If you’re a Quicksilver user, you may have noticed that an upgrade to Firefox 3.0 will screw up your bookmark indexing. Ordinarily, Quicksilver should keep track of all of your bookmarks even when you make them through Firefox. In the same way that the new version of Firefox “predicts” what URL you’re typing in, Quicksilver would do the same. So, the work flow is: invoke Quicksilver, start typing in your bookmark, press enter — and Quicksilver would automatically launch your browser and the URL you wanted. There’s also more complicated stuff you can do with quick web searches and bookmarks in Firefox.

Since Firefox 3.0 has a funky new Quicksilver-esque navigation bar, bookmarks are stored in a different place and in a different language. You have to ask Firefox 3.0 to export in the Firefox 2.0 style for Quicksilver to be effective.

The hack

1. In the navigation bar, type in about:config. And “void your warrany” — that’s a joke from the Mozilla folks.
2. Start typing in browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML until you find it. This is the setting for the Firefox-2.0-style bookmark saving.
3. Toggle this setting to “true” by double-clicking or left clicking and selecting “Toggle.”

After that tweak, Firefox will export the bookmarks to bookmarks.html every time you close it. From there, Quicksilver will see the bookmarks or quicksearches you’ve been saving.

Don’t use Quicksilver? Check out our introduction to Quicksilver for students.

It sounds crazy, but there are some sites on the Internet that still don’t play nicely with Firefox (ahem, MTV2). Why?!

But instead of launching Internet Explorer on top of your favorite browser, get the Firefox add-on IE Tab. It will embed the IE engine within Firefox.

So if you’re visiting a website with videos that just won’t load with Firefox, right-click and switch rendering engine. It will reload everything IE-style.

Install it here: IE Tab

Are you buying all your gifts this holiday season online? If so, the new Firefox add-on from popular site RetailMeNot is a Godsend, made especially for you. Install it here.

RetailMeNot offers an easy way to search for coupon codes from several online stores (e.g., Amazon, Victoria’s Secret, Kohl’s, Best Buy, Dell, and many others). So as you surf these stores, the RetailMeNot Firefox add-on will deliver the X number of coupons it has available right to your browser window. Thanks, guys.

The only problem with an in-browser email application like Gmail, is the bothersome mailto: tags. If you find yourself inadvertently opening Outlook, Mail or what have you when you click on something like this: hackcollege@gmail.com , then now is the time to install the Firefox plug-in from Lifehacker.com:

• Lifehacker Code: Better Gmail (Firefox extension) [via LifeHacker] (if you have ordinary Gmail)
• Better Gmail 2 Firefox Extension for New Gmail [via LifeHacker] (if you have the new Gmail that’s currently being rolled out)

It has lots of other bells and whistles through Greasemonkey (another Firefox plug-in, required for this hack to work, available here), but the mailto: avoider is completely indispensable. If you don’t have Greasemonkey already, I would say it’s worth installing, just to enable this plug-in.

Research season: the productive student becomes a tab maniac during this time of year. Just in time for midterm papers, I’ll share some methods for saving tabs in Firefox so that you can come back to your research later. You and your computer can take a rest.

Impromptu

Personally, this is my favorite method, just because of how resourceful it is. You can do this right now, using Firefox’s built-in capabilities: no need to install a plug-in (which means you can do this on a computer other than your own). The idea is simple. Force Quit (Command+Option+Escape) Firefox. This will “force” your tabs into Firefox’s Auto-Recover. When you open the browser again a window will pop-up, asking if you’d like to restore your last websites – think of this as a “reminder” that you’ve got to get back to your research. Agree to the restore, and you’ll have the last session’s info. If you chose to decline and procrastinate, you’ll loose your work.

I won’t completely endorse this method, because of the ramifications of a Force Quit. Kelly Sutton got all up in my face about “memory leaks” and other disasters of the Force Quit, but I think Firefox is robust enough to handle such an action every once in a while. And if you’re using the school’s computer lab, who cares?

