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Hack 4. Identify and Use Toolbar Icons

This hack explains the mystery icons that sometimes appear on Firefox toolbars.

It's up to you whether you take advice or not. Firefox delivers a number of passive warnings and cautions to you in the various toolbars of the browser window. Here's a rundown of what those things mean.

If you choose one of the many themes offered by Firefox's Theme Manager, then all the icons will likely appear different. Their locations will be the same, though.


This hack describes only the Firefox-specific icons that are different from standard browser icons:

This is the standard icon for a Mozilla Extension, Plugin, or Theme. Extensions are small add-on pieces of logic (or whole applications) that can be run or used as part of general web activity. If you have installed one or more extensions into Firefox, then something is going to work differently from the default behavior.

This icon sometimes appears at the bottom-right edge of the status bar. It tells you that the web page you're looking at has an RSS feed that complements its normal HTML content. You can hover your cursor over the icon to see the status of the feed. Click on the icon to capture the feed as a set of Firefox Live Bookmarks [Hack #33] . See http://www.mozillazine.org for an example.

This icon sometimes appears at the bottom-right edge of the status bar. It tells you that the web page you're looking at has alternate stylesheets. You can apply any of the stylesheets provided by clicking on the icon.

This icon sometimes appears at the bottom-right edge of the status bar. It tells you that the web page you're looking at has blocked a pop up. Click on the icon to see details of the page blocked, or to alter pop-up-blocking settings.

One of these three icons sometimes appears in the top-right corner of the menu bar. They indicate that there is an update (a patch or new release) for Firefox or for one of the extensions or themes that you've installed. Beware that issues with color and accessibility might mean these icons have been changed by the time you read this. Each icon indicates a different severity. Red means that a security problem with your browser has been detected at the moment, and you should grab the recommended fix by clicking on the icon. The other severities don't require any action, but it's good practice to keep your browser fully up to date. That makes these icons go away.

A subset of these icons appears in the Mozilla Extension Manager and Theme Manager dialog boxes. From left to right, they stand for "uninstall from the local disk," "update from the Web," and "configure options for a given extension or theme." Hover over the icons with the mouse to remind yourself what they're for.

These icons sometimes appear on the Find toolbar at the bottom of the browser window. The first one indicates that your search has been unsuccessful. The second indicates that the search has just wrapped, which means you've just reached the bottom (or the top) of the web page and the find process will continue again from the other end.

These icons sometimes appear at the right end of the Location bar, where the current page's URL is shown. They can also appear at the right edge of the status bar, at the bottom of the window. The uncrossed icon appears when the web page you are viewing is served up securely. That usually means that Secure HTTP (https:) is providing the page. Secure HTTP uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to ensure that all information between the web server and you is safely encrypted. The other icon appears when you log into a web site using a password, but the password is transmitted unencrypted to the web site. The icon indicates that your login is not as free from prying eyes (network sniffers in particular) as it might otherwise be.


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