So when you are reading a blog post or a webpage, sometimes, you may want to open the same link from Firefox in a different browser. You may want to see how the website’s design looks in other browser or test other aspects. It’s a pain to first copy the address bar link, launch another browser from Windows start menu and then paste the link in the address bar.

The Open With Add-on for Firefox helps simplifying the process by adding custom items in Firefox context menu, tab bar and View Menu, thus allowing you to open a link from Firefox in any other browser – Chrome, Safari, opera or Internet Explorer.

You can simply right click a webpage and select “Open with Google Chrome” or “open with Internet Explorer” and the same link will be instantly opened in the chosen browser. Else, you can activate the buttons in the tab bar and use them for quickly switching links between browsers.

So if you are designing something and want to know how your website looks in IE or other browsers, this add-on is really going to help a lot.

Tip:

1. Open links in Firefox using Hotkeys
2. Preview links in Firefox using Foxyspider

Open Links From Firefox In Other Browsers- IE, Opera, Chrome, Safari originally published on Ampercent

There are some entries in Firefox context menu which I never use. For example:

• View page source ( I use the keyboard shortcut Control + U)
• Send link ( I use Twitter or Facebook to send links to my friends)
• Save page as ( rarely used, I use the scrapbook add-on when I want to save a page for later reading)
• Bookmark this page ( I use the keyboard shortcut Control +D)

This list may depend on how you use Firefox and which context menu options are not required at all.

The Menu Editor Firefox add-on can be used to completely customize Firefox right click context menu and remove the unnecessary entries which you never use. You can also rearrange the items as per your choice.

You can choose to show or remove individual entries, this is very useful if you do not remember keyboard shortcuts and depend on the right click options heavily.

The best part about the extension is that it allows you to edit the main Menu bar in Firefox, so you can also remove the unnecessary links and entries from File, Edit, Bookmarks and so on.

Edit Firefox Right Click Context Menu and Remove Unnecessary Entries originally published on Ampercent

Download and install the extension for Google Chrome or Firefox. Once installed, just open the Settings to customize the button. To open the settings button use the Settings icon ( ) beside the services icons in both the browsers. Here are some changes that you can make to make it work better.

1. Choose Your Favorite Services

• For Chrome: Open the settings and choose your favorite Google services from the left window. To choose the services click on it and it will be selected and moved to the right pane. In a similar way you can remove entries from the right pane.
  
• For Firefox: Click the settings icon to open the customization window. Now in the left pane the supported services are listed while the selected services are listed in the right pane. To move something from the left pane to right pane you have to select the item in the left pane and then click the topmost green button (pointing right) to move it to the right pane. If you wish to remove a selected service click the item in the right pane and press the yellow arrow button (pointing left). You can also add custom URL in the Firefox add-on.
  

2. Change the Appearance

• For Chrome: Scroll down to the section named General Appearance and Behaviour. You will now have options like icon appearance, showing labels, whether to open in a new tab and choose the main button for the extension.
  
• For Firefox: Go to the 2nd tab in the settings window and choose the appearance and behavior of the Google Shortcuts button.
  

3. Setup Your Google Apps

• For Chrome: This is really great feature that I haven’t found in any previous extension. You can actually setup your Google Apps Custom domain tools also. Just scroll to the last section named Custom Domain for Google Apps and type your Google Apps domain name in the place provided. Now select the services of the domain you wish to add as a shortcut. That’s all. It is important to note that if you have any custom domain activated, all the corresponding services will be overridden i.e as I have mine set to a custom domain, clicking the Gmail link will open my Google apps mail and not the Google mail.
  
• For Firefox: You can add the Google Apps custom domain in the 2nd tab of the setting window. It is located at the bottom. Refer previous Firefox screenshot.

I am happy that every time I wish to see a Youtube video or even check my apps email I do not have to open my bookmarks or type in the URL. Hope you will enjoy it too.

Get All Google Services On Chrome and Firefox originally published on Ampercent

As a writer, I have to use typical words in my blog posts which does not come with the dictionary by default. Some of the common examples are – bittorrent, Newsgator, RSS, Orkut and so on.

The problem: The frustrating part with dictionaries and spell checker is those curly red highlights seen on a WYSIWYG editor when you have just performed a clean installation of Windows and starting to write an article. You have to continuously right click a word which does not exist in the dictionary and select “Add to Dictionary”

This is extremely frustrating and time consuming as well. It would be far better if you can backup the browser’s dictionary before performing a system format. Later, you can simply restore the dictionary by pasting the backup file in the appropriate folder or use the same Firefox dictionary in multiple computers.

Here are some tips on how you can backup Firefox dictionary and restore it later:

1. Click start menu and type %AppData% in the search box and hit Enter.

2. This will open C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming folder where you can find the actual location of the dictionary file which Firefox uses.

