Troubleshooting

Addon compatibility

If you are a Firefox nightly (Minefield ) user, then you must have gotten a notification today to update Minefield to 4.2a1pre. You probably did it too  Read more…

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Firefox-4-Improved

Important: If you are using Firefox 4 Beta 9+, don’t follow this tutorial because you already have this feature built-in. The smart guys at Mozilla have used our method to permanently include this feature into Firefox 4 Beta 9+ ;).

This is the latest solution to the original hack to remove Firefox 4′s title bar. The problem with the original hack was that it was having some problems with beta version 7 and upwards. Also, the addon-bar has been introduced in Beta 7 which is not so pleasant looking. So I modified the original userChrome.css to include the fixes.

Here’s what Firefox 4 Beta 7+ looks like after using the new and improved userChrome.css:

Features and fixes:

  • Neat relocation of tab-bar and removal of title bar.
  • Engraved effect on inactive tab labels. (This effect was present in initial betas but was removed in the latest one. I liked it so I added it back ;) )
  • In the original hack, the tabs would overlap window controls in FF4B7+. In this new userChrome.css, I’ve fixed the problem.
  • The menu bar is moved to the top. It can be viewed by pressing ‘Alt’ as usual.
  • The addon bar’s background is made ‘light-blue’ to complement with the overall theme.

How to:

1) First, right-click beside the URL bar (Address bar) and click ‘Customize…‘. Now drag the ‘Group Tabs’ icon to beside the URL bar.

Group-Tabs-icon

2) Now download this userChrome.css file (Right click > Save Link As…).

3) Place the file into this folder:

[Windows Vista/7] C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome

[Windows XP] C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome\

4) Restart Firefox 4.

Do note that, you need to have ‘Tabs on Top’ enabled for this to take effect. If you find any problems, do mention it in the comments. If you like this post, please share it. :)

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"Can I uninstall older versions/updates of Java from my Windows PC" [Troubleshooting]A reader just asked me, "I have been on an uninstalling spree and want to get rid of every junk inside my Windows 7 PC. I noticed that there are several versions and updates of Java Runtime environment installed in my computer. These updates are taking much space. So, is it ok to uninstall all except the latest one?"

Uninstall-previous-Java-Updates

The answer is yes. You can uninstall older versions and updates. The thing is, every time a new Java update/version arrives, it has all the goodness of the previous versions plus some additional features. However, installing an updated version does not remove the previous installations. If you’ve been updating Java since a while, you’ll notice many entries in the Programs & Features list, each representing an update. Since every new update has all the features of the previous ones, you can safely uninstall the previous updates. Infact, Java itself recommends you do so.

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Running out of space in GMail? FindBigMail can delete unnecessary mailsGmailIn spite of not providing unlimited storage space like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, Gmail is the favorite choice for most of us. It is a primary email service provider for most people and hence the problem of running out of space in Gmail bound to happen for most of us, sooner or later. The only thing one can do is to remove the emails that take up lot of space. These are mostly forwards with lots of multimedia attachments. You don’t want that. But the problem is, there is no easy way to sort emails according to size in Gmail (this was my favorite feature when I used Yahoo! Mail back in the day). So it becomes rather impossible to hand-pick the larger ones.

However, there is a cool service called FindBigMail which is nothing short of a bliss. As the name suggests, it scans your Gmail account and separates out mail with large attachments.

FindBigMail for Gmail

Once the scan completes, you need to login to your Gmail account and look for labels marked ‘My Big Mail‘, ‘My Really Big Mail‘, ‘My Ultra Big Mail‘. This is where you can easily select the large emails and delete them.

Gmail labels

The service also sends an email with stats about how much space your can recover by deleting those emails. Try it now.

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Facebook Groups

Quick-tip

Facebook recently rolled out ‘Facebook Groups’ which is more like ‘Friend Lists on steroids’. I was quite happy with the sleek implementation and  Read more…

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Facebook Status Update won’t submit (Ajax issues) [Troubleshooting]Quick-Tip

FacebookFacebook uses a lot of Javascript and Ajax to deliver real-time dynamic content. This has secretly played a great role in the success of the social network because technologies like Javascript and Ajax manage data requests very efficiently without page refresh, thereby not disrupting the browsing experience.

However, there are a few downsides of these technologies too. Ajax data requests are much more complicated and susceptible to minor network fluctuations compared to conventional HTTP requests involving page refresh. The most common and highly irritating issue with Facebook is that, at times, the Status Update just don’t work. The status just won’t submit after you click the ‘Share’ button. Facebook handles status update using Ajax and as I said earlier, a minor network glitch can break the functionality. In such cases, HTTP data request can be helpful but the normal version of Facebook do not have any secondary option (besides Ajax submit) to update Status.

So we let our common-sense run wild and use the mobile version of Facebook to update status. The mobile version uses conventional HTTP requests which is quite awesome.

1) Just login to the mobile version of Facebook: http://m.facebook.com

2) Write your status and click ‘Share’. The status will be submitted successfully followed by a page refresh.

Quite a simple trick but many wouldn’t have guessed it. So please share this post.

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[Solved] Google Instant for Opera not working

September 9, 2010 15:19 pm by Jal

[Solved] Google Instant for Opera not workingFor some really strange reason, Google Instant (and the interactive Google Doodles) are not available on the Opera browser. The Google Instant search simply doesn’t happen while you’re on any version of Opera. So, if you are an Opera user and have been wondering how to get it working, maybe we can help:

1) While you are on Google’s homepage, ‘Right click’ > ‘Edit site preferences…’.

2) In the window that appears, choose ‘Network’ tab and then in ‘Browser identification’, select ‘Identify as Firefox’. Click OK.

Choose 'Identify as Firefox'

That’s it. You’re done. Google Instant will work as beautifully as in other browsers. Just to make it clear, this is just a temporary fix from our side because the actual problem lies with Google. After Google stops discriminating Opera ;) you can change the setting back to ‘Identify as Opera’.

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