Firefox for Android is STILL NOT compatible with Samsung Galaxy Ace

 This is what the Mozilla blog said yesterday about the newly added support for the armv6 processors. You can see that the post clearly mentions the Samsung Galaxy Ace.

But when you head happily to the Play Store to install Firefox you will be greeted by Google saying that the Galaxy Ace is not compatible(See the pic below).

'GT-s5830' is the Samsung's Model Number for Galaxy Ace. Why did this happen when the guys at Mozilla clearly mentions the phone?.

Turns out the guys didn't do their home work on the internals of Galaxy Ace. Firefox for Android added support for ARMV6 but not for phones with RAM less than 512MB. Sadly our Galaxy Ace has only 278MB. It did not meet the minimum requirement and hence is incompatible. See the 'Whats new' section of the Firefox app below.

800MHz was fine with the Ace but 512MB RAM pushed the phone out. But the Galaxy Ace Plus, Ace 2 and Ace Duos users are at luck here.

I hope the guys at Mozilla would promptly lift the RAM requirement and would let use the Best browser available out there.

Rooting an android device - What? Why? When? How?

Note: This is a preliminary post for a Guide to rooting Samsung Galaxy Ace

What exactly is rooting?

The diverse dictionary definition of rooting ranges from 'the process of putting forth roots by a plant' to 'cheering' to things I cant even mention here. But to an android user rooting is the process by which we add an extra super-controller to their device so as to drive any part of their device in the way they want.

 The Term rooting came from the Linux world(same place from where android comes) where "Root" is the most powerful user of any system ( Laptops, PCs severs etc). The "Root" user in a Linux system is far more powerful than a windows Administrator.The "Root" user has access and control over every single thing happening in his system. Rooting of an android device essentially hands over the same power to the user. The process of converting a regular user of an android device to a 'root' user is termed 'Rooting'.

In a rooted phone this access to the restricted areas is controlled by an app called 'SuperUser'. This app is the doorman who allows or prevents the access based on your approval. The rooting process adds this app to your existing bank of apps. The "Just Rooted" device looks and functions the same as every other device of the same kind except for the added SuperUser app. So to tap the now gained power you need to install apps specifically designed to avail functions offered by a rooted phone like 'Titanium back up'.

Should you root your phone?

The should

Like I said before it gives access to all the processes in the device. There is nothing unchangeable in a rooted device so to speak. But here are the best advantages.

You can remove preinstalled bloatware - Most annoying of all things is the junk that comes pre-installed with the phone which takes up space and slows down phone. There were apps in my phone which I didnt even used once because good alternatives were available to me. But because of their 'system app' status and therefor non-removability, they sat idly there occupying valuable memory until I rooted my phone.

Free up a lot of space in phone- There are 3 Types of storage memory in an android phone

    1 System Memory - Also called ROM. Where the Android system files are stored. The OS update also goes there so its not completely read only.

    2. Phone Memory - Where your apps are stored. Updates to the system apps like Android Market, google maps, gmail etc also goes to the phone memory. In older android phones this memory was considerably low so users were not free to install lot of apps.

    3 SD Card - Where the user apps are stored if the app is 'movable'. Some popular apps like Facebook does not have this option enabled so they stay in the phone memory with their big foot print(In my phone it occupied 26MB of space out of 150MB which was close to 17% of the available memory)

After rooting, you can move any app to any memory. You can move system app to Phone Memory, move the updates of apps like market and gmail to system memory and move apps to SD card even if movability is not there by default.

You can do complete backups - You can completely back up the system and user apps including the user data. I would recommend Titanium back up for the task. As the user data is also backed up you dont have to set the preferences again if you are restoring. Also you can create Nandroid backups ( Complete System Backup).

Change the looks of your device the way you want

Prevents ads - You can prevent ads from showing up in your phone. But I wont recommend this because considerable time and effort are put in for making every app and in my opinion they should be rewarded for their work.

Fun - Exploring new territories is always fun and if your phone is alredy out of warrenty coverage, you can try rooting to have some fun.

The should NOT

Warranty - "With Great power comes great responsibility". The Super-depth access also means that you can damage the phone pretty easily. delete some essential system file and voila! you got a dead phone. The Manufactures cannot be held responsible for such mis-happenings because we are pushing the system outside of the intended use. So as you root your phone you WILL forfeit your warranty.

Stability Freaks -Don't go there. Rooting reduces the stability of the system so there is a higher chance of crashes and automatic rebooting.

When should you root your phone?