3. Navigate to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and you will see a typical folder ending with a “.default” name.

4. Open that folder and you will find a persdict.bat file.Open that file in notepad and you will see a list of words which you have added to the dictionary by choosing “Add to dictionary” from the right click context menu.

Firefox dictionary File

This is the dictionary file we are conerned about. On opening it with notepad, you will see a list of words as shown below:

Backup the Firefox Dictionary File and Use it On Multiple Computers

To use the same dictionary file in multiple computers, simply copy the file and paste it in the appropriate folder of another computer where you would want to use the same dictionary. The advantage is that you do not have to see the same spelling suggestions again and again, which you have already added to the dictionary in another computer.

I tested this on my laptop running Windows 7 and on my desktop running Windows Vista and it worked as expected. You can simply  paste the entire paragraphs of words in two dictionaries and it will be added to the Firefox spell checker options.

Note: I tried to find the dictionary location of Firefox in Windows XP, but the folder isn’t there. If you know how to restore the same dictionary in Windows XP, please leave a comment below.

Removing Misspelled Words: If you have accidentally added some words in the dictionary file and want to remove misspelled words from Firefox dictionary file, simply delete the words from the persdict.bat file.

Do you use any other way or browser plugin to backup and manage Firefox dictionaries? Please share your ideas in the comments section.

How to BackUp Firefox Dictionaries and Restore Them After a System Format originally published on Ampercent

Next, create a new account with the Mozilla website and enter your Mozilla login credentials in all the Firefox profiles. You are all done, Firefox will periodically backup bookmarks and sync them to the cloud.

You will get a fresh copy of all the bookmarks in all the computers and mobile devices.

If you are having problems setting up Firefox sync on your computer, check out this video which walks you through the steps to install and configure Firefox sync.

How to Configure or Setup Firefox Sync originally published on Ampercent

You will need to register an account with Mozilla for synching Firefox settings and bookmarks across computers, the feature will be available in Firefox 4 early beta.

If you are having problems setting up Firefox sync, check out this step by step video tutorial on configuring Firefox sync.

via Mozilla links

Firefox Sync coming to Firefox 4 – Sync Bookmarks, Tabs, History and Preferences originally published on Ampercent

When it comes to sending scheduled emails, none of the above email services allow you to send scheduled emails on a future date, which is frustrating because there are times when you would want to schedule a message to be sent later. May be one hour from now or may be after a week.

Here are some common examples:

- You are working on a project and want to send an alert to your client at 12.00 noon tomorrow. But you won’t have access to internet at that time and thus want to schedule the message beforehand.

- You use email to upload photos to your Flickr and Picasa web albums. You want to schedule the upload process by sending a scheduled email to your Flickr or Picasa account.

- You want to follow up with someone and want to send a reminder email exactly after 1 week or 1 month.

- You use Gmail as a To Do list manager and would want to automatically add tasks for a later date.

Enter Boomerang4Gmail, the service allows you to schedule emails from your Gmail account (Google Apps accounts are not supported yet). To use it, simply head over to the site and request a free invitation.

Once you get the invitation code, you will be shown a link to download the Firefox add-on or the Google Chrome extension.

Send Scheduled Emails From Gmail Using Boomerang for Gmail Add-on

Once the extension is installed, scheduling an email message is easily achieved. Log in to your Gmail inbox and you will see a “Send Later” drop down added just above the compose message section. Click the dropdown and you can choose a specific time and day for the message to be delivered.

The available options include sending the message in 1 hour, 2 hours, 4hours, tomorrow, in two days, in one week or in one month. You can also choose a particular time and date for the message, as shown in the following image:

Send Schedules Emails From Gmail

Once the message is scheduled, Boomerang will store the email header in their server and schedule it for the time specified. There is more, you can hide specific emails from your email inbox and make them reappear at a certain time of the day.

For example: If you receive a lot of subscription newsletters through out the entire day, you can use Boomerang to hide specific emails from your inbox and allow them to reappear at the end of the week. This is very useful because you can read the newsletters in bulk and don’t have to spend your precious time deleting unimportant email, looking at subject lines and deciding the priority of a message.

Watch the Screencast

Here is a wonderful screencast which shows how Boomerang works:

Overall, Bo0merang for Gmail is the best solution for scheduling emails from Gmail and anyone who sends and receives a large volume of email everyday, this extension is his friend for life. Thanks to Keith for the hat tip.

Tip: How to find older emails in Gmail

How to Send Scheduled Emails From Gmail originally published on Ampercent

Another option is to specify a list of URL’s in Firefox options, just separate the URL’s with a comma. When you start Firefox, these website(s) will load in new tabs automatically. (see example)

Both these features are good but if your bookmark folders is not short and contains a whole lot of pages, you need a smart alternative.

