A lot of people are complaining that Firefox has become bloated with its third version and they would very well like to go back to Firefox 2. Though we, the folks at DailyGyan, do not share the same opinion, we would still like to help you by showing how to downgrade from FF3 to FF2.

Related: Ultimate guide on how to get old versions of software.

Before beginning your downgrade, we would like to warn you that the extensions you have installed in FF3 will no longer work in Firefox 2, in most cases. But go ahead, see which all are not working and be ready to reinstall the ones that are not compatible.
OK, let's start. Here is what you should do:

1. Create a back up of your profile directory
   See this link to find where your profile directory is. Then create a copy of this directory in some convenient location. Read the link for more information.
   
   
2. Download Firefox 2
   This can be a bit daunting. That's because the Firefox site no longer gives you a link to download Firefox 2. The site talks about nothing but Firefox 3.
   Or is it? Get Firefox 2 from http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0.0.14/win32/en-US/. Linux users, you are smart enough to guess where Linux version would be, right?
   
   
3. Uninstall Firefox 3
   You can uninstall FF3 using the Control Panel -> Add/Remove programs or by running the [Firefox Installation Directory]\uninstall\helper.exe
   Select not to remove your profile information.
   Linux/Ubuntu users you need to run sudo apt-get purge firefox-3.0
   
   
4. Install Firefox 2
   Though most of your addons will be rendered un-usable, you can still have your bookmarks and passwords list saved. Ensure that the old bookmarks.html and key3.db files are still in the profile directory. Rename signons3.txt to signons2.txt.
   Now, install Firefox 2, and if all went correct you will have your bookmarks and saved passwords intact in your Firefox 2. Now it's time to reinstall all addons that Firefox have marked as not-compatible.
   Ubuntu users need to run sudo apt-get install firefox-2 to install Firefox 2. For other distributions, download the tar file from the above said Mozilla Releases site and untar it to a suitable location.
   

Do you know any easier method to get this done? Did you find any stumbling blocks? Share with us in the comments.

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If you have been brave enough to try out Firefox 3, you might have noticed that a lot of extension in the Firefox addons site is unavailable to you.
This is because those extensions were made for Firefox 2 and are hence not supported in FF3. So, the good folks at Mozilla have completely disabled downloading of such addons, if you browse to the addon page using Firefox 3.

We however disagree with the Mozilla developers. We have found that a large number of Firefox 2 addons function seamlessly in Firefox 3 and it is really cruel to lock out FF3 users from enjoying those extensions.

How to download Firefox 2 extensions using Firefox 3 From The Firefox Addons Site?

1. Take Firefox. Type about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
2. Click on "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
3. Right click and select New -> String.
4. Enter the preference name as general.useragent.override and the value as Firefox/2.0.0.14

Now go to an addons page like this and see whether the "Download Now" option is enabled.

How to enable installing Firefox 2 extensions in Firefox 3

We have already covered this here, but reproducing it here for making this post complete.
Even though, you are able to download FF2 addons using the above method, your Firefox 3 will resist installing incompatible addons unless you perform the below steps.

1. Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
2. Right-click anywhere. Choose New -> Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
3. Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
4. Restart Firefox.

That's it. Now you'll be able to download all addons from Firefox Addons site and also install them in Firefox 3.

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The latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution code-named Hardy-Heron has been released.

Ubuntu is a distro that’s well known for its user-friendliness and simplicity. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, get it here. You can even get a free CD shipped to you absolutely free of cost through the Ubuntu ship it program.

However, if tested out-of-the-box, Ubuntu is crippled on the multimedia front. This is because of copyright and patent restrictions that complicate distribution of proprietary codecs with Ubuntu, which prides itself as a totally free operating system.

Even though Ubuntu developers haven’t included proprietary codecs, they have made it extremely easy for you to install them later through the Medibuntu repository. You can get encrypted DVD playback, Adobe Flash plugin and non-native media files (Windows media, Apple QuickTime, Real, MP3) support by using this single command.

Take a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and enter the following command:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs

The above command downloads all the required codecs from the Medibuntu repositories and makes your Ubuntu box multimedia ready.

Note: The above command is for 32 bit processors. AMD 64bit users, replace the ending word w32codecs with w64codecs. PPC users replace w32codecs with ppc-codecs.

Bonus Tip

Once you have run the above command, you can easily install third party applications like Skype, Google Earth and Acrobat Reader.

Skype:
sudo apt-get install skype

Google Earth:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2

Adobe Acrobat Reader:
sudo apt-get install acroread

Happy Linuxing.

