• I’m now running Firefox 3 betas thanks to MultiFireFox.
• MidnightFox was updated the other day with incorrect buttons.  Oops.  That has been re-uploaded and should be made public soon.
• yExplore and GA? have been updated for Firefox 3. Actually, for the beats not the official release.  That’ll happen when the final release comes out.
• Now that I am running Firefox 3, I can start theming it.
• Just started to watch Entourage.  It seems like a pretty cool show.
• Watching the second season of Monk too which is an awesome TV show.
• I’m totally lost on Lost but I love it.
• I’m going to be speaking on SEO and web design next week at the Art Institutes MN.  That’ll be fun since I use to go to school there and I’m not big on public speaking.
• I just bought Delicious Library.  It’s such a great program to keep track of music, movies and games.
• I’m now using MoodBlast to update my Facebook, Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku status’.  I’d love to see this as a web based app much like TwitterFeed so it can automatically post my blog posts too.

That’s what I got at the moment.

yExplore 1.6.1 has been updated and released!

The new version updates the domain URL structure to work correctly with the updated Yahoo Site Explorer. It also adds in support for newer versions of Flock and adds Netscape 9.0 support.

Enjoy!

I remember logging into my developer account at Mozilla and getting a note saying that I qualified for a free t-shirt since I had created an extension (yExplore) for Firefox 2. Fast forward a few months and here it is.

Even though it’s a chilly 2 degrees out, I think I’ll wear it anyway.

Thanks Firefox team!!

One issue that people have is that their extensions don’t work. Then they complain to the Firefox team which does no good. What you really need to do is contact the extension developers. It’s up to them to update their extensions, not the Firefox team.

For those that can’t wait for a developer to update their extension, you can do a few tricks to update Firefox extensions yourself. It’s not to hard and works great for those extensions that you can’t live without your favorite extensions.

I helped out Glen yesterday and he turned my advice into a blog post that outlines how to update Firefox extensions for Firefox 2.0. The tutorial should work for most extensions, however the more complex the extension is, the less likely this will work.

Ohh and for those wondering, yExplore is good to go for Firefox 2.0.

One more note, if you do this with themes, like iPox, it’ll work, but look bad.  Themes are a separate entity that needs to be updated for each release of Firefox.  I’m working on iPox for Firefox 2.0 but it’s not ready yet.

Here is a quick preview of what’s new:

Now if you are on the cutting edge, like I am :), and are running Flock as your primary browser, you can install and run yExplore with no issues.

You can get yExplore for Firefox or Flock at Mozilla’s Add-ons site.

Since it’s a basic extension, and doesn’t tie into much that will change a lot, I thought it was safe to add the additional support. It has been tested by a friend in the latest version of Firefox so now everyone can enjoy it.

Next up, Flock & Seamonkey support!

[Get yExplore]

yExplore 1.1beta changes the URL structure that access’ Yahoo Site Explorer. It’ll now give you the most accurate data right away. The change is is in response to my odd Yahoo Site Explorer findings.

I think I also screwed up the the version numbers. This is version 1.1beta when there was no official version 1.0. It probably should have been 1.0beta2. Oops. So I’m guessing that the next version will be 1.2 maybe?? My Bad.

I have a compatibility check for newer version of Firefox in the works. And I’m trying to find a Firefox 1.0.x user to try out the extension. If you are on the bleeding edge with Firefox builds, or running an old version, let me know. I could use a tester!!

It seems, that by default, Yahoo Site Explorer is setup to count inlinks from all URLs (including the one I’m checking) and only links to the homepage.

You must click on the InLinks link and switch it to count all inlinks except those from the domain you’re checking and tell it count inlinks to the entire site.

Now I feel a little gipped because it seems that the options are good in some cases, but I don’t feel they should be the default options. But maybe that’s just me.

You also get different results if you use www or not when you are searching for inlinks to the entire site. To me, entire site means every page, every possible URL and those numbers should be the same.

Here is my Example with twistermc.com:
Checking Inlinks from the main Yahoo Site Explorer page: 13,334

Checking Inlinks from the main Inlinks page and selecting ‘except this domain’ and to the ‘entire site’: with the URL www.twistermc.com: 86,139

Checking Inlinks from the main Inlinks page and selecting ‘except this domain’ and to the ‘entire site’: with the URL twistermc.com: 88,857

I guess entire site doesn’t include any sub-domains. So it’s all in how you look at it. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have any sub-domains. So how am I getting different results?

Just be careful when using Yahoo Site Explorer. It’s a great tool, but you’ll be getting different numbers unless you make sure you are always checking the exact same way every time.

Now I’ll have to update yExplore to send people to the correct URL so they get the most accurate number of Pages and Inlinks for the site they are checking. Look for that next week.

My Firefox addons were built to work in today’s official build. Not the 1.0.x builds from months ago or the new beta/alpha builds of the upcoming browser. The reason for this is that I have the current official build and not the old or new ones. Without the other versions of the browsers, I can’t test my themes or extension. However, you can.

All you have to do is ask me to send you a version that will install in your older or newer version of Firefox. Same goes if you want to try the extension in Flock or SeaMonkey. Just ask and I’ll do my best to get you an installable version for your browser. Then, if it works fine, let me know and I’ll release it for everyone.

Now the with Wordpress plugins, I do have Wordpress 2.0.x and 1.5.x to test them in. It’s much easier to have multiple versions of Wordpress running than Firefox.

Currently, the Chicklet Creator plugin works in 2.0.x only. I have heard requests for 1.5.x so I’m working on that. The Social Bookmark plugin works in 1.5.x and 2.0.x.

What it all comes down to is just ASK if you have version issues. I see a lot that my themes and extensions don’t work in 1.0.x or the alpha Bon Echo version of Firefox, but no one takes the time to ask me about it.

Just ask.

The yExplore 1.6 update brings updates to match updates to Yahoo Site Explorer, better Flock support and added Netscape 9 support.

The yExplore 1.5 update included two options. yExplore the domain or a single page.

I felt that one extension that I was missing in Firefox was one to let me quickly access Yahoo Site Explorer stats. So, I took it upon myself to do a little research and build my first Firefox extension.

yExplore is a pretty simple SEO tool. It adds two yExplore options when you right click. Select Domain and it’ll open Yahoo Site Explorer in a background tab with the domain of the site you were on already submitted. Select Page and it’ll find the indexed and backlinks stats for just that page.

Give it a go and see what you think. It works on Mac or Windows in Firefox 1.0 - 3.0, Flock 0.4 - 1.0.x and Netscape 9.0.

Enjoy!. Ohh and don’t overlook my spiffy icon.

Big thanks to roachfiend.com for a great beginner tutorial.