Written on 19th June 2009
113 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Look, I know the majority of people reading our blog are geeks on some level and probably early adopters.
While we try not to, I’m also aware of the fact that occasionally we report on stuff your average Joe won’t understand/appreciate. But, I’ve got to be honest, I never for a second thought that this many people had no idea what a browser was.
Written on 11th June 2009
2 COMMENTS Keith, Network Consultant, Social Media Fanatic
Firefox Add-ons have long been a major reason of user devotion and now Mozilla has taken Add-ons to the next level with a major upgrade. The Firefox Add-Ons system has been redesigned with a focus on helping users find and share Add-ons that make their browser experience better. The most significant improvements are the introduction of Add-on Collections and the Add-on Collector extension.
The Firefox Add-on webpage is now heralding a new section called Add-on Collections. Collections are lists of related Add-ons based on function or interest.The Mozilla team kick started collections by creating lists for Web Developers, Social Media enthusiasts, and even a Traveler’s pack. Although Collections may be the best way to discover new Add-ons it is also an outstanding medium for sharing your favorite collections. Anyone with a free Mozilla account can create a collection so there is already a well populated list of collections from a variety of authors. Mozilla has simply implemented a fantastic social recommendation system for Add-ons.
Written on 8th June 2009
12 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Glue is a contextual social network that sits within your browser, powered, until now, by a Firefox extension and therefore only Firefox compatible. Today however, the innovative startup, lead by CEO Alex Iskold, announces compatibility with Internet Explorer.
This is a major milestone for the company and after months of work developing and growing the semantic recognition engine, users will now enjoy the benefits of using the app with the two most popular web browsers.
How does Glue work?
Following installation of the extension, you simply browse the web as you would do normally, however where Glue gets useful is when browsing pages that include information about movies, music, books, music artists, restaurants and alike (sites like Amazon, Last.fm, IMBD).
Visually, Glue slides down in the form of a bar which acts as though it were part of the page. Via the Glue bar, you are able to “like” the item on the page (album, movie etc..) or leave a comment/review about the item. You’ll also see previous reviews from friends of yours and other recent visitors, no matter where the comment was originally made. Just to reiterate that point – it doesn’t matter if one of your friends reviewed the album on Last.fm or Amazon, the review will appear wherever you might be.
Making the most of Glue
You do feel more at home using Glue when you have existing friends on there, and thankfully Glue makes it easy as pie to find existing Twitter and Facebook friends that use the site – or invite others that aren’t already using it.
“Adding your 2c” (commenting) and liking the various movies and music you come across is a major part of the application and you’ll notice a healthy amount of discussion across the web – a good sign. With private messages and replies integrated, its actually very possible to have in depth discussions about a specific product, all of which adds to Glue’s usefulness.
Glue came to the iPhone at the end of last year with a basic application that brought your favorites and friend’s Glue activity to you, wherever you have your phone. ReadWriteWeb have an in-depth look at the iPhone application.
Most recently however, Glue announced the release of their API, capturing the attention of developers looking to make the most of the rich data Glue collects. Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks covered the announcement: (more…)
Written on 15th May 2009
1 COMMENT Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
It’s no secret Firefox’s major competitive advantage lies in the thousands of extensions built by dedicated developers across the globe. The extensions make the browser perform functionality beyond the realms of virtually every browser out there, until now.
The latest developer channel releases of Chrome offer improved APIs and tools for developers who are keen on developing add-on for Google’s browser.
As WebMonkey points out, there are two current extensions developed by Google themselves. One shows the inbox message count at the bottom of the browser window and the other makes it a piece of cake to subscribe to RSS feeds in Google Reader.
We’re a long way from the catalogue currently available at Mozilla.org, but frankly the sooner Google get started the better.
To get started with developing for Chrome, you’ll need to:
Make sure you’re receiving updates from Chrome’s developer channel. If you haven’t already, download the Chrome Channel Changer and switch channels to “developer.”
Launch Chrome from the command line adding the --enable-extensions flag to the end of the application path.
Written on 7th May 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
One of the most exciting developments of Google Chrome, and more recently IE 8, is its multiprocessing technology allowing for each tab to include its own running processes.
Mozilla, according to its Wiki, is also moving in the same direction and looking to separate tabs into their own system processes. The move aims to “prvide better application UI responsiveness” and improve overall stability.
For the average tech head who generally tends to have 10+ tabs open at any one time, this is great news. It should mean less crashes, and as in Chrome, if there are any you should still have access to you other tabs to keep on doing what you were doing without the entire browser crashing.
Sadly, it’s going to be a while before we get our hands on a final version, probably not till 2010, but a “bootstrap” implementation that works with a single tab (not sessions support, no secure connections, either on Linux or Windows, unlikely to even based on Firefox) could be available by July.
The project, is coordinated by long time Mozillian, Benjamin Smedberg; and also integrated by Joe Drew, Jason Duell, Ben Turner, and Boris Zbarsky in the core team.
Written on 5th March 2009
3 COMMENTS Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
There are so many Add-ons that are currently available for Firefox for easing your way through social networking, web development, media management, alerts and security that the mind boggles.
