The new Chrome extension does he right things: Mute Tabs.

Mute Tabs

Mute Tabs looks on to all your open tabs for the audio violator, and puts a musical icon on it, makes an easy visual aid. It might not work with every html plugin, but believe me, it can tag the tab almost all the time.

All sounds in modern browsers such as Chrome are made by plug-ins such as Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, etc. (expressed in HTML as <object> or <embed>), Java applets (<applet>), or HTML5 audio/video (<audio>, <video>). The extension scans open webpages for these tags. If configured, webpages that include any of these tags that are making sound will have their tab icon changed to the MuteTab icon () to make it easier to see which tabs play sound. Also, the extension collects a centralized list of the found sound source tags.

More on how Mute Tabs works

Firefox users can be satisfied with BarTab. BarTab can load or unload any or all tabs, while keeping their spots in the browser. Its still better than force quit or crash, Firefox can start with all tabs unloaded except for the one you’re on, restarts are silent.

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Unfortunately, most email providers don’t support any of such features and the end result is that you end-up relying upon a thrid party website that promises to do so, but lacks genuineness.

Don’t worry about it, Boomerang will help you get over this problem by integrating itself into Gmail. So, even if you use Google apps for your business, you can have the scheduled email going out from your official id. You don’t even have to be online in order to send your scheduled emails.

Boomerang is a plugin that fits beautifully into the default Gmail UI.  All you have to do is select the Boomerang tool and tell Boomerang when you need to see the message again as a reminder.

Scheduling Emails in Gmail: You can schedule your message to be sent at a destined Date & time, and don’t worry about time zones, it knows yours and others too.

You can set your schedules and then synchronize when you’re back on an Internet connection. Its automatic.

It uses OAuth to request permission in advance for sending emails using your gmail account. Still if you’re worried about security, Boomerang is very open about stating it:

Like most other Gmail plugins, we need access to the full email data to be able to move and send messages. In our queries, we only store the headers of the message (subject, sender, time) so that we can uniquely ID the message you want to schedule. We don’t store any message text.

Boomerang is currently is Beta, and is available on invite basis as  addons/extensions for Popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox 3.6+.

Taranfx readers can get it directly from the URL: Firefox Gmail, Chrome Gmail.

Also, signup for the extended Beta trial.

We write about Latest in tech, Apple, iPhone, Tablets, Gadgets, Open Source, Programming. Grab them@taranfx on Twitter or below:

When Xmarks came, it solved part of the problem by syncing Firefox and Chrome bookmarks. But I was still looking for a solution that could sync my settings, addons. Mozilla Weave partly solved bunch of it by providing settings sync. But wait a minute, addons?

Then I came across another addon, which became the solution to sync every kind of stuff across Firefox browsers, no matter what:

Siphon (Download)

Siphon is a firefox addon that promises to kick all the crap and sync it all. Siphon will manage and sync all your Add-ons with your different computers. That means tt will also save your Add-on list if you ever need to reinstall Firefox.

Siphon is still in the beta but works fine almost all of the time.

Now, you can combine Mozilla Weave with it to sync all your Firefox settings, bookmarks. you can also use xmarks for bookmark sync across browsers: Firefox, IE, Chrome.

Using this methodology, everytime you install  a new firefox, just install Siphon and it will do everything.

Limitation: Support for profiles, Themes sync will be added soon.

2nd Option is to use FEBE addon.

FEBE (download)

FEBE also does similar stuff but does a backup instead of Sync.

FEBE backs up your extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and just about everything else Firefox offers (it can even backup/restore your entire profile). You can selectively restore only the items you need. For instance, you may just want your bookmarks restored and leave everything else as it was.

Key Features:

• Schedule automatic backups in time-stamped folders
• User-defined backups: Make backups of virtually any file or folder – Firefox related or not. Just specify what to backup and FEBE does the rest.
• Auto-Upload backups to your Box.net account.
• FEBE 6.2 has a new, simpler profile restore interface. No need to use the Firefox Profile Manager to manually create a profile to restore into.

