You have email accounts, social profiles, blogs, RSS reader, YouTube and so many different websites to use but the biggest problem with all these websites is that you have to remember a different username and password for each of them.

Sure, there are different ways to save usernames and passwords directly in the browser or use password manager applications for easing your routine job of typing the same usernames and passwords over and over again. But thing is, you have to create accounts with all these sites and have a unique login information, created only for you.

Mozilla is trying to address this problem with their new approach – Browser ID.

With Mozilla’s browser ID, you need not remember dozens of username and passwords for different sites. One browser ID authenticated email will take care of all site logins, if the host website support the browser ID login authentication system in the first place.

The short answer: Firefox wants to provide a dedicated sign in option directly in the address bar which can be used to sign into websites in a single click. No more typing long usernames and diffcult passwords, the browser lets you remember just one username and password combination for all the sites you use.

What Is Mozilla’s Browser ID - An Introduction

Here is how it works.

You create an account with browserid.org and choose a username and password for your browser ID account. Then you install the experimental Browser ID sign in add-on for Firefox and you are ready to take Mozilla’s newest authentication system for a spin.

The next time you visit a website that supports Mozilla’s Browser ID authentication system, you will see a login link at the left portion of Firefox address bar, as shown below

Clicking the sign in button and Firefox will prompt you whether you want to sign in to this website with your Browser ID account. Click the “Sign In” button and it’s done.

You will be immediately logged into the site without having to type any site specific username or passwords. Your locally saved Browser ID username and password will take care of the login and authentication system, which is a godsend for people like me who have more than 6 dozen online accounts, each having a different password.

Here is a 2 minute video demonstration which shows how Firefox browser ID helps you quickly sign in to websites, without having to type in usernames and passwords at all:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHWXoFD81Gs

How To Implement Mozilla’s Browser ID Sign In Process On Your Website

The Mozilla team has put together a nice guide for implementing Browser ID login authentication on your website. Here is the short and concise version:

1. Add the following code before the </head> tag of your site’s template. This is the JavaScript library which will process the login procedure, once users hit the “Sign in” button in Firefox address bar

<script src=”https://browserid.org/include.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

2. Use a simple IF else function to define successfull and failed actions, when users try to login to your website using the Browser ID login system

3. You must verify the assertion is authentic, and extract the user’s email address from it. The easiest way to do these is to use the free verification service provided by BrowserID.

Now you can go ahead and continue any post authentication steps you may want to. This is not mandatory and depends whether your websites really needs to verify the user’s email address completely (e.g shopping carts or ecommerce sites may want to implement this step).

When And Why You Should Use Mozilla Browser ID Login Authentication System

Without any doubt, the Internet is gearing towards speed.

People neither have time nor they have the energy to do recursive operations again and again, which is why there are millions of software applications being invented every year. Turns out, users need the answer as fast as possible and in least possible steps.

Implementing Mozilla’s browser ID login authentication system in your website might help you increase sales and conversions because users will have an easier way to login to your site without having to remember their account credentials. This will make your ecommerce site slightly more “sticky” as users would be able to quickly login and use your website within a few seconds.

Barring blogs that are geared towards content and publishing, this login system is ideally suited for online stores, ecommerce sites, sites that sell or endorse products. And the best thing is that you don’t have to maintain the software, manage any separate user database or take responsibilities for authentication.

Mozilla’s Browser ID Login System – One Username And Password is All You Have To Remember originally published on Ampercent

Whenever I restarted my computer, the web browser would open automatically and a particular group of websites would start loading on their own. Regardless of whether I used Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Firefox, these pages would load and open multiple pop-up windows bombarded with advertisements.

This is very distracting and after a couple of trial and errors, I found the exact reason why a particular webpage was opening when I booted my computer.

I am not a very big fan of transformation packs or Windows themes but some times, I do try them to give my desktop a different look. This refreshes the eye and creates a feel good factor. I Googled for a windows 7 theme and downloaded a couple of Windows 7 themes from that site.

