OStatic

If you're regularly saddled with repetitive computing tasks and you use the Firefox browser, one of the most useful of all Firefox extensions you can add to your arsenal is IMacros from iOpus. The download is free, and it shows up as a button on your Firefox toolbar for easy availability. This extension allows you to automate numerous tasks in Firefox, from mundane ones like visiting the same sites every day, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, to automation of complex web development tasks. Here's how it works.

If youοΎ’re a Web developer, you likely already know about Firebug--the amazing web development add-in for Firefox. (It was one of WebWorkerDaily's 6 recommended Firefox extensions for web workers and readers wrote in about it in response to our list too.) But if you havenοΎ’t been following the Firebug development blog, you may not know the latest news: Firebug 1.2 has moved from alpha to beta, and itοΎ’s ready for Firefox 3. even though the Release Candidate for Firefox 3 doesn't yet work with many other extensions. WebWorkerDaily has a report on version 1.2's better Javascript debugging, new console and more. Check it out.

If you're a user of the Firefox browser and haven't yet experimented with the Greasemonkey extension for it, downloadable for free here, you're in for a treat. The basic goal of Greasemonkey is to allow you to customize the way a web page displays and behaves by using small bits of JavaScript. The good news, if you're not adept with JavaScript, is that a thriving community of Greasemonkey users posts useful scripts for common applications that you can install in seconds for free. Many scripts are posted every day. Alternatively, it's easy to learn to create your own scripts. Read on for seven excellent example scripts, and see how Greasemonkey turns Firefox into a muscular web customization front-end.

Our sister site WebWorkerDaily is out with a collection of good stories of interest to open sourcers. Check out Mike Gunderloy's round-up of nine Firefox extensions optimized for privacy protection (Ostatic has its own collection of good extensions too). WWD also has a good contrarian opinion about OpenID, the single sign-on initiative that many open source projects favor. Finally, ever heard of Calais? It's a Reuters-owned semantic web service that takes in content and returns semantic metadata - lists of people, companies, events, etc. WWD's article discusses Calais Module for Drupal, and Gnosis, a Calais-enabling Firefox extension.

If you want to put a boatload of useful open source applications on a computer or, as I do, on a pocket USB drive so that you can have them with you at all times, there are now some very fast ways to do this. MacLibre is a great way to get tons of good free, open source apps in one download for Mac users. For Windows users, as I've written about before PortableApps.com is also a great way to get many free applications in one free download. So what kinds of applications are we talking about?

As we noted earlier today, after five beta versions have gone through testing, Mozilla has delivered Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of version 3 of the Firefox browser, for Windows, the Mac and Linux. I've been using all the previous beta versions, and while I'm still frustrated that I can't use my extensions with RC1, the rendering speed is so much faster than previous versions that I'm ready to use it as my main browser most of the time. It is still pre-release software, but the speed and several of the new features are truly welcome additions to almost everybody's favorite open source browser. Here's a tour of what's under the hood.

The official first Release Candidate for Firefox 3--the next, much faster version of the open source browser that could--is now available. It hit that milestone last night. This release is all about stability and speed and bug fixes; there arenοΎ’t any huge new features to trumpet if youοΎ’ve been watching the betas. But if you had trouble with beta 4 or beta 5 (which for Mike Gunderloy, who writes here, caused problems), the official Release Candidate is much better. Like Mike, I've been using Firefox 3 since early in its cycle. The improvements over the previous versions in rendering speeds are palpable, although this release still doesn't handle my extensions. Check out more on what Mike has to say at our sister blog WebWorkerDaily and stay tuned for updates this weekend as we take RC1 for a spin.

In a story, The Best Video Download Tools on our sister blog NewTeeVee, Liz Gannes has identified a very useful extension for (almost) everybody's favorite open source browser: Firefox. Liz's pick is optimized for downloading and saving video segments for the web--for those items you don't just want to stream and forget about. I've taken her extension for a spin in Firefox, and it looks very good for anyone doing a fair amount of web video viewing. It comes with a helpful set of tutorials, too.

Linux-based mobile phones have just picked up added momentum, thanks to Verizon Wireless. Numerous Linux phones and phones based on Google's Android (Linux-based) platform were announced early this year at the Mobile World Congress, and many companies joined the LiMo Foundation--the organization behind improved mobile Linux technology. However, while U.S.-based phone makers announced plans for Linux phones, not a single large U.S. service provider joined the LiMo Foundation's cause. That's changed in a big way now, as Verizon Wireless becomes the first U.S.-based operator to join the LiMo foundation. Mozilla and others have just joined as well.