Sep 16th, 2007 by Jared Schwager cookies, firefox
The upgrade to Firefox 2.0 from 1.5 added many great new features, but some features were also removed, one of these being the option to easily disallow any cookies that do not come from originating sites. Thankfully this option can still be altered in the Firefox config editor despite the option being removed from the main options dialog by the following procedure:
Open a new tab in Firefox, type about:config in the address bar and press enter. This should load the Firefox config editor.
Using the filter field at the top, search for network.cookie.cookieBehavior.
Right-click on this option and select Modify. Change the value to 1 to disallow all third-party cookies. Set the value to 2 to disable all cookies. To accept all cookies, change it to 0.
For more control over your cookies:
I highly suggest using the CookieSafe extension for Firefox if you’d like even more control over your browser cookies.
Jul 7th, 2007 by Jared Schwager firefox, google talk
I recently stumbled across a great little trick for using the new Google Talk Gadget in a sidebar in Firefox. There’s no need to install any extensions in Firefox as the functionality needed to do this trick is already built in to Firefox.
First things first, add a bookmark in Firefox for the link below. I’d recommend placing the bookmark in the Bookmarks Toolbar for easy access.
Next, right-click that bookmark and choose “Properties”. Check the box labeled Load this bookmark in the sidebar and click OK. Now every time you click on the Google Talk bookmark it will open in the sidebar.
You can use this same method with any other bookmark as well, though it only works best for pages that can be viewed at very narrow widths.
Jun 30th, 2007 by Jared Schwager annoyances, firefox
Ever visit a site which automatically resizes your browser window? This may be a big no-no in web design, but some people still do it regardless of what may be good and right in webdev rulebook. There’s an easy way to stop sites from doing this, assuming you’re using Firefox (which you should be).
In Firefox, go to “Options” under the “Tools” menu. Find your way to the “Content” section in the Options. Next to the “Enable Javascript” option you will see an Advanced button. Click on that and in the dialog that pops up uncheck the Move or resize existing windows option.
Once you save all your changes, Firefox will not be bothered by those nasty window resize scripts. There is also a more involved method of configuring the same option by using about:config, but I won’t get into that since the above method is much easier to do and follow.
May 30th, 2007 by Jared Schwager drm-free, itunes
Today Apple released iTunes 7.2 along with the new iTunes Plus feature which allows users to purchase DRM-free tracks encoded in 256kbps AAC. After reading the comments on the Digg story, I realized many people were unsure of how to enable iTunes Plus. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t make it very apparent how to enable iTunes Plus, so here’s how you go about doing just that.
To begin with, go to your account page by clicking the button in the upper-right with your email address. When prompted, enter your iTunes password to progress to your account page.
You should now be at your iTunes account page. As you may have already noticed, the first option on the page is iTunes Plus. Go ahead and click the “Manage iTunes Plus” button. On the next page, make sure the box is checked next to “Always show me iTunes Plus music and music videos when available” and click “Save Changes”.
That’s all there is to it! Now any music and music videos which are available DRM-free will show a plus (+) sign next to the price, which is $1.29 for each track.
