I know everyone is using Firefox, Right? But every now and again we encounter a problem that a site REQUIRES Internet Explorer. Why close Firefox and open up Internet Explorer, when you can run IE right in Firefox?

IE Tab allows you to do that!

IE Tab, an extension from Taiwan, features embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This extension is derived from the famous extension IE View, but they are quite different. While IE View always open IE-only pages in newly launched windows of Internet Explorer, IE Tab can open them in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.

Go Get It

I can’t remember the last time I actually used conventional browser based bookmarks. Unless you’re carrying a portable version of your favorite browser around with you ala thumbdrive like a geek [USB lanyards hanging around your neck are not  cool], web-based social bookmarking services are the best solution for managing and accessing your marks from multiple terminals. I’ve tried them all [del.icio.us, Blinklist, Blogmarks, ect]. The single social bookmarking service – and the most popular – which I rely on is del.icio.us.

If you’re behind the times and have trouble associating the word “social” with “bookmarks”, it’s OK. Being somewhat of a geek is the new black. [wikipedia]

If you checked del.icio.us you were probably shocked by the plain appearance. Some users embrace the minimialism of the layout. Who needs eye candy for managing and browsing bookmarks? You want eye candy? Check Blinklist. Heavy del.icio.us users are probably aware of Johnvey Hwang’s Del.icio.us director bookmarklet which Ajaxifies the del.icio.us interface. Danny Dawson took the liberty of turning the popular bookmarklet into a standalone GreaseMonkey script:

As much as I love Johnvey Hwang’s Del.icio.us Director, I got really tired of having to click his bookmarklet every time I loaded my del.icio.us links page, so I created a Greasemonkey script to do it for me. In all honesty, his bookmarklet was already optimized to become a greasemonkey script, so it only took me a minute or two to convert it.

Transient Savant » Greasemonkey Del.icio.us Director

No more clicking on a bookmarklet to access a Director interface for del.icio.us! Want to try it for yourself? You’ll need a del.icio.us account, Firefox, GreaseMonkey, and Dawson’s script here.

I just discovered the Firefoxit Firefox widgets extension. I’m still a little skeptical about a widgets system based and run from within Firefox. We’ll have to see how these widgets develop. Possible UNEASY Firefoxit widget?

Firefoxit is a Firefox extension that puts tiny little widgets or web applications on a kind of desktop launched from Firefox. [...] Sometimes apps just don’t look cool occupying an entire webpage. Firefoxit widgets are intended to be anything from a weather widget to a notepad or a spreadsheet.

Firefoxit, Firefox Widgets

If you haven’t had a chance to test our UNEASY Konfabulator widget, read up here.

Flock users are aware that in order to get your favorite Firefox extensions to play nice with Flock you’ll need to do a little .xpi editing. Mainly, editing the install.rdf. Download and install the Flocker for easy drag n’ drop conversion of Firefox extensions.

Well, I made it easier. Download Flocker and all you have to do is drag and drop a downloaded Firefox extension (a .xpi file) onto the Flocker window and you’ll have a newly modified xpi to install the extension in Flock.

Frobba.com thr33

Due note that not all Firefox extensions will work perfectly with Flock. Some extensions may work partially or not at all. If you’re interested in getting an official Flock friendly extension, contact that extension author directly. For a list of unofficial Flock extensions visit here.

Handy extension for sifting through source code:

• Creates a Colorful Chart of a Webpage’s Rendered Source Code
• Displays Dynamically Generated HTML and Static HTML Together
• Removes JavaScript Code, Displays JavaScript Output
• Works Superbly as a Visual Aid in Learning Environments

View Rendered Source Chart (Firefox Extension)

Viewing the source code for a website is a great way to see what makes a webpage tick. The downside is that all the black on white text often gets jumbled together making it hard to differentiate between tags. The View Rendered Source Chart extension (Firefox / Flock) creates an additional right-click contextual menu item which provides a color coded chart of the page source code. Firefox users can download a copy from here. A Flock friendly version can be found here.

As a follow up post to our tutorial here: How-To: Downloading Yahoo! Music Videos with Firefox & VLC. Aaron tipped us to an interesting application for OSX users which streamlines MMS:// URI browsing and discovery into one single interface.

LyFox if a program that gives you the ability to watch music videos from launch.yahoo.com. There is nothing really speacial about it. The way it works is it read the launch.yahoo.com pages and only displays the necesary information. You can view the videos straight from the program it self because it uses the windows media player internet plug-in to show the video or you can copy the MMS URL and open your desired media player and insert the url to watch the video.

FernyB :: LyFox

The PaNIC – Productivity and Networking Information Component – Firefox / Flock extension may prove to be your most valuable extension yet. How many times have you caught yourself eyeing an unapproved website at school or work? How many beads of sweat rolled down your forehead as you continued scrolling down the page cautiously looking over your shoulder every 15 seconds? Admit it! You know exactly what I’m talking about!

The PaNIC extension will close all your currently opened tabs except one. That single tab will refresh with the page of your choice activated by a keyboard shorcut (defualt Alt + `). The default “safety” page is set to open a Google search for “increasing workplace productivity”. I’m thinking the default search page will look like you’re trying to hard to cover something up. You might want to change the setting.

Get It

Tab Preview is an extension for Firefox 1.5 that shows a preview of tab contents when you move your mouse over a background tab. It’s simple to use, but surprisingly useful.

