Though SQL Server Management Studio / Express has an option in the GUI itself do this (if you want, scroll below to see that option), it will not always work in the way it is expected to work. So, here is a simple set of SQL Commands that does the trick and truncates the log file to a unbelievable size saving some essential space. To do that, just open a New Query window and then type the following code:

USE <DatabaseName>
GO
DBCC SHRINKFILE(<TransactionLogName>, 1)
BACKUP LOG <DatabaseName> WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY
DBCC SHRINKFILE(<TransactionLogName>, 1)
GO

The first statement makes the database to perform the operations and the second and fourth commands just shows you the actual size of log being used by the database. The third statement is actually a backup statement but here it just truncates only the log file. So, if you’re afraid of loosing anything, please take a full database backup manually before executing the above commands.

If you’re not up for executing commands and you’re more of a GUI person, you can use the following steps to truncate the log file (though it may not work certain times)

1. Start SQL Server Management Studio / Express
2. Connect to your Database Server
3. Expand the Databases in the left side list
4. Right click on your Database name and choose Tasks -> Shrink -> Files from the popup menu
5. Choose File type as Log
6. Choose any of the following three options as per your need:
   1. Release unused space – Frees any unused space in the Log file (mostly this will not save any disk space)
   2. Reorganize pages before releasing unused space and choose a minimum size as you please in the Shrink file to option.
   3. Empty file by migrating the data to other files in the same filegroup
7. Click on OK
8. After execution completion, open your Database files location (you can find that from the Properties of your Database) and see whether the Log file (with extension LDF) is reduced.

If above steps doesn’t seem to work, please try the commands I’ve specified above as they’re guaranteed to work.

Let me know your if you face any problems in the comments…

Microsoft created a website called Office2010themovie.com based on Blockbuster Movie designs.

They mentioned that the Technical Preview will be available to general public until July 2010. However, the Office 2010 Technical Preview applications will start automatically shutting down after 2 hours of use starting from March 2010.

Though the official version of Technical Preview is not expected until July 2009, Torrent sites has already released the version and is quite popular because of the increasing number of downloads.

The major change in the new Office 2010 is that it is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors (something that should’ve happened long before). The next major thing I noticed is that the design has gone under a major rework based on Office 2007 theme. They also introduced new themes for Office Suites (however, only default theme is available in Technical Preview). The screen shots so far leaked are amazing and I tried the 64 bit version of Office 2010 in my Vista PC and was awesome by its beauty. Major rework has gone on many applications in terms of functionality. The ribbon from Office 2007 is now available in all the applications (Office 2007 does not show ribbon in some applications like Outlook to make them feel compatible with Office 2003). Instead of the round button that showed Start Menu in Office 2007, it is now a rectangle button which shows a different screen for all menu operations and allows you to go back to work area. All office suites are following their official color schemes throughout the Menus. The performance is slow but acceptable due to its beauty. Unusual introduction is Minimize, Close and Cancel links in Splash screens.

My longing for this has been answered mightily by a Japanese freelancer who developed a small program named GDI++ that works on top of a Open Source product named FreeType (an advanced font rendering program across OSes). This small program works beautifully and adjusts the font rendering to Mac OS X like smooth and clarity all over the Windows. It is so beautiful how it can turn a boring looking windows to smooth and clear display. See the comparison shots below:

Without GDI++

With GDI++

Here are some instructions on how to get this working on your computer:

1. Download GDI++.
2. Extract this ZIP file in any directory, for example: C:\gdi
3. Double-click the file: gditray.exe
4. Now, your task bar you can note a “G”, like the image:
   
5. Double-click it, it should start glowing green:
   
6. Enjoy this beautiful font-smoothing.
7. You can adjust the font-smoothing level by right clicking this icon and choosing Use Preferences and selecting any of the three Japanese letters shown there.

Try it out…

As my previous post on SharpDevelop explained, SharpDevelop in many ways a better alternative to Visual Studio. However, the significant differences between these two and the advantages or disadvantages over each other are explained here.

