How-To Speed Up, Customize, and Secure Firefox, Chrome, IE8, and Opera

MaximumPC has a post on  How-To: Speed Up, Customize, and Secure Firefox, Chrome, IE8, and Opera.

Lots of good advice on improving your browsers performance.

Xenocode browser sandbox

Xenocode lets you Run IE8/IE7/IE6, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera from the web.

Now you can test out how your website looks in a variety of browsers without having to have them all on your own computer.

Microsoft’s SuperPreview

Microsoft’s SuperPreview is a ZDNet post on the “tool allows developers and designers to see how their sites look and work with different browsers so they can debug them more easily.”

“SuperPreview is part of Microsoft’s forthcoming Expression Web 3 release. Microsoft made available for download a subset of the full SuperPreview tool — the part that developers and designers  can use to compare how their sites look in Internet Explorer (IE) 6, 7 and 8. The full release of SuperPreview will allow developers to also compare how their sites look in Firefox, Sarari…”

Xmarks now syncs bookmarks across browsers

Xmarks is the new incarnation of a personal recommended favorite add-on for Firefox, but now it is available for IE and Safari!

Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) is a free bookmark synchronizing service, which now can be used with Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari browsers.  Now you can sync your bookmarks (including your bookmarks toolbar) in any of these browsers (just install the freeware on the computer you’re currently using) and it syncs all the bookmarks to the latest ones you have.

If you’re using Firefox, it also syncs your Sage RSS feeds too.

Final Builds Site – Internet Explorer Collection

Final Builds Site – Internet Explorer Collection is a site for web site developers.

Internet Explorer prefers to install new versions over old ones, which makes it difficult to test your web site on older versions than you currently have.

This site offers IE from 1.2.0.2 up to a beta version of 8, which allows you to test as far back as you’re likely to need.

Gizmo’s Best Free Windows 7/Vista 64 bit Software

[updated 2009.7.20]

“Gizmo” Richards has a post on his picks for the Best Free Windows 7/Vista 64 bit Software.

This blogger tests everything and gives you the facts, in detail, so he’s an excellent resource for finding as much freeware as you can for your Windows 7/Vista 64-bit system.

Browser, firewall, anti-virus, office suite, and more are recommended here.

U3 version: Firefox 3 Final Portable U3

[update 2009.3.7]

(The Firefox on the regular U3 sites may still be only version 2.)

Oops!  The link for the original version of this post has been hijacked or forwarded to something unrelated to Firefox 3 for U3.

There are versions out there, but I can’t be sure if they are safe (uninfected, no trojans, etc.)

One possible source is here or more directly from here.   I can’t guarantee safety of this version.  Click on the “free user” dial and wait for the countdown, then proceed as instructed.

You’ll need tell it to update as soon as you get it installed, and then get the latest versions of your addons.

Screen2: Share your Browser Screen

MakeUseOf has a post about Screen2, an  “online screen sharing app that lets you share whatever you see on your web browser with any of your friends. And the cool thing about Screen2 is that it doesn’t require you to install anything. The screenAll you need is a web browser and internet connection.”

“First enter your name and wait your friend to do the same. The use these names to search and invite each other. Couple of sconds later you should see and invitation, click accept, done. Start browsing together.”

Free service.

Sxipper addon for Firefox handles passwords and more

Sxipper is a Firefox addon which handles passwords and more.

“Sxipper is a free Firefox add-on that saves you time by keeping track of an unlimited number of usernames and passwords as well as the personal data you share every day over the web.”

Use at your own risk, but this should be safer than just the regular Firefox password save.

Transmute converts your bookmarks between browsers

Transmute is a “freeware bookmark conversion utility.”

“This amazing utility will help you to try out different web browsers, synchronize bookmarks between systems, organize bookmarks, convert bookmarks for use in bookmark managers, share bookmarks with others and more. And best of all, it’s free!”

When you want to try out a different browser, this is one way to convert your bookmarks to the new browser.

Transmute is the first and only bookmark converter to export bookmarks between all of the major web browsers:

Google Chrome
Transmute supports the new Chrome browser, including dev channel releases.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox 1 & 2 are supported as well as Firefox 3, with its new database model.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Vista are fully supported.
Opera
Opera browser hotlists are also well supported for easy importing and exporting.
Apple Safari
Safari is the web browser from the people behind the iPhone and iPod.
Chromium
Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome.
Flock
Flock is a social web browser based on Mozilla Firefox.

NotifyMeWhenItsUp: Get Notified When Error Pages are Back Up

MakeUseOf.com has a post on NotifyMeWhenItsUp, a useful web service that will keep checking that overloaded web site to see if it’s available again — yet.

This could be very useful during times when certain sites are overworked — say, an online store during the holiday season, or a university enrollment page near the start of the semester.

Address Finder: Get The Address of Any Point on Google Maps

MakeUseOf.com has a post on Address Finder which is a “Google Maps mashup application (build on top of Google Maps) which makes it easy to find out the exact street address of any point on a map by clicking on the spot you need. To get started, use the provided search box to get the map of the area you need and then click on any point on the map to see its address.”

Lifehacker has Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing

Lifehacker’s Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing involve Google, Gmail, Firefox and TraceMonkey, Safari and Opera, DownThemAll for downloading, tweaking your cache size, using DD-WRT or Tomato to tweak your home router, RSS, OpenDNS, and others.

Stix.to: Leave Personal and Public Marks on Any Webpage

MakeUseOf.com has a post about Stix.to which is a “Web service with a browser plugin that lets you make marks on any web page. You can leave marks in form of simple notes, interactive chat boxes and spoken messages. Additionally to leaving marks you can also see public marks left by other Stix.to users read , chat and comment on them.”

“Stix.to gives you a layer on top of the Internet. You can go to any page you wish, put a note, chat, picture or video on top of that page. Share your layer with friends, link to it from your blog, or just see what pops up when you surf around.”

Finch: Speedup Your Dialup Connection by stripping off unneeded stuff

MakeUseOf.com has a post on Finch, a service which speeds up your dialup (and perhaps simplifies text-to-speech?) by stripping off the graphics, scripts, and other details to boil web pages down to their basic essentials.

“For example, the New York Times homepage is over 110KB, and uses external resources (images, scripts, what have you) that make it amount to about 1.4MB. Finch trims that down to 84KB, which doesn’t look as pretty, but is 94% less for your computer to download.”

Features:

• speedup browsing speed on slow dial-up connections.
• Reduce page sizes by stripping secondary elements from pages (CSS, flash, frames, etc.)
• No sign-up or registration needed.

iMacros for Firefox

CNet has iMacros for Firefox which was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the Web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the macro will run at the click of a button. Version 6.0.7.5 supports Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2, bug fixes and enhancements.

Freeware. Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 – 3.0b2.

Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons = Researcher’s Browser of Choice

The Res Ipsa Blog posts Become an Efficient Researcher: Top Twenty Firefox Add-ons that Make Firefox the Researcher’s Browser of Choice.

Some of these are techniques, some are add-ons.  Handy for doing research for your papers.

10 reasons why you should use the Opera browser

The browser you use may be a matter of default (Internet Explorer was on the computer when you got your Windows PC), or choice.

TechRepublic blogger Jack Wallen gives us 10 reasons why you should use the Opera browser.

If you’d like to give it a try, download it here.

What sites do you trust?

Internet Fixes has instructions on adding web sites you trust to the Internet Explorer Trusted Zone — or the Restricted Zone, if you’d rather keep away from them.

CyberNirvana offers 8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

CyberNirvana has a list of 8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast.

These are settings inside Firefox that can speed up your use.