How to Use Firefox 3 Effectively

Tech advice and tips: get some tips on how to use the Mozilla Firefox 3.0 browser effectively.

Welcome to PCWizKid’s Tech Talk, today I want to talk about Firefox 3. If you haven’t made the switch yet to Firefox, where you are using Firefox 2 and thinking about upgrading to Firefox 3. Let’s go ahead and review it a little bit and then you can get an idea whether or not this browser is better. And if you decided that you want to go ahead and try it. So as you can see here I am running version 3 of Firefox, I have also version 2 installed at the same time and install them in different folders. And one of the first things I did after installed it was to check out my blog. And all I have to make sure that the web page look the same as in version 2 of Firefox. And it did, there was no real difference it loaded fast. Second thing I did was go to my YouTube channel to see if I can everything okay. Well I couldn’t the flash plug in was not actually enabled in version 3. So surprisingly enough I had to go ahead and manually install it. It wouldn’t install automatically, as you can see here it says “Missing plug-ins.” And if you go ahead and try to install – it wouldn’t install it, so that is one thing I had to do and other thing that I wanted to check of course was the themes. So I notice right after that the default theme was enabled and not the new add-ons, previous add-ons that I had. So the blue ice thing that I had was not compatible with version 3 of Firefox. So that is another thing that I will have to do is go ahead and download a new theme that is similar to that one. So with respect to the flash plug-in though, like I mentioned – you have to go manually to the Adobe Flash web site. Download the plug-in, run it and of course restart your computer. Because it wouldn’t install it automatically, so when you get to that screen here, you just click on manual install. It automatically opens up the Adobe page and then click on install from there and then install the update. So obviously after I installed the update and restart it – Firefox. The first thing I did was to go back to the YouTube channel and make sure that the flash, the Video Flash was working very nice. You can see it is now working, so that is done, not too difficult to do. Is just a little bit of a hassle but that is okay, then the other thing I did was of course to check the menus. To check, to see if there was anything else that was different and from the menu point of view and the options available. That was pretty much all the same so from the surface here – visually that was still the same. So the only things I have to do were really go and change the theme. So now let’s talk about the themes and the add-ons little bit. So on the add-ons portion of it; my add-ons were pretty much working okay except for the theme. So I already had some other add-ons in there for like no script and the add blocker – that was working fine. My Greasemonkey add-on was also working fine – so pretty much it was just the themes. So I went to get new updates and check them out and see what was available for version 3? In case there was something new, and there is a couple of recommended add-ons there that you can look into and see if you want any of those. I use Gmail so I was looking to see if there was something new or something supported in version 3 in Firefox relating to Gmail. So I went to browse all the add-ons that I found better, Gmail too. So there is an example of an add-on – it allows you to show or hide options in Gmail that you might want more details or less detail on. Enable certain macros and key combinations and of course it also has skins. So you can change the look and feel of Gmail itself. So I enabled a few options here because I want to get more details and display certain options when I get my Gmail. And then I tried Alpha Skins, to see okay what skin, what look and feel could be neat. And then tried to redesigned skin and that it what it looks like, so when you select that and refresh your Gmail. You’ll immediately see the new skin here, so that is pretty neat, that is quick little add-on there that work in version 3 of Firefox. And now of course after I install that – I went to the themes, let’s see what themes do we have? We are looking for a theme that was similar to what I had before and that is available for version 3. So I look for a theme that had the green at Firefox button and the arrow here Silver Firefox has a green button I can install that one. Or there is the Aquatint – I like the Aquatint that is closer to what I have before and there is a redone version. So I will go ahead and install that one. That one is pretty much close to my previous version so I added that one the same way I added them earlier in Firefox 2. And that installed easily as expected, no problems there and after I installed I just restarted FireFox and checked out the new interphase for. And the buttons, that look pretty much the same as I had earlier so that is not too bad. And another neat little neat feature is the enhanced history in Firefox 3. So in Firefox 3 here in the URL field where have my blog URL – just erase that and just type in the keyword like PCWizKid’s, it will scan your previous visited sites. So it could be something, you have bookmarked already or a site that you have already previously visited. And you can actually quickly click on one of those and get there or id you don’t have it bookmarked – you can click on those yellow stars on the side to add to your bookmarks. So I like that little quick enhanced feature, so if you are interested in Firefox 3 by all means Google Firefox 3 download and visit the Mozilla web site and try it out. Enjoy and thank you for watching.