I’ve already done a couple of posts there, I hope you’ll like them
And yeah, this blog is going to be there, don’t worry, but just for archival purposes, the new blog will have it all
So please support the new blog as you supported this one…any suggestions are always welcome!

I run this blog to help people and you guys deserve an applause!! Thanks for supporting me!! )

See you at my new home

It adds buttons to the Awesome bar to do simple tasks – like copying a url to the clipboard – with just a click of a button. This not only saves time, it adds makes things more produtive.

The feature that I personally like about UrlbarExt is it’s feature of making Tinyurl at just a click of a button! Cool eh?

This addon is also featured on one of my favorite lifehacking blogs LifeHacker.

So, download this addon and make your life more easier (at least when using firefox :p ).

Links:

UrlbarExt

UrlbarExt on LifeHacker

Technorati : awesome bar, firefox, urlbar
Del.icio.us : awesome bar, firefox, urlbar
Zooomr : awesome bar, firefox, urlbar
Flickr : awesome bar, firefox, urlbar

I’m back with a new guide, this time, an mIRC scripting guide, that I was making when I was offline a month back.

This new guide teaches mIRC users, how to script their mIRC client to do lots of things that they couldn’t have done manually.
Like, kicking a user when he says a particular word (useful with swear words).
This guide is totally newbie friendly (I tried my best to make it friendly for the new readers who have just started with mIRC), but, still, nothing is perfect hehehe

Any comments or questions are always welcome, I will add new stuff on it as I have free time, you can also request a particular topic to be included in it and I will try my best to include it in the next release

Here’s the link: http://www.mediafire.com/?mlzxzwwown2

Have fun reading
Cheers

- gastly

And oh yeah…A Very Happy Christmas, from yours truly

Here’s a tip for you guys, you can send free online e-cards from http://www.123greetings.com/

That site is awesome and also doesn’t spam it’s users xD

So, have fun everyone, enjoy the christmas eve and keep smiling

- gastly

I first shared to you some Firefox 3 Tweaks, Best Firefox Extensions etc. and now, I would like to tell you the theme that I use for my Firefox.

The theme that I use is called ‘Noia 2.0 Extreme’ and can be downloaded here.

The thing I love about this theme is that it has many options that we can configure like, it has options for having Aqya style close buttons, Rounded tabs etc. It also comes in two variants, a dark theme and a light theme. I personally like the dark theme better as it goes with my desktop’s theme.

Here’s a screenshot:

The thing is, if you don’t know how to go and figure out things yourself, then it’s gonna be a bit difficult finding the options (well, it was a bit difficult for me ).

To get to the theme’s options, Goto Tools->Addons->Themes and then select the Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) theme and select About Noia 2.0 (eXtreme). This will open up a window with the configuration options for this theme.

So, what Firefox theme are you using? Tell us in the comments

Cheers

- gastly

Technorati : firefox, mozilla, noia, theme
Del.icio.us : firefox, mozilla, noia, theme
Zooomr : firefox, mozilla, noia, theme
Flickr : firefox, mozilla, noia, theme

I found a cool new Firefox extension which helps in sorting the Firefox bookmarks. It’s called SortPlaces and it can be found here.

Here’s a post from GHacks which explains all the stuff’s of this extension.

The main thing is that this extension is experimental, so you need to register on the Firefox addons website to be able to download it, but it’s worh it if you have tons of bookmarks (like me ) and if you don’t want to sort each of them manually.

Technorati : bookmarks, firefox, sort, web browser
Del.icio.us : bookmarks, firefox, sort, web browser
Zooomr : bookmarks, firefox, sort, web browser
Flickr : bookmarks, firefox, sort, web browser

Happy Birthday Google and may you reach new heights in the years to come

NOTE: This is a sticky and it will remain on the top until this issue has been resolved (or, if I change my mind ). Please scroll down for new posts.

Update: I’ve made a forum to discuss this topic further, so people can interactively share information about this here. Also, please note that you need to register to view the more ‘appropriate’ content of the forum, so please do so. If you’re not someone from the govt. then you’ll probably find the post in the forums *wink*

UPDATE: It’s been confirmed that Undernet has been blocked by most of the Indian ISP’s. This post confirms it and the comment by anand has also confirmed that the Indian government has blocked Undernet. It’s time for some serious action people, we can’t just keep quiet, it’s a violation of our rights. I’ve added a poll, so please vote and tell your ideas in the comments

PS: I also request everyone to Stumble and Digg this post in order to spread awareness to all other people of the world. There is also a Google Group that has been created about this issue, visit it here.

