Thursday, March 24, 2011

Firefox 4 -- to upgrade or not to upgrade?

     Wow is the new Firefox fast! Boy, do I wish I would have checked the compatibility of my add-ons/extensions before I upgraded!

For example, I found out that the following applications that were not compatible:
















     I was really bummed because I use some of the extensions, like LinkDiagnosis and Mozbar, quite extensively.  I felt like I needed to go back to version 3.6.  Apparently, a few other people felt this way as well: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/795075?s=go+back+to+previous+version&as=s

     Here’s how I was able to "roll back" to 3.6 (big thank you to "TonyE" for his post on the above forum :

     “I strongly advise against going back to Firefox 3.5, when you installed Firefox 4 it made changes to a couple of files that store user data, those files will no longer work in Firefox 3.5. If you go back to Firefox 3.5 the files containing bookmarks, history and cookies will be lost, causing you to lose all history and cookies, with bookmarks being restored from a backup.
If you want to downgrade it would be better going to Firefox 3.6.15.
To downgrade to Firefox 3.6.* you can uninstall Firefox 4, but do not select the option to "Remove my Firefox personal data". If you select that option it will delete your bookmarks, passwords and other user data.
You can then install Firefox 3.6.* available from http://www.mozilla.com - it will automatically use your current bookmarks, passwords etc.
To avoid possible problems with downgrading, I recommend going to your profile folder and deleting the following files if they exist - extensions.cache, extensions.rdf, extensions.ini, extensions.sqlite and localstore.rdf. Deleting these files will force Firefox to rebuild the list of installed extensions, checking their compatibility, and reset toolbar customizations.
For details of how to find your profile folder see https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Profiles

Thanks to "mlwalker" in the same thread, I was able to find the download page for version 3.6:
http://www.oldapps.com/firefox.php?old_firefox=109
    
     Finally, after the reinstall of 3.6 I did have to reinstall HTML Validator, but by the time I was finishing this post I noticed that the LinkDiagnosis tool was upgraded to work with Firefox 4!  I haven’t tried it yet since I’m waiting for updates to the other tools I use.  Hmm, I wonder if the greater speed I initially experienced might have been due to fewer extensions being loaded?  Guess I’ll have to wait a little bit to find out.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Having Trouble Scanning From An HP All-In-One?

Can’t seem to use the control panel scan button to initiate a scan to you HP all-in-one?  Make sure you download and install the full printer installation package.

The other day I installed the software for an HP Officejet 6500 E709N on my laptop.  The wireless printing worked just fine, but when I tried to initiate a scan from the control panel on the all-in-one, the unit would not acknowledge my laptop as an attached device. 

When I tried to do this, I kept getting the following error: 'No Scan Options'.  I was a little perplexed since I was able to print, so I looked for the scanner under “Control Panel/Scanners and Cameras”.  I was able to communicate with the E709N from the laptop using the icon I found, but I could still not “see” the laptop from the scanner.

Online research informed me that I could try to initiate a scan from Microsoft Paint (I did not know one could scan from Paint – it works!), but I wanted to be able to initiate the scan from the all-in-one.  A little more digging around provided me with the final answer.  I had downloaded an installed only the basic drivers, but I really needed to install the full package so that I would have the necessary HP Solution Center software - http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02450835&cc=us&lc=en&dl#N74

I downloaded and installed the full package.  The installation procedure prompted me to uninstall the previous software and required me to re-boot and start the installation process a second time, but I am now up and running.  Now I need to figure out how to be able to use the Solution Center application with multiple HP devices – initial research has not been promising.