I did try a few steps like renaming the extensions folder, re-install Firefox, import bookmarks manually, etc..  to isolate the cause of the issue but nothing helped.

What helped was something I found here..

Manual deletion method:

1. Open the Firefox profile folder and delete (or rename) the “places.sqlite” file and the localstore.rdf file.
2. Open the bookmarkbackups subfolder and remove any .json files to another location (or rename).
3. Restart Firefox. Firefox 3 will then automatically import the bookmarks from “bookmarks.html” in the profile folder.

The steps mentioned above solved the issue and brought back all my bookmarks. You can follow the steps mentioned here to try and resolve the issue.

This is important because what Firefox has achieved without the backing of any big tech companies is commendable. The credit not only goes to the 250+ employees working with the Browser company but also thousands of contributors who add to the open source code Firefox is based on.

Relentless innovation and a laser focused dedication to make the browser faster and better than its competitors is what drives the Mozilla community forward. And a quick glance at Mozilla labs testifies the commitment the teams and the loyal community shows towards the advancements of the browser.

A report from marketshare shows that Firefox is eating into IE’s user base on a consistent basis and it won’t be too long before Firefox snatches away the #1 Browser tag from IE.

If you are one of the loyal Firefox users, join the celebrations at SpreadFirefox and Facebook

Microsoft takes a more informative approach in trying to explain how browser benchmarking should be done and justifying their claim that Internet Explorer is faster than other browsers.

The testing team picked up TOP 25 sites from ComScore in December and started testing load speed across three browsers, Internet Explorer, FireFox and Chrome.  Results showed that IE won 48% of the times as opposed to Chrome’s 36% and Firefox’s 16%.

The following spreadsheet shows you all the 25 sites tested, their load times, and the winning browser.

The post also released a video which takes you through some of the details behind the whole benchmarking techniques and process. It also shows a few sites being put through the test.

Watch the video below

IE8 Performance

Well, I can’t disagree with the numbers and stuff but it’s just hard to believe IE is faster! Anyway that’s just me.

You can get more details from the whitepaper Microsoft released about the benchmarking and performance analysis.  Click here to download!

VideoSurf recently released a nifty Firefox extension, which lets you scan through the video on Youtube and in your search results even before you play they video..cool right? (Download from here)

The idea is to save time by scanning through the strip of thumbnails of the video that is instantly created and skip the video if the you don’t find what you are looking for or if the thumbnails don’t seem interesting enough.

I have tried using this plugin on sites like Vimeo, Metacafe, Break, Dailymotion, etc. however, it just worked on Youtube and Google Search. It turns out that this plugin works only on Yahoo Search, Google Search, Youtube and Friendfeed for now, although it would be nice to see more video services on the list of this extension.

The extension earlier existed as a Greasemonkey script which only worked on search results..

The following image shows how this extension adds a image strip of the video and by clicking on any of the thumbnail you can start the video from that point on.  Not only that but the extension is designed to recognize if there is a face in the thumbnail and by checking a checkbox you can choose to see thumbnails with faces only..

Interestingly the extension manages to create thumbnails from video services other than Youtube, for example Vimeo. See the Image below …

Click here to download VideoSurf Firefox Extension

MinimizeToTray 1.0 Firefox plugin will send you Firefox to the system tray whenever minimized; optionally it will also move Firefox to the tray when closed.

Once installed (click here to install), go to Tools > Add-ons and click on the “Options” button on “MinimizeToTray 1.0” to configure it. This Firefox extension is in experimental add-on category and works very well.

The image below shows the configuration options….

Click here to visit the plugin page and install it now…

All you got to do is select the source and target browser and simply click on “Export” button to sync bookmarks between browsers.

Transmute supports Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. The list of browsers Transmute supports, covers 97% of the market share, so almost everyone can use this software to copy or export bookmarks from browser to another.

Look through the images to see how simple it is to export bookmarks:

This is what the Transmute will look like the first time you run it.

Click on the button to select the "Source" Browser. This is the browser where you export your bookmarks from

Next, select the "Target" browser. Browser where you want to import the bookmarks to

Under the Target button you see “Options”. This lets you select if you want to export bookmarks to the root folder or a custom folder with time and date information.

That’s it! Once you select all the required options, just hit “Export”.

Simple right? The best part is that unlike other Bookmark utilities which come for a price, Transmute is absolutely free.

Click here to visit Transmute and here to download Transmute.

So what do you do when you want to save the file on your machine as PDF or may be send that file to your own e-mail address directly?

All of this and a lot more can be done using PDF Download Firefox plugin.

Once the plugin is installed (download it from here) any webpage you visit can be converted to PDF and downloaded to your machine or simply e-mailed to any or a default e-mail address.

Here is how you can convert any webpage to PDF

Right-click on any page and click on “Save Page As PDF” this will take you to the plugin site where the page will be converted to PDF with the option of downloading it.

Or you can click on the button which sits on the top right corner of the browser and select “Save Web Page as PDF”

Also, as you can see in the image above you can also select “Email Web Page as PDF” to send yourself an e-mail.

This plugin is also capable of converting online PDF documents to HTML. Click on any PDF link online and you will see the options as shown in the image below.

