Firefox 20 Lands In Ubuntu, Brings Per-Window Private Browsing, New Download Manager

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Firefox</a> 20, released a couple of days ago, has just landed in all supported Ubuntu versions. The new Firefox version brings a few long-awaited features such as per-window private browsing and a new download manager.</b></div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Firefox 20 introduces <b>per-window private browsing</b>: accessing <i><b>File > New Private Window</b></i>, you'll get a window for private browsing that doesn't affect the other Firefox windows. In previous Firefox versions you couldn't have both a regular Firefox window and a private window open in the same time.</div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/firefox-20-private-browsing.png" rel="image_group"><img alt="Firefox 20 private browsing Ubuntu" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FlsaT5T0Yeo/UV2hOxV6WtI/AAAAAAAAO24/zRUutbT3nO4/s320/firefox-20-private-browsing.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Private browsing lets you browse the web without saving information about the sites you visit, meaning the pages won't show up in the Firefox history, the passwords won't be saved, no downloads will be listed in the new Downloads Manager and also, no cookies of cached web content are saved. However, the website can still track you so you're not completely anonymous when using this feature.</div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/firefox-20-downloads.png" rel="image_group"><img alt="Firefox 20 new download manager Ubuntu" src="http://img.netupd8.com/firefox-20-downloads_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">With Firefox 20, there's also a <b>new download manager</b>. The downloads are no longer displayed in a separate window and instead, Firefox now uses a download button on the toolbar, which displays the remaining download time and when clicked, it lists the most recent downloads and lets you open the files.</div><br /><br /><b>Other changes in Firefox 20:</b><br /><ul><li>ability to close hanging plugins, without the browser hanging;</li><li>continued performance improvements for page loads, downloads, shutdown, etc.;</li><li>new JavaScript Profiler tool;</li><li><canvas> now supports blend modes;</li><li>various <audio> and <video> improvements;</li><li><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/20.0/releasenotes/">more</a>.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The latest Firefox 20 has been uploaded to the official Ubuntu repositories today so if you're using Ubuntu, you should get an update in a few minutes / hours.</div><br /><a href="http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Download Firefox</a>

Firefox 20 Lands In Ubuntu, Brings Per-Window Private Browsing, New Download Manager

Firefox 20, released a couple of days ago, has just landed in all supported Ubuntu versions. The new Firefox version brings a few long-awai...

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Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="ram" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3UZk_Ym5TKs/URzCNMJ7jXI/AAAAAAAANsA/XAgqCLK_9ZM/s220/ram.jpg" /></div><br /><b><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">Profile Sync Daemon</a> is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes </b>(useful for SSDs, some would say)<b>, increased speed and responsiveness. </b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The tool supports most browsers</b>: <b>Chromium, Google Chrome, Firefox (stable, beta, aurora and <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/install-firefox-nightly-from-ubuntu-ppa.html">firefox-trunk</a>), Conkeror, Midori, Opera</b> (including <b>Opera Next</b>) and <b>Qupzilla</b> and is based on an old script (we've covered it on <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-mounting-profile-in.html">WebUpd8</a> back in 2009), with some extra features: this is a daemonized script and has recovery protection, as well as support for all the above mentioned browsers as opposed to the old script which only supports Firefox. It's also a lot easier to use.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Since RAM content is cleared on reboot, Profile Sync Daemon <b>automatically syncs the profile back to the physical disk</b> using a symbolic link and rsync at a given time interval. Furthermore, the profile is synced back to the hard disk before you shut down or restart your computer, so no profile data is lost. Still, <b>use it at your own risk!</b></div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">By default, Profile Sync Daemon syncs all your browsers profiles in RAM, but this can be changed from its configuration file, along with some other options.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install Profile Sync Daemon</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Profile Sync Daemon is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Chakra Linux, Debian and Gentoo.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Before installing it, make a backup of your browser profile just in case!</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Too install it in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graysky/utils<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install profile-sync-daemon</code></pre><br />For <b>Arch Linux</b>, install it via <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/profile-sync-daemon">AUR</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">For <b>other Linux distributions</b>, see the Profile Sync Daemon <a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">GitHub</a> page.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>After the installation, you must configure it</b>. The instructions below are for Ubuntu and may be different for other Linux distributions (I'll link to the Profile Sync Daemon Arch Linux wiki at the bottom of the article for more info). Open <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/psd.conf</code></pre><br />then scroll to <i>USERS=""</i> and add your username, example:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>USERS="andrew"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Save the file but don't close it</b> - just switch to a terminal and run the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>profile-sync-daemon parse</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This should display all the browser profiles Profile Sync Daemon can sync to RAM. Now that you know all the browsers / profiles available on your system that this tool supports, go back to the text editor where you were editing <i>/etc/psd.conf,</i> scroll down to <i>#BROWSERS=""</i>, uncomment it (remove the "#") and add the browsers for which you want to mount the profile in RAM (if they showed up when running "profile-sync-daemon parse"), separated by spaces. Examples:</div><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox"</code></pre>or:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox chromium"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you don't uncomment this, all the supported browser profiles will use tmpfs.<br /><br /><br />See if you need to change anything else in this file (you usually don't need to change anything else because the <i>VOLATILE</i> path is automatically set based on the Linux distribution used, so it's set to <i>/run/shm</i> by default in Ubuntu), then save it.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Now you need to close the browsers added to <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> - make sure they are not still running! - and start the Profile Sync Damon:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo service psd start</code></pre>That's it.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Optional: more frequent syncs to disk</b>. By default, Profile Sync Daemon runs every hour (using a cron.hourly job) and syncs your browser profile(s) to the disk, but if you want more frequent syncs, you can add a cron job:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>crontab -e</code></pre>And add this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/profile-sync-daemon sync &> /dev/null</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The above line will sync your browser profile(s) to the disk every 5 minutes, but you can change this to anything you want (for more info, see the <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto">Cron howto</a>).</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>How to check if Profile Sync Daemon is working</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s1600/tmpfs-run-shm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" border="0" height="103" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s320/tmpfs-run-shm.png" title="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" width="320" /></a></div><br />To see if Profile Sync Daemon is working and your browser profile is using tmpfs, you can navigate to /run/shm (in Ubuntu; on Debian it should be <i>/dev/shm</i>) and see if your profiles show up there. You can also check your browser profile directory (e.g.: <i>~/.mozilla/firefox</i>) to see if the profile folder (e.g., for Firefox, it's usually called <i>123456.default</i>, where 123456 are some random letters / numbers) is now a symbolic link to a folder in <i>/run/shm</i>.</div><br /><br />Further info:<br /><ul><li><a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon</a> - instructions for Arch Linux (should also work for other Linux distributions using systemd) and generic info</li><li><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon</a></li></ul>

Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

Profile Sync Daemon is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes (useful ...

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Download GNOME 3 Adwaita Theme For Firefox

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Adwaita for Firefox is a theme designed to integrate Firefox with Adwaita, the default GNOME 3 theme.</b> The theme features GNOME 3 like tabs, a toolbar like the one used in the latest GNOME 3.6 and many other tweaks.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDhuqtkxQyk/UGL4Cix2meI/AAAAAAAAKSk/S_dk4ifJVVc/s1600/firefox-adwaita.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="firefox adwaita theme" border="0" height="223" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDhuqtkxQyk/UGL4Cix2meI/AAAAAAAAKSk/S_dk4ifJVVc/s320/firefox-adwaita.png" title="firefox adwaita theme" width="320" /></a></div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">Adwaita theme for Firefox 15 has been released recently and was submitted to <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adwaita/">addons.mozilla.org</a> but it hasn't been approved yet so for now, you can get it from <a href="https://github.com/adwaita-firefox-team/adwaita-firefox/downloads">GitHub</a>. To install it, download the .xpi file, then drag and drop it from Nautilus onto the Firefox window.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For a full GNOME 3.6 experience, you may also want to install <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/htitle/">HTile</a>, an extension which hides the Firefox titlebar when the window is maximized, just like the new behaviour for the default GNOME 3 applications.</div><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>via <a href="https://plus.google.com/110020735578104565833/posts/fznMENssKWy">+Garrett LeSage</a></i></div>

Download GNOME 3 Adwaita Theme For Firefox

Adwaita for Firefox is a theme designed to integrate Firefox with Adwaita, the default GNOME 3 theme. The theme features GNOME 3 like tabs,...

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3 Hidden Features In Firefox 15 You May Want To Enable

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Firefox 15, which has been released a few days ago, comes with some cool features disabled by default: native PDF viewer, preferences in tab and click-to-play plugins.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These features have been in testing for quite a while, but they are not 100% ready so they aren't enabled by default and there are no options in the Firefox preferences to enable them. But, if you don't mind an occasional glitch, you can enable them  using the <i>about:config</i> tool.</div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-khc_OeGA1SY/UEHngS1igAI/AAAAAAAAJ3c/Tq4MGgXSKi8/s1600/firefox15-pdf.js.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="firefox 15 native pdf reader pdf.js" border="0" height="189" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-khc_OeGA1SY/UEHngS1igAI/AAAAAAAAJ3c/Tq4MGgXSKi8/s320/firefox15-pdf.js.png" title="firefox 15 native pdf reader pdf.js" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Firefox 15 comes with a <b>native PDF reader</b> that uses JavaScript (pdf.js) to open PDF files directly in the browser. This feature is disabled by default but it can be enabled by following these steps: open a new tab, type "about:config", search for "<b>pdfjs.disabled</b>" and set it to "<b>false</b>" (double click it).</div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LoGu2bz0Q10/UEHoCJGdhnI/AAAAAAAAJ3k/2hm_2-ZMdUI/s1600/firefox15-preferences-in-tab.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="firefox 15 preferences in tabs" border="0" height="230" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LoGu2bz0Q10/UEHoCJGdhnI/AAAAAAAAJ3k/2hm_2-ZMdUI/s320/firefox15-preferences-in-tab.png" title="firefox 15 preferences in tabs" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In Firefox 15, you can also enable<b> 'preferences in content'</b> which makes the Preferences window open in a new tab instead of using a new window. To enable this, type "about:config" in a new tab, search for "<b>browser.preferences.InContent</b>" and set it to "<b>true</b>" (double click it).</div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ceJu9QwWHPU/UEHoH7cs4yI/AAAAAAAAJ3s/-fzZsrN927I/s1600/firefox15-click-to-play.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="firefox 15 click to play plugins" border="0" height="250" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ceJu9QwWHPU/UEHoH7cs4yI/AAAAAAAAJ3s/-fzZsrN927I/s320/firefox15-click-to-play.png" title="firefox 15 click to play plugins" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And the third hidden feature in Firefox 15 is <b>"click-to-play" plugins</b>, which disables plugins like Adobe Flash by default but you can still play them with a single click. This prevents Flash and other plugins from loading automatically. To enable 'click-to-play plugins' in Firefox 15, type "about:config" in the address bar, search for "<b>plugins.click_to_play</b>" and set it to "<b>true</b>".</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Note: after changing the native PDF reader and click-to-play plugins preferences in about:config, you need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><i>via <a href="http://www.instantfundas.com/2012/08/3-great-firefox-15-features-you-should.html">instantfundas.com</a></i></div>

3 Hidden Features In Firefox 15 You May Want To Enable

Firefox 15, which has been released a few days ago, comes with some cool features disabled by default: native PDF viewer, preferences in tab...

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