Built-in Power

Hidden within the depths of Firefox, there is indeed a way of easily saving your last session – but you have to know where to find it. Open Options/Preferences and in the “Main” tab, under the “Start-Up” heading, select “Show my windows and tabs from last time” under the pulldown menu at “When FireFox starts:.”

Read on to your heart’s content »

The previously mentioned Firefox Campus Edition is now available for download! The new edition comes with three extensions pre-installed:

FoxyTunes - allows you to control your media player from within Firefox. FoxyTunes can also find lyrics, covers, bios, videos, and more.

StumbleUpon - helps you find different websites, videos, and photos based on your interests from within Firefox.

Zotero - a research tool that collects, manages, and cites your sources from within Firefox.

If you are already using Firefox (and if your reading HackCollege you probably are) you can just download the extensions individually from here: FoxyTunes, StumbleUpon, and Zotero.

Firefox Campus Edition is still absolutely free to use and can be download here.

Mozilla is working on a new Firefox edition exclusively for college students. Basically it’s the Firefox browser bundled with extensions focused for student use such as FoxyTunes, Zotero, etc. Although the Firefox Campus Edition isn’t quite ready for download yet expect it to be released soon, just in time for the upcoming school year. Stay tuned for updates.

Firefox Campus Edition

Earlier I posted on how to download torrents via Firefox. But the real old-school chatters and downloaders, they use IRC –which is less likely to be blocked at your college campus.

ChatZilla provides all the usual IRC client features: multiple servers, a built-in list of standard networks, easy searching and sorting of available channels, logging, and DCC chat and file transfers, plus easy customization with JavaScript plug-ins and CSS styling.

To search for downloads, check out:
IRC Klipper - ircklipper.info/search.php
Packetnews - packetnews.com
MyDownloader - mydownloader.com
IRCDig - ircdig.com
XDCCz - xdccz.com

Read on to your heart’s content »

An extension for Firefox, FoxTorrent is a very, very practical BitTorrent client –working right within your browser.

The open source FoxTorrent Firefox extension that lets you stream torrents as they download, from your web browser, with zero configuration needed.

I’ve been using it for about a week, and my only complaint is that you can’t choose the download folder (currently, it’s set to download files into the FoxTorrent folder, rather than whatever you set Firefox’s default download folder to be). Other than that, I love it.

So, in the key of Fergie, I urge you all to check it out!

[Edit] And I hear TorrentSpy.com is a good place to start. [/Edit]

If you like Star Wars, here’s a cute “Easter” Egg inside Windows XP:

1. Start > Run
2. telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
3. Enjoy!

But,

That’s not the point of this entry.

Since I will be spending this holiday working on my senior thesis, I thought I’d share with you all some of my frequently used Firefox extensions (you know, the ones that actually HELP productivity):

1. Adblock Plus
This will block all those annoying ads that are absolutely everywhere nowadays (even on this site!).

2. BugMeNot
Are you searching for a specific article from an online journal? Are you a student without the $19.95 to pay for the access to just that one article? The BugMeNot Firefox Extension grabs login information from BugMeNot.com. I use this all the time. I rarely have to sign up anymore for websites I know I will only use once.

3. Faviconize Tab
While you’re doing online research, you most certainly have a bajillion tabs open. With this useful extension, you can double-click on a tab and have its length shorten to just an icon, letting you view more tabs at once!

4. Google Images Re-Linker
This extension will skip the “context” of a Google Image, going right to the Full Image. Oh, this saves my sanity.

5. Google Preview
While searching through Google, this extension will give you a thumbnail screenshot (preview) of the websites listed.

And…

6. LeechBlock
This has got to be my favorite. Currently, I have it set up to only allow me to visit HackCollege.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, RosarioDoriott.com, etc. (aka the “unproductive” websites) during the first 10 minutes of every hour between 11am and midnight. All other times, they are blocked. This is essential for getting anything done!

For the same effect,
Enter the Time Periods: 1110-1200,1210-1300,1310-1400,1410-1500,1510-1600,1610-1700,1710-1800,1810-1900, etc…

Happy Productivity!