Windows: If you’ve got more than one monitor, you’ve probably tried fullscreening a Flash video on one monitor while working in another. The problem: Flash exits fullscreen as soon as you click on something. FlashHacker fixes this problem.

A few months ago we highlighted a somewhat complicated method of tweaking Flash to fix this problem, but it hasn’t been updated for a while and doesn’t work with Flash 10 (the latest version of Flash). FlashHacker, on the other hand, should work like a charm on all versions of Flash. Just fire it up and click the big Hack My Flash! button. (Blogger Mike Pegg reports that he had to first click unhack and then hack, so if it’s not working the first time, you may want to try that.)

FlashHacker is a free download for Windows only. Any Mac or Linux users figure out how to address this issue? Let’s hear about it in the comments. Thanks badgerz!

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Google’s Gmail tweak broke some of the more popular features of my Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension this week, including Folders4Gmail and Hide Spam Count. Thanks to the quick work of Arend v. Reinersdorff, the problems have been fixed. If you’re a Better Gmail 2 user and your labels aren’t collapsing properly or your Spam count is showing when it shouldn’t, hit the “Find Updates” button in Firefox’s Add-ons dialog to get the fix, or download the most recent version directly from Mozilla Add-ons. Thanks for your patience and for using the extension. As always, news and discussion about the whole series of Better extensions is always posted on the mailing list.

Republished from smarterware.org

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Every year music lovers from across the country head to Austin, Texas for SXSW, and for the past six of those years, SXSW has offered hundreds of DRM-free tracks from artists playing at SXSW—and it’s all available via BitTorrent.

Just head to the Home of the Unofficial SXSW torrents to grab the first torrent, featured 646 tracks weighing in at 3.35 GB. These songs are all freely available on the official SXSW web site, but this handy site wraps them all up into a much more convenient torrent. A second torrent is on the way (with over 200 more free and legit tracks). The site also hosts every collection since SXSW 2005, so if you’re in the mood for some new music or just free (and legitimate) music, head on over and get your download on.

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If you need to buy a new copy of Microsoft Office but don’t want an instantly outdated suite when Office 2010 is released later this year, you’re in luck: If you buy Office 2007 any time between March 5 and September 30 of this year, you automatically qualify for a free upgrade to Office 2010 when it’s released. [Microsoft via Digital Inspiration

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One of the most powerful features in Firefox is also one too few people know about: the ability to create and use more than one profile at the same time. Here’s how to streamline and reap the benefits of multiple browsing profiles.

Instead of installing every single extension for every task into the same Firefox profile, why not separate them into separate profiles, organized by task? Think of Firefox like an Operating System for the web, and each profile as a separate application—one profile is used for basic web browsing, another for writing, another for web development, and so on.

Most of the writers at Lifehacker HQ use different profiles for writing, researching, and personal browsing on a daily basis. It keeps your Firefox instances running smoother, and each profile is streamlined for accomplishing the kind of things you want to accomplish with that profile.

Setting Up Separate Firefox Profiles

Creating a new profile is a lot easier than you might think, but there’s no default menu item that allows you to open the profile manager easily. If you install the ProfileSwitcher extension in the “Switching Profiles the Easy Way” section below, you can use it to create new profiles via a menu item; if you want to go that route, skip down to that section; either way, here’s how to do it without the extension:

You’ll need to pop open a command prompt, switch to the Firefox directory (cd %programfiles%\Mozilla Firefox\ should work), and then launch Firefox with a command line switch:

firefox -profilemanager -no-remote

If you don’t like using the command prompt, you can simply create a shortcut to Firefox.exe (or copy your current one), and then add the arguments to the end of the Target line.

The first argument clearly indicates that you want the profile manager, but the second –no-remote argument means that you want to open a separate copy of Firefox at the same time as having the first one open. This is the magic switch that will allow you to run more than one profile at the same time, and it also allows you to open the profile manager without closing your current browser window.

Once you’ve created a new profile, you can make a separate Firefox shortcut, and modify the Target line to include a few extra arguments, making it look something like this:

firefox.exe –P profilename –no-remote

Switching Profiles the Easy Way

If you’d rather not mess with command line arguments and new shortcuts, you can switch between profiles or launch the profile manager the easy way with the previously mentioned ProfileSwitcher extension.

Once you’ve installed the extension, you can simply use the File menu to access the new profile switching options and access the profile manager directly from there. Once you’ve chosen one of the other profiles, you’ll be prompted on whether you want to switch to that profile or keep the current profile open and open the second profile at the same time.

Sync Your Profile Passwords and Bookmarks

The biggest problem with maintaining multiple profiles is utilizing the same passwords, bookmarks, and settings across the various profiles, and previously mentioned Weave can do just that. Once you’ve setup Weave in each profile, you can sync your bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences, and even your open tabs if you felt like it. Weave isn’t the only game in town, though, as you can use Xmarks to sync your bookmarks and passwords across other browsers as well, but it comes with additional “discovery” services that you might want to turn off.

