If you have ever needed just a single tiny file trapped inside a very large archive somewhere in the web, you know how frustrating it is to wait so long for so little.

ArchView is an almost miraculous Firefox extension developed by Solar Flare, that lets you access the contents of a RAR, ZIP and ISO archives (7zip should come later) and extract and view individual files without downloading the archive. For example, I was able to view and extract the checksum file and a few images from an Ubuntu 8.04 image without downloading the full 700+ MB file, a real time saver.

Once installed, ArchView displays clicked RAR, ZIP and ISO files (served through http, ftp or file protocols) contents in a familiar file browsing interface. You can then either open or save a file right-clicking on it and selecting Open or Save.

The status bar icon which lets you select an alternate HTML interface (that resembles pre-Firefox 3 FTP browsing), enable/disable ArchView handling and select what archive types to handle, seems pretty obtrusive. An option to disable the status bar icon would be very welcomed.

I would also like to see an option to save a complete directory and much better icons for files, folders and toolbar buttons which it really reads.

ArchView, is a handy add-on you may not need to install right now but may want to bookmark. It is available for download from Mozilla Add-ons.

Fore more details, take a look at this this screencast prepared by the developer.

Via Zona Firefox (ES).

Mozilla Messaging has reached the second milestone in Thunderbird 3 development (code named Shredder) with the release of Alpha 2.

Among the 264 bug fixes since Alpha 1 (released on May), Alpha 2 can import mail and settings from Mac OS Mail.app, as well as SSL and port settings from Outlook Express configuration on Windows. Faster IMAP delete and undo operations. A polished theme and use of the internal address book by default, provides better Mac OS X integration. An option to include only the selected text on replies should become a valuable time saver, like the new compact (purge) button available in the Customize Toolbar dialog.

Thunderbird 3 is based on the same Mozilla 1.9 platform code base as Firefox 3, so Windows versions previous to Windows 2000 are no longer supported. Tiger (10.4) is the minimum requirement for Mac OS X platforms.

Thunderbird 3 Alpha 2 release notes.

On time, as usual, the Mozilla Japan team is ready to start a new month with a new wallpaper featuring Foxkeh. Just one week away from the Olympic Games inauguration, Foxkeh is training on gymnastics.

Get your wallpaper from the Foxkeh blog, available in several resolutions with or without an embedded calendar.

During today’s Snowl: Messaging in the browser session, Myk Melez introduced a new Firefox extension called (you guessed!) Snowl, to explore what does it take and whether it makes sense to add messaging capabilities to the browser.

Being an early prototype, Snowl currently only handles Twitter feeds and web feeds you subscribe either manually within Firefox or importing an OPML file.

Then comes another the other experimental aspect of Snowl: presentation. Twitter and web feeds are added to a sidebar (available from the View menu) but instead of folders and items as you may expect, you get a set of predefined searches that return not only the feed titles but also groupings by author name which consolidates all messages you have received from that person.

Click on a sidebar item and you get all the related messages in an email like view in either a horizontal or vertical layout.

Things then get even more interesting when you switch to Message River view (View menu). Based on the concept of the river of news, it consolidates the item titles or contents of the selected author or feed into a continuous page that favors horizontal scrolling (as opposed to typical vertical scrolling) as a way to: take advantage of larger screens and provide an experience that resembles the interaction with newspapers more closely.

Contents can be sorted by date ascending or descendingly, and are displayed in columns you can easily resize.

While the benefits are pretty obvious (make it easier for users the task of tracking the many communication ways currently available: email, social networks, web feeds, newsgroups, instant messaging and pretty much any asynchronous medium), Myk main question is: Is the browser the right place for this aggregation to happen?

For me it would work as I would definitely want to have it as close to my browser as possible. Messaging moved into the browser realm first and this just looks like the browser going to meet it half way, which is good.

What I am not sure is if it’s worth implementing so many interfaces with so many social networks and web mail providers, adding a dependency that is most likely to break at some point like Flock users can attest.

Ideally, I would prefer an open standard for the most common social networking and emailing activities: messaging and sharing, but it just seems so distant that maybe dealing with all the current web interfaces is a good enough second best.

Snowl should be available from the Mozilla Labs web site in the next few days, in the meantime you can get it and try it from Myk’s personal folder.

Firefox 3.1, codenamed Shiretoko, has reached its first milestone, Alpha 1 pretty much on track for a targeted final release late this year, despite a short delay due to a nasty crash bug with Java on Mac OS X.

Perhaps the most notable improvement with this release is an option to restrict the location bar autocomplete suggestions to either history, tags or bookmarks only as well as an option to tell Firefox to search just for page titles or addresses when looking for a match.

To restrict to history, bookmarks or tags only, enter ^, * or + respectively somewhere between your terms. To include titles or addresses only, you enter # or @, and you can combine them with the previous operators to refine your suggestions.

New advanced settings (accessible entering about:config in the location bar) let you customize all the default characters and set your own character or group of characters to apply restrictions.

Even further, you can set any of the related preferences (browser.urlbar.restrict.history, browser.urlbar.restrict.bookmark, browser.urlbar.restrict.tag, browser.urlbar.match.title, browser.urlbar.match.url) to blank values to apply the restrictions by default (without entering any special character).

This location bar restrictions were considered for Firefox 3 but the performance hit along with time constraints had it postponed for the next iteration. It’s still to be decided if there will be any user interface (possibly in Options(Preferences)/Privacy) to make these options discoverable.

For more details you can check this Edward Lee’s post on the matter. He is the developer largely responsible for this implementation.