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Whenever you install an extension, Firefox will show the above message box. Initially the Install button will be grayed out for 3 seconds, during which you have to sit there, watching the timer ticking down. Even though there are very good reasons why such a delay is put in force, still some of us have felt the need to remove that.
If you are a Firefox addon-surfer (hey, we coined that term :D) who installs (and obviously, uninstalls) a couple of extensions every day, the 3 seconds delay can easily become a time sink.

Related; Install Addons The Easy Way In Firefox

You can easily disable the installation wait by a simple about:config hack.

1. Type about:config into the Firefox address bar and hit enter.
2. Click on "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
3. Enter security.dialog_enable_delay into the Filter text box. Double click on that preference value and change the value to 0

Try to install some addons now and you will notice that there is no wait period in the dialog box that pops up.

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For those who haven't yet heard about Mozilla Prism (earlier known as Mozilla WebRunner), let's get some info directly from the horse's mouth:

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
Prism lets users add their favorite web apps to their desktop environment:
When invoked, these applications run in their own window:

Prism is based on the Firefox engine, but doesn't have any of the Firefox's bells and whistles, and when I said any, I really meant any! There is not even a preference window where you can set the proxy information.
Then how do you enable proxy for prism? Read on.

The instructions are applicable for both Windows and Linux versions of Prism.

1. Run prism. The following dialog should pop up.
   
   Type about:config into the URL field. Give it a name like config and enable the check box Desktop to create a desktop icon. Click OK.
   



2. Once the above steps are done, an icon named config would have been created on your Desktop.
   Double click that shortcut to see the following window.
   
   Click "I'll be careful, I promise!" button to show the main configuration screen.
   



3. Type network.proxy into the Filter field.
   
   
   
4. Double click on network.proxy.type and give it anyone of the following values:
   0 - Direct connection, no proxy. (Default)
   1 - Manual proxy configuration. (If in doubt, select this)
   2 - Proxy auto-configuration (PAC).
   4 - Auto-detect proxy settings.
   5 - Use system proxy settings (Default in Linux).
   
   
5. Double click on network.proxy.http and enter the IP Address of your proxy server.
   
   
6. Double click on network.proxy.http_port and enter the port of your proxy server.
   
   
7. Repeat the above two steps for network.proxy.ssl and network.proxy.ssl_port
   

For your information, this is how my values look:
network.proxy.type = 1
network.proxy.http = 192.168.0.1
network.proxy.http_port = 8080
network.proxy.ssl = 192.168.0.1
network.proxy.ssl_port = 8080

That's all. You can now close the about:config window. Now prism should start working over the proxy.

Reference

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How to download videos from all popular video sharing sites like YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo, MySpace and Metacafe?

Quick Answer: KeepVid.com


Drag the above button to your bookmarks toolbar. Next time you are in a video page, click it to get the download links.

In addition to the flv file, keepvid also gives you the link to the better quality mp4 file, if one is available.
KeepVid.com supports a large number of video sharing sites:

1. Google Videos
2. Youtube
3. Break.com
4. iFilm
5. Putfile
6. Angry Alien
7. ArtistDirect
8. Blastro
9. Blennus
10. Blip.tv
11. Bofunk
12. Bolt
13. Castpost
14. Current TV
15. Dailymotion
16. DevilDucky
17. FindVideos
18. Free Video Blog
19. Grinvi (NSFW)
20. grouper
21. Hiphopdeal
22. LuluTV
23. Midis.biz
24. Music.com
25. MusicVideoCodes.info
26. Myspace
27. Newgrounds
28. PcPlanets
29. Pixparty
30. REVVER
31. sharkle
32. StreetFire
33. That Video Site
34. The One Network
35. VideoCodes4U
36. VideoCodeZone
37. vidiLife
38. Vimeo
39. vSocial
40. Web62.com
41. ZippyVideos

What other tools have you found useful? Please share in the comments.

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You may know AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox as a pretty good way to block ads on websites. What you may not know is that it can be used to download flash media embedded in web pages like a flash game. See the screen cast where I download a super cool game "4 Wheel Madness" from flashgames247.com
(Safe for work, no audio)



In case you can't understand from the video, here are the steps to follow:

1. Go to the page having the game. In this example it is http://www.flashgames247.com/play/754.html
   
2. When the flash content loads, you get a link named "block" that AdBlock Plus have added to the top right corner of the game. Click on it.
   