Advantages of SharpDevelop over Visual Studio:

1. Open Source (Full Source Code available freely)
2. Completely Free to use for both Commercial and Personal use
3. Supports all .NET Framework, Compact Framework, WinForms (with excellent extra GTK# for X-Window based systems), Console Application, Direct3D (wow, Game Development anyone?), WPF, and Windows and Web Services.
4. Supports additional languages like Boo, F#, ILAsm and Python (very good)  out of box apart from C# and VB.NET.
5. Supports Installer Creation (a very likable feature works better than VS in my opinion)
6. Light on Resources and faster on Building (refer Point 8 below). The last time I checked, has only 80 KB of RAM with 0.x% CPU Usage even after opening a bulky WinForms project and keeping couple of forms open in design mode. (A relief from VS’s usual 128 KB or more RAM and 4-5% CPU Usage)
7. Inbuilt Re-factoring Engine (you’ll need the paid software JetBrains ReSharper if you want this in Visual Studio)
8. Parallel Build support for Multi-core machines (faster building, very likable feature which is sadly not available in VS as of 2005)
9. Supports important Visual Studio add-ons like FxCop, StyleCop, NUnit, PartCover etc.
10. Version Controlling with Subversion (which is far better a solution than VSS. I’ll post another post soon explaining the benefits of SVN over VSS. You can of course use AnkhSVN to get this in Visual Studio though.)
11. Wide range of very useful Add-ons (as the case with most Open Source projects)
12. Inbuilt Documentation Generator (Sandcastle, SHFB)
13. Very likable Class Diagram and Code Coverage views
14. Very likable F# Interactive, Boo Interpreter and Python Console
15. Supports Mono (the alternative .NET 2.0 Framework for Linux, BSD and Mac OS X)

What I see as disadvantages of SharpDevelop:

1. Code Editor has some minor glitches (I’ve seen some glitches on code folding and unfolding though it’s just visual not physical)
2. Lack of VSS Support (though I’m not looking forward to it as it’s a proprietary version control system to be included in any open source project like this)
3. Lack of Visual Studio like Object Browser (I miss that one here, though #Develop has very good Class Browser)
4. Somewhat Buggy (I’ve seen it crashing sometimes but understandable due to its Open Source nature)

But apart from this, programmatically speaking, you can do everything that you can do in VS with #Develop. It’s pretty impressive for a Open Source project.

Now, you can shed all your worries of that and embrace the open source community for making a powerful Open Source IDE named SharpDevelop. It was so powerful that you can seriously consider it for a complete drop-in replacement of Microsoft Visual Studio. It supports almost all of the Visual Studio features and much more. It supports Subversion for Version Control. In my opinion Subversion is far great an Version Control system than VSS. Here is the screen shot of how it looks:

For starters, Firefox Version 3.1 comes with the new JavaScript engine (just like Chrome’s V8 engine) which is far powerful and faster. Though the memory issues still plague Firefox users, I’ve seen the beta version of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 beats that. So, here is my guide to those who would like functionality and look and feel like Google Chrome in Firefox.

Making your Firefox 3.0.5 look like Google Chrome (A Compromise actually…)

(NOTE: Some of the Extension needs you to login to Mozilla in order to install them as they are experimental)

1. Download and Install the Chromifox Theme from Mozilla Add-ons site
2. If fortunate and have Vista, download and install the ChromiGlass extension to give Chrome touch
3. If unfortunate and have XP or Linux, download and install the Total ReChrome extension to give Chrome touch
4. Download and Install the New Tab button on right extension to have new tab functionality like Chrome
5. Download and Install the LocationBar extension to have Chrome like address bar functionality
6. Download and Install the PersonalMenu extension to have Chrome like Menus
7. Download and Install the Download Statusbar extension to have Chrome like Downloads
8. [Experimental] Download and Install the autoHide Statusbar extension to have Chrome like status bar
9. Download and Install the Google Toolbar for Firefox
10. After installing all these, restart Firefox. You’ll already be seeing the Chrome like look and feel.
11. Right click on the Toolbar and remove the tick in Menu Bar
12. Right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. Drag and drop Stop button to the next of Go button in address bar (this will make Go button become Stop once a page starts loading, just like Chrome)
13. From the same Customize box, Drag and Drop Personal Menu icon to the right side of Stop button. Close customize box.
14. Click on the Personal Menu icon (now will look like Chrome’s). Choose Edit Menu and choose whatever menu options that you want from Left side to Right side to have them under this single menu.
15. The Google Toolbar for Firefox (Version 5+) will mimic the new tab page feature of Google Chrome. However, if you don’t want it, you can turn off that feature alone from the Settings page of the Google toolbar.
16. Now, you should be seeing Firefox as Chrome