Another visible enhancement is the new behavior for the Ctrl + Tab hotkey: instead of switching to the next tab to the right as before, it raises a small overlay with tab thumbnails. Since they are ordered with the most recently viewed first, you can press Ctrl + Tab successively to switch between the current and previous tabs, a handy shortcut for accessing a reference page while composing in another.

By default, only three thumbnails are shown but you can customize it by setting browser.ctrlTab.previewsCount (via about:config) to the desired value and restarting Firefox. I found 5 to be a more useful value.

You can disable the feature altogether setting browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed to false and get the old Ctrl+Tab behavior. Ctrl + PgUp and Ctrl + PgDown still provide the classic tab navigation.

Alpha 1 gets much better results in the Acid3 test, a benchmark of web standards support that, as opposed to previous acid test versions, not only assesses CSS compliance but also DOM capabilities and performance. As of this release, Shiretoko scores an 84, an 18% gain compared to Firefox 3’s but still behind WebKit nightlies that already score a perfect 100.

There’s still plenty to come including native audio and video support, possibly font download, one click autologin option for sites where a single set of credentials is available, private browsing, cross site AJAX requests (pulled back from Firefox 3 after late changes to the specification), bulk tagging, tag autocomplete, the possibility to enable color management support (introduced with Firefox 3) by default.

Let’s wait and see what gets in by the next milestone, which according to an early schedule draft, should be a first beta sometime in August.

More details Mozilla Developer News.

The Flock guys have just released a fashion oriented edition of its namesake Firefox-based browser labeled Flock Gloss Edition.

From People to Cosmopolitan to The New York Time’s fashion section, it comes with a thick bundle of fashion, health, and gossip links and feeds framed in a girlish lavender theme to please fashion lovers cravings (well almost).

This edition follows Flock Eco Edition, released on April to celebrate Earth’s Day, which also featured a number of environmental web sites bookmarks and a green theme.

Gloss Edition is based on the current Flock 1.2.4 and available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The next major update, Flock 2.0 will be based on Firefox 3 code and is currently in Beta 2 stage.

Exactly one month after the original Firefox 3.0 release comes its first security and stability update labeled Firefox 3.0.1, the first also to feature the new three digit versioning instead of previous 4-digit scheme.

The update includes fixes for three critical vulnerabilities including the one reported through TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative program, the same day Firefox 3 was released, that could lead to remote execution.

Another bug is related to GIF images handling on Mac OS X that could also lead to remote execution; while the third one would allow an attacker to launch Firefox with certain unfiltered chrome addresses .

You should be prompted to update in the next 48 hours but if you want to get it now, select Check for Updates… in the Help menu and follow the on-screen instructions.

Firefox 3 features an overhauled Page Info dialog (Tools menu, Page Info) that while provides some valuable security and content information it also lacks some elements like the Links and Forms pages many users are already missing.

Links and Forms, a Firefox extension developed by Florian Queze, restores both pages to the Page Info dialog just as they were in Firefox 2 and previous versions.

You can get Links and Forms from Mozilla Add-ons. It’s still labeled as experimental so you will need a Mozilla Add-ons account to install it.

Thanks to CFox for the tip!

Bonus tip: If you use the Page Info dialog a lot, you may want to add a button to open it to the toolbar or bring the original Ctrl + I shortcut back. To get back both, install Page Info Button. Hope to see a status bar icon option soon.

Sudoku fans rejoice! Petr Blahoš has created a fun Firefox extension that brings sudoku headaches and frustration to Firefox.

To play, just select Your SUDOKUs sidebar from the View/Sidebars menu. Select a puzzle from the sidebar and click on >> to open it in a new tab. To place a number, you click on it from the bottom number bar and then on an empty space. The selected number will be highlighted on the board to help you avoid errors. If you’re not sure, right click to place the number as a hint instead.

It helps identify errors like a number repeated in the same column, row or square, highlighting them all as soon as you place the duplicate.

Sudoku ships with 65 puzzles (40 easy, 5 medium and 20 hard), but one of its main features is the ability to grab other puzzles from well known sudoku web sites including WebSudoku, Sudoku Puzzles,  Sudoku online, and a few others.

You simply visit the site and Sudoku will detect the puzzle and prompt whether you want to play it now with the enhanced interface ir provides or save it to play it later. Saved puzzles are stored in the Unrated category.

An option to pause a puzzle and continue it later is planned and will be very welcomed. I would also like to see thumbnails of the puzzles as a the mouse cursor passes over them in the sidebar and a way to turn off the tips displayed at the bottom.

Sudoku is a very nice extension, with some rough edges still there. But minor bugs aside, what it needs is some eye candy to make it more enjoyable and playful.

sudoku 0.9 is available from Mozilla Add-ons as an experimental extension so you will need a Mozilla Add-ons account to access and install it.

As you may know, Firefox 3 introduces three different themes for all the officially supported operating systems: Firelight on Mac OS X, Tango on Linux, and Strata on Windows, which even comes in XP and Vista variations to better blend with Luna and Aero respectively.

If you are feeling envious of what the other platform or style got or just want to try a different look and have a couple of minutes to spare, you may want to give these themes a try.

Vista on XP, is a theme by Pascal Herbert that lets you use the Windows Vista theme, which is pretty much like the XP theme except all main navigation bar icons are blue and glassy instead of plastic-y.

If you prefer XP’s green plastic, try XP on Vista by the same author.

MacOS X Theme, created by GOLF-AT, brings Firelight’s brushed metal to users in Linux and Windows platforms. You will need a Mozilla Add-ons account though, as it is labeled experimental and awaiting further reviews.

Finally, if you don’t like change and believe Firefox 2 theme was just perfect, there’s also a theme for you: Firefox 2 for Firefox 3 will make you feel as it is 2006 again, yellow location bar for secure sites included.

Enjoy!