We keep hearing that lot of important sites do not work with Firefox e.g.

1. Rohit Srivastava is Frustrated
2. During the Breakfast with Mozilla event that took place in Pune on February 15th, Arun made a remark that several web developers still develop for IE 6 (which was released around 2000, eight years ago)

While that may have been correct a while ago, I’m sure that things are improving. Since I switched full time to Ubuntu few weeks ago, I had no choice but to use Firefox (considering there is no IE on Linux – Not sure if IE works under Wine) and I am glad to say that I had no issues what so ever. I’m using Firefox 3.0.5, as well as Firefox 3.1Beta 2 on Ubuntu 8.10 (if it matters)

I’m listing the websites that I know work with Firefox, in the hope that this would help more and more people to switch to Firefox.

• Online Banking (India)
  1. HDFC Bank
  2. ICICI
  3. Citibank
  4. Axis Bank (Thanks to @shantanoo)
• Online Banking (US)
  1. Wells Fargo
• Online Trading
  1. E-Trade – A leader in Online trading and Investing
• Localized Contents
  1. Marathi
     1. Leading Marathi newspaper – eSakal (While developed in ASP, it works, and works well in Firefox)
     2. Pune Pratibimb – Sakaal newpaper’s marathi blog
     3. Maharashtra Times : Marathi Newspaper by India Times
     4. Dainik Aikya
     5. Website Dedicated to famous marathi playwright – ??. ?.
  2. Gujarathi
     1. Nobat : Online Newspaper
     2. Lokprabha Newsline : Online Newspaper
     3. Divya Bhaskar : Online Newspaper
  3. Bengali
     1. Bangla Daily News : Online Newspaper
  4. Oriya
     1. Dharitri : Online News in Oriya
  5. Hindi
     1. Navbharat Times
  6. Nepali (Script is Devnagari)
     1. Himgiri News

Sure everyone knows Firefox is (relatively) secure compared to IE. But if folks can’t get their work done, they WILL continue to use IE. So in order to show them that indeed more and more websites work with Firefox without any issues, I started this list.  Obviously, this list is far from complete. But with your support, we can make this better, in the hopes that users do not have the option of not-using Firefox, just because their favorite website doesn’t work with firefox.

If you are not using Firefox yourself, please click on the button on the right to download Firefox right now !!

Please leave comments with URLs that you know work with Firefox.

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As the thread above mentions, Lightening team has to bump up the minVersion to 3.0b2pre. That means you need to get nightly build (at least as of this writing. Once Beta 2 is released, it is recommended you use Official Beta 2, rather than nightly builds.) You can get the nightly build from here.

Since I downloaded the .zip file, there are no installation involved for me, just unzip the contents into desired folder. Personally I would suggest this method to you all, since this provides portability.

Setting up Gmail IMAP Account

Setting up regular IMAP account was very easy with TB 3.0b2pre. But what amazed me was how simple it is to setup Gmail account.  Gmail IMAP is already a preset option when you try to add a new account. In second (and only real) step you need to enter your Name (as it will be displayed to your recipients) and your email address. That is all there is to it.  The last step is confirmation, where is shows your choices, and you need to click Finish so that account is created. So all practical purposes it is essentially one step process.

Compare it to the instructions you need to follow for Thunderbird 2.0 (Latest TB released version as of this writing)

Before you set any calendar, you need to install and configure the plugin. The instructions are same as listed in my previous post. I had bit of a problem the first time, as in the New calendar option was not enabled. Restarting Thunderbird resolved the problem.

URL to your Google Calendar

1. Go to your Google Calendar
2. Go to Settings.
3. Go to Calendars Tab, and Select the appropriate calendar.
4. Scroll towards end of the page where you will see entry titled Private Address, and three icons next to it. (XML, ICAL and HTML)
5. Copy the URL for XML (Right Click->Copy Link Location in Firefox, Right Click->Copy Shortcut in IE)
6. You need to use this URL in Step 4 below.

Private Address URL for your Google Calendar

Setting up Google Calendar

1. File -> New ->Calendar (You need to be in Inbox view. If you are already in Calendar view, you will not see menu option)
2. On Network
3. Format -> Google Calendar
4. Location  :  As discussed in previous section. Use your Private URL here.
5. You need to Provide name and select color for your Google Calendar.

That’s it. Now you can see as well as update your Google Calendar from Thunderbird.

Note : Since the Lightning plugin was broken, I installed the nightly build of Thunderbird in different folder, just in case I need to go back to my working email environment.  If you are installing it afresh, ignore this comment.

