Prevent Firefox from opening new windows once and for all

After using my recently installed news reader it was going on my nerves, that every time I clicked a link a new Mozilla Firefox window popped up. Why did Firefox not use a tab? As Jeremy Flint reports, he had the same problem. What good is a browser with tabbed browsing, if external applications use new windows?

Fortunately, there’s a function in the very useful “tabbrowser extensions” that lets you specify exactly what Firefox should do with links from external applications.

Tabbrowser Extensions Preferences

Just go to the “Preferences of Tabbrowser Extensions” window. Select “Use Tab” and then “External Links”. Now you can select what should be done with links in other applications.

Display Google AdSense on password-protected pages

The Google AdSense FAQ says:

Place ads on pages that don’t require a login.

What if the main part of your site is a password-protected member area? No AdSense? No earnings? No! Here comes a quick technique that allows you to place AdSense with content relevant ads on every page you want.

Google AdSense

AdSense automatically delivers ads targeted to your content on a page-by-page basis. After you’ve visited a page that contains an AdSense banner, soon a bot named “Mediapartners-Google” will visit exactly that page. It’ll use exactly the same address. And it will get what the script (sites that require a login are using some kind of server-sided scripts) gives to it. That’s all we have to do. Change the content of the specific page. Mostly the script will display something like “Login required” when the Google bot comes, because it’s not logged in. Google will scan that page in order to display ads targeted to your content. That page normally won’t contain relevant content. You can change that. Add some meaningful content, and if you want to, you can put it in a div and set display: none to hide it.

That way, you can force AdSense to display the ads you want. Create a nice keyword list, or something else. Even on pages that display e.g. some boring user details, AdSense will display relevant ads.

Why link to index.php?

Well, you can call me pedantic, because of writing a whole blog entry about this, but I think it’s important. We are web designers, so we should care about every little thing that helps us improve our websites.

I noticed that most people do not worry about what to link to, when linking to the home page of their sites. That’s a big mistake, I think. Let me explain what I mean. Normally, you have a link back to the entry site of your website. Often it’s titled “home”. But where do you link to? A little case study:

  • The CSS Vault links to “http://www.cssvault.com/”, but that will always redirect you to “http://cssvault.com/”
  • Dave Shea links to “/”.
  • Jeremy Flint links to “/wp/index.php”
  • Yellowlane links to “http://www.yellowlane.com/”
  • Anil Dash links to “index.php”

So, where’s the point? Well, in the worst case you can make three sites out of one. The visitors will still see one site, but search engines will think there are three. Continue reading Why link to index.php?