Browsers

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Firefox

Computer not opening links

If clicking on links on your computer does not open your browser, try going to Firefox Options > Advanced. In the General tab, check (or uncheck and recheck) the "Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup". Shut down your browser. It might work now.

If it doesn't work, you can also try:

Disable warning when closing other tabs

Go to about:config and set

browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOtherTabs

to false.

Manage Flash cookies

  • BetterPrivacy - BetterPrivacy is a safeguard which protects from usually not deletable Local Shared Objects (LSOs), pieces of information placed on your computer by a Flash plugin.

Not displaying special characters

If Firefox is not displaying special characters (such as foreign accent or umlauts) then go to the View menu item, Character Encoding, Auto-Detect, and choose Universal.

Preventing web sites from getting your browser history

Preventing attacks on a user's history through CSS :visited selectors - Users who want to be safe from such exploits where a web site can get your browsing history need to disable the coloring of visited links, which can be done in Firefox 3.5 and newer using the layout.css.visited_links_enabled preference in about:config.

NOTE: This was fixed in Firefox 4.0 (CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user's browsing history).

Recommended add-ons

  • Adblock Plus
  • BetterPrivacy (see above)
  • Blur (formerly DoNotTrackMe)
  • Firebug
  • FlashGot
  • HTTPS Everywhere (see above)
  • NoScript
  • Privacy Badger - Privacy Badger blocks spying ads and invisible trackers.
  • RequestPolicy

Secure connections

  • HTTPS Everywhere - HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox and Chrome extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.

Set address of new tabs

You can modify the browser.newtab.url preference on the about:config page and set its value to your preferred new tab page.

Spell check

To enable single-line spell checking change the about:config preference to layout.spellcheckDefault=2.

HTML

Space

To force a space in HTML enter the following:

 

Symbols

Please note that these may not supported by the HTML specification. They should render correctly across browsers and operating systems but there is no guarantee.

Trademark

You can render the ™ symbol in HTML with the following entities:

™ or ™

Copyright

The copyright © symbol:

© or ©

Registered trademark

The registered trademark ® symbol:

® or ®

In order to have the registered trademark symbol ® as a superscript:

<sup>&reg;</sup>

Dash

Either version may be used to denote a break in a sentence or to set off parenthetical statements (ideally with intradocument consistency). Style and usage guides vary, but often in this function en dashes are used with spaces and em dashes are used without them:

[Em dash:] A flock of sparrows—some of them juveniles—alighted and sang.
[En dash:] A flock of sparrows – some of them juveniles – alighted and sang.

The en dash (but not the em dash) is also used to indicate spans or differentiation, where it may be considered to replace "and" or "to" (but not "to" in the phrase "from … to …"):

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was fought in western Pennsylvania and along the present US–Canadian border (Edwards, pp. 81–101).

The em dash (but not the en dash) is also used to set off the sources of quotes:

"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing." — Oscar Wilde
  • The en dash "–":
&ndash;
  • The em dash "—":
&mdash;

Apostrophe

Contractions

A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters and sounds.

As mentioned in Which Unicode character should represent the English apostrophe?, the character you should use to represent the English apostrophe is U+02BC (MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE).

This looks like ʼ and is represented in html as &#700;

Other uses

It appears that all uses of a single apostrophe that do not call for closing quotation marks (U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) should also use U+02BC (above).

Internet Explorer

If Internet Explorer is crashing often, try going to Internet Options and in the Advanced tab uncheck Enable third-party browser extensions. Restart your computer for it to take effect.

DNS servers

Checking all checkboxes on a page

Go to the page you want to check all the boxes on and enter the following in the address bar of your browser:

javascript:function check_all_in_document(doc){var c=new Array();c=doc.getElementsByTagName('input');for(var i=0;i<c.length;i++){if(c[i].type=='checkbox'){c[i].checked=true;}}}check_all_in_document(window.document);for(var j=0;j<window.frames.length;j++){check_all_in_document(window.frames[j].document);}

You can also make a Bookmarklet of it, if you wish to and know how. This allows it to work even with NoScript installed.

Delete Flash cache

If Flash is misbehaving or slow, try deleting the files here:

%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player

%appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player

Just open your Run box and paste them in one at a time.

Security

You should disable SSL 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 in your browsers, as they are insecure.

  • Firefox: In the address line of new tab, type in about:config and hit enter. Click the box saying you will be careful. In the Search bar, enter security.tls.version.min. If security.tls.version.min is zero, change it to 1 by right clicking security.tls.version.min and choose Modify. If is a 1 or higher, leave it alone. Note that a number greater than 1 may not work properly with some secure websites.
  • Internet Explorer: Go to Internet Options. In the Advanced tab, uncheck Use SSL 2.0 and uncheck Use SSL 3.0 (if checked).

Outlook.com cookies

If you use two-factor authentication for outlook.com, it will ask you if you wish to have it remember your computer, so you are not required to confirm your account again on that computer. It remembers your computer using cookies. The following cookies are what it will save on your computer, so you have to make sure you do not have your browser set to delete some or all of these cookies:

  • 1drv.ms
  • adnxs.com
  • asm.skype.com
  • atwola.com
  • blu179.mail.live.com
  • h.live.com
  • live.com
  • login.live.com
  • login.microsoftonline.com
  • login.skype.com
  • mail.live.com
  • proxy-dm2-people.directory.live.com
  • skype.com
  • skypeassets.com

The ones with live.com are likely to be the most important ones.

Post and share Google Drive images

In Google Drive you can get a link to images. However, instead of the link just showing the image, it takes you to a Google page with the image on it. This makes it impossible to post the image on forums or just share the image.

To do that, use the URL https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1i2mwpaZHDV6x-DBsxwvwJG4KEh2AThWX , replacing the code after id= with the image ID in the Google sharing link.