When I installed one of the transformation packs, the software secretly changed my computer’s internal settings. First I thought this was a browser specific problem but after checking with multiple browsers, I was sure that this problem was not browser specific but something related to my operating system. Since, every other browser was opening an unknown page at startup, there must be something in my computer and not in Firefox or Google Chrome preferences.

If you ever come across a similar problem, here is how to fix it.

1. First uninstall third party transformation packs, Windows themes and unnecessary software which you installed recently and think might be a reason of this damage. This is important, you must get rid of the problem first – otherwise the next time the software is launched, it may override your customizations and might bring back the older problem.

2. Open your browser, click settings and check the URL of the homepage.

• In Google Chrome, click the wrench icon and select options. Check whether Google Chrome is configured to open multiple pages at startup and revert back to your preferred option. [Settings page example ]
• In Firefox, Click Tools and select options. Next, check whether Firefox has been configured to open multiple pages at startup or not. If yes, revert back to your preferred option and choose the homepage you want to open when Firefox starts up. [ Firefox options example]
• In Internet Explorer, click Tools and select “Internet Options”. Check the address of the homepage and if its not the homepage you want to load during startup, change it to a preferred one. [Internet Explorer example]

3. Your problem should be fixed but in my case it wasn’t. After choosing my preferred homepage and restarting the computer, the same spammy page was showing up on system startup.

To fix this, go to Windows control panel and click “Internet Options”. Under the “general” tab, you may find a whole bunch of unknown websites being added to the “Home page” text field. Click the “use blank” button and save your settings.

4. This worked but only partially, because after restarting my computer, I found that the browser was opening but it was showing a blank page. To prevent Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or any other browser from launching at startup, here is one last thing you have to do.

5. Click Windows start menu and type msconfig in the search box. This will launch Windows system configuration window, here you can specify which programs should and which programs should not auto launch at system startup. Switch to the “Startup” tab and remove the entry for browsers (if any). [see example].

You will have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect

What really happened?

In my case, here is what happened.

As soon as I installed the transformation pack, the program added an entry to Windows startup utility such that my default browser should launch automatically at system startup. Next, the program secretly changed my Internet options settings and added a whole bunch of unknown web addresses as the home page. This setting would override the browser specific settings of other browsers, so whenever I was launching any browser installed on my system, the same ad laden page was showing up.

Lesson learned: Never install programs, transformation packs and other stuff from third party sites, even if they look credible and trustworthy.

Is Your Browser Opening An Unknown Page At System Startup? Here is The Fix originally published on Ampercent

We have previously discussed a Greasemonkey script which lets you completely remove Google’s black menu bar. The script works in Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome and does a nice job in hiding the menu bar all together. You get the older clean Google interface but the disadvantage here is that all the links in the navigation menu bar are hidden and will be inaccessible.

Here is how Google.com will look like once you have installed the disable black menu bar Greasemonkey script:

So if you frequently click through the links on Google’s top menu bar, you won’t find the script very useful. It hides the top menu bar for good but you also need the links and don’t want to bookmark each of them manually, one at a time.

However, here is another Greasemonkey userscript which lets you change the color of Google’s top menu bar from Black to white. Named as Google light Menu bar, the script reverts you back to the older white background with all links accessible and working as before. The script works out of the box and there is nothing to tweak or configure.

Here is how Google.com will look, once you have installed the second script which changes the menu bar color to White from Black:

Pretty neat and does exactly what it says. The previous script hides the navigation bar while this one modifies the style attribute of the menu bar HTML element, thus allowing you to use the links while change the menu bar color to White from Black.

Google Light Nav bar is a free download, works with Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome. Give this a try!

Change The Color Of Google’s Navigation Menu Bar From Black To White originally published on Ampercent

Here is how the new design of Google.com looks like:

There is a new black navigation bar on Google.com and the size of Google logo has also been reduced in width and height. The black navigation menu bar on Google will appear across all Google products, whether you are using Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps or Google Translate – this ugly menu bar is here to stay!

