Welcome to the Geek Choice Blog

If you’re a user of Google’s internet browser Chrome, their arguable answer to Mozilla’s Firefox (offering much of the same functionality and performance that places these two competing browser’s well ahead of Microsoft’s stagnant Internet Explorer), there’s a good chance you also use Gmail.

With Chrome now supporting extensions, a long overdue addition to its impressive features, we have a new extension that augments your Gmail experience. Called Better Gmail for Chrome, this is an unofficial extension that renders your use of the popular email service a bit more manageable.

After its installation, you’re ready to begin taking advantage of it. To access the extension’s features, click on the wrench and select Extensions -> Better Gmail Options. Looking at the list of options, simply click on those you’d like to toggle for activation. An upcoming update that includes support for POP3 Email is said to be on the horizon.

Those of us in the Geek Choice office have no real preference between Chrome and Firefox, finding both to be far preferable to Internet Explorer. If you have a favorite extension to use with either browser, feel free to share it with us!

Better Gmail for Chrome can be retrieved here.

Well, here I am with another Firefox extension.

Like the one I touched upon earlier today, this is an add-on that will greatly enhance how you use the internet with this popular browser. Looking for a simple means of customizing how your tabs appear and function in Firefox?

This is the extension you’ve been searching for.

Called Tabberwocky, this extension builds upon the functionality of your tabs to an impressive degree, altering everything from their appearance to how you navigate between each one.

Installation is just as easy as it’s been for every other extension you’ve put to use. Once that’s complete, your first order of business  is looking at the available options : Tabs – Menus – Advanced.

These options afford you an opportunity to tailor the extension to your liking. For example, looking at the Tabs option, you’re able to adjust how your tabs behave and how they respond when clicked upon or closed.

With the Menus options, you can assign keyboard shortcuts, adjust your context menu, and determine where you want new links to open.

Lastly, using Advanced options, you can configure it so that the “progress bar” appears  on your tabs instead of in the Status bar. Advanced options will also allow you have multiple rows in one tab.

Not everyone will want to put this to use, finding that the default functionality of Firefox’ tabs suits them just fine, but this might pique the interest of you Firefox geeks that love to tweak this brilliantly customizable internet browser.

You can grab Tabberwocky here.

When using an internet browser, be it Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, you’ve probably used the full screen option that’s available when pressing F11. This is great for those of you who want a bit more breathing room while viewing the content.

Yet, in spite of how liberating that option can be, there are those times when you’d like to have some your browsing features available – such as the status bar or the address field. As in the past, I’ve happened upon a neat Firefox extension that introduces a new way of browsing, just one of a myriad of add-ons that significantly augments your browsing experience.

It’s called Hide GUI Bars, and it allows users to select which elements they’d like to remove from the browser, ultimately freeing up the viewing area on Firefox.  Those segments that you can specify the removal of include the navigation bar, the tab bar, the menu bar, the status bar, and the bookmark bar. Multiple combinations – if you, for instance, only want the bookmark bar visible — are available when using this extension.

There is a default hot key (CTRL-SHIFT-A), but it can be changed to suit your preference by using any other combination of keys.  Absolutely free, this is yet another example of the ingenuity that has propelled Firefox to the head of the browsing class.

You can grab Hide GUI Bars here.

For those of you who’ve recently upgraded to the latest version of Firefox (ver. 3.6), the popular and amazingly customizable web browser from the ingenious crowd at Mozilla, you might be aware that your extensions – those apps which expand upon your browsing experience – aren’t working.

This is a problem about which frustrated users of Firefox have become especially vocal, but there seems to be a fix.

In the past, when a new version of the browser was released, there was a simple solution to ensuring that the extensions were working properly. One needed to only edit the config file, adding a simple “extensions.checkCombatibility” entry to the list of values. With the new version, this string no longer works. However, with a simple amendment to the original value, you’ll have extensions working on your new browser in no time.

If you haven’t made the necessary changes, when installing an extension on the new version of Firefox, you’re met with an error message that reads:

Readeroo.0.2.20080520 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 3.6b3

Correcting this is simple, though the process may initially seem daunting to your average user. Here’s what you need to do:

In your address bar, where you’d normally enter a url (www.webpage.com), type: about:config.

Ignore the warning and proceed.

You’ll see an exhaustive list of all the configuration values associated with your browser. Ignore those and right-click on the list, choosing “New” -à “Boolean” from the drop down.

You’ll then be asked to enter a “preference name,” where it becomes critical to know which version of Firefox 3.6 you’re using, as both Alpha and Beta releases are available to the public.  For instance, if you know you have  the Beta release, you will enter the following in the “preference name” field:

Extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b

Note the “b” at the end and understand that it signifies the Beta release, while an Alpha release would require that you end the string with an “a.”

After that’s complete, you’ll want to choose “false” and proceed. Assuming everything was entered correctly, the value will now be included in that long list of configuration settings. If you’re curious, run a search for it in the “Filter” field.

Once that’s done, your extensions will install as they once did, returning you to the wonderful world of customization that Firefox extensions welcomes you to.

If you have any other questions, even if unrelated to Firefox, never hesitate to give us a call.