Making your Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 look and function like Google Chrome (A sure shot…)

(NOTE: Some of the Extension needs you to login to Mozilla in order to install them as they are experimental)

1. If you don’t have already, Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 from Mozilla website.
2. Download and Install the Chromifox 2 Theme from Mozilla Add-ons site
3. Download and Install the Total ReChrome extension to give Chrome touch
4. Download and Install the New Tab button on right extension to have new tab functionality like Chrome
5. Download and Install the PersonalMenu extension to have Chrome like Menus
6. Download and Install the Download Statusbar extension to have Chrome like Downloads
7. Download and Install the Google Toolbar for Firefox
8. After installing all these, restart Firefox. You’ll already be seeing the Chrome like look and feel.
9. Right click on the Toolbar and remove the tick in Menu Bar
10. Right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. Drag and drop Stop button to the next of Go button in address bar (this will make Go button become Stop once a page starts loading, just like Chrome)
11. From the same Customize box, Drag and Drop Personal Menu icon to the right side of Stop button. Close customize box.
12. Click on the Personal Menu icon (now will look like Chrome’s). Choose Edit Menu and choose whatever menu options that you want from Left side to Right side to have them under this single menu.
13. The Google Toolbar for Firefox (Version 5+) will mimic the new tab page feature of Google Chrome. However, if you don’t want it, you can turn off that feature alone from the Settings page of the Google toolbar.
14. Now, you should be seeing Firefox as Chrome

The final result is as below:

After searching in internet for various times and provided with loads of steps that either failed to work or entirely different when you try to execute them, I’ve finally hacked my iPhone 2G to the latest 2.1 Firmware by using the basic methods that are supported and reproducible at any point of time. For the benefit of Info Scraps readers,  here is the full step by step guide to unlock your own iPhone 2G to 2.1 Firmware on Windows. Please NOTE that these steps may or may not work for iPhone 3G. Particularly the QuickPwn for Windows version mentioned here was not programmed to work with iPhone 3G according to the developers. So, please use these methods ONLY in iPhone 2G and of course on Windows only. Mac OS X users obviously have better and easier ways to hack the iPhone 2G or 3G which I will write in another post.

