What Is It?

A Firefox Add-on that allows you to save and view web pages in a handy single file often known as web archive or “mht” files (from the .mht extension which is for MIME HTML)).

Why Would You Want It?

Firefox doesn’t natively handle the web archive single file format. The advantage is that using this format saves all the elements of the web page as a single file containing graphics, text, etc. This is particularly useful if you want to save web pages to archive, send by email or transport on removable media, flashdrives, etc. As the screenshots below show , where I saved the ProReviewer Homepage, it is a far more simple and tidy solution:

(Click on screenshots to enlarge where necessary)

as the statusbar shows there are a total of 74 files saved in the folder with a standard page save.

This is now all contained in a single file using UnMHT

See below for more details about the mht/web archive file

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Saves web pages as web archive files
• Views mht files in Firefox
• Allows all current tabs to be saved to mht files

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 20% [?]

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or Several Good Reasons for Using Portable Firefox

What is This all About?

Making it easy to use Firefox with different settings for different users and/or different purposes as well as being able to quickly and easily create Firefox backups.

A standard installation of Firefox keeps the programs and data (your profile with all the settings, cookies, cache, etc) in separate areas of your hard drive. Normally (unless you have specified a different location at installation or in your OS Setup) Firefox programs will be installed under C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ and the data will be stored under your Microsoft “Documents and Settings” area with a path like - C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\.

With a Firefox Portable installation you can have all your Firefox programs and data under a set of folders such as:

• C:\Firefox_Main
• C:\Firefox_Small
• C:\Firefox_Blogging

Or you could have:

• C:\FirefoxPortable\

containing

• • Firefox_Main
  • Firefox_Small
  • Firefox_Blogging

and C; can be substituted for any other drive including memory sticks/flash drive and network drives.

Not only is this easy to quickly backup everything using standard backup software or by simply copying the folder structure using standard copy and paste, but it is completely portable using a portable hard drive or USB flash memory.

This is how have Firefox set up on my main PC and I transfer this complete or in part to other PC’s at home and work on a removable hard drive or flash memory.

(Click on Screenshots to enlarge where necessary)

You could even run Firefox over an Internet connection using remote connection software like Logmein or even Windows Home Server, although unless you have a fast broadband connection this could be very slow and you would be better pulling (downloading) the installation to the local machine.

What Do I Do?

Well, I have already said some of the things that can be done based on what I am already doing. The next screenshot shows the files and folders under my Firefox Portable folder:

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Popularity: 22% [?]

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What Is It?

A Firefox add-on (extension - I use the words interchangeably) that provides a list of installed Firefox add-ons with user definable level of detail. Most importantly one option is to see what Firefox versions the extensions are compatible with.

Why Would You Want It?

Provides a quick and easy way to list all the extensions you have installed and their details. I have used this add-on in the past to list extensions when installing a clean version of Firefox to make sure I have added back in all my add-ons. Recently I decided to try Firefox Beta 3 Portable and downloaded it, then transferred my current Firefox 2 Portable profile complete with all extensions over. On starting it up Firefox duly sorted the compatible extensions and checked for updates so behave perfectly well. At this point I found that many of the  add-ons I consider to be essential for my day to day use were not yet compatible. OK, so you can use the nightly tester tools on a hit and miss basis to see whether the non-compatible extensions will work. This is slow and painful plus some incompatible extensions will completely crash FF on startup meaning you have to delete or move the extension folder. I tried it and gave up in the end as I could not justify the time. Later I looked at Extension List Dumper and realised this was a quick way to keep an eye on the compatibility of my important extensions so I could gauge the time when a changeover to Firefox 3 was going to be acceptable.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Lists all the currently installed extensions in your Firefox setup

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 28% [?]

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What Is It?

A Firefox Add-on that provides a simple RSS Reader based on Firefox Live Bookmarks contained in any bookmarks folder.

Why Would You Want It?

Provides a quick and easy way to read your Firefox Live Bookmarks RSS feeds from within your favourite browser and make full use of Firefox tabbed browsing and other add-ons to read pages in tabs, save pages, save sessions, etc.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Displays Live Bookmarks in a simple interface

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 22% [?]

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News

Today I receive a notification box for Google Calendar Sync on my main PC so I duly said yes to the update offer and it installed flawlessly.

I have previously posted Google Calendar Sync Test - Very Good But Not Perfect which gave a review of version 0.9.2.8 which gives details of some of the problems I found. (See the post for details )

A quick visit to the Google Calendar FAQ site didn’t reveal any details of what has been changed but a visit to the Google Calendar Forum resulted in finding a post that listed current issues:

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Popularity: 29% [?]

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What Is It?

Google Calendar Sync provides the functionality that I have wanted for sometime in being able to synchronise a web based calendar with MS Outlook and synchronising Outlook over different computers and hand held devices. Sure there are commercial "paid for" products on the market for synchronising Outlook and some freeware products that will partially do what is required or just import from Outlook but nothing that could synchronise both ways or optionally in only one direction. (i.e. either from Outlook or to Outlook).  The testing I have carried out so far has shown a couple of problems that I have not been able to resolve which may be the Google Calendar Sync program or Outlook. At work we have had some problems with the the corporate Outlook/Exchange Server setup which has resulted in appointments disappearing among other things, so I may have some "corrupted" appointments sitting in my Outlook installations. This post is not intended to be a full review but an explanation of my finding through the installation and initial testing process. I will, however, use the basic review layout and headings that you will be familiar with.

Why Would You Want It?

Having a single master calendar makes sense  and one that you can access from anywhere you have a web connection is ideal for people who need to use a single appointment system system for home and work. The ability to synchronise the master calendar with appointment systems used at home and work as well as mobile devices such a phones and PDAs really is essential for many of us. The icing on the cake is two way synchronisation so you can update the master calendar with appointments entered on one of your other devices.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Synchronises Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook
• Options for two way or one way Synchronisation

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 26% [?]

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What Is It?

A Firefox Add-on that allows you to set multiple status bars and move content between them to display what you want to see.

Why Would You Want It?

Many of the Firefox add-ons use the status bar to display information or as a clickable control to set options or display a menu to use the add-on. This can not only leave the statusbar cluttered but also create problems in the width of the page being wider than the screen. This in turn creates problems in viewing the page and not being able to see all the tabs. With Statusbars you can get rid of the width and clutter problems quickly and easily

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides multiple statusbars
• Allows statusbar items to be reorganized

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Popularity: 13% [?]

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