The thing I don’t like about this addon is that it doesn’t sync witha  cloud service automatically, and that could be pointed as a big limitation. Everytime you want to sync with new PC, restore the backups manually from file location. On the contrary, it’s more featureful.

Choose your wishful methods, and let the syncing prevail!

We write latest and greatest in Firefox, Chrome, Tech Guides, Apple, iPhone, Android, Open Source, Latest in Tech @taranfx on Twitter.

1. AutoPager: Tired of browsing through pages while you are looking for something? Paginate no longer with this addon you can get  AJAX like page loads while you scroll. The plugin is compatible with most websites [atleast all search engines google, yahoo, bing, etc.] that use pagination.

Download [Also Available on Chrome]

2. Firefox 4 Transformation: With few addons here and there you can get a perfect looking Firefox 4. Sure it’s more of an Eye candy, but cleans-up the clutter like combining URL and search bars, removing Menu bar, etc. More at: Firefox 4 Theme Transformation.

3. Make Older Extensions Compatible: Every time and then new version of Firefox arrives or we deliberately tryout Alpha/Beta builds, older extensions just don’t work. Hail, here is the trick you can do by adding Night tester tools addons. More details: Make Old Extensions Compatible with Firefox (any version)

4. IETab: Even though we hate IE, still we often hunt down to this base browser when we are stuck by an outdated website which doesn’t support other browsers. With this addon you can open IE in a new tab.

Download

5. Yet Another Smooth Scrolling: If you are iPhone or Opera browser user, you seriously miss smooth scrolling. Firefox’s default scrolling isn’t quite as refined as I like it. It supports up to three presets, which is nice for laptops. Keep one set for your touchpad and one for your mouse. I found the default settings for this addon to be very inadequate, however, raising up acceleration and smoothness(forepart) made it look alot better. You can customize to fit your needs.

Download

Found it interesting? You can subscribe to our Tips, Tricks, News and Guides via @Taranfx on Twitter

Bonus: I can’t hold myself back for this one: DownloadThemAll – This is a complete download accelerator/manager for firefox most people often overlook. In fact, it is the only efficient multithreaded downloader for firefox.

More Addons/ Extensions:

• 5 Interesting Firefox Addons
• Taranfx’s Web Addict Must-have Firefox Addon Collection
• How to Dislike on Facebook
• Best Google Chrome Extensions Top 15
• Useful Google Wave Extensions, Gadgets
• How To Write Google Chrome Extensions

1. Easy YouTube Downloader (HD)

How to Download Youtube Videos

Now that YouTube is going FullHD 1080p The only good addon that let’s you download YouTube videos is  HD, MP4, FLV,3GP, FLV formats.

How to Play FullHD 1080p on PC

2. Dislike for Facebook:

How to Dislike on Facebook

Petitions for Facebook to add a “dislike buttons are rising. They may not listen, bu there is an un-offical workaround.

3. App Tabs:

4. Google Wave Add-on for Firefox:

Google Wave Invites Giveaway [100+] [ending soon]

5. LongURL Mobile Expander

You may also want to checkout our  Taranfx’s Web Addict Must-have Firefox Addon Collection

Have a look at Firefox 4 – Screenshots

Of course, it isn’t released but confirmed that work is being done on it.  But we will assist you in getting the same Look and feel on your existing Firefox 3.x. Follow the Steps Below:

1. Form the menu View > Toolbars > Customize, Move your stop button next to the Address Bar and next to Reload button. We will combine them like in Firefox 4 over next steps.
2. Download Strata Reloaded, and StrataBuddy the base of our Transformation.
3. (optional) Download the theme and install (click Tools > Add-Ons > Themes). And then, Drag and Drop the file strata40_v0.3.jar to the theme section. (Note: you can use the theme inbuilt in Strata reloaded, but this one in more beautiful)
4. Now we will remove those traditional menu items “File Edit view..” and change it to something snappier. The Add-On called Personal Menu is needed for that change.
5. Next, we mock a loading progress bar. Download an Add-on called Fission here. After installation,  goto Add-ons, choose browse to get a new loading image. Browse to the folder where you have extracted the theme and select loading_bar.png.
6. Next step is to combine search and address-bars. Download OmniBar Add-on and and install it.
7. (optional) Now, we will remove our Standard Windows title bar. This can be done by using the Add-on called HideCaption.
8. If you’re one Windows Vista or Windows 7, we will make your title bar transparent. To do this, Tools> addons> Strata buddy > options > Select Firefox 4.0, Aero Glass. This gives a nice Glassy look.