However, if you don’t like the new menu bar of Google.com and want to hide or remove it, here is a Greasemonkey script which will come handy.

Disable Google black Bar is a nifty little Greasemonkey script which will let you remove Google’s black menu bar entirely from search result pages and from all the sites where this menu bar appears. So if you hate this newer design of Google and want to see the previous clean layout of Google.com, install the userscript and completely hide Google’s navigation bar from the design view.

Here is how the Google homepage and search result pages look, once you have installed the userscript:

Keith Dsouza, the developer of the userscript says that he is working on improving the Userscript to change the black bar to an earlier version of Google.com.

Google says in a blog post that the new design is geared towards more focus and usability but I found the black menu bar on Google.com extremely distracting and decided to remove it completely. I hardly use the navigational links but since I perform a lot of search every single day, I don’t want to see a cluttered user interface.

Disable Google Black bar is a free download, works in Opera, Google Chrome and Firefox.

Update: Those who want to retain Google’s top menu bar and only want to change the color from Black to white, should instead install this userscript. Thanks Martzuid for tipping us in the comments section.

Remove The Ugly Black Navigation Menu Bar From Google.com Search Result Pages originally published on Ampercent

Many studies reveal that the security of a person’s email, social or other online accounts depend on how secure their browser is. There are a lot of third-party websites who try to take advantage of your browser’s old configuration and outdated plugins, so you should be very careful and should regularly install the latest version of the browser you are using. If your web browser is not patched to it’s latest version and you are running an old version of a plugin, chances are that third-party malicious sites can use it to breach your system.

But how do you know when an update to your browser is available? How do you know whether you are running the latest version of Internet Explorer or have the most secure version for Adobe Flash? There are so many plugins and extensions already installed on your browser and it’s a bit difficult on the part of novice users to update all the plugins manually.

Thankfully, Qualys browser check changes all that.

Qualys browser check is a free browser plugin which tells you whether you are running an outdated browser plugin or any software on your system needs an upgrade. The tool scans vulnerabilities and loopholes in your current browser configuration and tells you which plugins needs to be updated and which extensions have a newer version available.

Qualys browser check works on Windows, Linux and MAC computers and supports all the major browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Use Qualys Browser Check To Secure Your Browser

Using the tool is fairly simple and takes only a few seconds. Go to the Qualys browser check homepage and install the plugin on your browser. Once the plugin is installed, hit the “Scan now” button and the plugin will scan your browser’s configuration and present a report.

I ran the tool on Internet Explorer 8 and here is the report I got:

The plugin found the following security vulnerabilities on my system:

1. I am running an older version of Internet Explorer while Microsoft has already released a newer version which blocks 99% of the malware from third-party sites. To fix this, all I have to do is click the “Fix it” button and I am taken to the Microsoft downloads website, so that I can download the latest version of Internet Explorer and update my system.

2. My Adobe Flash player is outdated and it is in a highly insecure state. This needs to be fixed immediately so I clicked the “Fix it” button and installed the latest version of Adobe Flash, which is free of course.

Additionally, the tool also checks whether your browser plugins are outdated or not. Previously, we have discussed how to keep Firefox and Google Chrome plugins up to date but with the help of this tool, there is no need to manually update any of your browser plugins.

Qualys browser check tool checks the following plugins:

Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Apple Quick time, Foxit reader, Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft Windows media player, Real Player, Java runtime and VLC media player. A complete documentation is available here

It is strongly advised to run this check once in two weeks, update all your browser plugins and completely secure your browser to be on the safe side. Remember that safe browsing also depends on your habits as well as on the tools you are using. Keep yourself away from malicious sites, bad software and install a good antivirus program on your computer.