Thats a subjective question . You can try rooting when your 'should root' outweighs 'should NOT'. I rooted my phone once the warranty got expired and the phone memory was reduced to such an extend that i could not install anything without deleting another one and cache files needed to be cleared every day just to avoid low memory warning.

If your phone is under warranty you better not root, because maintenance of an out-of-warranty smart phone is costly.

How to root your phone

Almost every phone has a method to root. Or guys at xda-forum will find a way for that. Mostly it involves starting the phone in recovery mode and applying an update file. This update file is different for every phone hence you need to use the file specific for your phone. Please do a little search and read about experiance of others in rooting their phones.

www.LovelyMovies.com is a scam

This one happened to my friend. He was directed to go to www.LovelyMovies.com to get the password of some file but never received it. Instead he was redirected to some online selling site.

If you are redirected to obtain passwords of some protected files to www.lovelymovies.com, be sure that you won't get it. It is a scam to get you to online shops under the reference of this site.

I checked out this site to find what it was doing. I did this in a sand-boxed Firefox running on a virtual machine to ensure that my computer will be safe.

This site first shows up a page saying that the password is saved in a secure location and it is being retrieved and the site will serve you with the password in no time. But when you click the enter button, you will be redirected to a survey page and asked to fill in a survey.

If you aren't a person who backs out, you will find that the survey is not actually a survey, it is a link to a online selling site. In my case I was redirected to snapdeal.com.

And this was a dead end. Only thing you could do is close everything. You won't get any passwords thats a surety.

What to do.

If you see anywhere that you need to go to www.LovelyMovies.com to obtain a password, just delete the file.  And never go to that site because god knows what scripts are hiding in that site.

How to take screenshots in HTC Explorer without root(Video)

this is a short tutorial on taking screenshots in HTC Explorer, HTCs new addition to the low-midrange section.

You will be using two buttons for taking screenshots in the Explorer. One is the power button located on the top of the phone and the home button located at the left most part of lower touch sensitive buttons.

For capturing a desired screen, you need to hold the power button and then tap the home button. Once the screenshot is taken, there is a camera click sound and the screen mo monetarily whites out. A message 'Screenshot is saved to Camera Shots folder' is also shown. See the video below

Once you press and hold the power button, you have a 2 second window to tap the home button. If you delay, the power options will be displayed and further tapping of the home button won't result in a capture.

You can take screen shots even when the phone is under lock with the same method. Only difference is the absence of visual clues like the whitening of the screen and the message. But the click sound would still be heard and the image will be saved to the same 'Camera Shots' folder.

The captured screens can be viewed by going to the gallery app. You can see all the screenshots in the Camera Shots folder ( see video)

Problems with Samsung Galaxy Ace

These are the problems I encountered with the original samsung galaxy ace and their solutions if any

Installation error : couldn't install on USB storage or SD card

• If you are still using android 2.2 on galaxy ace I strongly recommend an upgrade. Or checkout the above link for a temporary solution for the problem

WiFi error

• You try to switch the WiFi on but it is stuck in error. WiFi can be switched on only after restarting the phone. This problem is a result of a bug in the part of OS that switches between different types of network. 
• when you try to switch on WiFi in your phone, it first disables the mobile network. That is 2G/3G. In case of error this switching mechanism WiFi won't be turned on. Chance of error is more if you are having an active transfer in the mobile network. A possible prevention method is to disable mobile data network before you switch Wifi on.
• A solution was promised with the the 2.3.4 update but the problem recurs now and then. See the video
• 
  

Heating problem

• Using WiFi hotspot generates a lot of heat in this phone. I have seen upto 55degrees/131 F. Below are the screen shots showing battery temperature at 50 and 55 degrees at two different occasions.

 These screen shots were taken using ZDBox, a great system management tool
Low total memory and RAM

• User available memory is only about 130MB in effect. This is completely insufficient to install even a moderate number of apps. 
• Low RAM results in undue closure of programs during multitasking. But what good it could do when apps like Facebook are using 102MB RAM

Complete step-by-step guide to installing flightgear 2.4 in Ubuntu(Update 2.6 is available now)

If you follow the guide completely you will be able to run the latest version of FlightGear (2.4) with a graphical user interface to select the aircraft, location of start, resolution of the program etc in Ubuntu.

Why a guide?

The version of FlightGear available from the Ubuntu repository is 2.0.0-4. This version is old, by about 2 yrs. Further more, FlightGear launch control, a GUI front end to FlightGear  which is used to customize the program start, is not available in the official Ubuntu repository. 

You can definitely install FlightGear from the source file but it creates a lot of blocks in the form of unfilled dependencies. Also if you install flight gear alone, simple tasks such as changing airplane, scenery or resolution becomes a daunting task. This is because without the Launch Control, you have to enter the customization commands manually to the terminal and a single spelling or syntax mistake will fail the opening of the program.

Below is a sample command I would have to enter if I want to fly a F-14 from runway 28R of San Fransisco International Airport at dawn, with a resolution of 1280*800 pixels to match my screen resolution.

fgfs --airport=KSFO --runway=28R --aircraft=f-14b --geometry=1280x800 --timeofday=dawn

If you make a single spelling or syntax mistake in any of these, the system will show an error and flight gear won't run.

Lanch Control simplifies this by entering these customizing commands to the terminal for you. You just need to select your preference from the Launch Control window and it will add a corresponding parameter to the terminal.

This tutorial to install flightgear 2.4 in Ubuntu was made out of an installation in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. But the same tutorial applies to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) also. Guys with 10.10 and below are out of luck here as the PlayDeb only provides FlightGear 2.0 to you.

Ok enough of the introduction, Lets cut to the chase. 

1. Add PlayDeb Repository

Playdeb offers .deb files for Flightgear 2.4 and FlightGear Launch Control. Butyou have to add Playdeb repository to your trusted vendors to install them.


Steps to add playdeb repository

You can Add PlayDeb Repository to your trusted software vendor's list by one of the two methods below
 

Semi-Automatic way:

Install Playdeb package - use this link or go to the PlayDeb.net Page

You will be asked whether to save the file or not. Save it and then double click on it to install.

Installing the Playdeb package will add the address of the repository and the GPG key automatically.

Manual way : 

Go to Software Sources - Either Select Software sources from the programs list or open Ubuntu Software Center and Select Edit >> Software sources.
Select the Tab 'Other Software' and click on 'add' button
in the small window like the one below add 

deb http://archive.getdeb.net/Ubuntu oneiric-getdeb games

click on 'Add Source'. Now the archive is added.

now we have to add the GPG key. GPG keys are used to encrypt the transfer and to ensure that you are downloading from playdeb itself.

Open up a terminal, paste the following command to the prompt and hit enter

wget -q -O- http://archive.getdeb.net/getdeb-archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

That hyphen in the end is necessary.

Note: If you clicked the 'Install' button from PlayDeb's FlightGear page, without adding the PlayDeb repository to your software sources list first, a software center will open but you will see a page to install FlightGear 2.0 only.

The video below has two sections showing different behavior of Ubuntu Software center before and after the addition of playdeb repository. First when Playdeb was not added the software center just got pointed to FlightGear 2.0 only. Later when the repository was added, the software center got pointed to the newest version available, ie, FlightGear 2.4

2. Update (Synchronize) the repositories and install FlightGear

Open up Update Manager and selet 'Check' button to update the repositories. This is to add files from the newly added playdeb repository to the software center.

After successful completion of the update, you can install FlightGear from either the Ubnutu software center. Now that the playdeb's programs are added to the list of available softwares, you will see FlightGear 2.4 instead of the previous 2.0.

Its a 480Mb download so will take some time to download install. But you don't have to download that much at a single stretch. As Ubuntu software center supports resuming, you can resume the download at anytime.

3. Install FlightGear Launch Control

When the download is completed, you can straightaway start playing FlightGear by selecing it from the games list. But you will be limited to only one plane, one location and one resolution.

If you want to change the plane, location or resolution, you need to do it as commands like I mentioned earlier. Here comes the use of FlightGear Launch Control (Equivalent to Flightgear wizard in windows).


FlightGear launch control can also be installed from the Software center. But the term you have to search is 'fgrun', not 'Launch control' or anything. Even searching for 'FlightGear' won't show up the launch control in the results

Tip: You may also install FlightGear Launch control( Search for fgrun in the search window) first. As the base FlightGear program is a dependancy to the launch control, it will also be installed. This way you don't have to install them separately. 

4. Configure FlightGear launch Control

You have to enter the locations of root folder and the flightgear executable manually when you first run the launch control. Here is the way of doing that.

Open FlightGear Launch Control you will be presented with a window like the below screenshot.

You only need to fill up the first two text boxes. If you get those correctly, rest will be filled up automatically.

Box 1 Labeled 'Executable' - Enter full path of FligtGear executable
Enter 

/usr/games/fgfs

in that box. 