3. In the window that pops up, copy the location of the swf file and cancel the pop up.
   
4. In a new tab paste that address and hit enter. When the game loads, select File -> Save Page As and save the swf file to your computer.
   
5. Now you can play that game even when you are not connected to internet by opening that swf file in Firefox or IE.
   

Happy Gaming.

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The How-To Geek weblog recently made a post on creating desktop and keyboard shortcuts to eject your CD/DVD drive. Wow! this is so coool... I mean, I have been using Linux for a couple of years now. I have been using keyboard and desktop shortcuts to eject (and close) CD/DVD tray in my Ubuntu/Fedora box long back and never once realized that this was a hot blogable topic that could hit the front of lifehacker.
Me dump. Me idiot. Well, since How-To Geek doesn't appear to know about a stuff called "Linux", here goes my How-To on doing the same on Linux... Better late than never.

HowToGeek uses a piece of software from NirSoft to do the above said magic. Linux users might be a bit disappointed here, because they don't have to install another software to do this magic. ;)

Create a Shortcut to Eject the CD/DVD Drive

1. Right click anywhere on the desktop and select "Create Launcher..."
   
   
2. Enter the name as "Eject DVD" and command as "eject /dev/scd0"
   
   
3. Do you mind if I don't spoon feed you on getting a CD/DVD icon for your shortcut?
   

Create a Shortcut to Close the CD/DVD Drive

Same as above, except that the command is eject -t /dev/scd0

Assign a Hotkey to the Shortcut

Well, (unlike in Windows) you don't have to create a shortcut to have a Hot Key in Linux.

1. Hit Alt + F2. In the run dialog enter "gconf-editor" and hit enter.
   
2. Go to "apps" -> "metacity" -> "global_keybindings"
   
3. Double click on e.g. "run_command_1"
   
4. Type in <Control><Alt>c
   
5. Go to "apps" -> "metacity" -> "keybinding_commands"
   
6. Double click on e.g. "command_1"
   
7. Type in "eject /dev/scd0"
   

This creates a hot key - Control + Alt + c to eject your CD/DVD drive. Similarly create another hot key with run_command_2 = <Control><Alt>v and command_2 = eject -t /dev/scd0 which will eject your CD drive using Control + Alt + v.

Happy Ejecting.

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Firefox 3 beta have been released, and if you have been reading DailyGyan, you already know how to run Firefox 2 along with Firefox 3.

But Firefox 3 beta has a serious issue. Lack of extensions!
Many extension writers are waiting for the official release of Firefox3 before porting there extension to it. The result is that many of our beloved extensions refuse to install in Firefox3.

In this How To, I'll show you how to install a Firefox2 extension in Firefox3 beta using the official del.icio.us Firefox extension as an example.

1. Go to the delicious extensions page.
   
2. Right click on the Install Now and select "Save Link As". Save the xpi file to your computer.
   
3. Open the downloaded xpi file using any zip application. Inside the archive there will be a file named install.rdf. Open it using a text editor.
   
4. Change the line <em:maxversion>2.0.0.*</em:maxversion> to <em:maxVersion>4.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
   
5. Save the file and update the archieve.
   
6. Drag the modified xpi file into Firefox to start the installation.
   

Update: LifeHacker blog suggests the following procedure.

• Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
• Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
• Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
• Restart Firefox.

(However, I couldn't get this method to work for me. Even after setting the two values, firefox was still doing compatibility check and failed to install the extensions.)

Related: Official Delicious Extension for Firefox 3 Beta
Happy Firefoxing

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Here is the challenge. You are a heavy table creator in the Word, Outlook, OOo Write etc but you absolutely hate the interface they provide for creating a table. You are a keyboard junkie and want to create a table without touching the mouse.

Well, here is what you should do.

1. Type +---+---+---+ and hit enter.
   
2. You can see a table popping up with a single row and 3 columns.
   
3. As the number of minus increases, the length of the row increases.
   
4. You can increase the number of columns by adding more "+" signs.
   
5. Hit tab to navigate from one column to another. When you are at the last column, tab creates a new row for you.
   

photo by:hypowren

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You have heard about the Firefox 3 beta that was launched and want to checkout the new cool features, but is twitchy about messing up your current spiced up Firefox 2 profile.
Amit at Digital Inspiration recently posted a solution to this by asking readers to try out the Firefox portable edition. Daily Gyan wasn't satisfied. We wanted to run the native Firefox 3 build along with Firefox 2 without messing up our existing profiles. And yes, we did it at last. Here is a How-To.

