Do you remember the 5 Firefox 3 Tips article? There are so many Firefox tricks to master, and even if you're not using the Internet on a daily basis, I am sure you'll find some time savers to match your way of handling a computer. After all, Internet users are, basically, split into two big categories: those that can't get enough, and those that use the computer at work, but are not IT or media professionals, and when they get home, they usually try to avoid using it more than a few minutes per day, just as much as they need to read some emails or copy some DVDs they shot last weekend.

OK, so no matter the user category you think you belong to, I have some goodies ready for you! Ready or not, here I come, you can't hide... ;)

1. To open one of the recently closed tabs, but not the last one - simply go to the History menu, and then point to Recently Closed Tabs. As you can see, only the first one in the list has a keyboard shortcut associated with it, Ctrl+Shift+T, a combination we talked about already, in the Firefox 3 review, if I recall it well. Getting back to our tip here, all you have to do is click one site in the list, or use the Open All in Tabs command to open all at once.

2. Are you a programmer, and need to troubleshoot a page you are working on? Just load the page, and then press Ctrl+Shift+J to bring forward the Error Console or, if you like to waste precious time, go to the Tools menu, and then click on Error Console, as slow as possible, if you're paid on an hourly basis...;)

3. At last, you should know how to report fake websites and those that cause problems in Firefox 3, to help making everyone's life better. How to do that? Just go to the Help menu, and pick on of these two options - Report Broken Web Site or Report Web Forgery. After you do that, you'll surely feel better, believe me! ;)

I know there may be more than just these, so come out and say it loud. I can't hear you! What? Louder! I will retreat now, you have that add your comment button below, use it!

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I know most people consider Firefox to be the best browser out there because of those countless addons available for it, of which a lot are pretty good, but with Firefox 3, things may look a bit different. Why? Well, Mozilla has learned a lot from the past, and features available only in various plugins, until now, have been added to the browser. To me, this is a great move, because I would rather have a good browser "out of the box," rather than an amazing one, but after installing 30 plugins...or something like that, but I am sure you got the idea. Well, today I'll tell you all you need to know so you can get the most accurate information about the page you're visiting right in Firefox 3!

<-234x60 Half Banner - left->As you can see above, accessing the Site Information window is pretty easy - just left click the site icon, if any, or the blank one, as we see here, then press the More Information button. Now, we should see the Page Info window, pictured below.

In the General tab, you can see the size of the current page(good idea to send a print screen of this one to your ISP, when a 10kB page loads in 30 seconds and they claim it's not their fault), encoding, last time the page was modified, address, type, as well as Meta tags and their contents. If you press the More button, you're going to be taken to the Security tab, as you can see in the image below...

As you can see, nothing is perfect, because I surely did not visit SoftDistrict today 258 times. Anyway, if you're paranoid, you can check every cookies stored by a certain site on your computer, or view your stored passwords for it - if you managed to forget them, and also delete any information you had that could help you do any recovery. Even more, if owner information is public, it should appear here, but from my own experience, not many sites display any owner information.

The Media tab shows all the media files in the current page, allowing you to save each element you need, as well as to choose to block all images located on the current page.

The Feeds tab has a name saying it all. Apart from simply viewing the link and type for all the Feeds available on the current page, you can also subscribe to them. Sweet!

At last, we have the Permissions area. <-125x125 Button - right->The options here will only affect the current site, but they could prove extremely useful, especially to those not using the NoScript plugin yet. With the help of the options available in the Permissions area, you can block images from loading, popup windows, as well as disallow cookies and the ability of a page to install extensions of themes to your browser. Not bad at all, don't you think?

This is all for today, and I am hope you'll be happy with all the things you can do with a single left mouse button click on a tiny button. Let me know what you think, I am anxious to hear what's your opinion! ;)

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Today, I have one interesting question for you: is Firefox 3 safe for public user? I know, it sounds lame, stupid, call it as you wish, but I must ask. Why? Well, I am not talking about the security flaw discovered a few days after the official release...or were those hours? Nothing is perfect, and I am not going to get into any data security dispute today. It's not Easter, of course, but I am moving around an Easter Egg now... It's all about robots!

All about robots...don't you get it? Firefox - robots - Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics...

OK, just type "about:robots" in the address bar! Got it now? Not yet?
<-125x125 Button - right->
Even more, if you press the Try Again button...just don't press the button! Oh, my - you did that already? Well, next you can click the new button, now saying Please do not press this button again, and a robot will get to you and kick you in the back! Well...not quite that, just that the button will go away.

I didn't manage to see or hear anything else, but if you did, please feel free to let us know!