Box 2 Labeled 'FG_ROOT' - Enter the path to the FlightGear root file ( equivalent to the program files in windows)

Enter 

/usr/share/games/flightgear 

in the box. Or you can use the folder icon on the right side of these text boxes to navigate to the mentioned folders yourself.


Update: The completed screen look like the screenshot below ( in Ubuntu12.04)

In the next screen you can select the aircraft of your choice


The select the location from the next screen

On the last screen you can select the display resolution display effects

You can see in the lower half, the commands that are going to be fed to the terminal to bring out the customizations.

Once you have selected your variables, hit Run. If everything was entered correctly, you will run the setting of choice in flight gear

Next time when you run FlightGear launch control, you will start with the page to select the aircraft. You don't need to enter the path details again.

Note: If you feel that the mouse button is too sensitive while in yoke mode (cross), Check out Change the Mouse Sensitivity in FlightGear.

UPDATE: Flightgear 2.6 is out and it has already made its way to the PlayDeb repository. This means that you can install FlightGear 2.6 using the same method described above.
If you have already installed 2.4 you just need to run a system update.

Change the sensitivity of mouse when used as a yoke in FlightGear in Ubuntu

When you start with any flight simulator it is natural to have an unstable, mostly swinging plane. In case of FlightGear, this might not entirely be your lack of skill or experience. It might also due to the high sensitivity of the mouse in yoke mode.

The default mouse sensitivity in flightgear is  bit on the higher side. This makes the experience frustrating as you need effort just to level out the plane.

Fortunately we can change the sensititvity settings but unfortunately you have to edit some files(here 'mice.xml) manually to make those changes. I am trying to walk you through this unfortunate situation here.

For enabling users to do in-depth customization, fligthgear uses human readable configuration files to control the behavior of input devices. All of these configuration files are located in the file system partition.

To edit a file in the file system partition, with the exception of home folder, you need root access. Without the root access you won't be able to save the changes.
What you need to do here is to navigate to the location of mice.xml, open the file with root permissions and make the necessary changes.

This can be done entirely using terminal but it is a bit complicated for the beginners. We will try here the GUI way.

Step 1 : Open the mice.xml with root permissions. We will be doing this with the help of a file browser with root permissions. For that, open the terminal and type

sudo nautilus

Here nautilus is the file manager in ubuntu linux. You will be prompted for administrator password. Enter it. A file browser with root permissions will be opened. Then navigate to

/usr/share/games/flightgear

You will see a file 'mice.xml' among others in the flightgear folder. Copy the file and save it somewhere else in the hard disk. Creating a back up copy of the file helps to restore the previous state even if you mess the file up.

Rightclick the mice.xml file and open it with the text editor.

Note: If you double click the file, it will be opened in your default web browser instead of text editor.

Step 2 : Navigate to the section similar to the screenshot below

Look for this line in the section

<factor type="double">4.0</factor>

Change the number 4.0 to a lower number (2.0 would be fine) and save the file.
Next time when you open flightgear you will notice a decrease in sensitivity of the aileron and hopefully some better control.

The behavior of mouse in FlightGear is completely controlled by this mice.xml file. You can do other adjustments like changing the sensitivity of rudder, control the throttle with mouse wheel etc by editing this file.

For getting a better control changing the aileron control is enough so it is fine leave the rest as such.

Find the location of executable files in Ubuntu

When you try to open a program from terminal in Ununtu, you normally do not have to type in the complete address. You just have to enter the command to the terminal and the program will be opened.

If you want to open gedit, you just need to type gedit to the terminal. But if you want to pass parameters to some apps you might need to find the actual( full) location of that executable file ( like the location of .exe file in Windows).

There is a way in Ubuntu to find the complete location of any software. You just need to know the terminal name ( standalone command with which a software can be opened) of the application. For example terminal name for VLC media player is vlc, file browser in Linux is nautilus and FlightGear Flight Simulator is fsgs.

If you know the terminal name, go to the terminal and type

which name

Where name represents the terminal name of the application.

Eg : To find the location of vlc media player, you need to type

which vlc

Below is the screenshot of the output in my laptop

You can see that the executable for VLC media player in Ubuntu is located in  /usr/bin/vlc

What if I don't know the terminal name of an executable?

Open Ubuntu Software center and type in the search box, actual name of the software you want to find the terminal name of.

For example, you want to find the terminal name of software center itself. Do a search for the term 'Ubuntu Software Center' and go to 'More Info'. There you will see the details of selected program( Software Center). locate the area where version is written (see screenshot below).

