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Hey! I'm new here. I have a few tips to share after installing Linux on my computer (Mandrake 10 Community, to be exact) and trying to setup Mozilla Firefox so that it would function as well as it does in Windows. I thought I'd might as well post 'em here if ya don't mind.
The middle mouse button (this is usually the scroll wheel) closes tabs in the Windows version by default, but for some reason this is not the case in the Linux version. This is easy to fix, but not very intuitive. Open Firefox and type about:config into the URL bar. Click the Filter field and type in middlemouse. Now you should see three Preferences. Double click middlemouse.contentLoadURL, and when the window pops up type in false and hit Enter or click OK. That should do the trick -- you don't even have to restart the browser.
When you click on links in other programs, such as GAIM or Liferea they open in new Firefox windows if you tell such programs to open Firefox by default. I'd rather have them open in new tabs, wouldn't you? Fortunately this is simple enough to fix with a shell script. Create a new text file anywhere you want (I put mine in /usr/bin) and name it, say, firefox-newtab.sh. Put the following lines in it, but change the location to wherever your browser is installed. (If you used the same RPM I did to install Firefox you won't need to change anything.) Then tell programs to use this file instead of the browser executable.
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox -remote "openURL($@, new-tab)" || exec /usr/bin/mozilla-firefox "$@";
This isn't really a tip for Linux in particular, but I'm used to Opera's SDI (Single Document Interface) option. There's no way to prevent Firefox from opening new windows without installing an extension called Tabbrowser Extensions. Once it's installed and you've restarted Firefox, select Options from the Tools menu and click Extensions in the left pane. Double click Tabbrowser Extensions and the Preferences window should open. Click Advanced, and change the Window Mode to "Use only one browser always (Single Window Mode.)" Now you won't have to deal with those pesky new windows.
Macromedia's Flash seems to have problems with Mandrake 10 Community. I'd given up on trying to make it work until I found this page with Flash RPMs for various distributions, including Mandrake 10. (It has to be installed as root, of course.)
Alright, that's all for now. Hope this helped at least one or two people, or I'm just getting carpal-tunnel syndrome for no reason here. :p
March 23 2004, 03:24:22 UTC 8 years ago
And an extension to change default browser behavior when clicking a link in another program is not that hard to install. In fact, it couldn't be easier. Go to http://texturizer.net/firefox/extension
Is it so hard to download a gzip'd tarball to the appropriate directory, tar -zxvf blah.gz, cd into the directory, then run the appropriate installation commands (e.g. ./configure && make && make install) rather than an RPM? I use Gentoo and I love the automated process of emerging a package from source, but if there's not an ebuild for a particular program I want to use, it's not so hard that I couldn't download the source myself and install it. It takes about 5 commands to do it by hand.
March 23 2004, 04:21:04 UTC 8 years ago
How do you like Mandrake 10.0C so far? I have it, I just need to install it.
March 23 2004, 05:05:04 UTC 8 years ago
So far, I think 10C is awesome. Much better than 9.2. The ability to switch users without logging out is the best new feature by far.
March 23 2004, 04:21:59 UTC 8 years ago
Keep in mind that Firefox is still a beta and there are bound to be some bugs in the plugins as they adapt to the new interfaces and versions.
Also, as far as your Gentoo installation attempt goes, did you even try looking in the forums for your motherboard/NIC/SATA controller or manually loading the driver with modprobe? Autodetection isn't perfect in the LiveCDs yet. If you wanted a functional system while installing Gentoo, you could have used a Knoppix CD and just done the installation from that. In fact, there are a ton of different ways you can install Gentoo because it is extremely versatile. It just takes a little willingness to find the answers.
March 23 2004, 05:17:06 UTC 8 years ago
I did install Gentoo from Knoppix, because Gentoo wouldn't boot from the Live CDs on my system. The Live CDs just locked up my computer, which is pretty much what happened after Gentoo installed itself to the very same drives it would later not be able to recognize. I asked on the forums but nobody seemed to know what was wrong. I'm guessing the problem was more related to the kernel Gentoo came with than anything, since the 2.4.x kernel had mediocre support for the particular SATA controller I have.
I am willing to try Gentoo again in the future, but they're going to have to add that fancy installer they've been promising for some time now before I'm willing to seriously consider it.
For now though, I'm perfectly happy with Mandrake. It's largely hassle-free -- a requirement for any desktop operating system as far as I'm concerned. If I was getting paid to setup my own computer I'd be a hell of a lot more willing to try out other distros, but alas, this is not the case.
March 23 2004, 06:09:25 UTC 8 years ago
Yeah, that's because the middle mouse button is traditionally used for paste in X.
Once you get used to copying and pasting with the mouse, you'll wonder why you ever had to go through that tedious highlight, Ctrl-C, place cursor, Ctrl-V rigmarole in Windows. Highlight, point, click.
Don't repurpose the mouse button for something much less useful! You'll find it harder in the long run.
March 23 2004, 08:06:39 UTC 8 years ago
March 23 2004, 08:42:32 UTC 8 years ago
Sorry if I jumped in there without knowing what I'm talking about. It's a personality flaw, but I'm working with Britain's leading head scientists to correct it.
March 23 2004, 09:18:33 UTC 8 years ago
March 24 2004, 11:53:24 UTC 8 years ago
Dual post request...
You should dual post this toQvacks.
March 25 2004, 12:49:20 UTC 8 years ago
image.animation_mode to 'none'
I hate animated GIF images.
Anonymous
April 29 2004, 22:24:00 UTC 8 years ago
firefox steals focus
OK, the script worked great, however I've found one small annoyance:when I open a link in liferea, firefox steals focus. Since i might want to open multiple links this is mildly irritating. Can this be corrected?
Regards
Michael
April 29 2004, 22:32:52 UTC 8 years ago
Re: firefox steals focus
With Tabbrowser Extensions there is. Otherwise, I don't think so.BTW, did you get the latest version of Liferea to run? I can't get it to work at all since .47 or so.
Anonymous
April 30 2004, 11:31:59 UTC 8 years ago
Re: firefox steals focus
I'm running version 0.4.6e which is the latest (unstable) version offered by the gentoo portage tree. I can't say it's perfect, but it'll do until something else shows up in portage :-).Michael
April 30 2004, 12:38:57 UTC 8 years ago
Re: firefox steals focus
0.4.6e is easy enough to get to run, but I haven't had any luck with the 0.4.7 series. Judging by the forum posts on the SF.net page, many other people have had issues as well.Anonymous
May 22 2004, 16:53:41 UTC 8 years ago
May 22 2004, 17:48:34 UTC 8 years ago
July 11 2004, 03:28:09 UTC 7 years ago
Alternatively you can just fill in this
/usr/bin/mozilla-firefox -remote "openURL(%s, new-tab)"
in the manual browser configuration, and then the error message is gone, but otherwise nothing happens! Please help? :P
July 11 2004, 04:27:54 UTC 7 years ago
/usr/bin/firefox -a firefox -remote "openURL($@, new-tab)" || exec /usr/bin/fire
fox "$@";
This line seems to work for the most part with 0.9.1, but there are still times when it fails. Let me know if you get it to work properly.