It’s highly customizable, and you can fine tune it to your preferred settings. For moreFirefox Tips, and Tech guides you can catch us Live @Taranfx on Twitter.

Firefox 4 is way far, meantime you can look at Firefox’s Latest Beta release Firefox 3.6 (Performance benchmark, features)

Don’t worry we got a quick solution for you. All you need is Firefox and a plugin

Download Plugin

What’s ridiculous is just this morning there were at least two new pages requesting the addition of a “Dislike Button” (dislike button page and dislike button petition page) each of which have over 1 million fans. wow, the Demand is huge. Till Facebook implements it, you can live with Firefox addon. Here is what it will Look like:

Subscribe to Twitter updates, or RSS, join Facebook fanpage for more Tech updates.

Chrome 4 is not just developer friendly and Cloud sync enabled, It’s faster than ever. Chrome 4 is now the fastest browser on PC, MAC OS X.

Before we begin the fun of creating an Extension on Chrome 4, Don’t forget to download Chrome 4.0.201.1 —  Follow this link.

Note: If you are not a developer you can download the extension directly from the “Installing Extension into Chrome 4.0″ near the end.

The extensions in Chrome are based on pure Basic web languages – HTML and Javascript. If you had your hands-on Palm Pre MOJO SDK, it sounds very similar to the Palm’s WebOS. And indeed it is. Google has exposed the core API via Javascript library, that you can call to interact with your browser. These consists of functions for manipulating those aspects of the browser and an event system which allows developers to bind JavaScript callback functions to specific browser events, such as the creation of a new tab, in order to implement custom behaviors. Also, there is also a message-passing system that allows data to transmitted between various components of an extension and a lot-more.

Creating a Simple Extension (TwitterFx)

The Very Basic of Hello World application can be found on Google’s Chrome blog. But it’s not mandatory to understand the following tutorial. I`ll try to keep it easy.

For creating an extension, you need to create a manifest file in JSON format. This manifest file will specify various attributes of extension metadata and defines the structure.

Toolstrip: A component that will hold you Extension. In my example it will hold the default position: Located at bottom. The example of our TwitterFx extension is simple and only includes a single toolstrip item:

1. {
2. “name”: “TwitterFx”,
3. “version”: “0.1″,
4. “description”: “Twitter client for Chrome 4″,
5. “permissions”: [
6. "http://*.twitter.com/*",
7. "http://twitter.com/*"],
8. “toolstrips”: ["twitter.html"]
9. }

The following is the complete code of the twitter.html file in the Twitter extension:

Note that in the above snippet, the extension uses the “toolstrip-button” class to make the “Tweet” div element look like a regular Chrome button. If you remove this class-reference, it will look like a standard web form button.

Chrome 4 Extensions

The Execution: When the user clicks the Tweet button, it calls the getElementById DOM method to access the input textbox message. Then it applies escape function so that the text can safely be transmitted as a URL parameter. then, we append it to a URL string that points to Twitter’s status update REST method. Finally, the message is sent using an HTTP POST operation.

Since this is a lame example, Username and password has to be set in the HTML file manually.

If you want to enhance this to have it configured and stored based on user’s input, you can create a preferences page and store the user/password info with the HTML5 localStorage feature, which Chrome and (even Firefox beta builds) supports.

While the request is being sent, it replaces the button icon with an animation LOADING and disables the input textbox and button.

