However, if you have quite a few bookmarked websites that you use often, then disabling the bookmark toolbar will not work. In this case, you can choose to reduce your bookmark toolbar to a single button. While there is an extension that does this for now, it doesn’t work on all builds of Chrome. A simple tweak can create this button in seconds, and here’s how:

This is how your normal Google Chrome Bookmarks toolbar looks like.

Let’s change this.

Note: This works for Google Chrome versions 2.x – 4.x installed on Windows.

First, disable the existing bookmark toolbar. Click the tools icon and then clear the check mark for the “Always show bookmark bar” command.

• Close Google Chrome.

• Next, locate the shortcut for Google Chrome on your Desktop or Start menu. Right-click on this shortcut and then select “Properties.” This will display the Google Chrome Properties dialog box with the Shortcut tab open.

• In the Target box, you will see the path to similar to “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”. Or in other cases, the path may be something like “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”. Now add a space followed by “-bookmark-menu” to this path. Your final path in the Target box should be similar to: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe  -bookmark-menu

NB: Another pathway that would be accepted by Windows, if the above doesn’t work, is to add another quote mark to the end of the pathway, exactly like below:

“C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -bookmark-menu”

• Hit the “Apply” button and then click “OK” to save your changes. You should now be able to see your Bookmark button beside the address box.

Now you’ll be able to bookmark to your hearts content in Chrome.

Thankfully, things have changed somewhat compared to say, 5 years ago, due to Web 2.0 influence. But should you still bump into these common annoyances, Firefox gives you some tools to put these pages in their place – if you know how to do it. So, here are a few easy (but often overlooked solutions):

1. The site that blocks your viewing it, but lets Google in. So it pops up in search results, but when you click the link it slams a “member-only” message in your face. Hint: Think experts-exchange.com, among others.

Solution: Switch user agents. By installing the User-Agent Switcher for Firefox, you can have your web browser identify itself as anything. Including switching it to say “Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html).” If Google can get in, you can too.

2. Sites that make their font too small to read

Solution: Just hit ‘Control-plus’ (Ctrl +) a few times and the text will get bigger. Also, (Ctrl -) makes the font smaller, and (Ctrl-0) returns the font to its original size. You can also use the fonts and colors section in Firefox preferences to set the smallest allowable size for fonts.

3. Pages that pop open additional browser windows.

Solution: Fix this annoying problem in the ‘tabs’ section of Firefox Options, selecting the button for “new pages should open in a new tab.”

4. Sites with huge amounts of images, YouTube videos, dancing gifs, playing music streaming, and basically throwing anything and everything at you over your tiny bandwidth connection.

Solution: There’s two fixes here. In preferences in the ‘Content’ section of Firefox Options you can un-check “load images automatically.” You could also get Flash-block from the Mozilla Firefox extension site, and even turn off Javascript in the content section of Firefox preferences, for those sites that hog your computer with gigabytes of Javascript.

5. I’ve done all of that, but this page style just doesn’t cut it. Maybe…. the colors are horrible, it’s showing fixed-width in one side of the screen, or the content is in a tiny box I have to scroll…

Solution: Not the best solution, but in the menus at the top of Firefox, go to ‘View… Page Style… and click ‘No Style.’ Bam! All CSS styling is gone, along with weird fonts, bad colors, and other odd styling. You’ll have to scroll more though, because the content will fall into a single column, but the web browser will be forced to only interpret basic HTML tags. Don’t do this unless you really want/need to, cos it basically butchers nice looking pages into ugly ones.

• Your IE installation might be producing errors that say IE has encountered an error and must close (happens with Firefox too).
• Internet connectivity issues resulting in frequent inaccurate 404 errors
• Your computer begins loading webpages at an abnormally slow speed
• There may be a high number of pop ups intruding on your web browsing time

Here’s a very simple way to reset cookies on Internet Explorer, and optimize it:

Begin by restarting your machine.  Once the computer is rebooted close any programs that may have opened automatically including any IE windows.

• Navigate to Start>Control Panel>Internet Options if in Classic view, or Start>Control Panel>Network & Internet Connections>Internet Options
• In the Internet Options popup box, you should be on the general tab of the internet Properties box by default.
• About halfway down the Internet Properties dialog box you should see a sub heading called Browsing History; in this section click on the delete button to open the delete browsing history box.

In the delete browsing history box you will be presented with the following box:

You will want to click on the Delete All button at the very bottom of this box. This is not an immediate process. If you have never done this before this can take several minutes. For people who use the internet on a daily basis it is a good idea to do this on a monthly basis.

