Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

With the recent announcement from AOL that they will end support for Netscape in February, many loyal Netscape users will be looking for a new browser. Since Netscape 9 is based off of Firefox 2 with a few extensions built-in, it would seem moving to Firefox 2 would be the logical choice. However once users Get Firefox, they are going to discover that the social networking features that came with Netscape 9 are not included. While it is not too difficult to get these features installed in Firefox 2, locating them on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) isn’t as easy. The Guru has made this part a lot easier. Back in March, shortly after the time Netscape 9 was announced, the Netscape Add-ons Team registered on AMO and posted the Netscape theme and the 4 standard extensions for Firefox 2. These can be obtained here and include:

• Netstripe- Netscape Navigator 9’s default theme, packaged for Firefox.
• Propeller.com Friends’ Activity Sidebar - The Friends’ Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on what stories your Propeller.com friends are submitting, commenting, and voting on.
• Propeller.com News - Displays the latest news stories from Propeller.com in a top-level News menu and sidebar.
• Propeller.com Sitemail Notifier - The Propeller.com Sitemail Notifier extension adds a button (shown above in the preview image) to your toolbar that indicates when you have new sitemail messages at Propeller.com.
• Propeller.com Tracker - Follow the latest news, votes, and comments on the news at Propeller.com with this auto-updating sidebar.

So, what about your Netscape bookmarks? Firefox will not automatically pull your bookmarks over from Netscape. However, it only takes a couple minutes to manually bring them over:

1. In Netscape 9 go to the Bookmarks Menu and select ‘Organize Bookmarks…’
2. A new Bookmarks Manager window will pop-up, go to the File Menu and select ‘Export Bookmarks…’
3. Select HTML (standard) from the list
4. Choose an easy to find location such as the Desktop to save the bookmarks.html file and click ‘Save’
5. Close any open Netscape 9 Windows
6. In Firefox 2 go to the Bookmarks Menu and select ‘Organize Bookmarks…’
7. A new Bookmarks Manager window will pop-up, go to the File Menu and select ‘Import…’
8. Select From File and click ‘Next >’
9. Locate the Bookmarks.html file you saved from Step 4 and click ‘Open’
10. All your bookmarks from Netscape have been imported into Firefox 2. Close the Bookmarks Manager window

Hopefully this guide will make your transition from Netscape 9 to Firefox 2 a little smoother.

December, for the most part was a rather uneventful month (other than the Blog Year In Review). The only big news was the (premature) release of Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 about a week before Christmas. I still say the developers should have held out until after the holidays. The Guru did review a couple add-ons, Locator and a really cool and revolutionary ‘theme’ extension called Personas. While on the subject of add-ons did you know both Firefox and Thunderbird have a ‘hidden’ feature that adds an ‘install button’ to the add-ons manager? You ask, and you shall receive. The Guru, upon request provided a list of his extensions. Albeit this list was bit shorter than it was a couple months ago when I was still using my XP system.

JustZisGuy at Spread Firefox has copied Firefox 2.0.0.11 onto floppies. Also over on Spread Firefox were Fx Holiday Wallpapers. We also added a new Firefox related Blog to our Blogroll. Learn Firefox, a sister blog of CyberNet News was added very recently.Finally what has become a monthly tradition some Get a Mac ads:

• Get a Mac: Misprint - PC responds to the recent PC World Article which said Macs were the fastest machines when it comes to running Vista.
• Get a Mac: Now What? - PC has written a couple self-help books
• Get a Mac: Holiday Ad - A different variation on the holiday classic Santa Claus is Coming to Town…

That pretty much wraps up the 2007 Blog Year In Review. For 2008….wait this just in…AOL has announced it is ending support for Netscape in February. I am sure there will be more news on this as we get closer. Anyway, for 2008 The Guru plans for the blog:

• Firefox 3. I am waiting for Beta 3 to come out later in January and I will start trying to use it as my primary browser
• Thunderbird. With all that has with Thunderbird this year with the transition to MailCo and the departure of a couple of the original developers, it is going to be interesting to see what happens with Thunderbird 3
• Add-ons reviews. After all I am the ‘Extension Guru’
• Get-A-Mac ads. I’ll keep posting them as they offer a nice escape from the at times mundane Firefox/Mozilla/Thunderbird topics. Besides, Macs can run Firefox too.
• Theme and Structure. The current layout and theme seem to be working well for this blogs. I don’t foresee any changes in the near future (of course last time I said that I created the new logo).
• Integration with the discussion forum. Commenting on the article is good, but it is hard to keep track of the comments as the post gets older and the blog grows.