The second thing this extension does is, gets your Friend’s Timelines every 60 seconds. This information is shown via standard HTML Marquee tag. I’ve customized the scrolling speed via special attributes, that make it look pretty, easier to read. Again, XMLHttpRequest is used to communicate with Twitter’s rest API. Next, a simple HTML string with the message contents and the user’s Twitter profile icon is generated and injected into the marquee element.

If you look carefully, there is a <head> that refreshes this by calling the onCheckTimeline every 60s. Time interval can be changed at the top from timeToRefresh. Also, itemsToDisplay can be configured to set max items per fetch.

Now all is set for You to import the extension into Chrome.

Basically, Chrome 4 supports to formats:

1. Compressed .crx files

2. Uncompressed Folder Imports

The first one is nothing but a zipped version of 2nd. You can either download .crx file into chrome to use it or import a folder.

Chrome 4 Extensions

Installing Extension into Chrome 4.0

Download this zipped file and uncompress into a directory. Open twitter.html in an editor and change user / password to that of your Twitter account.

Browse to “chrome://extensions” in chrome to open the panel that let’s you Load Unpacked Extension and browse, select the  folder.

You are done.

Note: I`ll be Enhancing this Extension to parse URLs, @twitter ids, Reply to individuals, many more. Subscribe to RSS or Check back again soon.

Feel Free to modify the code and redistribute it. Don’t forget to give credits to Author.

You can refer to the Twitter API and do wonders with it. It needs some parsing mechanism, but it’s not hard.

So Era of Chrome OS starts, where you write apps that run inside your Browser

Audience – WEB Addicts, Daily Internet users, Developers, Geeks.

Here is the Solution – FireShot — Firefox plugin which is very flexible, let’s you choose size of the target image and automatically uploads to a free Image hosting instantly.

When Installed, It sits in the right corner of Statusbar and gives you alot of options to chose from for capture. You can capture and Edit, Upload, save, print, copy to clipboard, Email for the Visible area or the Entire Page.

Also, you have option to include or exlude flash components. When you are including them, you can mention time offset too. Helpful for animated flash.

If you are saving image, you can choose between Jpeg and PNG file formats and corresponding image quality between 1 and 100, bigger the no., higher the size.

1) Making Extensions Compatible – THE EASY WAY

All you have to do is to go and download a wonderful Nightly Tester Tools extension. Not only it is compatible with your newest Firefox version, but it will also add a button to your Extensions manager (Tools->Add-ons):

Just click this button and restart your browser. Please note that this is a screenshot taken AFTER making all the xtensions compatible – so as you can see they’re all active already.

The advantage of this way is that it’s really easy to make all your extensions compatible with any Firefox until Firefox 3.0 (that’s what this extension puts as the MaxVersion for each of the extensions it fixes)

The disadvantage is that there is no equally easy way to revert the changes, so once “made compatible”, your extensions will stay this way – there is no button to make them uncompatible again. However, disabling the extension seems to restore the versions.

2) Making Extensions Compatible – THE FIREFOX GURU WAY

What you can do is open the configuration (about:config) in your Firefox browser, right click the list and create a boolean extensions.checkCompatibility option there. Set its value to false and restart the browser.

Most of your extensions should work now. If you go to the Add-ons dialog, it will look like this:

As you can see, extensions which would otherwise be incompatible, are flagged with the exclamation mark. You can also see a warning message which suggest you enable the compatibility check again.

The advantage of this approach is that it’s really simple to make the change which affects all the extensions.

The disadvantage is that this way can be used as a temporary solution only, as it may lead to unpredictable consequences (some really old or really new extensions may malfunction).

3) Making Extensions Compatible – THE HARD WAY

This is essentially a manual way of accomplishing the result of using the Nightly Tester Tools extension.

The advantage of this way is in total control over which extensions you’ll hack to become compatible.

The disadvantage is in the fact that every step of this method is rather hard: distinguishing extensions to make sure you’re changing the one you really want, and
manually changing the versions supported.