Options here are pretty self-explanatory

1. Download it: Download the PDF to your machine
2. Open PDF: Open PDF in the browser
3. View as HTML: Convert the PDF to HTML
4. Bypass PDF Download: Bypass the PDF Download plugins functionality and let the browsers default functionality take over.

Users can also configure the functionality of this plugin for ease of use.

Click on the “Options” to bring up the configuration panel

This plugin is developed and distributed by NitroPDF which claims to be an alternative to Adobe PDF.

Click here to download the plugin and here to visit NitroPDF.

Whether it is a search engine or the online application space, Microsoft has always been struggling to achieve the success it has seen with its offline application business.

But that’s about to change..

Recent announcements about Microsoft Asure, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Office Live (Office in Browser), etc.. might have sparked a few high level meetings and strategic discussions at Google and other companies who offer similar products.

The new office is expected to hit the market in the late 2009 or early 2010, which still leaves these companies with some time to try and grab more share of online productivity applications before Microsoft launches its applications and aggressively sells it.

I think eventually Microsoft will gain a considerable lead in the online office space because it has a strategic advantage of being the industry leader in offline productivity tools and that’s exactly what companies like Google or Zoho lack an offline application which integrates with online office for seamless transition.

While I agree that the future of technology is in the clouds I totally refuse to accept that offline applications will play less or no role in future technologies. I believe the future is all about collaboration, while offline applications will become lightweight as online technologies allow developers to create more sophisticated cloud applications.

This is exactly where Microsoft has the advantage, it already has a wonderful suit office applications offline all it needs to do now is create its online counterpart and integrate it. If that is done, why would anyone maintain multiple accounts for storing documents?

Just imagine an upload option in your MS Word applications which uploads the documents to a Google Docs like platform which lets your create collaboratively and publish universally. Things will be so much easier.

A good example for this would be Google’s Picasa, how many of us actively maintain Flickr or Photobucket accounts when you can export and share pictures on picasaweb with a click of a button.

Office applications that will be made available online are MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote supported by Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

I really want to see how Microsoft plays this, whether will it be defensive and try to match Google docs or other online services or be attacking and offer much more than these services currently offer.

Can’t wait to see what they have to offer..

With 100’s of new and better services being launched, you tend to register with least a few new services every week not because they are new but because they offer something your existing service does not offer.

The point is, we register with a lot of services and over a period of time managing login information becomes a nightmare. Thanks for FireFox for offering an improved password managing service with Firefox3. I have had instances where I lost passwords because my system crashed. What do I do? Almost every time I wanted to login to any of the services I had to request for new login information, I did this for almost a week until I covered all the services I was registered with.

Here we discuss a Firefox plug-in called “Password Exporter” which helps you export your passwords at any point and save the information anywhere you’d like.

Alright.. for the starters, click here to download Password Exporter.

Once installed restart Firefox and got to Tools > Options > Security Tab. Notice a new button here which says Import/Export Passwords. (See the image below)

Click on the Import/Export Passwords button and you will see the screen like the one below.

Export Passwords: This one lets you export your stored passwords in an XML format. I suggest “Encrypt Usernames/Passwords” should always be checked before exporting the passwords so that these passwords are at least not readable by the naked eye.

Import Passwords: Click on the button and point to the existing XML document containing passwords, it will import all the passwords.

Export Disable Hosts and Import Disabled Hosts maintain a list of sites for which saving password was denied.

View Saved Passwords: It will ask for the master password, which once provided will show you the list of saved passwords.

Once you click Export Passwords button it asks for Master Password, if set. Once you punch the master password in, you are prompted to save the XML file at the desired location.

Click on Save and all the passwords are saved.

I currently have only 26 Passwords saved as I lost at least a 100 in the last system crash. I managed to save all my data except Firefox and everything that was there on the Desktop.

But this time around I’ve set my system up in a way that even if my laptop crashes I won’t lose any data including the Firefox settings and Desktop information. My next post will be based on the same topic. “How to save the data even if the computer crashes”

The new release will make navigating more easily for screen readers and other self-voicing browsers. Google recommends Firefox 3.0 with screenreaders with ARIA support for best use.

Google has tied up with other medical institutions to share your health information only if you authorize it. Information sharing between Google Health and other medical institutions will happen both ways, if Google Health has an updated profile of the user, it will be accessible by selected institutions, likewise if the medical institution has an update for your profile, it will be added to your Google health profile.

Following are few websites offering health services that can be authorized to sync with Google Health.

• Allscripts ePrescribe
• Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• Cleveland Clinic MyChart
• Longs Drug Stores
• Medco

Here are some tips from Google for first timers on Google Health:

When signing in, first-time users should use this link ARIA-Enabled Google Health to turn on the accessibility enhancements. If you would like to use these enhancements whenever you sign in to Google Health, please perform these additional steps:

1. Activate settings by pressing hot key e, or alternatively, press . to bring up the available actions and pick settings from the list of choices.
2. Listen to the spoken messages that guide you through the settings interface.
3. Check the option labeled enable screenreader support.
4. Save your preferences.
5. This will automatically activate ARIA support the next time you sign in as long as you use a supported browser.

Google claims to offers a single unified web interface to manage all health related information with Google Health. Click here to try Google Health.