Weekly Update 2007-02-26

Lots of news (mostly good) from today’s Weekly Update Meeting.

• Fx 1.5.0.10 & 2.0.0.2 released on Thursday, February 22nd

  • Some 2.0.0.1 users are not able to upgrade due to read-only file issues. You may need to download Fx 2.0.0.2 from getfirefox.com in order to upgrade.
  • Users on modified builds are also having issues going to 2.0.0.2 as well. Mozilla is working on this and plans to have a fix out ASAP.

• Major Update now slated for may be mid/late March due to Vista integration issues. Also, testing now needs to be done for 1.5.0.10 to 2.0.0.2
• Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 is still scheduled for release this Thursday, March 1st
• Thunderbird 2.0 deadline pushed back to March 6th also due to Vista integration issues. Likely looking at end of March for final release.
• Sunbird/Lightning 0.3.1 was released on February 19th. This maintenance release is to handle the change for US daylight savings time (starts March 11th this year).

News Source: Mozilla Wiki >> WeeklyUpdates

Mr. Tech’s Link Wrapper

This is a very useful extension in instances where you have a long link (which you don’t want to shorten) and limited space such as within tables, forums and blogs. Firefox won’t wrap links so you end up having to scroll horizontally or in the case of my blog, links in the comments occasionally run into neighboring sidebar. The extension will automatically wraps the link on to a second (or more) line without breaking the link.

Before installing this extension visit the test page and then again after installing the extension to see how it works.

Note: There is a “lite” version which is much smaller (6K) and does not have an options menu. I also discovered the “lite” version will break the WordPress Editor. I installed the full version and was going to disable wrapping while in the editor, but discovered the full version did not cause any issues.

Mr Tech’s Link Wrapper works with Fx 1.5.0.X, Fx 2.0.0.x and Fx 3.0a1 (can be force to work 3.0.a2 & 3.0.a3pre via about:config change extensions.checkCompatibility to false) and is about 29K.

Tab Groups

Ever find your tab bar getting congested? Too many open tabs? Having to scroll (for those of you who have not Disabled Tab Overflow) to find the tab you want? Wish there was way to organize (group) your tabs into folders? If you answered yes to any of these questions check out the Tab Groups extension. So, what does the Tab Groups extension do? Since it is a difficult concept for me to to try to explain I’ll quote the extension’s author:

Tab Groups is a firefox extension that lets a user organize tabs into groups, those groups in turn can be switched between through their own tab bar. This extension is aimed at power users who have many tabs open on different subjects at once so that organizing these tabs coherently can become difficult.

So far I have two groups (click images below for full-size), Main group which has non-blog related tabs and Blog group which has several WordPress tabs open and a couple tabs for items I want to blog. So now, all my tabs pertaining to my blog are in their own group now making them easier to find and navigate through.

“Main” Group

“Blog” Group

Some notes/issues about Tab Groups:

• Does not work fully with Tab Mix Plus.
• Works with Colorful Tabs.
• Designed for Fx 2.0 only.
• Can be forced to work with Fx 3 (Minefield) if you disable compatibility checking (via about:config, change extensions.checkCompatibility to false). Note: If using with Minefield, the tab bar is displayed a little oddly, but still works.
• Works with the Fx 2 Session Restore. However, Session Restore takes a bit of time at first since ALL the tabs are restored then sorted into the groups. Further, tabs may not be in the same order they were prior to closing your browser.
• Works with the Fx 2 Undo Close Tab feature. However, restored tabs are placed in their own (new) group
• You can drag and drop tabs between groups

Tab Groups works with Fx 2 (can be forced to work with Fx 3) and is about 9K.

Info Source: CyberNet News