by Peter Ridge
Last night, I updated to Firefox 6.0.2 and after it was finished installing, lo and behold the middle mouse button no longer opened links in new tabs. Using a middle click (Command+click on the Mac) on a link normally opens the destination in a background tab, but it just stopped working. However, I could still use the context menu (right-click on PC, Control+click on Mac) and select “Open Link in New Tab”.
Check your extensions. Are you using Greasemonkey 0.9.10? Are you also using Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6? As of this writing, they’re both the latest versions at the Firefox add-ons site. Nevertheless, there’s an incompatibility that causes the middle-click to fail.
To remedy the problem, download and install the latest version of Greasemonkey 0.9.11 directly at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/versions/0.9.11 or if you’d rather wait for Mozilla to approve the version, it should eventually show up as an update in Firefox.
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by Peter Ridge
The zcat command line program in OS X has been broken for quite some time and is still that way in Snow Leopard. When trying to output the contents of a gzipped file, zcat appends .Z to the end of the file name that it’s given and outputs an error. The quick fix is to replace it with gzcat as follows:
$ cd /usr/bin
$ sudo mv zcat broken-zcat
$ sudo ln -s gzcat zcat
This process renames the original zcat program to broken-zcat and then creates a symbolic link called zcat that points to gzcat. This way, you don’t have to remember to specifically use gzcat. Running zcat will also use gzcat.
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by Peter
Last month, I posted about the free VirtualBox virtualization software and how you can use it to run various operating systems on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (Intel CPU version) computers. Virtualization is also handy for quick and painless operating system evaluation purposes.
There are many Live CDs available today spanning a plethora of distributions of Linux, some Unices and you can even create your own Windows live CD. However, using them usually requires burning the ISO to a CD or DVD. Although media is cheap these days, it’s still a waste to burn discs just to try out things you may never continue using.
With VirtualBox, you don’t have to burn any discs to try things out. Simply follow these steps:
- Download the ISO file for the operating system you want to run. Verify from the description/help files/documentation that it is a bootable image (i.e. doesn’t require a boot floppy).
- Start VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine with enough memory for the operating system you’re going to try out.
- There’s no need to create a virtual hard drive for this machine if you’re using a Live CD/DVD since everything will run in memory. However, if it is an installation disc, then you will need to create a virtual hard drive large enough to install the operating system.
- Assign the ISO file to the virtual CD-ROM drive of the virtual machine.
- Start the new virtual machine.
Not only does this method reduce waste by avoiding the creation of plastic coasters (wasted CD/DVD media), it boots faster than a CD/DVD drive and your computer system is isolated from anything that may go wrong in the operating system you’re trying out.
So, now you’re all set to go play. Report back on the cool new operating systems you find.
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by Peter
Continuing the Firefox tips theme from the last article, here are two more hidden preferences in Firefox that are very handy. To access them, enter about:config in the browser’s address bar and press the Enter or Return key.
- browser.urlbar.hideGoButton
In earlier versions of Firefox, it was possible to remove the Go button. Now, it’s part of the address bar. However, setting this preference value to true will make it go away to give you more room to see the URL in the address bar.
- permissions.default.image
Firefox also used to allow you to prevent it from loading images on the page that were from a different server than the page itself. If you’d like to enable this security feature, set this preference value to 3.
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by Peter
There are a lot of hidden preferences in Firefox that are available by entering about:config in the browser’s address bar and pressing the Enter or Return key. Here are some tweaks that I find particularly helpful.
To change a preference in the list, double-click on it. To filter the list, type any part of the preference name in the Filter box.
- browser.backspace_action
By default on Windows and Mac OS X, hitting the backspace key causes Firefox to go back one page in the browser’s history. Changing this setting’s value to anything greater than 1 (Firefox on Linux defaults to a value of 2) will disable this behavior to prevent accidentally changing pages while typing in a form or Flash program.
- layout.spellcheckDefault
The default value of 1 enables spell checking in text areas. To have Firefox show incorrect spelling in text input fields of forms as well, change this value to 2.
Changes to these settings take effect immediately. The spell check one may require that you reload a page that was open before the setting was changed for it to take effect.
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