Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Fun Friday

When you spend several hours a day looking at a computer screen (or two or three), the space you’re working in can make quite a difference. Today we thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the computer set-ups that people have out there. Most involve multiple monitors and some even involve multiple operating systems. Does your work space look anything like these?

Work Space 1

Source

Work Space 2

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Work Space 3

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Work Space 4

(This is one way to be sure you get your exercise in!)

Source

Work Space 5

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Work Space 6

Source

Work Space 7

(Notice that it’s cross-platform)

Source

Work Space 8

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Work Space 9

(This is Bill Gates’ work space)

Source

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on January 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox extensions do all kinds of things, but how many that you use actually make you more productive? If you think about it I’m sure that you can come up with a reason for nearly all of your extensions as to why your more productive for using them. That’s why I’m not going to hit at some of the obvious ones that most people talk about, like IE Tab, DownThemAll, or Tab Mix Plus. I went browsing around the Web looking for ones that even I have never heard of, but I made sure that they are useful. Now you may have heard of a few of these, but they were all new to me so I thought there was a pretty good chance that most of them will be new to you, too.

Note: All of the extensions mentioned here are compatible with Firefox 2.

–BetterSearch (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

This extension will make you more productive while performing searches on sites like Google, MSN, Yahoo, A9, Answers.com, AllTheWeb, Dogpile, and del.icio.us. Sure there are all kinds of separate extensions that do similar things, but this one brings them all together into on convenient package. It can add thumbnail previews to your search results and you can customize how many of the results receive the thumbnails. Buttons can also be added to open the link in a new window, view site information, pull up the archive for the site via Wayback Machine, or even preview the website in one click (pictured below). The preview feature will “popup” the website in the same window as the search results so that you can see if the content on the site is right for you before navigating to it.

–Repagination (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

So I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to explain this extension without sounding like a drunk old fool. I kinda understood how it worked after reading the product’s description, but their screenshots were a little confusing…so I hope mine is a little better.

Basically Repagination works on the sites that have multiple links at the bottom with pages numbers, such as Google. What’s going on in the screenshot below is I scrolled down to the bottom of the Google search results page and right-clicked on the number “2″, which represents the next page in the order. Then I went to Re-Pagination->All and it concatenated 26 more Google search results pages onto the one that I was already viewing. I darkened the concatenated portion in the screenshot below so that you can distinguish where the original results page ends and where the other one begins, but when using the extension it looks like one fluid page. You can also limit how many pages are concatenated which might be a good idea so that it doesn’t add so many.

–Next Please (Homepage)–

This extension is similar to the “Fast Forward & Rewind” feature in Opera. If you’re on a page, such as Google, with the previous and next links then this extension will essentially click on those links for you. I find this useful when browsing for images because it seems like the “Next” hyperlink is always moving since the thumbnail sizes are changing, but with an extension like this I can just keep pressing the right-arrow to move to the next page without ever clicking on a hyperlink.

I do want to point out that the extension does install a toolbar, but you can drag the buttons wherever you would like if you right-click on a toolbar and select “Customize”. Then after you have placed the buttons where you would like just right-click and uncheck the “NextPlease!” toolbar. Otherwise a whole toolbar for just four buttons is a little ridiculous.

There are a ton of things you can do to configure this extension (it even supports mouse gestures) so make sure you checkout this page if your interested in all of the details.

–Googlepedia (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

This extension will show you a Wikipedia result right next to your Google search results. It does take it a step further by rewriting the Wikipedia links into Google search links, and it also removes the Google advertisements on the side…otherwise there wouldn’t be much room for the Wikipedia article. At the top of each article you’ll also find an “Expand” link that will make the Wikipedia article overlap the Google results so that it is the full width of the page, and therefore easier to read.

–GTDGmail (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

This extension branches off of the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) concept by bringing it into the Gmail service that millions of people use. It makes it easy to setup projects and follow through with actions all by keeping yourself organized. If your unfamiliar with the terminology that David Allen, the author of the Getting Things Done book, uses then you should read through this Wikipedia article to see if it is something that interests you.

