Mauro Pirrone | Blog

Firefox 3 uses a new bar for displaying browser history URLs. It is designed to make it easier to browse websites. Personally I love it, but some people simply hate it! Here’s how you can replace the awesome bar with the old one

Help setting up a world record for the most software downloaded within 24 hours. Simply go to the Download Day website and pledge to download Firefox 3. When the download day arrives, you will be notified by email to download it.

Help spread the word by telling all your friends, colleagues and family members to participate in this worldwide event!

Here are some Firefox extensions which I find very useful. If you would like to suggest other Firefox extensions which are not listed over here, feel free to do so by sending a comment.

General

PicLens
PicLens transforms your browser into a visually stunning experience for enjoying online photos and videos. It is also integrated with Facebook. Must try this out…it’s amazing!

ColorfulTabs
Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying enjouting the overall appearance of the interface.

Download Statusbar
View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.

DownlaodHelper
The easy way to download Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.

PDF Download
PDF Download relieves the pain experienced when encountering PDF files on the Web. Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.

Extended Statusbar
A Statusbar with Speed, Percentage, Time and loaded size (like in Opera)

Gmail Notifier
A notifier for Gmail accounts.

ChatZilla
A clean, easy to use and highly extensible Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client.

Web Development

Web Developer
A do everything addon for web developers. Must install!

IE Tab
An extension which uses IE’s rendering engine to view web pages inside Firefox. Very useful when you want to switch between Firefox and IE.

Page validator
Validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service.

Firebug
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

FireFTP
FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

Selenium IDE
Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. Selenium IDE includes the entire Selenium Core, allowing you to easily and quickly record and play back tests in the actual environment that they will run.

Social Networking

Digg Firefox Extension
The Digg Firefox extension allows you to interact with Digg (http://www.digg.com) and see information about the web page you are currently viewing while you use Firefox.

MVC which stands for Model View Controller is an architectural design pattern used for building modularised web applications. The main idea behind this model is to separate the business logic from the user interface. As a result, the application would be easier to manage and maintain since any changes in the business logic will not affect the user interface.

MVC consists of:

• Model which consists of the application’s data and the business rules (methods) used to modify the data.
• View is the application’s presentation layer which consists of text, buttons, and other objects.
• Controller which uses a model to invoke methods for data processing and views to output the results.

As with regards to the PHP programming language, there are many open-source frameworks which you can use including the following:

Zend Framework
Zend Framework is well designed and specifically targeted for PHP5. The nice thing about ZF is that all modules are self-contained. Practically should can take any module from this framework and plug it into your application. Video Tutorial

CodeIgniter
CodeIgniter works with PHP 4 and 5. CI is very easy to use and it is very well documented. Video Tutorials

CakePHP
CakePHP works with PHP 4 and 5. It is feature-rich and has built-in support for ORM (Object Relational Model) and Ajax. Video Tutorials

Symfony
Symfony is much like Ruby on Rails since you have to use a command line. Video Tutorials

All the above frameworks support MVC but there are some differences when it comes to the framework’s functionality. I would suggest trying them out!

Here’s a list of my top 10 favourite free / open source software. Feel free to send me your comments.

1. Mozilla Firefox / Mozilla Firefox Portable- Simply the best web browser. There are tons of extensions which you can install.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird / Mozilla Thunderbird Portable - Lightweight and fast email client
3. Launchy - As you type search utility for windows. You must try this out! (Much better than Vista’s search)
4. KeyPass - Lightweight and portable password manager application
5. Amanda - Full-featued backup solution
6. Foxit Reader - An exclusive small and fast PDF Reader. Consumes less memory and text search is much faster!
7. PrimoPDF - Create PDF files optimized for print, screen, ebook, or prepress
8. Notepad++ - Advanced text editor which supports a variety of programming languages
9. TrueCrypt - An open-source disk-encryption software
10. Pidgin - Multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that works with MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo!, etc