• Once the deleting has finished you can close the delete browsing history box.  You will be returned to the Internet Properties box automatically.
• In the Internet Properties box navigate to the Advanced tab.
• On the Advanced tab click the Reset button.

That’s all you need to do to quicken IE 7. This works about the same with IE 6 too, except you don’t have the Reset option.

Why should I clear my cookies every now and then?

It is important to clear cookies from your system on a fairly regular basis. This is a little known fact but those who work in web based software will tell you that old cookies become corrupt.

A corrupt cookie will not cause any real damage to your computers hardware or software but corrupt cookies can cause problems with any internet applications you might use. For instance, if you often log into Internet based email software like Hotmail or Yahoo, a cookie from their system might be storing your login information for you so you do not need to type in your login information each time you visit the site.

If that cookie becomes corrupt it can cause login failure.  This type of login failure is often assumed to be a problem with the website you are visiting, but nine times out of ten the issue is simply a corrupt cookie.

How do cookies become corrupt?

Cookies can become corrupt in a few different ways.  The most common way a cookie becomes corrupt is when the internet connection fails while the website you are visiting is installing the cookie in your web browser.  Again, there is no risk of long term damage to your computer due to corrupt cookies but they can cause your browser to behave weirdly, and you may have login difficulties at some websites.

Here is a list of most useful Firefox add-ons that can serve any Web developer well:

Firebug: This has been a most useful add-on for web developers and designers alike, who are often lost in large CSS or complex HTML outputs. This add-on helps you view the DOM (Document Object Model) of the output HTML. You can verify any dynamic scripts (like JavaScript) for consistency and errors. It is useful when you get lost in complex CSS. You can easily examine the inheritance and limitations of classes and IDs.

Web Developer Toolbar: This is an excellent extension for Firefox through which you can easily control your webpages and check them under different situations. You can check your pages without CSS, without colors, verify alt tags of images, validate pages on different platforms, enable/disable JavaScript, cache, pop-ups, cookies, control font sizes, forms and many more. This helps you see how robust your web page or application is under different conditions and screen resolutions.

ColorZilla: This handy tool can easily grab colors from any section of the webpage which you are currently opening in the browser window. It is an efficient color picker and helps you obtain the HEX codes of any color on a webpage.

LiveHTTPHeaders: This add-on helps you verify HTTP header status messages for every element on a webpage. This is mainly used to verify the status of webpages as whether they are 301, 302, 200 or 400. This add-on reports cookie information and user-agents too.

Search Status: A must-have extension for developers who use it to surf the web. With this tool, you can learn more about a page or site, through its Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete Rank. This is a nice SEO add-on which helps you easily identify no-follow links on a webpage.

Greasemonkey: This add-on lets you add JavaScript to any Web page, when you have a good knowledge of writing these scripts. Many people use Greasemonkey to generate scripts to run on their webpages. At first Greasemonkey does nothing, it just enables the scripting. You’ll need to write or install userscripts before you can see any changes on your webpages.

Firefox Accessibility Extension: This extension adds accessibility check features which are useful for people with disabilities and also helps developers to evaluate the accessibility of their designed applications.

Screengrab: Through this Firefox add-on you can easily take screenshots of any webpage opened in any tab inside the browser view port, in its entirety. You can have screenshots of websites in various ways, like a screenshot of the whole website below the fold, or only over the fold.

WAVE Toolbar: WAVE web accessibility evaluation toolbar helps you to assess the accessibility of your web pages, without sending any information to the WAVE server. It validates your pages for accessibility check against W3C Accessibility Initiative guidelines.

So there you have it – 9 add-ons for Firefox that are useful for any webmaster project. Get help with these tools and add-ons from your favorite web browser, and make your Web development more user-friendly and consistent.

Since the browser is new, there are still many who are not as enthusiastic as Microsoft in adopting it as their main browser. For example, the latest zero day incident served as another reminder of IE’s track record when it came to security. How many of you have downloaded IE8 beta?

From a developer’s point of view, it is hoped the browser would be useful for visitor tracking systems and other add-ons. But, it may end up giving headaches to webmasters wanting to track their site usage and other statistics, because of a new feature with similarities to Google’s Chrome, called InPrivate.

This new version has now implemented an ‘InPrivate’ mode concept which will prevent cookies, history, and other data from being saved in the browser, thereby blurring your web movements. So if you are accessing some important information from outside, the InPrivate mode on IE8 would be useful. When you are in InPrivate mode, your sent information is not shared with third-party web sites without your permission.