Take Our Poll

Hello eveyone

Recently, there was an issue with me that I couldn’t access Undernet. It always gave an error while connecting and said ‘Connection Timed Out’. I thought it was just me and so I re-installed mIRC (the client I use) and checked everything but still the same error. Then, after a bit of searching and stuff I came to the conclusion that it was my ISP that was the problem.

I sent an email to them and I am still awaiting a reply…

BTW, Undernet is one of the largest IRC networks and by far the best (imho). You can connect to Undernet by using your IRC client and connecting to ‘irc.undernet.org’.

Anyways,

I posted a request to confirm from other ‘Hathway’ (my ISP) users at the India Brodband Forum

and I got a reply from an ‘Airtel’ user (lenkite) that he has been experiencing the same problem. And a post at the Undernet forums made it clear that all the people from India are experiencing this problem. But currently, only ‘Hathway’ and ‘Airtel’ users have confirmed this problem. Other ISP’s are yet to be confirmed.

lenkite, on his blog has also posted about this problem.

The question which arises through all of this is that whether Undernet has been blocked on purpose by all of India’s ISP’s or not. And if that’s true, then WHY? Why in the world have they blocked Undernet? That’s a complete violation of our rights and we will stand against it.

Just like Blogger.com was blocked sometime back in India, that raised many voices, now Undernet has been blocked (maybe on purpose, still to be confirmed). This is a complete restriction on our right to free speech and we will stand against it.

I’ll keep you posted on this…so stay tuned.

If anyone wishes to help or wants to learn more, then feel free to contact me

- gastly

I have decided to keep the home page of this blog clean and use snippets instead of displaying full posts. I hope this won’t effect the things much…ok then…off to the post. Enjoy

Here are some of my firefox tweaks that I use. These include both ‘about:config’ tweaks AND ‘usercrome.css’ tweaks. Enjoy

Userchrome.css Tweaks

For these tweaks, you need to edit your ‘userchrome.css’ file which is located in the folder: <windows_drive>\Documents and Settings\<your-username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<some_random_characters>\chrome

If in the chrome folder, you have a file named ‘userchrome.css’ then its well and good. But if you dont, then rename the file ‘userChrome-example.css’ to ‘userchrome.css’.

Open the file in notepad (or your preffered text editor). And then start adding the tweaks from the end of the file (well, its your choice, but I prefer to add them to the end).

Hiding ‘Edit’ and ‘History’ Menu’s

I prefer to use shortcuts for simple things like copy (ctrl+c), paste (ctrl+v), Find Text (ctrl+f) etc. So, I don’t have any use of the ‘Edit’ menu. And, I don’t use the ‘History‘ menu either, I prefer to use the shortcut Ctrl+H for displaying the history items. And as for the ‘Help’ menu, I don’t use it either. Lets make ‘em dissapear, shall we?

OK, so open up ‘userchrome.css’ in a text editor of your choice. Add the following lines at the end:

/*
Remove Edit ,Help and History menu items from menubar.
*/

#history-menu { display: none !important};
#edit-menu { display: none !important};
#helpMenu { display: none !important};

/* End */

I think the CSS code above is pretty much self-explanatory. The first line removes the ‘History’ menu, the second line removes the ‘Edit’ menu and the third line removes the ‘Help’ menu.

If you ever want to enable these menu-items. Then just open up your ‘userchrome.css’ file and either comment out (/* Code */) or remove these lines altogether.

Here is a screenshot of my Firefox window, before applying the tweak:

Firefox before CSS tweak

After the UserChrome.css tweak…

Firefox after UserChrome.css tweak

About:Config Tweaks

The tweaks mentioned below are to be used as follows…

1. Type about:config in the firefox address bar.

2. Click the ‘I’ll be careful, I promise!’ button.

3. Search for the tweaks mentioned below and change the value as mentioned. You can right click the value and change the value accordingly. If any value doesn’t exist, you can create it by right clicking and selecting the appropriate option. Eg: If you want to create a new ‘true or false’ value then right-click and select ‘New->Boolean’ , for numbers ‘New->Integer’, for strings ‘New->String’.

