My Fx Splash Screen & FastStone Capture

Once I was able to get the Splash options window working I made a visit to Mr Tech’s Firefox Splash Screens site and found a Splash Screen I liked. I also took a couple minutes (literally) to get and install the free FastStone Capture software thanks to an excellent recommendation from Ryan at CyberNet News. The quality is outstanding compared to the conventional Windows screen capture plus it allows me to save the files in PNG format. There are lot of other features with FastStone I have yet to try out.

So with the FastStone Capture software I was able to get a good quality screenshot of my new Firefox splash screen:

Tweaking the About Screen

The standard About Firefox screen is pretty boring looking. It is even worse for those of us using the Bon Echo or Minefield nightlies since it uses a globe without the firefox as the image (Minefield’s globe has a stick of dynamite stuck in it). However, you can tweak your About Screen by changing the image, the color and font of the text as well as the size of the window. Here is my new & improved About Screen:

Note: For this tweak I recommend using the ChromEdit Plus extension. Simply add and modify these lines to your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder:


/* ============ Custom About Background ============== */
#aboutDialog {
width: 40em !important;
height: 40em !important; }

#clientBox {
background: Transparent
url(”http://www.mrtech.com/photos/firefox-splash-screens/image/595/Firefox1.png”) no-repeat top center !important;
font-family: verdana !important;
color: rgb(0,64,62) !important; }

In the #aboutDialog section these decelerations specify the settings for the dialog box. width and height decelerations are in em (1em = 10px 40em=400px) and are for the dialog box only.

In the #clientBox url(”") specifies the location of the image (insert the image location within the quotes). font-family & color declarations specifies the font and color for the text which beings with ©1998-2007, it does not change the text for the version number or your user agent.

Changes take effect once you have saved the userChrome.css file and restarted Firefox.

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Update: Splash Screens

Some quick updates regarding A Splash Screen For Fx & TBird. First, the extension (here) also works with Flock, sort of. You will get an Incompatible Extension Warning. Just click ‘Yes’ and the extension will install.

Further there is an options screen which is accessed from Tools, Add-ons (or Extensions), select Splash and then click Options. Note: If you are having trouble with the Options Window “rolling-up” this can be fixed via about:config by changing browser.preferences.animateFadeIn to False. With the options screen you can specify the image you want displayed, background text, size of splash screen, how long it is displayed and much more.

To install Splash in Thunderbird:

1. Visit the Splash page
2. Right-click on the green Install Now button and select “Save Link As…” from the context menu.
3. Save the extension to your Desktop
4. From Thunderbird select Tools, Add-Ons (or Extensions)
5. Click Install.
6. In the Explorer Window locate the file you saved in Step 3 and click OK
7. Close and restart Thunderbird
8. Delete the downloaded file from your Desktop

Finally, turns out there has been several “splash screens” submitted to MrTech’s for Firefox (31), Flock (3), Sunbird (5) and Thunderbird (4):

• Firefox
• Flock
• Sunbird
• Thunderbird

SearchLoad Extension

Another great find by Percy at Mozilla Links. SearchLoad Extension adds some much need options to the Firefox search bar (or search box). Once installed, to configure go to Tools and then select Search Options. There are two sections Searchbar and Tabs.

The Searchbar section offer two options for the search bar. The first option well clear the searchbar after a specified amount of time (in seconds). This is a nice feature, but what I really like is the options to resent the search engine back to a default (in my case Google) after a a specified amount of time (in seconds). There have been many of times I have switched over to search on Wikipedia or BitTorrent and I forget to switch it back to Google.

The Tabs section controls how the search results are displayed. Note if you have previously used the method described in the Getting Your Search Results In New Tab article, you will find this is already setup. Note: New background tab means the search results are loaded in a new tab (in the background), but Fx does not switch over to that tab. Not sure what the Keep blank tab option does.

SearchLoad work with Firefox 1.0.X-2.0.0.X and is about 6 KB.

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Related Articles:

• SearchLoad 0.3 Extension Released
• SearchLoad 0.3.1 Extension Released

News Source: Mozilla Links

A Splash Screen For Fx & TBird

Thunderbird and Firefox more so (if you have lots of extensions), do take sometime to start up. This extension displays a “splash” (loading) screen for Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird (Mozilla’s calendar application) while the application starts. At the end of this article are samples of the Fx and Thunderbird splash screens.

Oddly enough it does seem like the applications are launching a little faster with the splash screen. If anything at least you know the application is loading. I’ve had cases where Fx took so long to load from when I click the icon and I end up clicking again thinking it didn’t work the first time around. Then I end up with Fx in two windows, not a big deal just closed the extra browser window.

Splash is about 24K and works with:

• Firefox 1.5 - 3.0a2
• Sunbird 0.3a1 - 0.4a1
• Thunderbird 1.5 - 3.0a1

Default Fx Splash Screen

Default Thunderbird Splash Screen

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Related Articles:

• Update: Splash Screens
• FastStone Capture No Longer Free
• Review: Splash

News Source: Mozilla Links