1. If you do not already have iTunes 8 or have an older version of iTunes in your PC, first step would be to go to Apple Official iTunes Website to download the latest version appropriate to your Operating System. (NOTE: Windows Vista x64 users like me should ONLY download the 64-bit version mentioned in this Page as using the other version will cause an Warning upon setup)
2. Install the latest version of iTunes into your PC and restart the Computer if asked, otherwise, start the iTunes.
3. Connect your iPhone 2G to the Desk Charger and plug the USB port to the PC. iTunes will automatically start up upon successful connection of iPhone 2G. If it does not, don’t panic, just start iTunes manually and it’ll detect the connected iPhone 2G.
4. Even though the steps mentioned here will not erase your data, I can’t guarantee you if something unwanted happens. So, it’s a better idea to backup everything in the iPhone by right clicking on the iPhone button in the left side bar of iTunes and choosing Backup option. Also, make sure you sync all your data to your PC using iTunes before you try updating the firmware.
5. Upon connection, the iTunes will ask you to update your iPhone to latest 2.1 firmware. If it does not ask you, don’t panic, just click on the Update button on the iPhone summary page in iTunes. (NOTE: look at the version number it says carefully. If by the time you’re reading this post, Apple released yet another update to the iPhone firmware, you might probably be upgrading to a later version than 2.1 firmware for which these steps won’t be effective. So, if the version number you see in the update dialog is bigger than 2.1 firmware, follow alternative steps I’ve mentioned at the bottom of this post to find the 2.1 firmware update to your iPhone 2G)
6. The update process will take some time, leave your iPhone 2G connected. The 2.1 firmware itself is a 230 MB sized file. iTunes will first download this file and then only update your iPhone 2G to this firmware. So, the waiting time will vary depending upon the speed of your internet connection.
7. After the update, your iPhone 2G will restart. Just unplug it from the Desktop Charger while it’s being restarted. This will prevent an nagging message from iTunes that your SIM Card is locked and your iPhone 2G put into restore mode (some rare cases only). If you’re not quick enough or forgot to unplug it while it’s restarting, nothing is lost. Just proceed down the steps. ONLY in case if your iPhone 2G is put into restore mode by your iTunes, you have to follow the alternative steps mentioned at the bottom of this post to get it back to normal mode.
8. Now, you’ll notice that only emergency calls are allowed in your iPhone. Nothing to worry about. This is the locking feature of iPhone 2G and iTunes. Whether you unplugged it from iTunes while restarting or not, it’ll still lock the iPhone 2G as you’re using the latest firmware but not using a genuine SIM Card.
9. Now, visit the iPhone-Dev blog to download the QuickPwn 2.1 for Windows software from there. If you’re NOT familiar with Torrents and was not able to download the official version or the mirror versions mentioned there, you can download my own version here which is the same as the official version (you can verify it by using the SHA1 signature mentioned in that post if you know how to verify file signatures).
10. Now, close your iTunes and plug your iPhone 2G to Desktop Charger and connect the USB Port to PC. If iTunes starts up again, just close it. You wouldn’t need it for unlocking.
11. Extract the QuickPwn21-1.zip file you’ve downloaded from Step 8 to your convenient location. You’ll find a README.txt file and QuickPwn.exe file. Double click on the QuickPwn.exe to execute it. (NOTE: If you’re using Windows XP and is not having .NET Framework 2.0 installed in your machine, you must first install it before using QuickPwn 2.1 on your PC. You can download the .NET Framework 2.0 from Microsoft Website for x86 if you’re using 32-bit Windows XP/Vista or x64 if you’re 64-bit Windows XP/Vista)
12. QuickPwn should detect your iPhone connected. If it’s not automatically detecting, just click on the blue right arrow button to make it detect your connected iPhone. Once detected, select the right phone (iPhone 2G) from the displayed options.
13. QuickPwn will now ask you to choose the firmware file which is installed in your iPhone 2G. If you followed my Step 4 above for updating your iPhone, you can find the latest firmware downloaded by iTunes at: %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates\iPhone1,1_2.1_5F136_Restore.ipsw
    (NOTE 1: APPDATA% means the Application Data folder of your Windows installation, to find it, just go to Start -> Run and type %APPDATA%. It will show you the correct folder where Application Data is available.)
    If you followed the alternative steps mentioned at the bottom of this post to update your iPhone 2G to 2.1 firmware, you’ll have to select the file you used to update.
14. If the file you selected matches with the firmware installed in the connected iPhone 2G, QuickPwn will show you a green check mark to indicate successful file selection. Click the blue right arrow button to continue.
15. Now, you’ll be given options to unlock your iPhone 2G. There will be four options as: Cydia, Installer, Unlock iPhone and Custom Boot Logo. You’ll have to select Cydia and Unlock iPhone (MUST). If you want an third party applications installer apart from the Apple AppStore which will be installed for you already in 2.1 firmware, you can select the Installer also. If you want the boot time Apple logo shown by iPhone to be something else which is cool, you can select the Custom Boot Logo (Just remember that choosing this option adds an extra step which will ask you to choose the custom logos for Boot and Restore modes which is NOT covered in this guide)
16. Now QuickPwn will open a new to show you that it’s ready to start the Pwning process. Click Go.
17. Now QuickPwn will do a series of steps and shows you actions to perform in the list of items in the Window which are highlighted in black when in progress.
18. These steps include, Switching off your iPhone after connecting to Desk Charger and USB Port to PC. Holding down the Power and Home in the manner being asked to put your iPhone in DFU mode (which is the Restore mode helping QuickPwn to install a custom built firmware in your iPhone)
19. Just do as it says exactly with the seconds count it shows. Please be careful about this process as it’s highly important. Also, make sure you’re connected to an unconnected power source so that to ensure your PC didn’t turned off while this process is being carried on which might cause a severe damage to your iPhone which may or may not be reversible.
20. At the last operation, you’ll still be holding the Home button. Don’t release this button until you see your iPhone saying Loading Ramdisk in it’s screen.
21. Just to clarify things for beginners, Power button is the small switch on top of the iPhone and the Home Button is the only round button available in the front side of your iPhone.
22. Wait patiently until the entire Jailbraking operations completes. It might take at least 10 to 15 minutes to complete the whole operation. It might be long also depending on your PC configurations.
23. Once all the 8 different processes were done, you’ll finally see a message in the QuickPwn window saying “You iPhone 2G seems to be jailbroken. You can now use the device.” or something like that. Wait to ensure your iPhone also finished it’s processes (sometimes QuickPwn finishes its processes quickly while iPhone is still loading and running multiple processes). Once everything is done at both end, you’ll see your iPhone restarting.
24. That’s it! You’ve now fully jailbroken (unlocked) iPhone 2G with latest 2.1 firmware at your hands. Enjoy. Please provide me comments here if you’re facing any problems or issues.

