What I always loved about Firefox is the many ways it can be extended and customized. Even if a feature is not yet integrated into the application itself, it’s a safe bet that the community will create an addon for it sooner or later.
There are many useful extensions in the addon library, and here I’d like to share the ones I found particularly handy:

Adblock Plus: Pretty standard popup and banner blocking, but it’s very easy to block any element of a webpage.

All-in-One-Sidebar: Adds a sidepanel where different things can be displayed: bookmarks, history, downloads, web pages, you name it.

Dictionary tooltip: Double click on a word looks it up in a dictionary, displayed in a small floating window. There is a wide selection of available dictionaries, from thesaurus through english/malay translation to slang dictionary.

DownThemAll: A download manager. Does everything you’d expect from it.

FireGestures: It adds gesture control: by holding down the right mouse button, one can draw simple shapes to do stuff.
This means that you don’t have to target icons and move your mouse there, just do a gesture wherever your cursor is.

Here is how I have it set up:
- Drag up : Create new tab.
- Drag down : Close tab.
- Drag left : Back in history.
- Drag right : Forward in history.
- Drag left-right : Reload.
- Drag down-up : Undo tab close.
- Wheel down (still holding RMB): Previous tab.
- Wheel up (still holding RMB): Next tab.

It makes navigation so much easier that it becomes second nature in no time.

GrabAndDrag: Adds momentum based scrolling: you can grab the page and move it or throw it for scroll. Just like on iPhone.

TabMixPlus: With this addon one can extensively customize the way Firefox handles tabs.

Xmarks: Keeps bookmarks in sync between computers. Since the bookmarks are accessible from the web as well, it also helps when surfing from an internet coffee.

XUL/Migemo: It makes finding words on a page very convenient: just start typing, the addon searches for the string as you type and highlights them. The highlights appear not just on the page but next to the scrollbar, so you can quickly locate instances further away.

Ah, yes, the Moon Landing… it’s been 40 years already? It feels like yesterday.

I was a mechanic at the time, stationed with the British paratroopers in Anguilla. The whole base was excited, there were bets on successful landing and predictions of how the soviet block would react.
The second lieutenant of the Royal Engineers was a good friend of mine, and he let me in the HQ. We watched the moon landing live on TV through the open door of the commander’s office while drinking beer. Good times…

Nah, just kidding, actually I was born 9 years later, but I always wanted to drop a Higgins kind of story. Jonathan Higgins from Magnum PI, do you remember? I loved that TV show. We watched that on the commander’s TV all the time…

Anyways, to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, here is the link to my favorite page on the topic:
Fake moon landings revealed!

It seems that something is not cool with my email service: I can’t get my emails from the
zoltan at zspline dot net mailbox. June 23rd was the last time I got anything.
So if You sent me a mail since then, and I failed to respond is not because I’m an asshole (I could be one but this doesn’t indicate that).
My email application has no problems connecting to the servers, it just doesn’t receive anything.

Anyway, I’ve already reported the issue to my web service provider, it should be fixed momentarily sometime this week.

So if this issue affects You, dear reader, then please resend me you mail, I’ll respond asap. (To be on the safe side, please CC it to zoltan dot erdokovy at gmail dot com .)
And I really hope the gentleman I spoke with the phone this morning reads this service announcement…

Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: Scratch the “momentarily". Admittedly it will take a few days, so for now
zoltan dot erdokovy at gmail dot com
is the way to go.
For now I rewire the email form in the Contact section, so that will be useful again.

The second part of the series is online. This article is about counters: both rolling, mechanical ones and simple digital displays.

At last, it’s out!
It’s so good to see the fruit of our hard work finally reaching the audience.
Head over to www.punishernomercy.com</a> to see what’s what. PS3 owners can buy the game in the PlayStation Store.