Did you notice the message in the tab with the message from the robots? So...what's all this Gort!Klaatu Barada Nikto! thingie all about? Just watch the movie below -


So...is Firefox 3 safe for public use? What if those robots have the plan of assimilating us? What if the Borg assimilated our favorite browser? Too many questions today, I got a headache... but I hope you enjoyed the Firefox 3 robots Easter Egg! ;)

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Firefox 3 came up with a bunch of improvements, but some of its new features are really two-headed serpents, because some love them, while other hate them. Just one example - the default over sized Back button in the toolbar. I love it, but some people want to see it go away. No problem, we'll solve that, and we'll also check an additional Firefox 3 tips, so fire it up!

OK, so let's get to it - how to turn the big Back button into a smaller one?

- Right click on the toolbar to get to the menu, and choose Customise.

- Check Use Small Icons, and then press Done.

- Enjoy your small Back button, or go back to the big one!

Next, we'll see how to adjust the Smart Location Bar's suggestions number (maybe you don't want more than 3, after all).

- Type about:config into the Address Bar, and then press Enter.

- Press the I'll be careful. I promise! button.

- Type browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the Filter field to get to this preference.

- Choose how many suggestions you need(5 is fine with me, as you can see below).

Next, let's see how can we choose what Firefox 3 does with a certain file type by default.

- Open the Tools menu, and choose Options.

- Go to the Applications tab, and type in the name of a program/company/file type. In my case, it's Adobe.

- Select the action you want to set as default, as you can see in the image below.

- Press OK, and it's all done!

Fourth Firefox 3 tip today is a very quick one - to open a tab that you just closed, press Ctrl+Shift+T. Sweet!

At last, a quick scroll tip - to quickly scroll with your keyboard, use the Space key. While the Space key scrolls down, use the Shift+Space combination to scroll up.

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed these Firefox 3 tips!

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Summer is a troublesome season for computer owners, especially for those without proper airflow in their cases, and if the computer is also located in a room that gets hot...problems are just around the corner! Even more, viruses and other security threats are also waiting to make your life miserable, but you don't have to go and drop your computer at the local computer repairs shop, or the geek next door, because there are a lot of free computer fixes within reach! You don't have to pay for any software, and you won't need any special tools for "playing" with your computer's innards, you just have to pay attention to my advices!

<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->When it comes to software, checking 10 Computer Security Tips could help a lot, although I can't claim that's all you can do to secure your computer and your data, but those tips could take you much closer to "best security you can get," since there's no such thing as "unbreakable system," only "system that hasn't been broken in yet."

Now, let's leave the security issue aside and move to the heat related problems and other issues that my need fixing these days, shall we?

Computer not starting/random reboots after upgrading the video card? If you got your hands on one of the new ATI Radeon HD 4850 or HD 4870 cards, I envy you! Both offer unbeatable price/performance ratio, and there are plenty of benchmarks and tests published here and there to prove that, but what if you just got one new card, and you can't enjoy its power? No, ATI doesn't suck, and NVIDIA doesn't suck either! Here's what you can do by yourself...

First of all, be sure to check that the 6-pin PCI-Express power connector is inserted into the card, because most new PCI-Express card need a bit of extra power. If you didn't check before buying the card, you should also check that your power supply unit can handle the power requirements of your new card, since most of them need at least a good 450W one. At last, if you get reboots in games, check the temperatures of your card, and maybe add some fans to your case, or simply remove the side panel.

After the last power drop, your computer doesn't boot at all, or gives you the BSOD? I know this won't probably help, but be sure to buy a UPS, just to avoid such problems in the future! Now, to serious things...

Test your memory, first of all. How to do that? No, don't go to any specialist, you can do it, too! Grab a Linux bootable CD of, if you have Vista, you can try the Memory Diagnostics Tool to check the memory. If you don't want to use any Linux bootable CD just to check your computer's memory, you can also give MemTest a try, I know a lot of computer service technicians using it, and you don't need any special knowledge to do that.

If your computer is starting up without problems, temperatures seem to be fine, but you still get random BSODs, you shoud check the hard drive, too. The fastest method is to get a program able to check the SMART status, such as Active SMART, DriveHealth or HDDLife. Although these are commercial programs, using the trial versions for a quick check is possible, but you could also consider buying them for long term hard drive health monitoring...or not, it's your choice.

Slow computer? Programs crashing all the time? Check your memory, scan for viruses, clean the dust from inside the case...and maybe even get a new computer, if the one you're currently using is 10 years old!

That should be all for today, but if you're looking for other free computer fixes, don't hesitate to stand out and shout. Your wish is my command, so let me know what's wrong with your computer. If it's ill, we'll cure it!

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