Create Profiles for Specific Tasks

Now that we’ve learned how to create profiles, switch between them, and sync your passwords across them all, it’s time to actually start creating useful profiles to separate out your tasks. Here’s a few suggested ideas for the profiles I use on a regular basis, but you aren’t limited to these ideas—you can more or less come up with a specialized profile for any task.

The Writing Profile
If you’re doing writing on the web, you’ve no doubt realized that it’s far too easy to get distracted by your other tabs, click on your bookmarks, or just type something into the search box. What I’ve done to keep myself focused on writing is create a separate profile specifically for writing, with almost all of the chrome elements removed to maximize the viewing area for writing and prevent myself from being distracted.

The Web Development Profile
If you spend any percentage of your time doing web design or development, Firebug is the single must-have extension that you cannot live without. It’s not just that it lets you debug Javascript, but it allows you to edit the page HTML and CSS on the fly, and even has extensions like YSlow and Page Speed to help keep your web site nice and speedy. Since you really wouldn’t want to have the hefty Firebug extension running all the time, it’s best to create a new profile specifically for web development.

The Social Media Profile
Let’s face it, social media can be a massive time suck, especially when you’re browsing around finding random stuff using StumbleUpon-so what I do is create a separate profile for random browsing and social media. This helps keep me from clicking that Stumble button while I’m supposed to be working, but also helps me separate my time. Your social media needs may differ, but the point is to keep them separate from your primary profile to keep yourself focused on a single task.

The Extension Testing Profile
Rather than install every new extension and bloat up your primary Firefox profile, why not create a separate profile specifically for testing new extensions? This way you can make certain that you’ve fully vetted an extension before unleashing it on your main web browsing experience. Here at Lifehacker HQ, we make extensive use of test profiles when we’re checking out extensions to recommend.

Secure Banking Profile
Why expose yourself by using your primary profile to access your banking sites? What I do is setup a clean banking profile with every plugin disabled, the NoScript and Adblock Plus extension to remove any danger of malware, and only my banking sites are allowed to use Javascript. I even go so far as to remove the search box to make sure I’m not using this profile for any quick Google lookups, and I create bookmarks for each of my banking sites, and make sure to never click a banking link in an email, since that’s a quick way to get yourself scammed online.

The How-To Geek has been using multiple Firefox profiles for years. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, and Twitter.

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This Sunday is the last day users still running Windows 7 RC will be able to go about their everyday computing before Windows starts with the nagging and auto-rebooting. The annoying part is less that the Windows 7 RC period is ending (it was a great run!), but more that there’s no upgrade path for going from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 proper. Luckily we’ve already highlighted a simple step-by-step method that will allow you to upgrade from Windows 7 RC to the official Windows 7 release with minimal complications—so if you haven’t upgraded already, this weekend is the time to do it.

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A great BitTorrent client is all well and good, but you need a great tracker to get the actual torrent files and stoke the bandwidth burning fire in your client of choice. Here’s a rundown of five of the most popular options.

A bit of clarification is in order before we share the list of the top five contenders with you. In our call for contenders we asked for you to share your favorite BitTorrent trackers, but we didn’t explain the difference between a BitTorrent tracker and a BitTorrent indexer. The difference isn’t immediately clear to the end user—nor does the difference even matter to many end users—and because we didn’t make the difference crystal clear the votes were a mix of both sites that tracked and indexed and just indexed torrent files.

Since the purpose of the Hive Five is to help readers find tools and the ability to find torrents is more important to the majority of users than whether or not the place they find the torrents is also acting as the tracker for those torrents, we’ve opted to overlook the confusion in an effort to share a list of where Lifehacker readers go to search and download torrent files. The following list contains both true trackers and indexers. If you’re curious about the technical details between a tracker and an indexer you can read up on them here and here.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is no longer the full-service tracker it once was thanks to some rough battles with the law, but it remains in service as an indexer. The Pirate Bay has been and remains one of the most publicly recognizable faces of the torrent phenomenon and is still a popular destination for torrent seekers. It no longer indexes its own tracker but instead organizes torrents indexed to other trackers. The Pirate Bay is known for having, even now, a wide selection and a well-organized, easy-to-browse site.

BTJunkie

BTJunkie is one of the largest torrent indexers on the web with over four million torrents and several thousand added daily. BTJunkie amasses such a high number of torrents by employing crawlers that dig through web sites looking for torrent files to index. The quality of torrents is ranked both by an algorithm and by user input which helps filter out low quality or malicious torrents.

isoHunt

Another enormous indexer, isoHunt has nearly two million torrents and a huge user base. In addition to being able to search torrents and sort them by age, number of peers, and other common search factors isoHunt has an additional variable, appropriately called isoHunt Rank, that is a compilation of all the other factors like age, number of comments, user feedback, and more. Sorting by isoHunt Rank allows you to see which torrents are best overall instead of just best in some subcategory like number of seeders or age.

Demonoid

Demonoid is a semi-public tracker. Registration is traditionally closed—it opens a few times a year to let new users in, or you can be invited by an existing member—but the site is still quite functional even without registration. Registration gives you access to the deep archives of Demonoid, but even without it you have access to over a quarter million torrents—the most recently added ones—available for download. Demonoid has built a name for itself by having a low number of bogus torrents and a high level of user participation.

