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Items filtered by date: December 2015

Tuesday, 06 October 2015 19:34

Is there a way to find bookmarks that I haven't used in a long time?

I'd like to delete bookmarks that I haven't used in a long period of time. Is there a way to find out what was the last time I used a bookmark?

Answer

Firefox can cross-reference your history, so if you don't clear history you can sort of figure this out. Here's what I mean.

  1. Open the Library dialog to your bookmarks. E.g., Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks
  2. In the search box at the upper right, type http  (should be virtually all of them)
  3. If you do not have a column labeled Visit Date, right-click any column heading and choose Visit Date. (Or Mac equivalent of right-click.)
  4. Click the Visit Date column heading to sort by date. This should sort from blank to most recently visited. Click again to sort the other way.

Answer taken from

Is there a way to find bookmarks that I haven't used in a long time? | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 19:23

How can I see the total number of bookmarks I have?

Firefox does not have an inbuilt method to tell you statistics about your bookmarks so we have to use a workaround to get the bookmarks total, but tankfully it is very easy to do.

  1. Open the Bookmarks Manager (Library) using Ctrl+Shift+B or go to the menu item (Bookmarks / Show All Bookmarks)
  2. In the search box at the upper right of the Library dialog, type http - This will match pretty much all your bookmarks in a search result which now lists all of your bookmarks
  3. Click on one search result so it is highlighted
  4. Press Ctrl+A which will select all of the results and the number in the bottom bar will tell you how many results there are. The result is the number of bookmarks you have in firefox.
Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 18:20

My Custom Firefox Setup

With the evolution of Firefox I have found that the developers have constantly removed features that i use and i now have to use plugins to replace the missing functions. I also have used plugins to improve Firefox, this article is my collection of notes for these critical improvements.

Restore Status Bar / Bottom Bar / Addon Bar

The status bar has been removed in newer version of Firefox, read this article, What happened to the Status Bar? | Firefox Help

Bookmarking Improvements

These are improvements on the standard bookmarks menu which is to small and the number of items in the recent history (5 items) is not enough.

Security

i will add the rest of my Extensions and options i use at some point.

Web Development

i will add the rest of my Extensions and options i use at some point.

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 17:45

My OpenSearch Notes

OpenSearch is a collection of simple formats for the sharing of search results or adding custom searches to your browser.

This process is instigated by a preformed string of HTML in the webpage which gives the browser the information that it needs to create the custom search. Some of the variables that are supplied are the 'Name' of the search and 'search string' to be passed.

These custom searches can be detected either by looking in the HTMl or much easier on modern browsers there usually is an add button or icon change that will occur near the search boxes.

Example

<link href="http://quantumwarp.com/search?format=opensearch" rel="search" title="QuantumWarp" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" />

Links

Published in Web Design
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 17:07

How do I renew my member certificate at StartSSL?

This article shows you how to renew you User Authentication SSL certificate for your StartSSL account.

I received the following mail:

The Class 1, client certificate for my@email.address and serial number 123456 (123456) is about to expire in about two weeks. Please log into the StartSSL Control Panel at https://www.startssl.com/?app=12 and get a new certificate for this purpose. Failing to update your client certificate might result in the loss of your account.

I logged in, but I cannot figure out how to get a new certificate. Could someone please give me a hint?

Answer

  1. Login -> "Validations Wizard" -> "Email Validation", get the code and validate.
  2. "Certificates Wizard" -> "S/MIME and Authentication Certificate" ->
  3. browser asks if you wanna install........ some more prompts and done.
Published in SSL
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 16:51

Client Certificate Authentication remembers decision when canceling

Firefox remembers the selected certificate for client certificate authentication by default (Remember this decision). However when attempting to authenticate and clicking cancel (for various reasons, for example no certificate exists), Firefox apparently remembers that too.

Reproduce by going to https://www.startssl.com/?app=12 and click on "Authenticate" and hit cancel. Try to authenticate again and the request fails automatically. The only way to get out of this, is by restarting the browser completely.

Firefox should not send ANYTHING to the server when the request is canceled at the client side and certainly should not remember that decision. Users get very confused because they don't regularly restart their browser.

These instructions can be used to clear what SSL certificate is used for logging in to various sites including StartSSL.

IE

Note that IE has an option to forget/clear the remembered state with a button press. No need to restart the browser.

In IE8 : menu Tools / Internet Options / Content / Certificates / Clear SSL state

Firefox

Tools / clear recent history / time range: everything / details:

  • check "Active Logins"
  • uncheck everything else, so you don't lose that information
  • Clear now

Test Scenario

Scenario

I've tested this with www.startssl.com

  1. I have a personal cert
  2. I authenticate
  3. I select "remember"
  4. OK

On the web site, in the upper right, I click that logout icon (go out of the door). If I do, I will briefly see the start page, however, because Firefox has the use of the client cert remembered, it will immediately log in again using the client cert. Next, I use above steps to "clear active logins". Now, if I clock the logout icon on the StartSSL site, I will be really logged out.

Links

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 16:28

Font Awesome Icons not displaying in Firefox

When using Firefox to browse the internet occasionally you come across websites where Font Awesome icons do not display but are fine when viewed in another browser. This seems to be caused by a couple of things.