You can see some text and a version number. The text before the version number is the terminal name of Ubuntu Software Center. Here it is 'software-center'.

You can double check the terminal name by typing it to the terminal and hitting enter. If it is correct, the application will be opened

Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus Specs comparison with original ace

This is the specs comparison of Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus s7500 ( Announced Jan 2012) with the original galaxy ace s5830( Announced Feb 2011).

Galaxy ace is one of the most successful smartphones from samsung as it delivers greats specs at an affordable price tag. The second in the ace series address some( not all) of the most nagging problems of the original ace had.

Design and dimensions

The new galaxy ace plus s7500 is taller(114.7 vs 112.4 mm), broader  (62.5 vs 59.9mm), thinner (11.2 vs 11.5mm) and a little lighter (111gm vs 113gm) than the original s5830.

Galaxy ace plus doesn't look particularly different from its predecessor except for the camera. The camera has been moved to the center from the side. Also the camera window and flash is now squarer instead of circular in the previous model. On opening the lid it comes clear that the location of the Sim card slot and the camera has been swapped to move it to the center.

The change in shape and location of the camera window spares galaxy ace plus from controversial iphone like look of the original ace.

Another change is the location of micro USB port which has been moved to the bottom in the new model. Also the lid protecting the micro USB port ( which on repeated usage causes damage to bezel) appears to have gone in the galaxy ace plus.

The screen

The screen of galaxy ace plus is a little bigger at 3.65 " compared to the 3.5" of the predecessor. But the resolution remaining the same ( 320 x 480 HVGA), it eventually is a disadvantage to the s7500. The pixel density is dropped to 158 ppi from an already mediocre 165 ppi in the original s5830.

The Processor and Memory

This is where the galaxy ace plus really scores. The processor has been upped to 1Gz (from 800MHz) and the RAM to 512 MB (from 278 MB). The internal memory available to the user has got a very significant boost, from 150MB of user available memory to 3GB of internal memory ( Increased to about 20 times).

The internal memory is divided into two sections. 1GB is dedicated specifically to apps and the rest 2GB is a shared memory for apps, pics and other multimedia files. This means that a hell lot of apps can be installed and you won't need micro SD card mounted to take photos. But I am not sure if the internal memory shows up in USB storage mode because if it doesn't, you will need samsung kies to move your photos (Disadvantage to a Linux user).

While bluetooth has been upgraded to version 3.0, all other connectivity options remain the same.

The phone comes with Gingerbread 2.3 with touchwiz UI layered upon. Given the fate of Samsung Galaxy S with the Ice Cream Sandwich update, I seriously doubt this phone will ever receive one. Samsung also announced that ace plus will be preloaded with full version of Thinkfree document editor, chat on services and usual Google services.

The camera

The camera is completely same as the previous model. It sports a 5 MP auto focus shooter with video recording upto 480p ( VGA recording). There is no secondary camera in galaxy ace plus.

Battery

samsung actually reduced the battery capacity from 1350 mAh on the base model to 1300 mAh in the ace plus. The battery back up on the original ace is considered to be one of the worst(I needs to charge it twice a day). Unless samsung has found a way to use battery in a way more efficient way, it is not going to stand a chance even to its predecessor.

The Price

Samsung is yet to announce a tag to the phone. But it is speculated to be around INR 16,000 ($ 320). This speculation is based on the current price of galaxy ace s5830 in samsung website (Rs 14,600 or $290). 

I think this phone doesn't stand a chance at that range as better spec'd phones ( better resolution (480 x 800), front camera, HD recording, HD playback and better battery among others) are available at a near ( Motorola Defy plus) or lesser( Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V) price .

Reinstalling Grub2 in ubuntu

This is a guide to reinstall the grub 2 boot loader in Ubuntu. This guide will be useful for those who had the grub-xputs not found error and those who installed a windows in a system which already has a Ubuntu.

If you have installed Widows after a ubuntu installtion, windows bootloader will wipe the linux’s grub bootloader before it scrubs into MBR. You need to reinstall grub if you want a dual boot system.

There are several methods for correcting the broken Grub 2. Following are the easiest

Solution 1

Open terminal and type ( in a dual boot scenario, you need to use a live CD).

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

This installs grub 2 to the first hard disk

sudo update-grub

This updates the grub and now you can boot directly to your repaired grub 2.
optionally  you can run

sudo grub-probe -t device /boot/grub

to find current location of grub but this doesn’t actually change the procedure.

Solution 2

Ubuntu provides a graphical tool for recovering the broken grub 2 boot loader. It still 352MB in size but provide an easy solution than many others.
Download Ubuntu Boot-Repair.