1. Close your browser
2. Go to the folder with all your Firefox extensions:
   C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\extensions In this line, USER is to be replaced with your Windows login, and PROFILE will be the name of your Firefox profile (weird looking folder name, usually the only one found in Profiles folder)
3. You’ll see a list of folders there, 1 folder for each extension. The names of the folders are the unique identifiers for extensions, so they may seem scary at first:
   {34274bf4-1d97-a289-e984-17e546307e4f} – this is the Adblock extension GUID.
4. Go to any folder, and open the install.rdf file for editing with your favorite clear text editor. Notepad works, but using it will make things even harder cause it doesn’t part rdf files properly. Your choice Now back to the business. You need to look for 2 things:
   • name of the extension, to make sure you’re editing the right oneJust look for the em:name, and try to recognize the extension from the description that follows:
     

     <!– Front End MetaData –>
     <em:name>Adblock</em:name>
     <em:description>Filters ads from web-pages</em:description>
     <em:creator>The Adblock Crew</em:creator>
     <em:contributor>Henrik Aasted Sorensen</em:contributor>

   • a block of minimal and maximum Firefox versions the extension will work on.
     Warning: there could be few similar blocks with versions, so make sure you’ll edit the one which has EXACTLY this em:id, the one which belongs to Firefox browser: ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384.

   <!– FireFox –>
   <em:targetApplication>
   <Description>
   <em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
   <em:minVersion>0.7</em:minVersion>
   <em:maxVersion>1.5</em:maxVersion>
   </Description>
   </em:targetApplication>

5. Edit the maxVersion parameter (shown in bold to make it easier), and change it from 1.5 to 2.0b2.
6. Remove the extensions.cache file from the C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\ folder – this will make sure Firefox will read all the changes from install.rdf files and pick up the now “compatible” extension
7. Restart your browser, enable the previously disabled extension you’ve just edited
8. Restart your browser again to activate this extension

An intriguing new add-on from the team that’s still developing Ubiquity extends the promise of a browser that you can change yourself to suit your own purposes.

When you’re a developer with Mozilla Labs or another open source laboratory, one of the things you’ll often find yourself doing is “launching” a project before it’s anywhere near complete. That’s what it means to be truly open. In the case of Aza Raskin and his design team, last night, he “launched” (that’s Mozilla’s term for it) a project to encourage Web site developers to build simpler but more accessible add-ons for the Firefox browser, by means of a JavaScript API and Firefox plug-in called JetPack.

Although Firefox is itself an exercise in JavaScript, crafting plug-ins to do simple things is not a simple matter. There’s actually a cottage economy developing already around plug-ins, which Jetpack could disrupt merely by giving everyday programmers simpler means to make additions to the browser. “Specifically, Jetpack will be an exploration in using Web technologies to enhance the browser (e.g., HTML, CSS and JavaScript),” wrote Raskin late yesterday in his Call for Participation, “with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play.”
The surprise is that there’s not much to it, and that actually may end up being its biggest benefit. With Jetpack installed in Firefox, the browser becomes instantly adaptable, even on a live basis — a JavaScript coder can make changes to it without a restart. The language is JavaScript enhanced with jQuery, the transformative language extension that makes the language much more direct, driving events rather than merely reacting to them. The Jetpack API exposes just a few objects pertaining to the event matrix of the browser and some of the front end elements, particularly the status bar. That’s where a lot of add-ons’ exclusive output will appear, as the Firefox status bar becomes the counterpart of the Windows taskbar or the Mac Desktop dock.

Mozilla Labs Jetpack – Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

There’s not much to show for what Jetpack 0.1 can enable a homebrew developer to do with Firefox right now, but the strongest case it’s making for itself right now comes from the Gmail notifier demonstration, a little add-on whose total development time could not have consumed longer than an hour. Its principal function queries the Atom feed from Gmail for a string of text, and parses that text to obtain the unread message count. Another function adds the digits for that number to the graphic that appears for the add-on in the status bar. Jetpack utilizes Mozilla and Mozilla Labs features that already exist: for example, it uses the Labs’ experimental HTML 5-based inline JavaScript code editor Bespin as its programming front-end and even for a command line that gives immediate orders to Jetpack. And it uses the already popular Firebug as its inline debugger.

