Firefox

Google optimized Gmail to make the download fast and appear in two columns, which is pretty cool. If you don't have an iPad, you can still experience this view in FF (and other browsers) by changing the user agent to simulate an iPad. This is of course just for fun, not good for any serious use.

If you're reading a Web page and want to go back to the last site you visited without leaving the current site you're on, there's a simple trick to allow you to do so.

Hold down the Command (Apple) key and click the Back button in Firefox or Safari. The site you're currently visiting remains open and the previous site you visited will open in a new tab.

Tip courtesy of The Graphic Mac.

If you want to open more than just one page at startup you can simply do that by adding several urls in the Preferences/ Main/ Home page field, each divided by a vertical bar, like this: http://google.com | http://creativebits.org

By now, you know that by pressing Apple (Cmd) and scrolling with the scroll wheel on your mouse you can change the font size in your browser. You also know that by pressing CTRL and scrolling you can Zoom in and out your screen.

So, what does Alt (Option) and scrolling does than? Yes, you guessed right. It moves you back and force in your navigation history. Pretty cool if you need to go back several pages quickly.

Firefox 2.0 was released almost at the same time as Internet Explorer 7. And, what a difference. While Firefox alongside Opera is raising the bar, IE7 is barely catching up with the rest of the crowd.

This is a good example of how much more efficient the open source community can be compared to a giant behemoth company like MS. The new Firefox packs a lot of cool new features and most importantly it is much faster than the previous version. Here are the new features in the order of importance for me.

When developing websites I need to make sure that the page I'm looking at is using the latest images and stylesheets. They tend to be loaded from the cache therefore so I may not see the recent changes. I found that by holding the Apple (Command) key and clicking the refresh button I can force Firefox to reload ALL the elements of the page therefore I can make sure I'm looking at the latest set of files. What is your experience?

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the Apple - "+" (Command - "+") and Apple - "-" keycombo to change font size in a browser window. But did you know that you can hold down the Apple key and use the scroll bar to increase font size as well? I'm not sure if it works with all mice, but it certainly works with the mighty one.

To create a new tab in Firefox just double-click the empty area next to the tabs on the right.

Now with Yahoo! and other companies trying to break into Google's targeted text ads business, I guess Google felt it needs to expand as fast as possible. Therefore they launched a new referral system. If you're an AdSense member you can refer your friends to let them start making money on their websites.

To create a referral button just like the one you see here, you need to visit your AdSense account and click the referrals tab. There are several different sizes and languages available to choose from, but the color combination is restricted to the white/black/green combo.

Users who sign up for AdSense through your referral button will learn about the product, and you'll have a new way to generate revenue - US$100 when each user you refer first earns US$100.

In addition, if you are a U.S. publisher, for Firefox with Google Toolbar referrals Adsense will pay up to $1 per referral the first time a user installs Firefox. The Adsense team promises to make this available soon to international publishers as well.

This is just a bit of speculative fantasy on my part but if you could have an extension for the brilliant Firefox browser what would it be?