firefox – Something Odd!

TIL Firefox debugger can edit JavaScript files

I’ll spare you the long story of why I had to edit a JavaScript file, but today I learned that since Firefox 128 you can add a script override in the browser Debugger Panel. This downloads the JavaScript file in question, where you can edit it with your favourite editor.

Open DevTools by hitting F12 and select the Debugger.
Right-click on the JavaScript file in the source list and select “Add script override”.
Save your file somewhere and edit.
Reload the page to apply changes.
Remove the override by right-clicking on the file again and selecting “Remove script override”.

A context menu is open with the option "Add script override" selected.
The file highlighted is jetpack-boost.js located in a folder structure under app/assets/dist.
Other options in the menu include "Copy source URI," "Ignore source," and "Download file."

A context menu is open with the option "Remove script override" selected.
The file highlighted is jetpack-boost.js located in a folder structure under app/assets/dist.
Other options in the menu include "Copy source URI," "Ignore source," and "Download file."

The file I was editing was minified, so Firefox doesn’t save the nicely unminifed file you were looking at, but it’s not too hard to unminify it. It was a small change I was making, so it wasn’t too difficult to find the right place to edit.

The image shows a cat sitting comfortably on a black office chair. The cat has a tabby coat with a mix of brown, orange, and black markings, and it is looking directly at the camera with bright green eyes. The chair appears to be slightly worn, especially on the seat, which shows some signs of use. The background consists of a stone or brick wall, suggesting that the setting might be either outdoors or in an industrial or rustic indoor space. There is also a red and black striped fabric visible to the left side of the image. The overall scene gives off a cozy and relaxed vibe, with the cat being the focal point of attention.

Yes, yes, Chrome has been able to do this for a long time, apparently. Thanks for letting me know.

Firefox: bookmark all the tabs

Browser tabs. We all love them, and then we hate them when there are too many. Sprinkled among the litter of blog and Facebook posts, Twitter and Reddit threads, are the nuggets you want to keep.

You could just close them, you probably won’t miss them but my brain rebels against the thought. Instead I’d like to bookmark them somewhere so at least in some distant future I can review them at my leisure. Thankfully it’s easy, in Firefox at least. It looks like it’s even easier in Chrome!

First of all, right click on a tab and click on “Select all tabs”.

All your tabs will be highlighted and “Bookmark Tab” helpfully changes to “Bookmark Tabs”.

Clicking that will bring up a familiar bookmark window. I opted to put the my browser windows into different folders. I had a lot of tabs open..

But now I’m back to one window and a handful of tabs related to my current project. Out of sight, out of mind! 🙂

Firefox printing with no headers and footers

First it was Netscape, then Chromium, on to Chrome and now (back) to Firefox, but the paperless office is still a pipe dream for me and most people.

Printing from Firefox can be annoying. I don’t like seeing the title, URL, current time, etc in the headers and footers so I would change those settings each time. Since I don’t print that often I’d always forget to find out how to save those settings, until today.

Turns out it’s quite easy, but it does require some tinkering with internal Firefox settings!

In Firefox, type about:config.
Search for print.print and list of entries will appear.
Look for:
print.print_headercenter

print.print_headerleft
print.print_headerright
print.print_footercenter
print.print_footerleft
print.print_footerright
Double click on each one and remove the text in the (value) box.

This will remove the header and footer information when you print.

Next time I tried to print a page the headers and footers were both blank!

How to Insult the Mac Brigade

I’ve insulted the Mac Brigade. I am so sorry. I didn’t realise that putting stickers on an Apple Macbook was such a heinous crime. HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID?

Well, that’s how Bernie puts it anyway. Sort of. He posted a photo of my Macbook at BlogTalk and the response surprised me. Hahahaha. Thud! (Laughing my head off)

For those who missed the original shot, here’s one I took moments ago. There are stickers from Laughing Squid (and a button too), getfirefox.com (Thanks Nikolay), Zooomr.com, Hyku, that WordPress crowd who get everywhere, and 2 from Om Malik: FoundRead and NewTeeVee.
The other button says, “hard bloggin’ scientist” and I got that from Jan Schmidt last Tuesday at BlogTalk. Thanks!

Lovely isn’t it? Who’s on your laptop? Anyone got a Dell sticker to put on the Apple Logo? It’d shine through nicely!

How to use ssh as a proxy server

Using ssh as a proxy or encrypted tunnel to browse the web can sometimes be necessary:

When you’re at a conference but need to login securely to your blog.
When local access restrictions make life really difficult.
If you have a server in another country and want to see what Google Adsense adverts people see in that country.

I use ssh for the third reason. I want to see what adverts people in the USA see when they look at my blog so I can filter out the low paying and MFA ads (see notspam.org for more). Unfortunately I have a head like a sieve so unless it’s in the bash history I need to go look this up every few months:

ssh -D 8080 -Nf example.com

Replace example.com with your own hostname. That short command will create a socks5 proxy at 127.0.0.1:8080. Just configure your browser to talk to that and you’re surfing again!

Here’s a few external links you might find useful.

Matt had trouble with his socks5 dns while travelling.
Proxy Firefox through a SSH tunnel

– if only I had searched for the right terms I would have found this excellent page sooner.

