Shref in Life: FireFox

FF search plugin for the PHP manual

Wed, 02 May 2007 14:48:43 GMT

I have created a small search plug-in for FireFox that searches the php manual and wanted to share it with you.
heh, I just created a copy of the "yahoo.xml" file and renamed it to "php.xml" and edited some lines,I got it working in no time. hmm, maybe I will create other ones too. ok, follow this 3 steps to get it working on your FF.

copy the following XML lines to a new file and call it "php.xml"
put "php.xml" in your "c:\program files\Mozilla FireFox\searchplugins" folder or this path's equivalent on your system.
restart Firefox

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>php manual</ShortName>
<Description>php manual Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,Qk02AwAAAAAAADYAAAAoAAAAEAAAABAAAAABABgAAAAAAAADAADEDgAAxA4AAAAAAAAAAAAAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA19fX19fX19fXwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA19fX19fX19fXwICAwICAwICA19fXAAAA19fXwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA19fXAAAA19fXwICAwICAwICA19fXAAAA19fX19fXwICAwICA19fXwICAwICA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXwICAwICA19fXAAAAAAAAAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAAAAAAAAAA19fX19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAA19fX19fXAAAAAAAAAAAA19fX19fXAAAAAAAAAAAA19fX19fXAAAAAAAAAAAA19fX19fXwICA19fX19fX19fXwICA19fXAAAA19fX19fXwICAwICA19fX19fX19fXwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA19fXAAAA19fXwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA19fX19fX19fXwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICAwICA</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="POST" template="http://php.net/search.php">
<Param name="pattern" value="{searchTerms}"/>
<Param name="show" value="quickref" />
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.php.net/</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin> 

how browsers treat the back slashes in URLs

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 22:07:23 GMT

One of the annoying things when clicking some links in the news section of Masrawy.com , is that I get a "404 not found" message. this problem happens as the developers of this website used back slashes instead of forward slashes in the urls of some area of the page. FireFox [my main browser] didn't do any thing regarding this back slashes, but IE7 and Opera 9 replaced every back slash in the URLs with forward slash.

from a developer view, I can say that FF did it right. but from a user view, IE and Opera saved my time.

FF2.0: Undo close tab

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:51:55 GMT

I don't know if you noticed that or not (I didn't notice it anyway). Chris Shiflett wrote in his blog about the "undo close tab" option. just right click with your mouse on any tab and at the end of the menu you will find that option.

Also, I have noticed another thing when I was writing this post. you can spell check more then one language. just right click with your mouse on any <text area> , in the menu go to "languages->add dictionaries" which will show you a list of available languages. till the moment, there is no Arabic dictionary supported there but I hope that it will be available soon.

check the new MDC (Mozilla Developer Center) for more. yea, it's still beta, but we are the beta community too.

PS : noticed that ? MDC here means "Mozilla Developer Center" not "Middle East Developers Conference".

FireFox 2.0 is here too

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 23:21:33 GMT

FireFox 2.0 is here guys. it's amazing.
here is some of the new features :

more enhanced interface and tabs.
inline check spelling .
javascript 1.7 .
enhanced searching.
phishing protection (like the one in IE7).
browsing sessions can be saved now.

see the full features list .

you are encouraged to upgrade to the new version. upgrading to the new version won't make you lose your bookmarks or preferences, but maybe your outdated extensions won't work until updating .don't worry, the installer will check your installed extensions to check for compatibility with the new version.
I have installed FF2.0 without problems at all. and all the extensions are working fine.

another thing, the Internet Explorer development team sent cake to the FireFox team for the release of FF2.0 .

happy feast.