Then I found out a way to get this working with the Tunderbird 3 Beta

Install the Extenstion

1. Get the extension from here.
2. Download the .xpi file on your computer.
3. Go to Tools->Add-ons. Click on Install button. Point to the newly downloaded .xpi file.
4. Restart Thunderbird 3 Beta for the Add-on to be active.
5. Now you should see Lightning Nightly Updater in Add-ons list.

Configure

1. Click on Options button for this extension
2. If you actively use Google Calendar, then select second mode Also install Provided for Google Calendar
3. Leave both options under Backup as checked
4. It is good idea to click Backup Now button. If you are installing Lightning for the first time, skip this step.

This in itself doesn’t install the Lightning extension. As the name suggests, this is the extension to help you keep up to date with another extension

• Go to Help->Check for Latest Lightning update. You will now download the real Lightning extension (Two, if you have selected to download Provider for Google Calendar) 
• Download and install as usual. Restart Thunderbird for the extension to be effective.
• Now you will see two icons towards the far right of the “Tab bar”. Tooltips reveal these to be Calendar and Tasks respectively. (This puzzled me for a while, as to how do I access these functions now that I have installed the extensions)
• When you click on these icons, two new tabs will open. It is very intuitive after that.

It is in order to mention that I have also been using the nightly builds of FF3.1 Shiretoko for a while as well. Partial credit for the following hack goes to this Lifehacker article. So without further delay, here is what you can do if you want to try latest Thunderbird without disturbing your existing TB version.

1. Download the latest version here
2. Exit from your current instance of Thunderbird 2
3. Install it like any other Application
4. Do not let the installer start Thunderbird automatically on the last screen.
5. Rename <driveletter>:PortableAppsThunderbird20017AppThunderbird to <driveletter>:PortableAppsThunderbird20017AppThunderbird2
6. Create a New Folder <driveletter>:PortableAppsThunderbird20017AppThunderbird
7. Copy the entire contents of <driveletter>:Program FilesMozilla Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 to <driveletter>:PortableAppsThunderbird20017AppThunderbird
8. Run <driveletter>:PortableAppsThunderbird20017ThunderbirdPortable.exe !!
9. All your accounts settings would be intact.

Note :  The extensions might not work.

I like to experiment with new stuff. I’m always trying to improve myself personally as well as improve my productivity. (This is also the focus of my other blog) This leads me to try various tools/utilities that would help me achieve either of these two goals. So I download a lot of software, I install and try most of them, I keep very few of them. I keep the ones which I find myself using regularly. Others are uninstalled and downloaded version deleted, to make space for more downloads

Over a period of time, some of these tools have become indispensable, ones I can’t live without. I have changed my primary work machine three times in last 10 months. So each time I get a new machine, I install these must-haves on them the first. (Off course that is right after I change my WinXP to look more like Windows Classic. I hate WinXP default look. To each his own.)

Browser

First and foremost is installing Firefox. I will install whatever version for which I have the downloaded copy, and them firefox will update itself to latest version. At times, when my copy is really old, I’ll download the latest copy.

I’ll make it my default browser and set the home page. I used to leave it blank, rather than connective to our corporate web site. But recently I point it my personalized google page.

The Extensions

Next thing I install my favorite plug-ins. Now, here also I keep experimenting. Try new ones I read about and leave the ones I use regularly. So the firefox extensions I must have are:

IE Tab: Useful when some sites won’t work or behave nicely with firefox. Mostly banking sites and internal corporate sites. It has an option either to render the existing page in IE rendering engine, or open IE as external application. I use both these options as and when required.

Tab mix Plus:There is only one word to describe this extension. Awesome !!

It lets you do some cool things with Tabs. Some of my favorites are undo close tab. I needed this only few times. But when you do, it is life saver.
The other feature of this extension, which really deserves to be separate extension of its own, is Session Manager. It can save all open tabs, when you close firefox with multiple tabs open. This is definitely handy and I use this a LOT.

Update (10 Dec 20078): I’ve stopped using this since firefox improved it’s Tab support in Firefox 3

Gmail Manager: It sits in the status bar quietly monitoring the gmail accounts. I have my personalized google page set as my home page. This already has gmail, so why would I need Gmail Manager ? For one thing, I may not be on my home page all the time. But more importantly, Gmail manager can monitor multiple gmail accounts. Now that’s neat.

Then there are others like Aardvark, which lets you remove elements from the web pages. Extremely useful for printing just the contents of the page, leaving out the Ads. Get clean print outs and save some toner in the process.

I’ve also installed All-in-one Gesture, but don’t find myself using it as much. May be I’ll just remove it.

More to come ..

Part II