Tip: Secure your Gmail account from phishing attempts

Qualys Browser Check Secures Your Browser by Suggesting Which Plugins Needs To Be Updated originally published on Ampercent

Since every other web activity is performed on the browser, it is really important to configure your browser for maximum security so that you don’t end up giving away your data to third party websites. The option’s panel of your browser may be configured to store your passwords, share your location, handle cookies and other privacy related features.

At the end of the day, most novice users are not well aware about how secure their browser is. They either don’t care whether a website is tracking their location, whether they have saved a whole bunch of passwords on their browser (which can be risky) or whether third party websites are accessing their browsing history or cached data in the background.

Thankfully, the latest nightly build of Firefox has introduced a new tool which can be used to tweak the necessary permissions given to third party websites. Here is how the about:permissions page in Firefox looks like:

To open the about:permissions page in Firefox, you must install the latest nightly build from the FIrefox nightly website. Trying to access this page on your current Firefox installation e.g Firefox 4 might give a page not found error.

The about:permissions page, as the name suggests can be used to tweak privacy related features of all third party websites from a single page. Although the same preferences are available under Tools > options, it seems that the Firefox team wants to provide a dedicated page to users so that they can control the default permissions for websites from a single page.

Here are a few things which can be done from Firefox’s about:permissions page:

1. Choose the websites with whom you want to share your location: If you frequently use Google Maps, Foursquare and other location sharing apps, you might want to add these sites to Firefox’s about:permisions page and choose “Always share location with these sites”.

For a specific site which you don’t trust and don’t want to give them your current location data, it’s wise to choose “Always ask” or “Block”. Chossing ‘Always ask” will show a notification like “This site wants to know your location” when you open it on Firefx. I would advise choosing the “Always ask’ option over “Block” so that you can decide to share your location data when you open or use a site, rather than choosing “Block” which will prevent sites from tracking your location.

2. Allow Only Specific sites to Store passwords: Again I would advise not to store passwords on the browser and use a dedicated password manager application like Keepass. But if you don’t want to use a password manager program and have the habit of saving passwords in Firefox, you can use the about:permissions page to define for which sites Firefox would store and manage passwords.

Example: If you have 6 Gmail accounts and you want to store all the passwords only for Gmail and no other site, it’s a good idea to add mail.google.com to Firefox’s about:permissions page, save all the username and passwords one by one and then choose the “Block” option.

This will configure Firefox to never save any passwords for any other site except Gmail. Your saved username and passwords will continue to work as before, it’s just that Firefox will not throw the dialog box ‘ Do you want this password to be saved?” in future.

3. Blocking Popup Winodows for specific sites: The same is true for allowing or blocking popups from sites you don’t trust. If you use a lot of Firefox add-ons and don’t want to block pop ups from Mozilla, add the pop up blocking exception to the about:permissions page and choose “Block Pop up windows” option. This will block pop up windows from every other site while allowing popups from the sites that are present in the exception list.

Other options are allowing and blocking cookies, and maintaining offline storage for sites that support it. The newer dashboad will surely help novice users who need a simple page for managing passwords, location, cookies and other privacy related options in Firefox.

Firefox Nightly Build Adds Better Privacy Controls Using An About:Permissions Page originally published on Ampercent

You may find that some webpages are very badly formatted, uses peculiar fonts or colors, have low font size and the template background is green or red. The article is informative and has quality information but the sad thing is that not every website owner is aware of proper web standards.

So how do you format a webpage for easy reading and keep only the content of the article, removing all the ads, Facebook social plugins, widgets, banners, subscription boxes and other promotional stuff ? In this article we look at some ways to make a webpage suitable for easy reading.

Readability – Browser Bookmarklet For Comfortable Reading of Webpages

This is one my my favorite bookmarklets and I use it on news websites who have a mix of unnecessary sections. Readability is a web and mobile app which helps you to remove clutter from webpages and offers a minimalist text version of the page, suitable for easy reading with bigger fonts and a subtle background.

For example: On using the above bookmarklet on the New York Times website,  the same article transforms into a clean text only version.

