Acid 2 Test which test the internet browsers against the web standard.

Please note that some of the extensions are still not being updated to Firefox 3.0. Please check on your favourite extensions before you upgrade.

Last but not least, the complete version of Firefox 3.0 will be released this Tuesday, June 17th. Let us make this as a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours :). Currently, there are only 5888 people in Malaysia who have pledged to download Mozilla Firefox 3.0. Come on, we need more people to download this amazing software :)

Firefox Download Day 2008

Favourite Firefox extensions

Since I am busy writing the thesis, the idea of writing an entry in this blog remains blur and empty. Thus, I will simply list down my favourite Firefox extensions (add-ons) added with my own comments :).

Tab Mix plus. A good extension to further enhance your tab-browsing experience. It has a lot of options for customization and to tell you the truth, I am still exploring the options.

Video Downloader. A famous extensions for you to download the video from Youtube and the Tube's clone ;). The video will be downloaded in .flv format and you need either to install FLV player or use VLC. Personally, I used VLC since it is able to read a lot of media format.

IE tab. Yeah, I know. Why need to use IE when most of the time you used Firefox. Apparently, there are certain websites that forced you to use IE. This extension will help you to switch the browser with just a click.

McAfee SiteAdvisor. This extension will give you the safety ratings for almost every websites on the net. If you search using google, yahoo or msn, this extension will give colour-coded rating to advise you whether the link is safe or dangerous or unknown. By using this extension, it will at least keep you away from virus, adwares, spywares or anything dangerous that might harm your computer.

Personal Menu. This is a nice extension that helps you to customise the menu. If you rarely click "file, edit, view, history" menu at the top of Firefox, this will help you to rearrange the menu. It can also increase the space for viewing the web. If you decide to install this extension, ask me if you encounter any trouble :).

Scrapbook. This extension helps you to save webpages faster. I used this extension to save digital books on the web. By using this extension, you read the webpage offline.

Web Developer. I am interested in the web development and this extension helps me a lot on developing this blog. It help you to dissect the page source, validate the websites etc. There are a lof of useful functions for someone who is interested in the development of a website :).

Is there any Firefox extension that you can suggest to me? :)

IE7- RC1

That stands for Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1.

Not much different from Beta 3 though. Overall, the latest Internet Explorer only match what has been available on Firefox and Opera. 3-4 years late.

I still remember the day I choose Firefox over Internet Explorer. Whenever I try to open more than 10 windows on IE, my operating system (Windows XP) start to slow down and later hang. I have to restart all over again. Plus there are simply too many security breach while using IE.

The first time I am using Firefox, I'm quite impressed with tab browsing. It was the first time I use that feature. Now, surfing through many website is as simple as one click. Just click one tab and you will go to the next web. In IE, you have to click the blue taskbar below (most of the time, I choose to group all the IE windows as one group), and then choose from the list shown. That cost me two clicks of effort :).

I'm also impressed that there are simply too many extensions to the Firefox. From time to time, I will visit the Firefox site to check the latest extension available. You will never know what do you need unless you give it a try ;)

Having said that, the only time I ever use IE was when I need to update my operating system and Microsoft Office. The Microsoft website simply don't allow you to use other browser beside IE.

signs

Do you recognise the symbol on the field there? More in here

superbrowser

It used to be Microsoft Internet Explorer since it is the default internet browser on Windows PC. In fact, many users still used Internet Explorer due to its default presence on Windows.

The emergence of Mozilla Firefox in the past few years have managed to disrupt the monopoly of Internet Explorer. Many users adopt the new browser while others tend to stick with IE. The most elegant feature of Firefox is the tabbed browsing and it is the most significant reason that I choose the Firefox instead of IE.

In fact, the new version of Internet Explorer version 7.0 follows Mozilla Firefox. The new IE will present the same interface as Mozilla Firefox. Certainly, Microsoft is quite late at adopting the features introduced by Mozilla Firefox.

Another important difference is that Firefox is an open-sourced browser whereas IE is closed source. Basically, Firefox programming code is public and can be altered by anyone who possessed the appropriate talent and skills but IE is only known to few.

One can argue that many viruses and spy wares can easily penetrate this open source but you should remember that there are thousand more people who are working round the clock to defend this browser ;)

Due to this feature of being open to everyone, Firefox has thousands of various extensions that sometimes, even I could not think of creating that kind of extension. You just need to browse the various extensions available on Mozilla site and later choose one. Quite easy and up till now, I have installed 10 extensions and the Firefox remains stable. I thought this was too many until I found this….

This guy has managed to install 100 extensions on his Mozilla Firefox just for the sake of testing its stability. Check the link here

superbrowser :D