NOTE: Create new values ONLY if any previous value of that name does not exist.

4. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

PS: Here I have only mentioned the tweaks that I use. And you only need to apply those tweaks that you want

Enable spell check in text fields:

layout.spellcheckDefault = 2

Speed up page loads:

network.http.max-connections to 96

network.http.max-connections-per-server to 32

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server to 8

network.http.pipelining to true

network.http.proxy.pipelining to true

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to 8

network.http.pipelining.ssl to true

network.http.proxy.pipelining to true

nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 100

Show more tabs in a single window:

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75

Other Things…

I followed a great tutorial on Firefox 3 Color Profile Support by Dria.

The theme that I am using is Camifox, you can get it here.

And, here are some other tutorials where you can find some more tweaking stuff.

Firefox 3 Hacks And Tweaks and TweakGuides.

OK, so that’s all for this guide. I hope it helped, and you enjoyed reading it

Any kind of comments are always welcome.

Thanks for reading…

Cya

- gastly

Adblock Plus – Filters advertisements in web pages. Highly recommended if you want an ad-free internet

Better Gmail 2 – As the name suggests, it makes Gmail better with some tweaks and scripts (you need Greasemonkey with this one). If you’re a gmail power user, then this extension is a must.

CustomizeGoogle – This extension makes some changes in the google search results. Like it makes available links to other search engines as well, so if you can’t find anything in google, then just click on the search engines name (just above the search results) with which you want to search. It also filters google’s advertisements in the search results page. Really nice extension, and highly recommended by me

Video Download Helper – It enables the download of videos and embedded media from web pages. It supports websites like YouTube etc. and it also supports download of picture galeries. A good alternative of this is the Unplug extension.

FavIcon Picker 3 – This little extention enables the use of FavIcons in your bookmarks via the bookmark’s properties dialog. Just right-click a bookmark and select properties and then select the favicon by clicking the ‘Browse’ button.

FireGestures – A highly recommended extension. It enables you to use your mouse to do things like Opening and closing a tab and to open a new window of Firefox. Really useful and highly configurable. You can use your own custom gestures. Check it out

FlashBlock – This nifty little extension saves a LOT of time and bandwidth too. As the name suggests, it blocks out all the flash in a webpage and replaces it with a placeholder, so that you can click on that little button and the flash will start to load. This is HIGHLY recommended for all those peeps who don’t want to get distracted while surfing the web. Its a good idea to combine this with the Adblock Plus extension, they make a killer combination (they kill ads you see ).

ForecastFox – This enables Firefox to display your countries weather conditions in the bottom of your firefox window. A really cool and nice way to show the weather, it also shows a little map of the weather activities of your country.

GreaseMonkey – A very nice extension which enables users to modify a website to their liking using JavaScript. Some extensions also use it, and some people who know JavaScript can also use it customize everything.

StumbleUpon – THE best extension if you’re feeling bored and have nothing to do. Just click on the ‘Stumble’ button and you are taken to really interesting websites of your interests (which you select when you install this extension and you can add or remove your topics of interests later too). Highly recommended by me

Stylish – This extension is more like GreaseMonkey but a whole lot different…well…it simply makes the websites more ‘stylish’ You can install userstyles that are made by thousands of Stylish users OR you can make your own too. Basically, GreaseMonkey uses JavaScript, but Stylish uses CSS to change the layout and style of the websites. You should know CSS if you want to develop your own userstyles, but if not, then just download some userstyles that others have made. Userstyles are available for many popular websites like Google, Gmail, Orkut etc. etc. You can get some userstyles here.

Sxipper - This is a really handy addon. It saves the passwords for your websites so that you don’t have to remember them and type them again and again. It is much better than the built-in Firefox password saver and it also learns your habits Try it, Highly Recommended.

WOT (Web Of Trust) – It warns you of dangerous websites. It checks for a website if it is dangerous or not and warns you. If you wander the web and visit some kind of ‘dangerous’ websites then this extension if for you. May you not get caught in some phishing trap

Alright, so this sums up all of my extensions. I know, I don’t use many extensions, but I only use those extensions which I think that they will be of any use to me .

More to come soon, I will write about the tweaks I use in Firefox to speed it up and make it more friendly (for me ).

PS: If you have any extensions that you like and would like to recommend it here, please free to do so in the comments. If I like it, I will surely include that in the list above.

Have fun

- gastly