  • using relative URLs
  • When that website is using a CDN
  • You are running an add blocker
  • possibly other things

The Fix

There are a few solutions and are quite easy. Not all might be suitable.

  • Use absolute URLs - This might be an issue but i would never use absolute URLs so i would recommend other solutions where possible
  • Add the following code to your server's .htaccess file 
    <FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff)$">
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
  </IfModule>
</FilesMatch>
  • Disable any Adblocker or similiar addons

Links

Published in Firefox
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Tuesday, 06 October 2015 15:28

Firebug keeps popping up | Google Groups

All of a sudden firebug pops open on every page I load, I did a fresh install of firebug but that doesn't help either.

Answers

  • In the opened pop-up, select the script tab, click options and uncheck 'Break On All Errors'. (Recommended)
  • I also suggest you try resetting the firebug options: Firebug Icon
    Menu (upper left) > Options > Reset All. Firebug 1.4.2 and earlier had
    a bug in activation and some people tried to work around it by using
    Open All options.
Published in Firefox
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Sunday, 04 October 2015 16:58

Email Marketing Campaigns and Sending Bulk emails

Nowadays we cannot just send an email to 100s of contact or send 1000s of emails to different people because of limits on your server:

  • Limited number of contacts that an email can be sent to in one email
  • Maximum number of emails per hour/day from your server
  • Your server could be put on a block list for send lots of unsolicited emails
  • Your server does not have a good reputation (used for SPAM analysis) or is already on a block list
  • Your SMTP service provider (usually for webhost) will not allow bulk emails to be sent as a policy

So how do all the big guys send emails to lots of people and not get blocked by my server?

The answer

  • Transactional Email Services
  • They have their own dedicated server and some IT staff looking after it

Transactional Email Services

Transactional Email Services are basically SMTP servers that are provided for you to use to send bulk emails without getting your email server on a block list and to get around any of the limitations mentioned above. Transactional Emails are normal emails, they do not have any per email tracking in them or anything you can use for analytics above and beyond what you put in the email yourself (ie links with tracking in them, but this would not be email specific but the same for all of the emails sent in that batch).

There are free and paid services but they work the same. Once you have signed up you can get their SMTP server details and replace the SMTP server details you are using with those and just send emails like you would normally.

You can get away with using a Transactional Email server to send mass emails from your favourite email program if the list is not too large, at most i would say 50 but it is definately worth checking out the rules for the service you choose to use.

What can I use these SMTP servers with?

  • Locally Installed campaign software
  • For your normal email (Outlook/Thunderbird ....)
  • Emails from your website platform (ie Magento/Prestashop/Wordpress/Joomla ...)

Why are Transaction Email Services better?

So i have explained that these services are better but why?

  • Increases the probability your Marketing/Normal Emails will arrive at their recipient and when it does help it not go into the dreaded SPAM/JUNK folder
  • Their servers are designed to send bulk emails so the normal limits from your hosting provider will not apply
  • Their servers will have a good reputation
  • SPAM companies know what the IP address of their servers are (this does not 100% guratee delivery but it definately helps)
  • Using this service will prevent your email server from going on a block list for sending large amounts of emails
  • The service providers put policies in place to make sure their clients do not SPAM people by monitor usage and activity.
  • You cannot just signup for account and send 40,000 emails
  • Over a period of time you are allowed to send more emails
  • They verify you are a real person
  • The servers are monitoreds to make sure they are not on block lists
  • If you abuse the rules they will actively remove your account

Email Marketing Campaigns

This is a related topic to Transactional Email Service because the next logical step is to be able to analyse and track the mass emails you send out and on a per email basis. This would allow you to see who opend and read the email, who recieved the emails, which ones got bounced and then even track the behaviour of those people who follow the links in the email you sent.

These features require two things to handle all of the tracking:

  1. Transactional Email Server
  2. A Platform/Software to handle all of the tracking information

There are two ways of building one of these systems

  1. Email Marketing Services - These are usally paid services and and these companies provide the tracking platforms and they use their own Transactional Email Servers. You can get per email analytics with these online services and it is one of their main advantages, these services also manage your mailing lists so when someone unsubscribes they take care of that. I have not used these enough to be able to tell you how they work but mainly you create the email and the lists on their platform and send from there rather than your own computer. Most of the paid services offer a Free service but they are usually so crippled that it is utterly pointless to use them.
  2. Locally Based Campaign Software - This method would require that you have a Transaction Email Service (or your own dedicated server with a unique IP) in place that you can use as the SMTP server. You would create the email in the software you have installed and send from that program using the Transactional Email Server for the configured SMTP server. The analytics is defiantly limited but you can control the lists and emails locally without having to pay a subscription. You definately have to put more effort in when using this method but it is a cheaper option and preferable if you do not like the cloud.

Links

Transaction Email Services

Email Marketing Services

Campaign / Bulk Email Software

Articles

Other

Published in SEM
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Sunday, 04 October 2015 15:32

Comodo Backup - Log file locations

There are a couple of places the log files can be located and logs might possibly be in 1 or more location.

  • %TEMP%\ComodoLogsFolder
  • \Windows\Temp\ComodoLogsFolder
  • The target location of the backup
  • A user specified location (but you should know where this is because you set it)
Published in Windows General
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