I need to install Foxy Proxy to make this easier to manage.

(I bet that when I most need to look up this post I’ll be behind a tight firewall that won’t let me at my blog ..)

Middle click your urls again in Firefox 2

One of the really useful features of Firefox in the past was the ability to click the middle mouse button anywhere on a browser page and have the URL in the clipboard load in that window. For some reason it stopped working some time back and I don’t know why. Here’s how to enable it again if your Firefox has stopped obeying your middle finger.

Open “about:config” in a new browser tab or window.
Search for “middlemouse” and find “middlemouse.contentLoadURL”. Set it to true if it’s false.
If that preference isn’t there, create a new one by right clicking and creating a new boolean value. Type “middlemouse.contentLoadURL” into the box and press return.
A new value, set to true by default, will be created.
Now try copying a URL and middle-clicking it anywhere on this page. Try http://ocaoimh.ie/ for good luck!

Linux Ubuntu Dapper to Edgy – no problem

I upgraded my Ubuntu 6.06 install to the new Edgy soon after it’s release using the simple command gksu "update-manager -c". Several hours later, and after clicking on a few dialog boxes to update files in /etc/, I’m not running Ubuntu Edgy on my desktop box.

Initially I wondered where Firefox 2.0 was hiding, but on my upgraded system it’s /usb/bin/firefox.ubuntu so it’ll live alongside version 1.5. I also noticed that when saving files in the GIMP the filename would disappear when I clicked on a new folder in the “bookmark” folder of the Gnome file dialog. Once I noticed, ctrl-c to record the filename and ctrl-v to paste it in again worked fine. I rename my files when saving so it’s not much of a hardship.

My machine seems slightly faster but I haven’t delved too deeply into what has been upgraded but Firefox, xchat, terminal, GIMP and Gthumb all work fine! Did your upgrade go as well?

Testing Firefox 2.0

I’m trying out Firefox 2.0 and first impressions are good. Fonts looks a little different which is refreshing but I’m having trouble exporting my bookmarks from Flock. It looks like others are having the same problem too. There’s even a FAQ about it.

On the Mac, click-and-hold doesn’t bring up a context menu. I’ll have to figure out why. Must be a key combo. Ah! It’s CTRL-click!

If you’re wondering which is better, IE7 or Firefox 2.0, then check out this “unbiased” review:

In one corner we have Internet Explorer 7. After 18 months of development and a shiny new set of tabs, he’s in top shape and looking better than his predecessor ever did. That is, before he entered the ring with Firefox 2.0. Now he’s just a cripple with fancy RSS reading.

Drowning in the flood

I have noticed a strange thing in the past week or so. Google has referred legitimate looking browser user agents to this blog and In Photos.org and within seconds that browser tries to download all my feed links, and several months of my archives. I have a little flood protection built in and it stops them with a 403 after several of these requests but it’s annoying. It’s some sort of pre-fetching plugin to “speed up” browsing isn’t it? Firefox has a similar thing in the form of the “Fasterfox” extension if memory serves. Ben Metcalfe has a good write up on the evils of pre-fetching. It could kill your database or use all your credits in online stores!

Whatever you’re using, welcome to my kill file.

64.136.27.227 … “GET /index.php?tag=suicide-girls HTTP/1.1” 200 36422 “http://www.google.com/search?q=suicide+girls&hl=en&lr=&start=20&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
64.136.27.227 … “GET /wp-content/plugins/widgets/rss.png HTTP/1.1” 200 3341 “https://inphotos.org/index.php?tag=suicide-girls” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
64.136.27.227 … “GET /feed/atom/ HTTP/1.1” 200 35775 “https://inphotos.org/index.php?tag=suicide-girls” …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /feed/ HTTP/1.1” 200 35449 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /feed/rss/ HTTP/1.1” 200 4636 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /wp-content/themes/whiteasmilk/style.css HTTP/1.1” 200 9639 “-” …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.1” 200 42 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /2006/07/ HTTP/1.1” 200 68150 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /2006/09/ HTTP/1.1” 200 68150 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /2006/08/ HTTP/1.1” 200 68150 …
64.136.27.227 … “GET /2006/06/ HTTP/1.1” 200 68150 …
…

My Meteor – why don't you work in Firefox?

There’s only 3 mobile phone companies in Ireland, Vodafone, O2 and Meteor. I’ve been a customer of each and am currently with Meteor. That might change however as their newly redesigned meteor.ie website doesn’t work properly in Firefox. They offer 300 free texts from their site but when one hits the “SEND” button nothing happens.
If you’re a Meteor user mail info@meteor.ie with your phone number and your PIN, or 3 phone numbers you’ve rung in the past month (for verification).
Ask them politely to fix their website so it works in Mozilla Firefox! The Javascript error I get is,

Error: window.smsForm has no properties
Source File: https://www.mymeteor.ie/mymeteor/phone_book/send_sms.cfm
Line: 295

Oh, and last time I checked, Vodafone’s website offers 300 texts a month and it did work in Firefox.
Later – Niall suggested entering your text message, phone number, and instead of hitting “SEND” copy and paste the following code into the URL address bar and press return: javascript:window.document.smsForm.submit();
Now how hard is that for Meteor to fix?