Green Fire Web Design

The switch from Firefox to Chrome

Aug 23, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a comment

I’m a big proponent of non-IE browsers.  I have used Firefox for over a decade now, and have loved it.  However, I’ve noticed things about it lately that have caused me to switch to Chrome.  And I love it.

Here are the reasons why I’ve switched to Chrome:

1. Firefox freezes.  I’m a very active person on the internet.  I have several tabs open at the same time, and don’t want it any other way.  However, when I do this with Firefox, my browser lags, Firefox freezes, and I have to shut it down.  Then I have to restart it and do this all over again.  Not my cup of soup.
2. Firefox is a memory hog. If I ever look at my task manager in Windows, Firefox easily takes up 300 MB of memory, which is a reason it crashes so often.  Point your finger at me for having so many tabs open, but that’s poor memory management.

Yes, these are really my only complaints.  But you know, it’s enough to switch.  I love Firefox’s extensions, and if I need them, I’ll open up Firefox.  But otherwise you’ll find me with a Chrome browser open.  Here is why Chrome is better:

1. Chrome never freezes. I’ve yet to have it freeze, and it runs so fast.  It starts up as soon as I click the icon (Firefox takes up to 10 seconds), and it doesn’t require me to restart.
2. Chrome is not a memory hog. Chrome’s multiple tabs each have their own process.  So if one site is a memory hog, it doesn’t affect the others.  It is brilliant.  It makes browsing soooo easy and so nice.

These are my 2 weak arguments for switching over.  But it makes me happy, and I’m sure it will make you happy as well.  There are a lot of new extensions coming out daily for Chrome, which is taking it a bit closer to Firefox’s level.  I hope it makes it there someday, but for now I’ll be fine with what I have.  Thank you Google Chrome!

How to Create a Favicon for Your Site

Jun 12, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a comment

It’s always fun to see the logo or icon of your site in the tab or address bar of your browser.  But how do you get that for free?  Well it’s easy!  Just go to DynamicDrive.com.  Get any image you’d like (it should be square), and use their tool to upload the image.  It will then give you the icon as well as some code to put in the header of the page so it knows where to point to.  Just don’t forget to upload the file to your server.  It’s that easy!  And the best part is that you don’t need to know any web design or be a professional web designer to do this.  Thanks Dynamic Drive!

How to Download Any Video From Youtube

Jun 12, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a comment

So many times you find a video on Youtube that is classic.  You either want to download it to put on your iPod, want to have it in a personal video library, want to put it on a DVD, etc….  But you don’t know how!

Well recently I installed Real player on my computer to do some testing.  Back in the early days of the internet it was a popular media player, but with the onset of Flash, it has nearly dropped off the face of the internet.  At least that has been my personal opinion, until I figured out what it can do.

Real Player will let you download nearly any video, and then when you’ve downloaded it, you can convert it to almost any format you wish so that you can put it anywhere.

To get this great program, go to Real.com.  When it is installed, you can go to nearly any video and it will have an option to download the video.  Happy Youtubing!

PHP’s GD Library

Jun 12, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a comment

PHP’s GD library is awesome!  It almost works as a little online version of Photoshop.  There are some amazing things that you can do with it.

You may ask, “So what can I do with this GD library?”  You name it!  Well maybe not anything, but for server-side image processing it truly is amazing.  Here are a *few* things you can do with this library:

• draw images
• resize images
• change the hue, contrast, opacity, etc…
• create images from fonts
• overlay 2 or more images

There are a ton more features you can do, these are just a few of my favorites that I have used recently.  Overall, the GD library is amazing.  It saves countless hours of unnecessary programming, and is very easy to use. If you don’t know how to use it, I would recommend taking a look on the PHP.net’s site. Check it out!