Tab Candy which is a feature of Firefox 4 will completely change the way we think of "browser tabs" in the future.  This one innovative feature may push Firefox to the forefront over Chrome in user interface as a result.

Techrepublic does a good in depth review of Tab Candy showing screen shots on how it works and you can see this video demonstration on how Tab Candy changes the game for internet browsing:

An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Tab Candy allows you to drag out websites and group them in sections and categories on your browser space with little live images of the sites themselves, instead of having tabs where you have to click on the tab to see the site, you can group your sites into the same "tab folder" which sits on your browser page.  It is almost like your browser becomes an OS desktop with each page becoming a folder or picture that you can open, close or organize together.

The ability to have groups of websites in the same "tab" are incredible and this will allow for increased productivity while browsing for sure.

One caveat is performance, Firefox already is losing in the performance battle against Chrome, Opera and Safari and having so many live sites in this format could further decrease performance if they don’t implement it right and improve the browser efficiency.

Still, I think tabs at the top of the browser bar are going to be a thing of the past very soon.

-Dragon Blogger

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What is the fastest browser for surfing the Internet?  Don’t take my word for it, one of the latest browser speed tests from ExtremeTech shows that Opera 10.5 (though Opera 10.6 is even faster) has slighty faster website rendering performance than any other browser with Google Chrome being second and Safari just trailing behind Google Chrome.  The overall reason why I chose to switch to Google Chrome as my default browser however is that Google Chrome has a much faster start up time than Opera and has a much smaller memory footprint, though I must admit I use Opera 10.6, Google Chrome and FireFox 3.6 almost every day on my computers for one reason or another.

I wrote an article on one of the many reasons I chose Google Chrome instead of FireFox but the primary reason was because Firefox was just rendering web pages too slowly and even with Fasterfox and all the about:config tweaks I could implement, I could not stop the browser from crashing repeatedly over some sites and consuming over 700MB of RAM if I worked on the browser for more than four or five hours.  Google Chrome is much leaner and when testing the same addons for Firefox on Google Chrome I noticed virtually no performance degradation on Chrome when those same addons would noticeably slow FireFox down.  A good test is for you to test the SEOQuake plug-in for Firefox and Chrome and you will see a prime example.

If you are looking for the fastest web browser on the Internet, you will have to look no further than Google Chrome or Opera 10.6 which are both the fastest browsers on the Internet according to ExtremeTech which is a highly reputable technology website that I go to read trusted reviews and product tests.

Which is your favorite browser and why?  Note:  I have high hopes for Firefox 4 and would like to see Mozilla back on top.

-Dragon Blogger

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Here is a video demo to show you how to delete form entries in Firefox that were either created by mistake (typo) or you just don’t want to use anymore. This allows you to remove just the entries you want without flushing your entire browser cache and starting over.

Here are the steps for those who don’t want to watch the video:

• Click on the form field you want to clear some entries
• Hit the “down arrow” on the keyboard
• Highlight the entry you want to remove
• Press “Shift + Delete” on the keyboard

This will permanently remove that one entry from cache, and you won’t see it as a selectable option anymore. Repeat the above for all fields and entries you want to clear manually.

Just a little tip I picked up.

-Dragon Blogger

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I was asked by a friend on how to get youtube and other downloaded video’s ported over to their iPOD Nano so they can be watched.  In addition, since mostly Music Video’s were downloaded my friend wanted to them to categorize to be placed in the “Music Video’s” category that comes standard with iPod Nano.  I found this to be a challenging task, but one that was very fun to figure out.

This process consists of 4 steps:
Step 1:  You have to download YouTube and other video’s off of the web.
Step 2:  Convert the video to MP4 iPOD movie format
Step 3:  Categorize the Video as “Television Show” or “Music Video”  (Optional)
Step 4:  Sync the video(s) to your iPOD

• Step 1:  Downloading the YouTube or Movie Video.

I have used numerous firefox plug-ins to download youtube video’s and two of the ones that work best for me are:
“Fast Video Download” and or “Magic’s Video Download”
Both install icons at the bottom task bar, and when you are your youtube video site, you just click on the icon and select to download the video.  In some cases, you need to repeat the click and download, since it won’t take the first time.  This is common with Fast Video Download, but it does work eventually.

TIP:  Once the YouTube video starts to play, pause it and then start the download so you don’t waste bandwith playing the video at the same time.

Once you save your .flv files to a common folder, the next step is to convert them to MP4 iPOD Movie Format

Here is Pic of Using Fast Video Download to save “Disturbed:  Inside The Fire” video from YouTube.

• Step 2:  Converting the .flv movie to MP4 iPOD Format

I have tried many programs and my absolute favorite is AONE Software’s “FLV to AVI MPEG WMV 3GP MP4 iPod Converter V4.2″, this piece of software is so incredibly powerful and easy to use.

1. Open program up
2. Add your Source Files
3. Select your output type “MP4 MPEG-4 Video Format”
4. Select your video quality
5. Select your output folder
6. Click Convert Button

See Image Below:

• Step 3:  Categorize the Video (This step can be skipped if you don’t care, and you don’t mind your Music Video’s or Video’s showing up as just “Movie” in the iPOD Nano.

iTunes is the only program that I know of that can categorize your movie as a “Television Show” or a “Music Video”.  I have tried every other method out there, including some sites that say edit the “Comment” and add [MV] for Music Video, even used Atomic Parsley, which can edit all ID3 tag metadata, but it cannot categorize and make the Video show up as an “iPOD Music Video”.

So Alas, iTunes is your only option if you really want to separate your movies into the default categories.  Note:  If you want to just create a video play list, you can do this in iTunes, or WinAmp.  I highly recommend WinAmp and use it for all of my mp3 -> iPOD Nano transfers, the only exception is I categorize the video with iTunes.  WinAmp will put the direct mp3 files directly on your iPOD without having to convert them to AAC format first which is very annoying.

1. Open up iTunes
2. Click File -> (Add Folder to library if you have more than one video in same folder) or (Add file to library)
3. Click on Movies (The movies should show up here)

Note:  You must do the following on each file individually, you cannot edit the Video Tags when you mass select files

1. Edit Each File one at a time
2. Right Click on File
3. Click Get Info
4. Click the “Video” tab
5. Select “Music Video” or “TV Show” in the “Video Kind” Drop Down

See Image Below:

• Step 4:  Sync the Video(s) to your iPOD

This is easy, now you just drag and drop, or sync as you would any normal song or music to your iPOD.
Note, at this point you don’t have to use iTUNES to sync, iTUNES did it’s job by Categorizing the Video, so you can use WinAmp to sync the video to your iPOD and it will still show up in the right category folder.

If anyone wants instructions on how to use WinAmp and your iPOD, let me know this also took some figuring out and research, but I love WinAmp and have used it for years.  The music library is so much easier to navigate in WinAmp in my opinion, than in iTunes.

Note for Ubuntu Users:

I have been trying for weeks to get the equivalent proces for Ubuntu but could find no firefox plug-ins for ubuntu to download video’s from YouTube, though there is the ffmpeg program which is freeware and does a great job of converting FLV movies to MP4 iPOD Video Format.  Unless you setup iTunes with WINE, there is no way to categorize the video’s into “TV Shows or Music Video’s” on Ubuntu.  SongBird is my favorite program for syncing mp3 files to iPOD on Ubuntu, but I haven’t tested whether or not it handles MP4 Video Format’s, I know it won’t delete some MP4 Video’s from the iPOD, even though I select them and delete, they aren’t removed from the iPOD.

Here are some helpful links again to all the software used:

Firefox Plug-in’s:

• Fast Video Download:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3590

• Magic’s Video Download:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6033

• AONE Software’s “FLV to AVI MPEG WMV 3GP MP4 IPOD Converter”

http://www.aone-soft.com/flv_to_avi_mpeg_wmv_3gp_mp4_ipod_converter.htm

• Itunes:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

• WinAmp:

http://www.winamp.com/player

• UPDATE

I have found a great free website and software that can combine Step 1 and Step 2.

Vixy.net is an online FLV to MP4 Converter that can take your youtube link and instantly convert the file to MP4 compatible format and allow you to download it to your desktop.  The best part about it is that it is absolutely free.  You can use the website, or download the free application to your desktop.

The only problem is it names the file some obscure random character code of names, and it doesn’t do batch files.    So I would still use the AONE’s Software for that, but for free you can’t beat the occasional instant conversion.

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