1. Create a backup of your existing profile folder - C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
   
2. Download Firefox 3 beta 3 from Mozilla.
   
3. Install it to a folder different from the installation location of Firefox 2.
   
4. During installation select custom and ask the installer not to create any shortcuts. (We'll create them manually)
   
5. Important: At the end of the installation, do *not* select the check box to launch Firefox. We are not yet ready to lanuch it.
   
6. In a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd), navigate to the folder where you installed Firefox 3 and run the command
   firefox.exe -P
   .In the window that pops up, click new and create a new Profile named Firefox3Test.
   
7. Now create a shortcut of firefox.exe in the Desktop. Edit the shortcut's property and add -P Firefox3Test to the end (after the "" ends) in the command option.
   

Use this shortcut to launch Firefox 3. Use your old shortcuts to launch Firefox2.

Points to remember:

• Always do a backup of your profile folder
  
• Do *not* uninstall Firefox 2
  
• Do *not* install Firefox 3 into the same folder where Firefox 2 is installed.
  
• You cannot run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 simultaneously. Only one can be run a time.
  
• Do *not* allow Firefox 3 to run with default profile. This can seriously mess up your existing Firefox 2 settings.
  

If you found this interesting, now would be a good time to subscribe to DailyGyan updates.

Happy Hacking.

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Mail 1:

Hi Boss,
Please find attached the review report, that you have earlier requested.

Regards,
Me

Mail 2

oops, forgot to attach the file.
Please find it now.

Regards,
Me

Does these mails look familiar? I bet it does. It happens to you and me all the time. Saying that you have attached a file and not finding it, makes the recipient question your credibility. Especially when you are sending some document like your resume to a future employer.


So before sending a third mail like:

Oops, I forgot again.
Please find the required document now.

Regards,
Me


update your gyan and read along. By the way, you can keep your gyan updated by subscribing to DailyGyan feed here.


Thunderbird users: Install the Attachment Reminder extension.


When ever it finds text like attachment or files in the mail body but doesn't find any attachment, it prompts the user before sending the mail. The text that it searches can be configured easily. So if you have the habit of just saying "PFA the stuff", that can be configured too. (For the geek, this extension supports regexp matching).



This is a plugin that Thunderbird can consider taking into itself, similar to the Lightning extension in Thunderbird 3. There are a number of similar extension available for Thunderbird, bur Attachment Reminder blows them away, because of its regexp pattern matching support and the ability to avoid quoted message in search.

Outlook users: Head over to TechTrax. (Warning: Geeky programming ahead)

Mail.app users: The Attachment scanner plugin seems to be pretty good and works out of the box. It has been translated into a number of languages and is also open source.



As a general thumb of rule, always attach the files first, compose the mail and then add the names of recipients.

What are the little tricks that you use, to avoid oops mail? Let us know in the comments.

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Our favorite disk encryption software TrueCrypt, have released a new stable version - TrueCrypt 5.0.
The new release contains highly demanded features like

• a GUI for linux
  
• Mac OS X version
  
• linux version of TrueCrypt is no longer affected by the changed in the kernel.
  
• faster read and write speed in Windows.
  
• and more
  

DailyGyan decided to take a ride of the new Linux GUI and downloaded version 5.0 from the TrueCrypt website [direct link]

Then we extracted the tar file :


and then we went into the extracted folder and installed the deb file:


When the installation completed, we couldn't find any menu entries that TrueCrypt made. Nevertheless, we hit Alt + F2, typed in truecrypt and hit enter.

The below GUI came up which looks very much similar to the one its Windows counterpart.


We decided to create a new encrypted volume and selected the "Create Volume" button. The wizard came up.


We decided to create a hidden volume. But oops...


OK, it isn't fair to ask for everything and the kitchen sink in the first release (btw kitchen sink is promised to come in a later release).

We went ahead a created a standard truecrypt volume. This worked smoothly. Mounting/ dismounting using the GUI is a breeze.
It automatically adds an icon to the tray.

Closing the application simply minimizes it to the tray (something that Rythmbox can learn from). Clicking the tray brings up the UI. Right clicking this menu icon brings up a nifty context menu with commonly used action items like Mounting and Dismounting. It also contain a preference option, which brings up the preference window. (Found a bug here - the X in the top right corner of the window wasn't closing the preference window. You have to select cancel for this. Are you finding this issue?)

However, the lack of a menu item to launch the application seemed a little bit frustrating. We would have liked it, if it launched itself on startup, add an icon to the tray and sat there silently. At last we found a way to do this. Just go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions and add a new startup program with the following command:

truecrypt --background-task

This runs TrueCrypt in the background mode each time you boot up. Happy encrypting.

