e-wot?

My Firefox was behaving badly. The pages were not loading properly. So I bit the bullet and tried to solve the problem. The solution turned out to be my Firefox profile. I guess it had become corrupted. Anyway, I fixed it. If you also have this problem, then here’s the solution on Windows XP. It’ll take an hour at least. Take a deep breath.

1. You’re going to delete your profile folder so first backup your current profile folder. You’ll need it later to copy your saved passwords (and as a ‘just in case’ measure). I copied mine to my desktop. You should find your profile folder here: C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default
2. The XXXXXX.default folder (all letters and numbers followed by .default) is the one you should copy. Paste it onto your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
3. Open your current Firefox and write down your addons and your search engines. I took screen shots of these and printed them out (press Print Screen – Prt Scr – it’s a keyboard key, top right on your keyboard). Save these ‘cos you’re going to have to re-install these manually later. Boring, but it’ll all be OK in the end. Promise.
4. Backup your bookmarks from within Firefox: bookmarks>organize bookmarks>Import & backup (dropdown)>Export html – save them to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
5. Download Firefox to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
6. Now you can uninstall your current version of Firefox (from control panel, uninstall programs).
7. Then delete your profile folder in C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default (you saved it already right? Point 1 above?)
8. Install Firefox from your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 5 above).
9. Reinstall all your fave addons and search engines manually from the lists or screen shots you made. This will take a while. Addons are here. And you can get the search engines by going to the sites or by going to Mycroft.
10. Now go to your old saved profile folder on your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 1 above) and copy all your saved passwords by copying the following from your saved old profile folder on your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 1 above): key3.db – signons.txt – signons2.txt  (source)
11. Paste these into (and overwrite those in) your new profile folder at C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default
12. Import your old bookmarks from: bookmarks>organize bookmarks>Import & backup (dropdown)>Import html>from an html file…. browse to where you saved it and open it.
13. You might need to reorganise your bookmarks from within the Firefox Bookmarks Organizer so they work how they used to.
14. Now you should be happy. Firefox should be back to normal.

Well, that was long. But that’s what I did to fix the problems I was having with Firefox. What a relief.

I tried other approaches, but this was the solution that worked for me. I hope you have equal success.

Here are some of the Firefox addons I’ve been using in an educational context for the past 5 years or so. The links take you to the pages that explain what each addon does:

Essential

• Tab Mix Plus
• All-In-One Sidebar
• Download Statusbar

Good to have

• NoScript
• Bookmark Duplicate Detector

Nice to have

• FoxClocks
• QuoteURLText
• Copy Plain Text
• Tiny Menu
• ScribeFire Blog Editor
  

Web Development

• ColorZilla
• Firebug

*The essential search addon*

• MyCroft Project searchbar addon Add this to your Firefox searchbar by clicking the ‘MyCroft Project – All’ link on the page this takes you to, and then use it from your searchbar to find all the available Firefox search addons you’ll ever need. There are thousands. You can also go to the MyCroft page and find searchbar addons from there. Here’s the Mozilla MyCroft page link. Test the ones you install, because some work better than others.

Here are some of the search addons I use regularly from my Firefox searchbar. (no links here, sorry – you’ll have to find them yourself in MyCroft):

• Dictionary.com
• Thesaurus.com
• Urban Dictionary
• Wikipedia
• Websters Online Dictionary
• Word Reference en – definition
• YouTube
• HowStuffWorks
• Quotation Book – Search
• Google Scholar
• Google Trends
• Download.com
• Amazon.com
• Yotophoto.com
• Yahoo images (better than Google Images because it has Flickr, but don’t use this in class because you occasionally get uncensored nude pics)

The searchbar is one of Firefox’s strongest features. Having the right addons greatly enhances Firefox’s functionality. I’ll write another post on this at some other time.

Here’s a quick video I made (just over a minute) comparing IE6 with Firefox on a Promethean Interactive Whiteboard. It’s aimed at teachers who’ve only ever used Internet Explorer on IWBs (like some of the teachers I work with). It shows off tabs as the main advantage – of course there are many other advantages to using Firefox, but this is the main one.

What is it?

Firefox (FF) has a built-in searchbar that allows you to type in a search query for Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia… Anything you like, in fact. You can add hundreds of different search options and customise it completely.

Why do I need it?

Because you can customise it. You can add any search options you like. You can then search without needing to open any website (e.g. you don’t need to go to Google, just use the search bar).

It’s fast and flexible.

How can I use it?

If you have FF, you just click the dropdown next to the searchbar and select any of the search options from the dropdown list.

In class you can use it to quickly check a word in the dictionary (dictionary.com, Urban dictionary, Websters online dictionary, etc…) or you can search Wikipedia… or find a book on Amazon… whatever you want. The possibilities are almost limitless. All you need to do is add any search engine you fancy by selecting  ‘manage search engines’ from the dropdown.

Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. Full stop/Period.

One piece of feedback I’ve got from teachers who’ve started using Firefox on their Interactive Whiteboards in class, is that they now use the internet more than they used to do when they were using Internet Explorer. (I particularly recommend that teachers use Portable Firefox – you can run it off your thumb drive on any PC.)

So if you want to show your class some websites using an Interactive Whiteboard, use Firefox. Mainly because it adds to the ‘Wow factor’ that IWBs have. Here are your three Hot Tips:

Hot Tip 1: You can ‘prepare’ your Portable Firefox so that it automatically loads the pages you want to show to your class. You need Portable Firefox for this so that you can move Firefox (on your thumb drive) from your staffroom PC to the PC in your classroom.

Here’s how you set up Firefox to do this: from the main menu select Tools>Options>Main>When Firefox Starts>Show my windows and tabs from last time. So why’s this so hot? Because the web pages you’ve prepared for your lesson will open automatically when you open the browser in class. No more fiddle-clicking and ‘wait, let me just open the web page… (pause)…etc..’ while your class stares blankly at a loading web page.

So now you can set all the pages in your staffroom, close the browser, move to the classroom, open the browser and ALL the pages load automatically and neatly in separate tabs – looks cool, and now you’ve got more time to do something more important.

Hot Tip 2: If you need to look up a word or topic you can use Firefox’s customisable search bar. This is impressively quick and easy – an audience pleaser. Check that meaning, find that concept, get that picture – fast and easy. You can customise your Firefox searchbar: mine has Wikipedia, Google, Urban Dictionary, Dictionary.com, YouTube and a bunch of others.

Hot Tip 3: The best thing about Firefox on the IWB is the tabbed browsing. You can effortlessly move between multiple web pages in a fluid and seemless presentation of information by selecting the tabs with your Interactive Board pen. This on it’s own is enough to make Firefox the tool of choice for any teacher with an Interactive Whiteboard. (I recommend that you install the TabMix Plus extension and set your tab preferences so that new tabs open in the background).

The best browser… now on a stick.

click for Firefox Portable

It’s great. Now you can open your favourite browser anywhere – like in class, or in workshops, or on any public PC. It works with no problems on our corporate IT setup.

Top tip. Install Foxmarks, on both your Firefox Portable and your desktop Firefox, so you can synchronise your bookmarks automatically between both. Life keeps getting better.