There are other advantages of using the Readability bookmarklet over browser extensions. You can share the article on social sharing sites, bookmark the webpage on your Readability account, print a formatted copy of the webpage on paper or download the text only version of the same page for offline use. If you are a writer and do a lot of reading every other day, I highly recommend this bookmarklet for distraction free reading environment.

Note: A similar bookmarklet is also offered by Readable, which offers more control on choosing a custom font, color, page background, font size and so on.

Browser Extension For Reading the Text only version of a Webpage

Instaread is a useful browser extension available for both Google Chrome and Firefox, which lets you quickly convert a webpage to it’s text only version. In reality, the Instapaper extension is a browser bookmarklet wrapped around a browser add-on which lets you remove ads, widgets and other useless clutter from webpages so that you can easily read the text or comments.

Using Instaread is simple. While reading a webpage or a blog post, simply hit the extension button or pull in the context menu option and you will see the text only version of the webpage in the same browser tab. Instaread also lets you choose a preferred font so if you hate the default Georgia font, you can choose between Verdana, Arial and a couple of more eye friendly fonts. Thanks Arpit

I used the Instapaper chrome extension on Wall Street Journal article and here is how the text only minimalist version looks like:

Using An RSS Reader For Reading Blog Articles

This is one of the best ways to read websites and online content from websites which you visit on a daily basis.  An online or a desktop RSS reader allows you to read all the latest articles from a blog, forum in a clutter free environment.

All you have to do is grab the RSS feed of the website and subscribe in your online RSS reader (I personally use Google Reader as my default RSS reader).

The advantage of using an RSS reader is that you don’t need to visit all the blogs, websites, forums one by one. Whenever there is a new update or a new article is published on your favorite website, you will see a new update on your RSS reader. Here are some more Google Reader tips for effective feed management.

Related: You might also want to try Evernote Clearly, a super Google Chrome extension which can format webpages for easier reading. The added advantage here is the ability to clip the formatted copy directly to your Evernote account.

How To Format A Webpage To Get A Clutter Free And Easy Reading Environment originally published on Ampercent

First, Flash cookies are not deleted when you clear your browsers browsing history i.e clearing your browser cache or hitting the “Delete Browsing history” button in Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox does not delete Flash cookies saved on your computer.

Flash cookies are used by websites who solely depend on shockwave flash objects or say web video sites like YouTube who stream FLV videos via your browser. Whenever you use a website which needs Adobe Flash for rendering or human interaction, a Flash cookie is saved on your computer which remains there until the next time you visit the same website.

Upon successive visits the Flash cookies are overwritten depending upon your actions.

Example: Go to YouTube or any other website which uses Flash objects. Interact with the Flash elements which could mean changing the screen resolution of YouTube videos, adjusting the volume or playing a game on some gaming website with custom preferences. When you are done, delete all browsing history and reload the page.

You should see the same preferences of the Flash elements because those preferences were saved in a Flash cookie and not as a normal bowser cookie accessible from your browser history settings in Firefox or Internet Explorer.

How To Delete Flash Cookies That Are Saved on Your Computer

Simple.

Open the following directory in Windows Explorer and there you have all the Flash and SWF cookie files saved in the shared objects folder.

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects – replace username with the actual username of your computer

Please note that flash files and cookies of each website is stored in it’s local folder, so you can clear Flash cookies of a particular site using this method. Another noteworthy point is that you can also find the last modification time of a cookie which could put some light when was the last time a YouTube video was viewed on this computer or when was the last time you opened a particular news website.

Adobe Flash 10.3 Let’s You Delete Flash Cookies From Your Browser

The good news however is that Adobe has released an update to Adobe Flash Player and the recent beta version (10.3, download here) lets you clear flash cookies and cached objects directly from your browser’s browsing history page. Flash player 10.3 integrates features and local storage of flash objects with the browser’s privacy settings so novice users won’t have any problems flushing the older flash files, if there is any problem related with Adobe Flash on some website.