Alternative Steps (for different scenarios)

If your iTunes is latest than 8.0 and shows a different version than 2.1 firmware in the update dialog:

1. Download iPhone 2G 2.1 Firmware from Apple Website
2. If you’re facing problems or the above link is not working, you can Download My version here which is the same.
3. Connect your iPhone 2G to the Desk Charger and plug the USB Port to PC. If iTunes is not already started, start it manually and it should detect and show an iPhone button in the left side bar.
4. If iTunes asks for updating, just click Cancel and also choose the Don’t ask me again check box if it’s available so that iTunes will not nag you asking to update again and again.
5. Hold down the Shift key and choose the Restore button in the iPhone Summary page in iTunes.
6. It’ll open a File Open dialog where you should locate the firmware you’ve downloaded above.
7. Wait patiently until the full restoring is done. It’ll take some time depending on your PC configuration.
8. Once the restore is done, follow the Steps mentioned in the beginning of this post starting from Step 7

iPhone entered into DFU Mode/Restore mode and showing iTunes logo with a USB Cable display no matter whatever you tried to do with it.

1. First and the easy method, Just hold down the Power Button and Home Button together for 10 seconds until the screen goes completely blank. Release both buttons and make sure iPhone does not restart again into restore mode (Sometimes this happens if you’re either too quick or too late to release both Home and Power buttons. If it happens try again and again.)
2. After successful blank screen, you can press and hold Power Button for 2-3 seconds to power up your device and it’ll go to the Normal mode (It might still display iTunes logo but there will be a display of Carrier and a slider with Emergency Calls Only shown in different languages. In this case, it simply means that the SIM card is Locked but you’re in Normal mode)
3. If doing manually frustrated you and you were never successful, download ZiPhone 3.0 from ZiPhone Blog or from here in Info Scraps if the ZiPhone Blog download is not working.
4. Double click on the downloaded ZiPhoneWin-3.0.exe file. It will ask you where to extract the files, Extract it to Desktop (default location) or to C:\Ziphone or wherever is your convenience place.
5. Double click on the ZiPhoneGUI.exe in the extracted folder to start this. (NOTE: If you don’t have .NET Framework 2.0 installed in your PC, follow the instructions in Step 11 in main guide above)
6. Once started, click on the “Click to show advanced features” button in the Advanced Features area.
7. Click on the Normal Mode button in the Change phone mode area under Advanced Features area. This will take some time and puts your iPhone into Normal mode and accessible to QuickPwn.
8. This is also an easy way to switch between various modes like Restore, DFU and Normal.

If any other problems, let me know and I will try to solve them as much as possible by providing detailed instructions here.

First of all, Google Reader, didn’t accepted my OPML file which I exported from RSS Bandit. So, I tried manually adding some of the RSS feeds and had a go. It’s really awesome.