Solution 3

Use RESCATUX from Super Grub Disk website. Its 334 MB but does the job very well.

Domar.ru - its a referrar spam not actual traffic

Domar.ru is a domain name frequently shows up in the blogger stats pages as a referrer. A referrer is usually a website that the visitor comes from. But in this case there is no actual visitor, just a request for a visit. In short, a referral spam.

Referral spam is a method to get traffic to a domain by deception. I will try to explain with the help of an analogy.

A man goes to the coffee shop and orders a coffee but leaves the place before the order is served. Now his entry will be included in the orders list but wont make it to the bills. Referral spam is something like this. A website (like Domar.ru) will request your blog/ website but won't actually be there for receiving the page (the connection is terminated).

This request will be present in your server log files but it actually is no good to you as the page is not loaded. But the visit won't be logged in the stats of a third party traffic monitor ( like Google analytics, statcounter) as  their monitoring scripts will be executed only when the page is loaded. So there will always be a difference between the server logs and the traffic monitor logs.

I checked back the domar.ru URL and found the following things

1. The website is privately registered so details of ownership are hidden from public.

2. The website first get forwarded to a clickbank hop link ( which is a legitimate online marketing company and then to some video advertisement site about money making.

How does the referrer spamming work for the spammer?

They work in three ways

1. The web masters who check their server log files might click on the link to know how their sites are linked. And usually the spam URL that shows up in the server log files can be traced back to some advertising and the spammer gets free traffic from your clicks.

2. If you do any purchase from the referred site, the referrer ( spammer) gets the commission.

3. Search engines that crawl your site and might index the log file and by this the spammer get a free indexing at your cost (a link from you to a spam site is a bad thing in the eyes of search engine).

What should we do ?

1 What ever you do NEVER EVER click the link from your logs. The blogger referral links that might appear on their site actually has a number representing your blogger blog ( Though the blogs have names, they have numbers designated by BlogID. You can see that in the address bar when you access the blogger).

2 If you are admin of a self hosted website/blog, you can move the server log to a private location ( By default the file might be placed in a folder where search engine eyes have a reach). Alternatively you can edit your robots.txt file to exclude the server logs from getting crawled.

3 Use a third party traffic monitor like statcounter or google analytics - If you are a blogger user adding a google analytics script is easy. you just need to know the analytics site number.

Accessing an Internet Explorer only site in Firefox

There was a time when websites were created for browsers not users. The website compatible for one browser would not render correctly on another. The developers built their own standards and features which were completely closed and non-inter operable.

In those times websites proudly displayed logos of loyalty to their intended browsers like "Designed for Internet Explorer or Netscape" etc. Thanks to w3c ( World Wide Web Consortium), for bringing order to that chaos, for creating consumer level standards that the developers needed to follow. For their efforts there was a universal standard for the first time.

Almost all of today's websites display in any web browser correctly. But there are some developers who live in their past, creating websites that do not allow users of competitor browsers to view content properly. Here is a solution to view websites marked 'For Internet Explorer' in FireFox.

When a browser tries to access a web page, it sends a request to the server that hosts the site. The request contains name of the page the browser want to fetch, IP address of the requester, the name and version of web browser used among others. You can see a complete tutorial on these requests here.

The name of the browser is send under a label User Agent. This is the part the server use to differentiate the users based on their browser.

What we essentially do in this work around is that we change the content of the request send to the server to make it look like coming from an Internet Explorer browser. The server will be fooled and the page will be delivered believing the recipient to be IE.

There is a good plug-in available to firefox which does this change in user agent easily, descriptively named User Agent Switcher.

Go to the above page by clicking the link and click the 'download now' button.

Wait for 3 seconds (big deal!!) and when the installation button gets activated click on it and the add-on will be installed. Restart firefox to complete the installation.

If you are NOT seeing the user agent switcher in the toolbar, right click on the tool bar and select customize. A screen like the one below will be opened and drag the user agent ( grayed out ball when in inactive state) to the tool bar.

 The default and activated states of user agent switcher

click on the down arrow and you will be presented with the target options. Select the one you need ( anyone in the IE category would be fine), and reload the page. you should be fine with the IE only website now.
Note 1 - The switching of user agent affects all current tabs and future tabs so an error might show up in an already open tab ( Eg: Mail might show an error because the user agent you are logged on is changed all of a sudden).
Note 2 - After you are done with the IE only website, remember to switch back the user agent to the default one.