Last night’s Call for Participation instructs interested parties as to how to download and install the Jetpack plug-in (not a big deal), how to submit bug reports, and where to find the Labs’ very brief instructional videos and tutorials — which may themselves been produced in an hour or less.

I’ve made a bit of a research out of it, and here we are: I present you with the 3 ways to make extensions compatible with Firefox 3.5

1) Making Extensions Compatible – THE EASY WAY

All you have to do is to go and download a wonderful Nightly Tester Tools extension. Not only it is compatible with your newest Firefox version, but it will also add a button to your Extensions manager (Tools->Add-ons):

Just click this button and restart your browser. Please note that this is a screenshot taken AFTER making all the xtensions compatible – so as you can see they’re all active already.

The advantage of this way is that it’s really easy to make all your extensions compatible with any Firefox until Firefox 3.0 (that’s what this extension puts as the MaxVersion for each of the extensions it fixes)

The disadvantage is that there is no equally easy way to revert the changes, so once “made compatible”, your extensions will stay this way – there is no button to make them uncompatible again. However, disabling the extension seems to restore the versions.

2) Making Extensions Compatible – THE FIREFOX GURU WAY (pre firefox 3.x)

What you can do is open the configuration (about:config) in your Firefox browser, right click the list and create a boolean extensions.checkCompatibility option there. Set its value to false and restart the browser.

Most of your extensions should work now. If you go to the Add-ons dialog, it will look like this:

As you can see, extensions which would otherwise be incompatible, are flagged with the exclamation mark. You can also see a warning message which suggest you enable the compatibility check again.

The advantage of this approach is that it’s really simple to make the change which affects all the extensions.

The disadvantage is that this way can be used as a temporary solution only, as it may lead to unpredictable consequences (some really old or really new extensions may malfunction).

3) Making Extensions Compatible – THE HARD WAY

This is essentially a manual way of accomplishing the result of using the Nightly Tester Tools extension.

The advantage of this way is in total control over which extensions you’ll hack to become compatible.

The disadvantage is in the fact that every step of this method is rather hard: distinguishing extensions to make sure you’re changing the one you really want, and
manually changing the versions supported.

1. Close your browser
2. Go to the folder with all your Firefox extensions:
   C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\extensions In this line, USER is to be replaced with your Windows login, and PROFILE will be the name of your Firefox profile (weird looking folder name, usually the only one found in Profiles folder)
3. You’ll see a list of folders there, 1 folder for each extension. The names of the folders are the unique identifiers for extensions, so they may seem scary at first:
   {34274bf4-1d97-a289-e984-17e546307e4f} – this is the Adblock extension GUID.
4. Go to any folder, and open the install.rdf file for editing with your favorite clear text editor. Notepad works, but using it will make things even harder cause it doesn’t part rdf files properly. Your choice Now back to the business. You need to look for 2 things:
   • name of the extension, to make sure you’re editing the right oneJust look for the em:name, and try to recognize the extension from the description that follows:
     

     <!– Front End MetaData –>
     <em:name>Adblock</em:name>
     <em:description>Filters ads from web-pages</em:description>
     <em:creator>The Adblock Crew</em:creator>
     <em:contributor>Henrik Aasted Sorensen</em:contributor>

   • a block of minimal and maximum Firefox versions the extension will work on.
     Warning: there could be few similar blocks with versions, so make sure you’ll edit the one which has EXACTLY this em:id, the one which belongs to Firefox browser: ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384.

   <!– FireFox –>
   <em:targetApplication>
   <Description>
   <em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
   <em:minVersion>0.7</em:minVersion>
   <em:maxVersion>1.5</em:maxVersion>
   </Description>
   </em:targetApplication>

5. Edit the maxVersion parameter (shown in bold to make it easier), and change it from 1.5 to 2.0b2.
6. Remove the extensions.cache file from the C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\PROFILE\ folder – this will make sure Firefox will read all the changes from install.rdf files and pick up the now “compatible” extension
7. Restart your browser, enable the previously disabled extension you’ve just edited
8. Restart your browser again to activate this extension