Google seems to be making very good use of AJAX. Which really made their Web Based reader a pleasant experience.

I strongly recommend those of you guys who think a Web Reader is not good to see Google Reader.

First of all, find all of the below listed Google Firefox Extensions here.

Google Toolbar 2.1 for Firefox

An excellent rework of Google Toolbar originally developed for Internet Explorer. Helped me a lot when I was a die hard IE fan. But now, it adds more cool features to Firefox and making me right in taking the decision on getting rid of Internet Explorer for good.

Google Browser Sync

The BEST class of Extension can ONLY given by Google! It’s simply superb. It saves everything from your Browser Settings, Bookmarks, History, Persistent Cookies, Saved Passwords and even your Tabs and Windows into the centralized Google Server and enables you to access them from any other computer any time by just using this extension in the target computer’s Firefox browser. It’s amazing thing. It’s really a life saver for me who find it very difficult to synchronize between my Office PC, my Home Desktop PC and my Laptop PC always as I keep on sitting in different places. This really saved my life by synchronizing everything across these three PC’s which shown me as though I’m working on the single computer. I want these cool guys sitting in Google to come up a solution like this for Windows Files also. Then, I won’t even need to worry about carrying my Memory Sticks and Flash Drives for moving data in and out. Actually, that I was able to solve by using one excellent tool from Microsoft named Groove. It comes as part of MS Office 2007 Beta 2. As I’m their Beta Tester, they’ve sent me this and it’s really awesome product. I will put one more Post on that software. As of now, I use Groove to synchronize my files and Google Browser Sync to synchronize my surfing things.

Google Notebook

Another handy tool from Google. Enables me to take quick notes on various web pages and sites. Man, really these tools will make me a real blogger hereafter I guess.

Blogger Web Comments

Supposed to be a COOL extension. But the only problem is, it ONLY supports Blogger. That’s the saddest thing. I use WordPress on my own hosting for my blogging. So, this won’t suit me. Anyways, if you guys are using Blogger for blogging, this is an excellent extension that allows you to post comments and view others comments on any website using Blogger.

Google Send to Phone

Another cool-but-not-useful-for-me kind of extension. Because, it currently supports ONLY US Mobile Numbers. If any of you guys are browsing this blog from USA (If so, I will be thrilled. ), I strongly recommend you use this for your MobiLog (Mobile Blogging) by sending snippets of web pages to your Phone via SMS.

But the all new Firefox 2.0 changed me entirely. I’ve even ended up in uninstalling my IE plug-in based Avant Browser which I found the most convenient replacement for boring IE interface. Actually the Avant Browser people call it the Swiss Knife Browser as it had a lot of cool utilities. But now, I don’t think this term is really means anything for Avant Browser than Firefox 2.0!

Actually the normal Firefox (with the DOM Inspector in custom installation) hasn’t given me much relief and isn’t the reason I wrote this Post. It’s after I found some cool extensions for Firefox from internet and applied it. It became so useful that I really ended up in using ONLY Firefox. I upgraded my Internet Explorer to 7.0 version as it’s now highly stable and supported old version (IE 6) websites also. But after I found a extension in Firefox that enabled me to use IE engine (the plug-in used by Avant Browser like IE replacements) in any Tabs as I wish gave me an easier way of switching the engines, I fall in LOVE with Firefox. It’s now the ultimate Developer Tool. If you’re interested, a Web Developer, and a dedicated fan of IE (like me), please read further about the extensions I used on Firefox 2.0 that made me forget IE forever.

Aging Tabs 0.4

This is a cool extension that shows different colors of tabs based on the usage. If you left a Tab unvisited for a period of time or new url loading or cycling, it will change the color of that Tab. This really helped me a lot in identifying which tab I visited when.

AI RoboForm Tool bar for Firefox 6.8.0

This is actually used in conjunction with RoboForm, an Excellent tool for Windows that stores your logins and automatically logins to them if you want. It also supports Form filling, Automatic Login, and encryption. This toolbar is meant for Firefox 2.0 and supports cool features integrated with Firefox for auto filling almost everything. (You can forget Firefox’s Form and Password remembering features).