Note: For the inquisitive, you will find a user's guide in /usr/share/truecrypt/doc

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By default Windows stores all the user's documents, the installed programs and the system files in the C: drive. As a result of this C: drive is the one that gets filled faster than other drives. Once the free space in C: drive (or any other drive) becomes very low, Windows starts to show the above annoying balloon pop up message. How do you solve such a problem? Just read along.
Scenario: The free space in your C: drive is in MB range while any of your other drives (D, E ...) have ample space. Since most of the programs require some space in C: during running/installing, you will find yourself unable to do your daily PC work as you would normally do, in this situation.

Solution:

1. Create an empty folder in any NTFS drive(D, E ...) that has ample space.
   
2. Run diskmgmt.msc from the Run command.
   
   
3. Right click on the C: drive and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" and click on "Add"
   
   
4. In the window that appears, specify the path of the empty folder that we created in step 1.
   
   
5. You can see that the folder that we created now appears as an exact copy of the C: drive and the that size of the C: drive have magically increased.
   

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One day a friend of mine, who was a recent convert to the Ubuntu world from Windows came to me, asking how he could make the Desktop icon in his home directory go away. There is no 'enable hidden file' check box in the properties, as one have in Windows and this simple issue was driving him mad. He couldn't simply delete it as it's an important folder for proper functioning of GNOME. However the solution was simple.

Method 1

Make a file named .hidden in the same directory where our to-be-hidden file/directory lies. In our case, we want to hide /home/friend/Desktop. So we make a file named .hidden (don't miss the dot in front of hidden) in /home/friend. Next we add the name of the file/directory to be hidden into the .hidden file, one name in each line. Since we wanted to hide only the Desktop directory, we add a single line: Desktop into it. This was the solution to my friends problem as he needed to hide a file without renaming it. However, if you have the freedom to rename the file, then below two methods will be easier than this one.

Method 2

Just rename the file/directory and prefix the name with a ' . ' (a dot). Files starting with a ' . ' are considered to be hidden files by linux.

Method 3

Rename the file/directory and add a ' ~ ' to the end. eg: if the file name was secretfile.mk the new name will be secretfile.mk~. Linux considers files ending in ~ as backup files and hence hides them.


Note: In some machines you need to refresh the GNOME file browser to see the effect.

Do not use above methods to protect confidential data, as the hidden files can be easily seen using View -> Show Hidden Files (Ctrl + H) in Nautilus and ls -a in a terminal.

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In case you are like me, you have experienced the violent urge to rip apart your computer cabinet and pull out that tiny internal speaker every time the Linux terminal/vi beeps at you. Tab beeps, backspace beeps, every stupid action in vi causes it to mock at you with that silly beep. Well it's time to show who is the real master.
In case you haven't noticed, the beep doesn't come from the system's big external speakers. It is from a speaker that is inside your cabinet which according to me should be used solely by BIOS. So today we are going to disable that little speaker.

Temporarily disabling the system beep

sudo rmmod pcspkr

For Debian/Ubuntu users open a terminal and run the above command. For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux log-in as root and then run rmmod pcspkr

Permanently disabling the system beep

For Debian/Ubuntu based systems :

sudo echo "blacklist pcspkr" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux users, run

echo "alias pcspkr off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

as root

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I have been an avid user of Google Reader since it was introduced. I have more than one hundred feeds subscribed, each one categorized in an appropriate folder. I get around 150 feeds each morning, and if I had decided to read all of them, my boss would have been too happy about that. But each morning, I manages to complete my feed reading in just half an hour. How?

Two features of Google Reader comes to my help.

1. List View.
   
   Always select the list view. This shows the title of each article. If it is something that interests you, click the title to read the full post. In Expanded View you have to scroll through all the post to find whether there is any post that you might be interested.
   
   
   
2. Mark all as read.
   
   If you are someone like me, you hate unread feeds as much as unread emails. It makes me think I have unfinished business, takes my concentration away from where it ought to be. So I always make my unread feed count zero before leaving Google Reader. Hit the magic button.
   
   It's holiday season, and most of you returning after holidays may find them selfs drowning under a large pile of unread feeds. Selecting individual feed and hitting "Mark all as read" can be quite tiresome when you have a large number of feeds subscribed. Google has provided a rather neat solution for that. Select "All Items" from the top left menu. This displays all posts from all your feeds. Now hit "Mark all as read". You have your unread feeds reseted to zero. Peace
   

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