Ted’s Mozilla page – Tab Preview

Have you ever found yourself juggling too many tabs while browsing with Firefox? I’m usually bouncing between a minimum of 15 tabs. Often times I find myself wondering what the other tabs might have open. Although each tab contains a short title, most of these are cut off due to the number of open tabs. For readers utilizing Flock, I’ve mirrored a working Flock version of the Tab Preview extension here. (Right-click and select “Save as”)

Flock users that are interested in an unofficial list of working / semi-working extensions can check here.

We received a few requests concerning our tutorials for downloading music videos from Yahoo! Launch [How-To: Downloading Yahoo! Music Videos with Firefox & VLC], I decided it would only be appropriate to throw together a tutorial for importing said videos into iTunes.

Unfortunately, there are no open source [read: "free"] options for converting WMV video files into MOV files on Windows. OSX users can follow our simple tutorial here: How-To: Play WMV files in iTunes. The only option Windows users have is to utilize shareware or paid programs. These utilites can range in cost from $20 – $50. They’re not “free”. Cough, cough. Be resourceful. Keep in mind that most conversion software does include a demo period.

For this short tutorial I chose to utilize Video Cleaner Pro and Quicktime 7 Pro.

Step 1: Assuming you’ve downloaded a WMV video of your choice [read tutorial above], open Video Cleaner Pro and select the ‘Add+’ button. Select your WMV file and select ‘Open’. At the bottom of the window you’ll notice output format, video settings, audio settings, and output directory. The default settings can be left alone. The main settings to change are the output format [choose AVI] and output directory [choose the directory of your choice]. Select the ‘Convert >>’ button and wait for Video Cleaner to convert your WMV file into an AVI file.

Step 2: Next, open Quicktime Pro and select ‘File > Open File’ and locate your WMV file. Once your video opens, play the file to check for video quality. The converted file obviously falls short of being HD quality. After verifying the video, select ‘File > Export’. Default settings (Movie to Quicktime Move) can be left alone. Select ‘Save’ and wait for Quicktime to convert the large AVI file into a more manageable MOV file (~100MB). The export may take some time depending on your system specs.

Step 3: Import the newly converted file into iTunes, tag appropriately, and enjoy! Time to make use of that new Video section in iTunes 6 eh?

iPod Video users: If you plan on viewing your Yahoo! music videos on your iPod, utilize Quicktime 7 PRO to export to an iPod friendly format before importing into iTunes 6. In the export options drop down menu, select ‘Movie to iPod (320×240)’ before clicking ‘Save’. The resulting movie can then be imported into iTunes and on to your shiny new iPod video player.

Update 12/29: For a streamlined method of retrieving the required MMS:// URi, check our latest tutorial: How-To: Download music videos from Yahoo with LyFOX & VLC.

Update 10/17: Do something with your new WMV video collection. Convert the videos and import them into iTunes: How-To: Convert WMV to MOV for playback in iTunes [Windows].

Hat tip to Adam for helping throw this updated tutorial together for downloading Yahoo! Music Videos. I know a few readers were waiting patiently for updates to our How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with VLC, How-To: Download Music Videos from Yahoo Launch with Flashget, and How-To: Download 700K music video streams from Yahoo. As a forewarning, the first run through will be a bit tedious.

If you don’t have Firefox and the very useful GreaseMonkey Firefox extension installed on your system, you will not be able to complete this tutorial.

Step 1: Install the PKLaunch userscript. There are two versions. On for both OSX and Windows users. Windows users right-click here and select “Install user script”. OSX users do the same here.

Step 2: Sign in with your Yahoo account on Yahoo! Launch. Select the music video of your choice. PKLaunch will force the music video to open a new window for video playback. Make note of the drop down menu which offers different video bandwidth options. If you recall our previous tutorials, the 700K streams are higher quality videos usually reserved for SBC Yahoo! customers.

Step 3: The next step requires that you open an “info” window on the currently playing video. OSX users press ‘CMD + I’ and Windows users select ‘Tools > Page Info’ from the toolbar menu.

In the ‘Information’ window select the ‘Media’ tab. With the stream address highlighted, select the ‘Save As..’ button at the bottom of the window. When prompted with the ‘Save As..’ window, change the “medialog.ASP” filename to “medialog.TXT”.

Step 4: Open the “medialog.TXT” file in the plain text editor of your choice. Highlight the entire .ASX address and save it to your clipboard (Windows: CTRL + C; OSX: CMD + C).

Step 5: Open VLC. Go to ‘File > Open Network Stream’. Paste the previously copied .ASX address into the ‘HTTP / FTP / MMS / RTSP’ field. Make sure that the ‘Advanced / Stream output’ box at the bottom of the window is unchecked.

Step 6: This next step will differ depending on your OS. With the stream playing in VLC:

Windows users: Select ‘View > Playlist’. In the ‘Playlist’ window expand the entries until you locate a time block. It will look something like -(0:04:01). Right-click on the item and select ‘Info’. The URi field will contain the coveted MMS:// URi.

OSX users: While the stream is playing, hit CMD + I. The MMS:// address is in the URi field. Copy the address and close the window.

Step 7: Return to the main VLC window. Go to ‘File > Open Network Stream’. Paste the MMS:// URi into the ‘HTTP / FTP / MMS / RTSP’ field. Make sure that ‘Advanced / Stream Output’ is checked and select the ‘Settings’ button. In the ‘Settings’ box select the ‘File’ radio button. Specify the save path and title the video filename.WMV. Lastly, check the ‘Dump Raw Output’ box and click ‘OK’ through the settings windows. VLC will download the video to your specified directory.

If you find step by step text tutorials challenging to follow, check out the Flash video here (Windows users).