sudo aptitude install icedtea6-plugin

which will remove Sun Java 6 and install the appropriate IcedTea packages. Now that is done Java applets and Java powered web applications seem to work just fine.

user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.http”, “/opt/firefox/firefox”);
user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.https”, “/opt/firefox/firefox”);
user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.ftp”, “/opt/firefox/firefox”);

Now I opened up Thunderbird and clicked on a Hyperlink in one of my eMails and Firefox promptly opened up and sent me to the URL. It seems that this behavior is default in Windows, but us Linux Users, who may not use the official packages provided by our distribution might have to make this adjustment. Alternatively you can use the ThunderBrowse plugin which will embed a simple browser within Thunderbird, or can be configured to specify an external browser.

Add Bookmark Here2

Add a menuitem “Add Bookmark Here…” to Bookmarks…

Fission

Fission combines address bar and progress bar (Safari style). This makes the progress bar more visible and allows for a nice visual effect.

Smart Stop/Reload

Combines/merges the Stop and Reload toolbar buttons.

Speed Dial

Direct access to your most visited websites

Tiny Menu

Replace the standard menu bar with a tiny menu popup.

These icons are designed around the simplified Stop, Reload, Back and Forward icons of Strata… expanding those basic elements across the entire interface. My goal is to create a compact alternative default theme… something that’s not just a special effect, but a fun and functional interface.

In addition to these extentions and theme I enter about:config in the address bar and change the value keyword.URL to http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q= (allowing me to type in a search string in the address bar that presents me with the Google results, letting me remove the search bar from firefox entirely if so felt).

However, you don’t have to use Google for ALL your searching needs.

First let me allow Clusty to introduce itself;

Clusty queries several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative ranking. This “metasearch” approach helps raise the best results to the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.

But what really makes Clusty unique is what happens after you search. Instead of delivering millions of search results in one long list, our search engine groups similar results together into clusters. Clusters help you see your search results by topic so you can zero in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items. When was the last time you went to the third or fourth page of the search results? Rather than scrolling through page after page, the clusters help you find results you may have missed or that were buried deep in the ranked list.

And with a name like Clusty, it’s gotta be good!

From the Clusty webiste

Next, say hellow to Ask.com

Our ExpertRank algorithm provides relevant search results by identifying the most authoritative sites on the Web. With Ask search technology, it’s not just about who’s biggest: it’s about who’s best. Our ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics (also known as “clusters”), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts — at the exact moment your search query is conducted — requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform. The result is world-class relevance that often offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other search engines.

From Ask.com website

Last, but not least is Dogpile.

If you had a choice between a single-person search party, or a search team of half-a-dozen, which would you choose? Yep, us too. Why not put six search engines to work on something in the same time it takes to use one? This is what we call metasearch. Dogpile puts the power all the leading search engines – Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, and Ask – together in one search box to deliver the best combined results. The process is more efficient and yields more relevant results.

Aren’t all search engines pretty much the same? Funny, we thought that too, but they aren’t. In fact, different search engines often return different search results for the same query. Based on everything from how information is arranged on a web page, to what each search engine pinpoints as most relevant, search results can vary widely across each search provider.

Our time is important to us too. So, we had an idea to bring together the Web’s best search engines in one place and deliver the most comprehensive and relevant results, and metasearch was born. The solution is an efficient, single-search-box engine that makes things easier for all of us. Especially when you learn that our special technology removes duplicates and analyzes the results to ensure the best results are always on top of the pile.

From the Dogpile website

In Firefox you can replace the Google search tools with other options. I even go as far as to replace the keyword.URL function in about:config (typed into the address bar).

For Clusty: http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=

For Ask.com: http://www.ask.com/web?q=

For Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/web/

The 32bit package was built using the binaries available from Mozilla. The plugins directory is symlinked to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins so that you can simply install the flashplugin and javaplugin from the main repository.  The 64bit was created by compiling from source as discussed in this post and is rather bulky weighing in at 25mb (the 32bit is only 10mb). These where the first two packages I have every built for Debian, and I am by no means a pro at the processes, however, I thought I would provide them for whomever may wish to use them.

First is I added the testing and experimental repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list

#TESTING AND EXPERIMENTAL
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian testing main
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian experimental main

then I preformed these commands in terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -t testing libstartup-notification0 libsqlite3-0 libnss3-1d libhunspell-1.2-0 libasound2 libxcb1
apt-get install iceweasel/experimental

Then I commented out the testing and experimental entries in /etc/apt/sources.list and performed an upgrade. To get java and flash to work I simply had to install them as usual.

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree sun-java6-plugin

Thus far I have found this the easiest way to get a Firefox 3.5 based build running on Debian Lenny. However, I am no longer running a strictly stable release of Debian, but with the other third party and backport repositories I use I don’t feel bad about this. For security issues Firefox/Iceweasel/Swiftfox is one of the few programs I actually desire to have the latest release and that it is the most used program on my desktop.

Adblock Plus

Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

BetterPrivacy

Ever wondered why you are still tracked though you tried everything to prevent it?
BetterPrivacy is a Super Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSO’s. It blocks longterm tracking on Google, YouTube Ebay and many other domains.

Video DownloadHelper

The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites.
This works also for audio and picture galleries.

Download Statusbar

View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.

DownThemAll!

The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!

FEBE

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. In fact, it goes beyond just backing up — It will actually rebuild your extensions individually into installable .xpi files. Now you can easily synchronize your office and home browsers.

FireGestures

A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures.

Flagfox

Displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.

Lazarus: Form Recovery

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, “recover form”, and breath a sigh of relief.

NoScript

The best security you can get in a web browser! Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks.

Read it Later

Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest.

OPIE

Import/Export extension preferences

Screengrab

Screengrab! saves webpages as images… It will capture what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, a particular frame… basically it saves webpages as images – either to a file, or to the clipboard.

ScribFire

ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.

TACO

Sets permanent opt-out cookies to stop behavioral advertising by 84 different advertising networks, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, all members of the Network Advertising Initiative, and many other companies.

Xmarks

Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on. Install it on all your computers to keep your bookmarks and (optionally) passwords backed up and synchronized. Xmarks also helps you uncover the best of the web based on what millions of people are bookmarking.

sudo dpkg -i mozplugger_1.10.2-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
cd /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/plugins/
sudo ln -s /etc/lib/mozilla/mozplugger.so

alternatively I instal mplayer-nogui to use the mplayer engine with mozplugger from Ubuntu (does not have player controls).

The new Firefox 3.5 stable dropped and I have spent the afternoon compiling it for my new Debian Lenny 64bit desktop. I fallowed the instructions from Mark Shroyer’s blog. In addition to his instruction I had to also install these packages;

sudo apt-get install libdbus-glib-1-dev libcairo2 libcairo2-dev libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libnotify-dev.

I had some problems with not having access to bookmarks at first. I fixed this problem by running in terminal:

firefox -profilemanger

I removed the default user and created a new default user. Afterward I reloaded Firefox and it seemed to fix my problem. To get flash working I had to type in terminal:

wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

tar -xvf libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz

cp libflashplyaer.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/plugins/

I deleted the tarball and the plugin flile from my home directory and continued to install the java plugin.

sudo apt-get sun-java6-plugin
sudo ln /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libjavaplugin.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.5/plugins/

I closed down any running instances of Firefox and then opened it again and Java and Flash worked. I have not had much time to explore what is new about Firefox yet, however I plan on tweaking Firefox to my liking soon, and will read reviews and release notes to see what new innovations I might like.