With mobile browsing so popular now, web app developers need to make sure they know how well their apps perform with internet connections that aren’t as fast as the ones many people have at home. Remember too that even in 2010 many people around the world still use dial-up connections or other methods that are much slower than broadband. Here’s a review of a Firefox plugin, Throttle, that makes it easy to simulate slower connections speeds when you are testing your app.

Christian Cantrell writes a secure plugin architecture for AIR applications, finds it was easier than he thought it might be, then gives us a post on extending AIR apps with plugins, as he transforms his own SearchCentral application into ‘Pluggable SearchCentral’.

Controlling or even monitoring what your children see on the Internet was never going to be easy. Not surprisingly there are many Firefox parental controls available in the form of add-ons for the browser to make it easier to keep tabs on where your kids are surfing or to restrict them from visiting sites that you deem inappropriate. Here are five of the better content filters available for Firefox, and they are all very easy to set up. Hey, you’re paying the bills.
Except as noted, these extensions are all free of charge with appeals for donations.

The FoxFilter add-on you a choice of using either custom keyword filters to block inappropriate content or block specific sites that you designate. Comes with a list of porn related keywords. Many children are computer-savvy enough to uninstall/reinstall a Firefox extension so there is password protection.
$10.00/per year for the deluxe version (no ads).

Glubble for Families: this extension is probably appropriate for families with younger children, as it involves making a “family page”, which is private, that lets you stay on top of the sites that your children are visiting, and approve or disapprove sites. It features photo upload/sharing functionality called the Family Photo Timeline, as well as chatting and games. Glubble also uses Ask for Kids, a search engine designed for children.

ProCon Latte: this add-on gives you two ways to filter Internet content. First, it replaces inappropriate words with asterisks, although it does not by default block access to sites containing these words. For that however, you can use ProCon Latte to set either a blacklist, which will block specific sites that you designate, or a whitelist, with which you specify only sites that may be visited. Note that you can use this extension to block any kind of site (gambling, etc.), not just porn. A password is required to change settings.

LeechBlock is interesting because it’s designed to do a lot more than block children’s access to objectionable websites: it’s to help you block your own access! If you find yourself updating that Facebook page every five minutes you can use Leach blocked to create sets of sites that do not want to be able to access, specifying dates and times of day when you want to deny access. If you’re unable to quit entirely during these periods, you can even designate an amount of time each hour where access is allowed. It’s probably a productivity tool as much as a Firefox parental control tool.

BlockSite is designed to remove the option of visiting certain websites entirely. You can also use a wildcard character to restrict access to sub-domains as well. If you stumbled across links to these sites while you surf this plug-in will disable the hyperlinks, leaving only text. You may also import a list of undesirable sites that you want to block. Block site is currently being updated for use with the most recent version of Firefox.

Parental controls for Firefox are a first, easy step toward having some say in the internet content your children consume, if it’s your browser of choice. If you have a Firefox add-on that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments.

We have written about upcoming changes to Firefox before, but here’s a fairly big one: the Jetpack browser API, announced today, is Mozilla’s response to developer input as to potential improvements to the current Firefox browser API, specifically the process of creating Firefox extensions.

A primary goal with Jetpack is that only basic web development skills (HTML, JavaScript and CSS) will be needed to create add-ons.

Development is still in the early stages, but other improvements will include: no browser restart for installation, improved debugging tools, improved packaging, etc. Some are already asking if a new browser API will divert development resources away from Greasemonkey, but clearly it opens up extensions development in Firefox to many people who might not have previously been capable. Stay tuned.

I’ve updated my Prevent Dupliate Tabs Firefox extension to allow for whitelisting of URLs that should be prevented from being opened in duplicate tabs.  You can grab latest version here.  Read the instructions about the new UI, checkout the changelog, and take a look at what I have planned next.

I created the extension to solve an annoyance that has always bugged me about Flex Builder, or more specifically any Eclipse based tool (ie. Aptana).  When you click the Run/Debug/Build button (or F11/ctrl-11) your project is always opened up in a new browser tab.  It doesn’t take long until you realize that you have 20 tabs open!

One thing that has always bugged me about Flex Builder (or more specifically Eclipse) is that when you click the Run/Debug/Build button (or F11/ctrl-11) your project is always opened up in a new browser tab.  It doesn’t take long until you realize that you have 20 tabs open – or at least in my workflow it happens!

So last night I built a Firefox extension that I have been wanting to make for a while.  It’s called Prevent Duplicate Tabs, and ensures that only the most recent tab of a given url is open at any one time.   After its installed, you will notice that there is a menu item in the Tools menu called “Prevent Duplicate Tabs”.  By default it is checked, and if you want to turn the extension off, you can simple toggle the menu item.

This is my first ever Firefox extension.  It was a bit of a pain to develop, and I now have even greater appreciation for the Flex documentation ;-)

Feedback is welcome – source is available by request.

Are you a serious Digg.com user?  The Smart Digg Button Firefox Extenstion is a neat tool that lives in your Firefox status bar notifying you how many Diggs the currently loaded page has.  A simple click takes you to the Digg page where you can give the page your own digg!

Yahoo! likes Joe Hewitt’s Firebug extension for Firefox so much that the YUI Team Is Hiring an Engineer To Work on Firebug.  This is great news and hopefully will help Joe make this tool totally kick ass!

Alessandro Crugnola has created a very useful Flash Switcher extension for Firefox that allows you to easily test their pages with different flash player versions.  The extension comes with all the currently published flash player plugins from the version 2 to the most recent and allows you to easily switch from one plugin to another.

One of my favorite Firefox extensions for quickly poking around the DOM is  Aardvark.  The extension ended up left behind with Firefox’s 1.5 and 2.0 upgrades, so this extension left my toolbox for a while.  Now it’s back and has been released to work with Firefox 2.0!  They have even added a couple of nice new features!