KickAssTorrents

KickAssTorrents is a new kid on the torrent indexing block, but it has quickly built a name for itself by offering a user friendly experience. KickAssTorrents is the only torrent search engine that offers correction of spelling mistakes—search for Unutu for instance and it will ask “Did you mean Ubuntu?”—which is a small thing but highlights the level of detail put into the construction of their search engine. In addition to indexing regular torrents KickAssTorrents also indexes httpTorrents, which allow users who cannot access the BitTorrent cloud due to their location or firewall restrictions to access torrents.

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Developer and blogger Darren Beckett rounds up a crop of five e-readers and gives them a short price and feature comparison with the newly released iPad—and rolled the results into an eye-friendly infographic.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

We may have our problems with the iPad, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in buying it. This comparison pits the iPad against other similar devices, highlighting price, screen size and type, storage, input, multi-tasking, multi-function, and connectivity. The chart’s not perfect (it only compares the bottom-of-the-barrel iPad, so when it says the connectivity is only Wi-Fi, keep in mind that more spendy iPads also have 3G), and it’s not as detailed as, say, this excellent comparison of the current crop of smartphones (which includes monthly fees for a true cost of ownership), but it still offers a nice overview of the market if the iPad’s piqued your interest.

Most e-reader enthusiasts would likely point to the iPad’s lack of e-ink as a pretty big red mark—and that because of that the iPad maybe isn’t something you’d even want to compare to an e-reader. But convergence devices like the iPad are certainly attractive when they can swallow the functionality of other devices (like e-readers) and offer a lot more at a similar price, so you can be sure that a lot of people interested in buying a Kindle will also be considering the iPad.

Give your thoughts on the matter—especially if you’ve got experience with any of the other readers listed—in the comments. (Note: The JooJoo is still an unreleased product but is, in theory, more like the iPad.)

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Adobe Flash is a plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox that allows active content to be displayed in your web browser. As with other third party programs, its updated on a regular basis. In many cases, the Flash Security Update KB923789 in Windows Update would not install properly. In other cases, you may have received an error “you must install a later version of the Macromedia Flash Player”.

In April 2008, Adobe is releasing another security update that may cause issues too. Because of these problems, you may have to uninstall and reinstall the flash player to may it work properly. Follow the steps below to download the Flash Player Uninstaller and then reinstall it. In most cases, a reinstall will fix any issues with Flash Player.

Last week, a hacked flash ad injected into online advertising enabled malware to attack systems just by visitors viewing the infected web page.  These “malvertisements” may become commonplace in the future and are even more reason to uninstall any old versions of Adobe Flash Player and install the latest version. Read more about Flash Security further down the page.

Download the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller

Many times, just uninstalling and reinstalling the Adobe Flash Player from the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel will not solve the problem. If the Flash Player is corrupted, it may not remove properly and therefore an new installations will not proceed correctly. Click on the following link to download the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller and save it to your desktop.

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/

Run the uninstaller program and then reboot your computer to complete the uninstall.

Download the latest version of Flash Player

Now that Adobe Flash has been uninstalled, go to the Adobe site and download the latest flash player.

http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

Security Level Issues Won’t Allow Flash Player to Download

Sometimes, browser security will not allow you to download the Flash Player correctly. If this happens in Internet Explorer, check the following items to allow the download.

To change your security level:

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Click on Tools, Internet Options
3. Click on the Security Tab
4. Click Custom Level
5. Find the section titled “ActiveX controls and plug-ins”
6. Choose Prompt for “Download Signed ActiveX Controls”
7. Choose Prompt for “Run ActiveX Controls and Plug-ins”
8. Click OK twice to close the options screen

More Troubleshooting Help for Flash Player

If this procedure does not allow you to install Adobe Flash, you may want to visit the Troubleshooting FAQ on Adobe’s site.

Flash Security

Because of the recent vulnerabilities found in Flash applications that allow malware code to be released when a flash file is viewed, you may want to turn flash off when viewing flash enabled websites. This is a more extreme measure, but should be considered.

Here are some utilities that will help turn flash off when needed.

For Internet Explorer:

• TurnFlash – a utility to turn flash on or off from the system tray
• No! Flash – free utility to disable flash, java, and more

For Firefox:

• FlashBlock – an add-on extension to block flash, shockwave, and authorware in Firefox

To read more about this flash vulnerability visit the Windows Secrets article

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Among the changes in the official Firefox 3.6 release is a change to where new tabs open from clicked links—to the right of the tab they launched from. Liked it better the old way? Here’s the quick fix.

The Mozilla Links blog points out a few about:config tweaks that Firefox 3.6 users might be intrigued in, especially if the new version handles things a bit differently than you’re used to, and you don’t want to spend time getting used to the new scheme. To set new tab behavior back to its old ways—opening in the right-most slot—enter about:config into your address bar, click that you’ll be careful, then enter browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent into the search bar. Set that value to “False,” and your new tabs will open where they used to.

For more Firefox 3.6 tweaks, visit Mozilla Links’ post, which details tab preview behaviors in detail.

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