Let’s say you want to open your email, Facebook account, Twitter account, Blog account, Adsense, Google Analytics and other websites in new tabs every morning. You want an easier option to open multiple pages with a single click and don’t want to click each bookmark from the bookmarks toolbar.

In such cases, Morning Coffee extension will be very useful. The add-on lets you create customized profiles and sets of bookmarks, which can be opened with a single click. After the add-on is insalled, you will notice a small Cofee cup icon placed just left to the browser address bar.

Go ahead in the add-on preferences and you can add your favorite sites to any day or every day of the week.

The interesting part is that Morning Coffee can open different pages on Firefox start, depending upon the present day of the week. You may want to open a specific set of sites on a specific day of the week, just add the list in the add-on preferences and you are done.

When you start Firefox, the add-on will detect the today’s day and open all the pages in new tabs. Very handy, when you want to have a quick access list of sites to open and don’t want the long bookmarks bar nagging in the middle.

By the way, you can use Morning Coffee to open a set of sites at any time of the day, not just morning. Did I told you that you can open multiple pages and automatically login with a Greasemonkey script ?

Open Multiple Pages or Bookmarks in Firefox With One Click originally published on Ampercent

There are browser extensions available to block JavaScript ads but if you want to block ads on YouTube video page, try TubeStop. It’s a Firefox add-on which blocks the in video advertisements when you play a video.

Block Ads on YouTube videos

Christopher Finke, the developer of TubeStop originally made the extension to stop the autoplay feature of YouTube videos and then accidentally discovered that the extension blocked the Youtube ads anyway. All in all, a great extension to stop YouTube ads for a distraction free video watching experience.

How to Block YouTube Advertisements originally published on Ampercent

- You are using an older version of Java. Please clear your browser’s cache or restart the browser.
- The screen goes white and the web pages never load however hard you try
- Some sites don’t open at all, restarting the system does not solve the problem either.
- You have to activate browser cookies for the website to work.

The above problems occur when you have not cleared the browser cache for a long time.

What is a browser Cache or Cookie ?

A Browser cache is nothing but a folder in your computer where temporary internet files are saved. This is because when you visit a website, some files and images are downloaded in your comuter to speed up web browsing. The next time you open the same website, the images are files are fetched from the browser cache and this results in quicker loading of websites.

A cookie is a small file used by a website that can have various purposes. A cookie can be used to track your location, to serve advertisements or may be authenticate your login information.

Browsing history is a list of websites which you have visited recently or visit quite often. All browsers including Firefox, Internet explorer, Google Chrome and Safari save browsing history of websites so that if you forget the actual address of a webpage, you can use the browsing history to navigate to the page in question.

Jayanta pal, one of our readers asked the following question via Email:

I am using Firefox and want a simple way to clear all browser cache on exit. This is because when I return for internet surfing at a later time, I want all settings to be refreshed and don’t want to automatically be loggedin to certain websites. Is there any scripts or plugins which I can use ?

Great Question, in fact I have answered this problem several times to my friends. Here is the answer:

How to Manually Clear Firefox Cache, Browsing History, Cookies and Active Logins

To manually clear Firefox cache, download history, browsing history, active logins and site preferences, follow the simple steps mentioned below:

1. Open Firefox, go to Tools and select “Options”

2. Go to the “Privacy” tab and select the option “Firefox will never remember History”. Then clickthe link “You may also clear all current history”

3. You are done. Firefox will clear the browser cache, delete all cookies, temporary internet files and site preferences (active logins). You do not need to restart the browser for the changes to take effect.

Related: Manually clear Firefox cache and Browsing history of a specific website

How to Automatically Clear Firefox Cache, Browsing History, Cookies and Active logins on Exit

The above method can be monotonos, especially when you restart the browser frequently and dont want to repeat the process over and over again. Here are the steps to automatically clear firefox cache, browsing history, site logins on exit:

1. Install the History Block Firefox Add-on

2. Go to the add-on settings and select the fields you want to clear automatically when you close the browser. This Active logins, cache, form and search history, browsing history and cookies. You may also like to clear the offline website data as well, this is recommended if you face any problems with a particular site in question.

3. You can also specify a list of hosts or domains in the add-on prefernces to block the history of particular websites. This is useful when you do not want to use an incognito or private browsing mode

Click OK and you are done. Whenever you quit Firefox, all the cache will be automatically cleared. If you are using Google Chrome, check out how to manually clear browser cache and browsing history in Google Chrome.

How to Automatically Clear Firefox Cache, History, Cookies On Exit originally published on Ampercent