The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Firefox’ Category

Extensions to force HTTPS in your browser

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/07/22

About 9 months ago I posted about HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation hoping someone would port the HTTPS Everywhere extension for Firefox to force HTTPS in other browsers like Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer et cetera.

In the mean time, I found out about HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), which is supported by FireFox 4, and Chrome 12.

Also in the mean time I found about a few HTTPS enforcer extensions for other browsers.

For instance, there are two similar Google Chrome Extensions to HTTPS Everywhere:

Internet Explorer does not have such an extension.

Opera has the Security Enhancer extension.

Next to HTTPS Everywhere, there are the ForceHTTPS and NoScript extension for FireFox (NoScript also supports HSTS).
FireFox 4 supports HSTS out of the box.

So now you have a choice!

–jeroen

Posted in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

SEO guys taking over Google results: Search Filter and Stackoverflowizer Chrome extension

Posted by jpluimers on 2011/01/14

Over at least the last year, I keep adding more and more “site:domainname” clauses to my Google search queries because somehow content scrapers somehow rank higher in the Google results than the original content.

Some domainnames I often used because of good content:

  • stackoverflow.com
  • microsoft.com
  • wikipedia.org
  • apple.com
  • reference.com

Others too noticed the SEO guys are steadily taking over Google results: Jeff Atwood just wrote a great article on this topic (with an even greater list of comments), and there is even a Stackoverflowizer app redirecting back from the scrape sites back to the content!

The world upside down, but maybe this is some good news:
an opportunity for other search engines to fill the gap.
And it looks like they do, and Vivek Wadhwa wrote a nice article on those too.

There is an opportunity for browser extensions too, so here are some Google Chrome extensions:

Be prepared to fill your machines with some more memory as browser plugins do eat some.

–jeroen

Posted in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/09/27

Currently this is FireFox-only.
I hope someone ports this to a Chrome extension and Internet Explorer plugin: HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

–jeroen

Posted in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, LifeHacker, Power User, Web Browsers | 1 Comment »

Solution: Can’t paste on a web-site with Ctrl-V

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/07/16

Quite a few web sites have fields where you cannot paste with Ctrl-V.
I don’t know why: pasting text input is a great way to speed up your work.

A solution for most of them: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Web Browsers, Windows | 1 Comment »

Maximum URL lengths

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/20

A client recently asked me what space should reserve to store URLs in their DBMS.

The plurality in the topic title is a hint: different systems have different limits on URL lengths.

But first:

Don’t use long URLs

If you use long URL’s (longer than say a coupe of 100 characters), then usually you have a problem.

First of all: short URL’s are easier to remember, index and search.

Second: long URL’s can pose problems.
It might be that your browser and server support them.
But a user might be behind an intercepting proxy (sometimes invisible to both you and your user) that imposes a URL limit.

In stead of long URLs with a HTTP GET, use shorter URLs with a HTTP POST. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, ASP.NET, Delphi, Development, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Web Browsers, Web Development | 8 Comments »

gmail harmless error message when editing settings: “Your changes have not been saved. Discard changes?”

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/01/28

When you edit your gmail settings, recently you often  get this message if you move the focus away from the settings pane:

Your changes have not been saved.
Discard changes?

The odd thing is that the settings are indeed saved just before you move the focus away.

So I always wondered if the message can be really ignored, and this thread confirms the message indeed is harmless.

I do still wonder why I get this message mostly in FireFox and Internet Explorer, but almost never in Chrome :-)

–jeroen

Posted in Chrome, Chrome, Firefox, GMail, Google, Internet Explorer, Power User, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »