Firefox is one of the best, if not the best internet browser available to us. It is a free open-source application, and is made by Mozilla. One of its great and innovative features that it had since its release was the ability to use user-created addons. Those who took advantage of this ability to add whatever functionality that they needed benefited both in their experience of the internet, and also in terms of productivity. They have indeed proved invaluable in aiding our daily lives, as they perform tasks ranging from helping us keep track of our social networking, to managing our downloads, or even blocking advertisements on web pages. And as another year goes by, we look back at all the extensions that have aided us in our never ending quest to improve our browsing experience. Here are some that have been proved particularly useful.

1. AdBlock Plus

Advertisements, advertisements, advertisements. While they are a key part of many websites' revenue, some ads are simply obnoxious; they slow down our page loads, eat up our computer resources, and get in the way of the content that we actually do want to see. While we can't physically remove them, we can simply prevent them from being displayed. AdBlock Plus does just that, allowing you to block specific pictures, scripts, or other elements, or anything from a certain URL. Once blocked, a file will never again be downloaded, meaning that less of your time is spent loading banner advertisements, and more of your time can be spent browsing, or doing other things that you enjoy. The extension also comes with several built-in blacklists, and you can also choose to whitelist sites where you do not want AdBlock Plus to block ads. Easy to use and effective, this extension is definitely one of the best extensions of the year.

2. DownThemAll!

DownThemAll! is a download manager extension (the only download manager for Firefox) that has great functionality. It has a built in download accelerator that can speed up your downloads by up to 4x, and allows you to pause and resume your downloads freely. DTA also has tools that allow you to quickly download all the elements on a webpage, with filters that you can dictate to determine which types of files to download, and also lends a great deal of control to the user, so that you can get the best performance from the addon based on what you want.

DTA also includes features that increase convenience such as listing every link, image, or embedded object contained in a webpage, and an auto-renaming tool that renames your download files based on your needs, making it a great addon that is packed full of functionality. It is open source and free, and is supported by your donations.

3. Firefox Universal Uploader (Fireuploader)

The Firefox Universal Uploader is a simple extension that allows us to upload files to websites such as Youtube, Facebook, and Box.net from the comfort of your browser, using a simple interface. You can upload any number of files to multiple websites at once, and to multiple accounts, from the same window, rather than having to go to each website and filling out the respective upload forms. Files upload instantly, and the extension displays information such as upload progress, file size, and allows you to set details for the files, such as category, tags, and title from the same interface.

While still early in its development (at the time of writing, it is in version 0.3.8) and having fairly rudimentary features, the Firefox Universal Uploader is easy to use, and makes uploading to multiple websites and/or multiple accounts a snap.

4. FireBug

FireBug is the developer's dream addon, providing detailed insight of webpage code, and allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in real time for any web page. Firebug's ability to inspect the webpage code allows a web developer to instantly pinpoint the code for any one element on the page, providing valuable information to the inner workings of certain layouts, or scripts. When used by a knowledgeable individual, this extension lends control like no other Firefox debugging addon does, and well complements any web developer's toolkit.

At first, you should have a host with Apache (or Litespeed), MySQL (4.0) and PHP (4.3) support. This tutorial goes these things through with host that have Apache. In this tutorial my host was "localhost", which mean I had installed required tools on my own PC. I expect you are installing a public Wordpress blog so the easiest way is find a host that support these features. FTP connection is suggested because uploading all the files with browser interface may let you down.

I am not going through the best free webhosts or either how to use FTP. You have to search for a tutorial and find out yourself. That's your job. I expect you can create a MySQL database on your host yourself.

Let's start!

1. Download Wordpress Files

   Before you can install Wordpress, you should have its files. They can be found at Wordpress.org.Here is few shots for navigating on that site.
   
   
   Click the "Download Wordpress 2.5" button or the "Download" tab link in the upper right corner. Choose the download format depending the tools you have.
   
   
   I think, the most common system is Windows XP with its own integrated zip file extract tool. In this case, you should choose the zip format (red box) but if you have 7-zip (or compatible tool) installed, you can select .tar.gz too (the blue link bottom of the red box).
   If you are not sure, just click the red box because zip format is a little more common.
   After clicking the download type you want, follow the instructions given by browser, download and extract the archive to a directory you should find later.

2. Copying Files For The Installation

   In this step you should find out yourself how do you upload extracted files to your host.

3. Preparing the MySQL database

   In this step you should check that you have a MySQL database for your installation with server domain (if other than "localhost"), username, password (and prefix if you're MySQL database for multiple web services)

4. Installing Wordpress

   This is the part you see that your host fills all the requirements you need to run Wordpress and you have enough details and your details are correct.
   First you should give your browser the URL of your installation directory. If you write your URL right, this kind of screen should appear.
   
   
   
   The next message might be this kind. It means that the script can't create and write a new file to the directory. The easiest way is to change temporary the whole directory permissions. Permissions can be easily changed using FTP or browser interface.
   When you have fixed this, reload the page and you should get this kind of check list. It seems like an error but it is normal when installing Wordpress. Click "Create a Configuration File".
   
   
   The next message might be this kind. It means that the script can't create and write a new file to the directory. The easiest way is to change temporary the whole directory permissions. Permissions can be easily changed using FTP or browser interface.
   When you have fixed this, reload the page and you should get this kind of check list.
   Click "Let's Go!" button to continue.
   
   
   Insert the following information to the form.
   Database Name: Might be user name of your host, serial number of your host's databases, username_name (where the "name" is user's defined) or anything else cointaining numbers, letters and "_" mark.
   User name: Can be your user name in your host or the name of your MySQL database
   Password: The password of your user name or other predefined password
   Database Host: Most common is "localhost" which means the MySQL database is physically or virtually on the same server as your files. Possible domains can be "sqlx.domain.com" where "x" means a number of the server and "domain.com" the domain of your host. If you don't find any other information about MySQL server domain, it is "localhost".
   Table Prefix: This depends on what you have installed and running on your host using MySQL database. There shouldn't be anything other service using the same prefix. If you are not going to run anything else with same database, it does not matter, what it is.
   After these have been done. Just click "Submit"
   
   
   This screen means that you have configured everything correctly and you are ready to start the installation. Click "Run the install" to continue.
   
   
   You have to choose the blog title. It can be anything depending on the use and the content of your blog.
   Your e-mail address you know, I think. After the required information given, click "Install WordPress" button to continue.
   
   
   
   After installation, this kind of info message appears. Take the username and password somewhere. You can change them later but without the old one you can't set the new one. Depending on host the recovery can be possible using e-mail but I have never required and that's why I haven't ever either tried it.
   When you have saved your account details somewhere, just click "Log In" to log in to your new blog.

Bottom line: There is practically no difference.

But if you want a fast browser, then you should look at the following options.

K-Meleon

SeaMonkey

And always remember about skins and themes. K-Meleon skins are avaliable here while here is a link to Seamonkey.

This was a good thing because I don’t want him to call me every time he wanted to update his website. Being a friend, I couldn’t ask for money from him too.

First of all, I introduced him to Microsoft FrontPage, the “Tool” for web designing newbies, but somehow he found the software difficult to use. I thought of telling him that it is very similar to MS Word, when I suddenly remembered that he didn’t know how to justify a document or format paragraphs. You must remember that I am dealing with a not-so-young guy, who’s also not very tech savvy.

Anyway, I was racking my brains, trying to remember other WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web editors. Macromedia Dreamweaver was out of the question and so was NVU.

I was nearly decided to make a website for him myself, when I suddenly remembered an article I had read – about TiddlyWiki. Created by Jeremy Ruston, TiddlyWiki, is a wiki-modeled client-side application which looks very much like a blog. It is a single self-contained HTML file that includes CSS and JavaScript code and is published under an open source license and anybody can download and use it for free.

I downloaded the blank TiddlyWiki file into my computer taking care that it's saved with an .html extension. To start building our site, first of all we changed Site Title and Subtitles. We did this by clicking the link already provided, which opens a new entry area called a Tiddler. We then edit the title by clicking the “edit” button. After changing the name, we click the “done” button on the top.

Next comes the technical part – adding to the MainMenu (on the left). You write the tiles of different Tiddlers separated by spaces. To link to that particular Tiddler, we just surround the word by brackets. For example, [[Resume]] to link to the Resume Tiddler (which we created later) so on and so forth.

By playing around, I found a way to embed images. All we need to do is to add the code:

[img[alternate text|filename or URL][link]]

My friend found it hard to understand the code. So I used an example:

[img[Walnuts |http://farm1.static.flickr.com/138/325360831_6b578688c0.jpg]]

This embeds the image of walnuts, from my Flickr page.

After almost an hour, we are done. All we had to do was load up the page to his server. My friend looked at me puzzled and asked he how he was going to do that. Oh no! I guess it means that I have to spend some more time for another lesson.