Example: Let’s say you grandma wants to watch the royal wedding video but she is unable to preview it on Internet Explorer because YouTube continues to show an “Adobe Flash Error”. Instead of manually deleting Adobe flash’s object cache, ask your grandma to go to Tools > Options and hit “Clear Browsing history”.

This will also delete all the previously cached Flash objects and probably now she won’t have any Adobe flash problems in the browser.

To test this newer feature, download the latest Flash player from Adobe, install it for your browser and head over to this Microsoft page.

Here you can create a demo Flash cookie and test whether Internet Explorer is able to delete it, once you clear IE’s browsing history and reload the page again.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3 Lets You Delete Flash Cookies Directly From Your Browser originally published on Ampercent

One simple trick you can do to make Firefox 4 faster is to disable the tab animations. The only downside to doing this is that you lose some for the eye candy that Firefox 4 is now known for. If speed is your goal, however, I suggest you do this immediately.

How To Disable Firefox 4′s Tab Animations

1. Type ‘about:config’ into your Firefox address bar. When greeted with this screen, simple click the button that says I’ll be careful, I promise!

2. Type ‘browser.tabs.animate’ into the Filter bar towards the top of the window.

3. Double click the word true under Value to change the value to false. Now close the tab.

Faster Firefox Browsing Without Tab Animations

After closing the ‘about:config’ tab, you will have already enabled the change. if you ever wanted to turn the animations back on, you can simply follow these steps but change the value to true.

I personally see a difference in the time it takes for a tab to load with the animations off. I am not sure if it is placebo or not, but if it feels faster then I am happy.

If you have any questions or comments, or have an idea on how to further speed up Firefox 4, please let us know by saying so in the section below.

Speed Up Firefox 4 By Disabling Tab Animations originally published on Ampercent

Windows Live Writer is always a favorite of bloggers, but what if you are looking for a cross platform blogging editor which works on Windows, Linux and MAC computers? If you are, then you should take a look at a browser plugin known as ScribeFire.

What is ScribeFire?

ScribeFire isn’t actually a piece of software that you install on your machine. Instead, it is a browser plugin that spans all major operating systems. It is available for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Apple’s Safari browsers. The experience of using ScribeFire is the same across all browsers and operating systems. ScribeFire is compatible with a wide range of blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, and SquareSpace.

ScribeFire’s Full Bodied Feature Set

Any blogger can tell you that a piece of software is useless without a robust feature set, and ScribeFire is no slouch.

At its base, it includes a fantastic WYSIWYG post editor. You can use any of the basic formatting features available to you when writing a post on any platform. You can also add images and videos to the articles with ease. The only thing I see missing from its feature set in this category is the heading formats. Many of us like to use preset formatting for subheadings within posts, and ScribeFire does not have those preset formats.

Beyond the basic editing capabilities, ScribeFire has a lot to offer bloggers.

It includes a monetization feature that uses InLinks to automatically insert paid links into posts. It also has a set of share features that will automatically allow you to share your new post on several social sites, like Facebook and Digg. Here again I notice a glaring omission, and this time its Twitter. I am not sure why Twitter is not included in the sharing package within ScribeFire, but I hope they will add it in a future update.

Another great feature of ScribeFire is its related articles search. While it doesn’t focus on articles that are on your website, it does help you find related articles for possible references. It is possible to have your blog added to the pool of articles, but I do not see a way to restrict it to only your website.

ScribeFire’s Road To Daily Use

I have had issues with Windows Live Writer in the past, and I have been searching for something else to use for blogging.

Overall, I am impressed with ScribeFire’s feature set and usability. As I mentioned, there are a couple of minor issues with it, but I think that they are easily forgiven for all the other features that ScribeFire has to offer. If you are in the market for a great piece of blogging software, you should definately give ScribeFire a try.

What blogging platform are you using? Do you have any suggestion or comments? If you do, please let us know by leaving a comment below.

Move Your Blogging To Your Browser with ScribeFire originally published on Ampercent