Codetch 0.4

Real Developer Tool. This is actually can be considered as a Web Page editor. But acts simply as a separate tab in Firefox and enables you to edit pages while previewing your changes. It’s like Dreamweaver. It also supports WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode of editing. It’s really wonderful.

DOM Inspector 1.8.1

This is another Developer Tool. This extension comes preloaded with Firefox installation. You need to choose Custom mode while installing and select this. If you haven’t installed it already, you can visit the plug-in link given in the title and download it. This shows a status bar icon which, when clicked, immediately shows the errors in your web page.

FireBug 0.4.1

Another cool Developer Tool which gives great control over the JavaScript and CSS you use in your Web pages. A clear winner on top of IE which doesn’t have any kind of software like this.

FireFTP 0.94.6

Actually, I couldn’t believe Firefox is this much customizable that by just installing an extension, you can use Firefox as a new Software itself. This is just 102 KB (unbelievable!) and gives an entire FTP client in a Tab of Firefox 2.0. Enables you to do all FTP operations as you do in any FTP client software. A clear winner over IE as IE is having the boring integrated FTP client that shows files in Windows Explorer mode.

IE Tab 1.1.1.4

This is the Extension that finally made me write this Post! This cool extension allows you to use IE engine for a Tab (a Web Page). Which is amazingly cool feature that is NOT supported in any other Browser (as far as I know). It gives a cool icon in status bar (or you can drag & drop a button of this next to Go button which gives very convenient way) which, on click changes the engine of the currently displayed web page from Firefox and IE which enables you to test your web pages how it will look in Firefox and IE by just a click of mouse.

lori (Life-of-request info) 0.1.0

Another Developer Tool. It just creates three boxes in the Status Bar which shows the accurate time each page took for rendering from Web Server. The ultimate thing any Web developer wants to know is how long his page is taking to load from Live! That’s solved by this amazing extension.

MeasureIt 0.3.6

Another excellent tool (cool isn’t enough). This gives me another box in the left corner of Status Bar which upon click, dims the current web page and allows you to draw a rectangle over any area which shows it’s measurement in Pixels. I can say, this is another ultimate thing any Web Page Designer will look for.

MetaProducts Integration 1.1.3

Another Software based extension like AI RoboForm. It comes with Mass Downloader, an excellent tool for mass downloading. Allows faster downloads by just downloading the same file from ten different connections and integrating internally for a single file output. I liked this Tool very much and using this for almost 2 years. Now, I found this extension which enabled easy way of integrating Mass Downloader with Firefox.

Session Manager 0.4.3 (Hacked for supporting Firefox 2.0)

This another cool extension which enabled me completely get rid of Avant Browser. Because, the ultimate feature of Avant Browser is saving all the open tabs under any crash or manual close of Browser and giving an option to restore them in next open of the Browser. This feature is not really integrated in Firefox though it supports restoration of tabs under Crashes only. But that flaw is gone away by this excellent extension. This enabled me not only save the session, it actually enabled me to keep track of closed tabs (I can specify the limit also) and allows me restore them individually. Also, supports saving the contents of the Tab (preserving anything I might’ve entered in that page), another cool reason to go for this.

Only one problem with the extension is it is not supported in Firefox 2.0. While searching in Internet, I found the work around for this and given that link in the title of this extension here. If you are using older Firefox and want this extension, it is available here.

Tab Catalog 1.1.2006

Excellent feature that enabled me forget IE7. IE 7 came with a cool feature of previewing the open tabs as Thumbnails and also a Drop down list of currently opened tabs. Both of these features and also another feature where by pressing Ctrl+Tab you can navigate through the open tabs by using Thumbnails of them (just like Alt+Tab functionality in Windows that shows only icons of open Programs) are included in this extension.

Total Validator 3.1

Another Developer friendly Tool. Validates everything (HTML, CSS, XHTML, etc) of a web page. Only problem is, it’s not offline validation (not Software based). It goes to their website for validating. And their website sometimes seems to be hanging.

XML Developer Toolbar 0.2

Best XML Developer Tool disguised as a extension here. Another amazing feature of Firefox. This tool enables me to work around XML just like HTML with validations and everything.