Here we present a couple of Firefox Add-ons, which we believe are key to making your browsing experience better.
All-in-One Sidebar
It opens dialog windows such as Downloads, History, Extensions and Bookmarks in the sidebar. You can even view source or websites in the sidebar. Each sidebar panel is also accessible by a shortcut key so that you can quickly pop out the sidebar with the right key combination.
For instance,
F4 – To open or close the sidebar.
Ctrl+Shift+F4 – To open or close the options dialog.
You can set its orientation to left or right, set the minimum, default and maximum width based on your needs with ease. It also includes a slide-out button and a toolbar which can be extensively customized.
The All-In-One Sidebar Firefox extension is available for download from the Firefox Add-ons site.
UrlbarExt
It extends the Location Bar in your browser with set of icons to:
Navigate through sequential URLs. This function / icon appears only when the add-on recognizes sequential URL’s. You need to hold the icon to navigate the next URL in the sequence.
Tag current pages and browse them later using the ‘Recent Tags’ menu.
Go up one level or directly to the root of the current site (double click).
Search the current site using Google.
(Very Suitable for Work!) Surf anonymously using online proxy servers and Unblock filtered websites.
You can always show/hide any icon you don’t need using the settings dialog. UrlbarExt Firefox Add-on is available for download here.
Do let us know about your favorite Add-on(s) in the comments.
Written on 3rd March 2009
18 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Flock, the social-media esque browser is abandoning it’s Firefox background for Google’s open source Chrome browser platform according to sources of Mike Arrington’s at Techcrunch.
The browser has raised $30 million dollars to date, releasing their latest build in October 2008. Although the browser received some levels of uptake amongst the tech crowd, not enough to see common usage or any infiltration into mainstream.
According to Arrington, sources have claimed Flock have decided to abandon Firefox as they have “become frustrated with Mozilla’s lack of attention to Flock’s needs”…hence, the move to Chrome.
Chrome however is still only a Windows based browser, although linux and mac versions are in (early stage) development. It is highly likely that all versions of Chrome, Windows or otherwise, will still lag behind the years of development which have gone into Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer…undoubtedly all this will have an impact on Flock’s own browser ambitions. Is this a brave move or a silly one?
I can’t help but feel this is very much like starting from scratch, or pre-scratch even.
**Update from Flock CEO Shawn Hardin**
It’s important to clarify a couple of things. We haven’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform. Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we’ve seen a variety of exciting technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing.
We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what’s best for our users and what’s best for Flock as a business. This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with over seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base with consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day.
With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock. It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase…
Written on 24th February 2009
4 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Mozilla Labs have revealed an awesome feature which will be made available on the mobile version of Firefox aka Fennec.
The mobile browser will be able to sync tabs you were using your mobile with the tabs on your desktop so technically it should be a breeze switching between the two… whether it is a breeze, we’ll have to wait and see.
Of course if you’re an Opera user, you can already do this.
Written on 7th January 2009
8 COMMENTS Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
We love Firefox – the innovative browser which aims to maintain choice and innovation on the Internet and here are a few add-ons to boost your browser productivity.
1. URL Fixer
URL Fixercorrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For instance, if you type thenextweb.con, it will correct it to thenextweb.com.
It will correct common typos of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil as well as the protocol (http:, https:).
You can set it to auto-correct your errors by right-clicking on the address bar or you can have it ask you before making any corrections.
This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media.
DownloadHelper also allows you to download files one by one, so that you keep bandwidth to surf for other stuff to download.
You can easily access your most used websites with Speed Dial. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.
To assign one website to Speed Dial, use the new “Set as Speed Dial” option in the bookmarks menu, or right click on the tab you want to add, and choose “Set as Speed Dial”.
This add-on lets you get rid of flashy banners and advertisements. It blocks all unwanted content like banners, annoying scripts and adverts. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu – the banner won’t be downloaded again.
This comes in particularly handy for sites like TechCrunch, which have flashing banners that are distracting you from the content that really matters.
With trailFire you can mark webpages that you find interesting by leaving notes right on the page. These notes are linked together into trails that you organize any way you desire. The trails you make will guide people on the web , the approach is collaborative as other people can leave responses on the trails you made and even add new marked pages. The next time you are looking for something on the Web, use Trailfire to mark the pages you find and they will be automatically shared with everyone else through the search engines. You can also keep your trails private if you wish to.
Written on 19th June 2009
113 COMMENTS 
Written on 11th June 2009
You do feel more at home using Glue when you have existing friends on there, and thankfully Glue makes it easy as pie to find existing Twitter and Facebook friends that use the site – or invite others that aren’t already using it.
It’s no secret Firefox’s major competitive advantage lies in the thousands of extensions built by dedicated developers across the globe. The extensions make the browser perform functionality beyond the realms of virtually every browser out there, until now.
One of the most exciting developments of Google Chrome, and more recently IE 8, is its multiprocessing technology allowing for each tab to include its own running processes.
Written on 5th March 2009
Mozilla Labs
This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media. 
You can easily access your most used websites with Speed Dial. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