These new privacy standards in IE8 again are going to give problems for webmasters with security programs. As the new security features disables many easy browser attacks, they also deactivate many security enhancements. I feel this so called feature of IE8 is going to be a double-edged sword.

Unlike IE6 or IE7, IE8 is touted to be more supportive towards web standards, and is expected to resolve codes more rationally. This has always been a major issue for developers working with previous versions of IE. While certainly going in the right direction, Microsoft may have overlooked the possibility that web pages which have been optimised for IE6 and IE7 – may not perform consistently well in the new version.

That’s why Microsoft has been busy assuring users that web pages optimized for the previous versions of IE, will display well in this new version by it now having an ability to switch between old and new standards.

Microsoft has decided to fix the compatibility problems with a Compatibility View button that switches the compatibility mode of the browser to that of IE6 or IE7. So if a site doesn’t work – switch your browser to an older version. This being a feature indicates that Microsoft hasn’t done enough to erase their now famous “browser incompatibility reputation.” Many webmasters (including myself) still remember how IE was usually the one browser to cough up site rendering issues.

I wonder how many users would be interested in switching the compatibility of their browsers whenever they get problems. Don’t you think users will prefer to have a more compatible browser, rather than a switching machine? It should be quite interesting to see if Microsoft can circumvent these old IE issues, but in the meantime I’m quite happy being a Firefox user

Keyboard Shortcuts:

These are some keyboard commands which make it easier to move around with Firefox. Sometimes, using keyboard commands can save you time and hassle.

Commands and Shortcuts

• Back = Alt+Left Arrow, Backspace

• Forward = Alt+Right Arrow, Shift+Backspace

• Home = Alt+Home

• Reload = F5, Ctrl +R

• Reload (override cache) = Ctrl+F5, Ctrl+Shift+R

• Stop Current Page = Esc

• Go to Bottom of Page = End

• Go to Top of Page = Home

• Page Source = Ctrl+U

• Print = Ctrl+P

• Save Page As = Ctrl+S

• Zoom In = Ctrl++

• Zoom Out = Ctrl+-

• Zoom Reset = Ctrl+0

• Redo = Ctrl+Y

• Undo = Ctrl+Z

• Search, Find = Ctrl+F

• Find Again = F3, Ctrl+G

• Find Previous = Shift+F3

• Close a Tab = Ctrl+W, Ctrl+F4

• Close Window = Ctrl+Shift+W, Alt+F4

• New Tab = Ctrl+T

• New Window = Ctrl+N

• Next Tab = Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Page Down

• Previous Tab = Ctrl+Shift+Tab, Ctrl+Page Up

• Select Tab {1-8} = Ctrl+{1-8}

• Clear Private Data = Ctrl+Shift+Del

• Full Screen = F11

These are the most useful keyboard shortcuts for all you Firefox fans. Find the full list of keyboard shortcuts here – It’s a long list.

Type Web Addresses faster:

While you are typing any url in the address bar of your Firefox, you need not complete typing out the address. Just type in the domain name (without the extension and www) in the address bar. Then hit Ctrl+Enter. This will turn the address into a www.domain.com. Similarly you can use Shift+Enter to add www and .net, and Ctrl+Shift+Enter to add .org. Less typing for all us lazy bums.

Intelligent Address Bar:

Firefox’s address bar is quite intelligent. If you are not sure of any site’s address, you can just type the name of the site and Firefox will take you to that site (if it is somewhat popular or has the same domain name). So your address bar is now also your search bar now.

Search within a page or source code:

You can easily search for a keyword in a long page or in a page’s source code by Ctrl+F.

View Selection Source:

Trying to understand a page’s coding, but not getting the exact code for a section? Firefox brings you a versatile feature, with which you can view the source code of some section in a page. Just select the section you want the code for, and then right click on it and select “View Selection Source”.

Scroll between Tabs easily:

You can easily scroll between all opened tabs by simply scrolling your mouse over the tabs. It is a fast way to switch between distant tabs.

Open links in different tabs:

You can open different links of a page in different tabs very easily. Just mouseover on the link, press Ctrl and click the link. The link automatically opens in a new tab.

Remember where you were last time:

This is a highly useful feature which can save you a lot of time, especially if your head is jammed up with stuff to remember. Firefox remembers all your open tabs and windows, and takes you to your previous workspace where you left last time.

These might seem like rather simple tips, but by putting them to use, you’ll be better utilizing Firefox nearer to its fullest potential. Especially if you use your web browser everyday, and all the time.