Gadget Advisor: Cutting Through the Cutting Edge

Posted on October 26th, 2008 in Web & Web 2.0 | View Comments

Gadget Advisor is a new site that I love, it’s there that you will find “the cream” of the best hardware, software, gadgets and tech news.
You’ll find there many useful tools advices like the Best extensions for Firefox or Blaze Media Pro review.

I discovered Google Cache Checker Firefox extension from the hand picked selection of of items made on that website.

Very Fast Internet Browsing with Firefox 3.1 and TraceMonkey

Posted on August 28th, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Macintosh Tips & Help | View Comments

Firefox developers improved once again Java Scripts execution’s speed on the Firefox Nightly build (beta) 3.1, and here are the results based on a benchmarking made on a MacBook Pro via Sunspider:

  • Safari 3.1.2: 3062.0ms
  • Firefox 3.0: 2997.2ms
  • Firefox 3.1 nightly without TraceMonkey: 2510.2ms
  • Firefox 3.1 nightly with TraceMonkey: 1610.4ms

 

Firefox 3.1 can be up to twice faster than Safari with TraceMonkey on.
Get the latest Firefox 3.1. Nightly here and read more about TraceMonkey here.

TraceMonkey isn’t active by default on Firefox 3.1, because it is still under development; if you want to enable it anyway, just follow these steps:

 

  1. Type “about:config” in the Firefox 3.1 address bar.
  2. Look for the following key “javascript.options.jit.content”
  3. Set that key to “true” and restart Firefox.

 

Have fun speed browsing!

2 Complaints about Safari vs. Firefox and their Fixes!

Posted on June 23rd, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Macintosh Tips & Help, Made with iWeb, Mods and Hacks | View Comments

  • First gap: PDF’s. While you’re able to read/download PDF files on the flow from Safari, Firefox 3 doesn’t have this ability. You can make Firefox open these kind of files by adding a free plugin that “uses PDFKit to display PDFs in the browser.â€
    You can get the plugin here.
  • Second gap: iWeb made sites rendering is broken in Firefox 3. Until Apple releases a fix for iWeb, here’s a fix to download. Go here to download Fix iWeb and Firefox 3 1.1.

 

First Hands on Firefox 3 (The Interface)

Posted on June 17th, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Freeware | View Comments

Third part of our detailed analysis of Firefox 3.
Let’s start with the toolbar. Big and ugly “back” button… Well, the first thing to be done if you’re shocked like I am with that weird idea is to go to View>Toolbars>Customize and check the “Use Small Icons”.

Ah! That’s better!!!
Firefox 3 comes also with an updated Add-Ons manager:

I have nothing to say on that one, it’s great!
The download manager is still the same too.
The global shape of the browser (with our “normally” sized back button) is close to Safari, and as the Safari fan I am: I’m happy with it!

First Hands on Firefox 3 (OS X Improvements)

Posted on June 17th, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Freeware | View Comments

Second level of analysis I’m going to do is OS X based ones. As we already said before, Firefox is going to move from the Carbon API, to the modern and classy Cocoa.
As a result, Firefox gets that native Aqua style forms we’re used to like the search button in Google.

Firefox also uses Core Graphics (which uses the Quartz technology) now instead of the Quick Draw technology (available on Macs since 1984)… The consequence is hardware acceleration provided by Core Graphics that leads to increase performances!

Now Mozilla’s projects for OS X are simple: replacing more and more Carbon by Cocoa to finally reach 64 bits versions of Firefox.

Aside from the usual bug squashing, we’re going to focus on minimizing Carbon usage and getting ready for 64-bit. Gecko 1.9.0 is generally Cocoa-based but it still contains a modest amount of Carbon and other code that is not 64-bit-ready. We’re probably not going to be Carbon-free or 64-bit-ready for the Gecko 1.9.1 release, but we can make a lot of progress. (Josh Aas)

Firefox 3 is built primarily using Cocoa

Posted on June 17th, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Freeware | View Comments

Yes, this new release of Firefox is amazing!

Firefox 3 will bring many changes for all Mac users (mostly good), as this is the first release of Firefox that is built primarily using Cocoa for the underlying Gecko 1.9 engine (a project that’s been in the works for years). Along with better redraw speed (CoreGraphics vs. the older QuickDraw API) and improved memory handling, the new engine provides the groundwork for a pure-Cocoa, 64-bit clean version of Firefox in the future. Firefox 3′s UI is more Maclike now, with Aqua-style widgets improving the view.

You can read more here.

Firefox 3 (June 17th at 10 am PDT)

Posted on June 17th, 2008 in 3rd Party Software, Freeware | View Comments

While Apple is seeding a preview version of Safari 4 to developpers, the 3rd version of Firefox is going to be shipped today!
A great even for the Firefox users!
The download link will be turned on at 10 am PDT.

If you can’t wait, you can still download Firefox RC 3 from here.

Real Life Firefox Logo

Posted on May 14th, 2008 in Humor | View Comments

A few hours ago, my friend Kofster was showing some very cute photographs he took of cats, so here’s another one, it’s a real lige Firefox Logo.
Hope you’ll like it padna!