Firefox | Markus Thielmann

Firefox will introduce Ogg support for audio and video

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Mon, 2008-07-28

If you're using a linux distribution, Ogg FLAC/Vorbis or Ogg Theora support is already available to you.

Today, Mozilla employee Christopher Blizzard announced, that (most likely) Firefox 3.1 will feature Ogg audio and video support for all platforms.

This is a huge step for the Ogg formats, since neither Windows, nor Mac OS X come with Ogg support pre-installed.

All time favorites: Firefox extensions

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Wed, 2008-05-07

Whenever I have to prepare a new Firefox installation, I tend to forget at least one of my all time favorite Firefox add-ons.

As a reference, I compiled a small list of my basic setup. You might find it useful:

* Adblock Plus
Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

* FireGestures
A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures..

* It's all Text
Edit textareas using an external editor, because it's all text!
Right click on a textarea, select "It's All Text!" and edit the text in the editor of your choice.
Alternatively, click on the edit buttons added for your convenience. Right click on the edit buttons for even more options, including preferences.

* Google Reader Watcher
Checks your Google Reader for unread news

* Shareaholic
Found something awesome online and can’t wait to pass it on? Tired of copying and pasting endless URLs? Shareaholic allows you to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.

* Firebug (currently beta for Firefox 3)
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firefox slowdown

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Tue, 2008-05-06

The last few days I noticed a massive slowdown of Firefox 3.0b5 on Ubuntu Hardy. I even started using Opera, since I thought it might be bigger problem.

As it turns out, my history kept data from the last 90 days. Combined with Firefox' new history search feature, it was nearly impossible to use the browser at all. I'm unsure whether I did change this value, or if it's a default setting for Firefox on Ubuntu. Fortunately, this issue is really easy to solve.

While searching for the reason of this behavior, I found a really good entry in Mozilla's knowledgebase. If you experience similar slowdowns, just have a look at this page.

Finally a localized Firefox 3 on Ubuntu Hardy

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Thu, 2008-04-17

Sometimes, I "recruit" involuntary beta testers for the next Ubuntu release by just updating their systems. It's not that fair, I know.

One of the major complains was a non-localized Firefox 3. Due to a bug in the language packs, some localizations didn't show up as expected, namely German and Spanish translations.

It seems Bug #202301 was fixed by todays updates. At least for some some languages.