I did a fresh reinstall of Firefox this morning.

I made the mistake when I set up this computer of networking to my G5 by IP address using the Internet (TCP/IP) instead of by machine name across the LAN. IPs will come and go, but I’m not changing the name of the machine anytime soon. I made some changes in the router so now the G5 has a different internal IP address and hence the problem.

The last time I selected something in Firefox and “Save as…” was on the old network. Firefox remembers the last location, so every time I tried to “save as…” Firefox locked up looking for the old IP that didn’t exist anymore.

Now networking is by machine name across the LAN, so not a problem but I couldn’t figure out how to tell Firefox to stop looking in the old location. I couldn’t seem to delete the correct the file in my profile to get the lockups to stop, so I wiped the whole profile out and decided to start over.

I’ve taken to saving a hard copy of all Firefox extensions I download in a folder on my drive. That way when I start over, I don’t have to go hunt my favorites down. Helpful for getting back up and running in no time.

A fresh start is a chance to make some changes. I’m steering myself away from the [A9](http://www.a9.com) toolbar. I used it for bookmark management for a long time, but the toolbar didn’t mature as I had hoped. After all this time, it would be nice to have the ability to sort, search and export bookmarks, no? I’ve managed to bring bookmarks back into Firefox, using some extensions to keep them sorted and managed. I’m sending most of the pages I want to save to [del.icio.us](http://www.del.icio.us) anyway.

Good timing to drop A9, as I’m enjoying the new [Google toolbar](http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/). My favorite feature is the spell check, which uses the same engine as found in [Gmail](http://www.gmail.com). Click the button while the cursor is in a field and misspelled words turn red. Scan through for red words, clicking on them for suggestions or add the word to the dictionary (which instantly turns it black).

There was a bit of [controversy](http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050225-104317) a while back on the “autolink” button. Web developers didn’t like Google messing with the way their pages appeared, adding links that aren’t “really” there. Autolink scans the page for addresses, ISBNs or shipping numbers and highlights them. Click on the highlight to load the Google Maps (or other map site) page, the Amazon page or track the shipment. I don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s a handy feature that I’m using with my eyes open. I can certainly tell which links are there because I clicked the “AutoLink” button and what the developer meant for me to see. It’s convenient not to have to copy/paste addresses to [Google Maps](http://www.maps.google.com).

Speak of Google Maps, how cool is [Google Earth](http://earth.google.com/)? I downloaded it a few days ago. We’ve only been living here for two weeks as of yesterday, but I’m as familiar with my new surroundings as I was after a few months in Connecticut thanks to Google giving me a sense of where I am in relation to everything else. Google Earth is slick, letting you use the scroll wheel to zoom in very tight without as much loss of detail as the satellite view of the map site.