–InFormEnter (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

InFormEnter is not like other form fillers because it does not do the form filling automatically. Instead it will place a small button next to each text field, and clicking on that button will reveal some profiles that you can setup. When creating a profile you are presented with a large text box that you can enter paragraphs of information into if you so desire. InFormEnter can even generate a random password for you and repeat that password for the confirmation box that is normally required.

–Errorzilla Mod (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

This extension adds more features to the 404 error page instead of just receiving the standard “Try Again” link when a website doesn’t come up. Once it is installed, and you come across a site that can’t be accessed, you’ll have the following buttons to help find the content you’re looking for: ”Try Again,” “Google Cache,” “Coralize,” “Wayback,” “Ping,” “Trace,” and “Whois”. I’m not sure if there is any feature that could make this extension more useful…except maybe combining it with the ReloadEvery extension.

–BlockSite (Homepage)–

 At first this extension may seem to be quite counter-productive, but for some of you it may be exactly what you need. If you find yourself visiting websites too often (except ours, of course) then it might be beneficial for you to block it while you try to get your work done. This extension will let you customize what URL’s to block and it even goes as far as to disable hyperlinks on other sites that link to the blocked site. While the purpose of this extension might be to block malicious websites it can also be used to keep you focused at the task you’re working on.

 –PageAddict (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

PageAddict allows you to tag and monitor the websites that you visit so that you can analyze where you spend a bulk of your time. I haven’t used this yet because I’m afraid to see how much time I spend on our own site (and in the forum), but it would be intriguing to see where I spend the rest of my time. I would guess that most of it would be on Google or some sort of Google service.

 –Separe (Homepage/More Screenshots)–

This extension is very unique in my opinion and I have never seen anything like it…but the concept is simple. It will help breakup tabs for those of us (definitely me) who like to keep a ton open at the same time. Basically you can insert dividers wherever you please, which then creates virtual groupings of tabs. You can then view a page in Firefox that shows thumbnails for all the tabs on the left side of a particular divider as well as the tabs from the right side (pictured below). Above each of the thumbnails is also a little arrow pointing to the opposite side of the page so that you can move the tab in a click of a button. It can also be used to navigate because clicking on a thumbnail image will switch to that particular tab. There’s so much you can do with an extension who’s primary purpose is to inserts dividers.

 –Overview–

So those are the unique extensions that I happen to come across while looking for things that might make you more productive. Most of them probably won’t appeal to you, but even if one out of the ten is useful then it was all worth it.

Let us know which ones you decide to try out or any alternatives that you think are better.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Windows only
File sharing is becoming more and more important these days, and that’s one reason why I’m always looking for easy ways to upload images and files. A recent program I came across called Rightload looks to remove the hassle of uploading files to common sites, or even to your own FTP.

With it you can right-click on a file or folder, and then have it upload the selected files to a service or FTP server of your choice. Before you can do any of that you’ll need to set up the program to work with those services.

The screenshot above shows what Rightload looks like after starting it up for the first time. Below you’ll find instructions needed to set up an FTP account or a few select web services (Imageshack, TinyPic, Rapidshare, etc…), and then also a brief tutorial on how the program works.

–Set up Your Accounts–

To set up one of your own FTP servers you’ll want to go to Tools -> Manage Servers, and press the New Server button. Now all you have left to do is enter in the details for your FTP account, including the default directory you want the files uploaded into.

You can select the Synchronize Directories option at the bottom of the screen to have it fetch all of the folders already created on the FTP server. That will make it possible to do one-click uploads to certain directories on your server, and in the next section you’ll see why that would be useful.

One of the other really nice things about Rightload is that it supports popular hosting sites like Imageshack, TinyPic, and Rapidshare. To sweeten the feature even more there’s absolutely nothing you need to configure. Instead you just have to import an XML file into the program.

The full list of XML files for the supported services can be found here. I’ve taken what will likely be the four most popular ones, and listed them below. What you’ll need to do is right-click on the one(s) you want, and save them somewhere on your computer.

• Imageshack
• Rapidshare.com
• Rapidshare.de
• TinyPic

After you have the XML files on your computer you’ll want to import them into Rightload. In the app go to Tools -> Import servers, and then browse for the XML file you want to import. You should receive a message saying that the import process was successful:

–Using Rightload–

Now that you have all of the accounts set up you can start using Rightload. Just right-click on a file or folder, move your mouse over the Upload with Rightload menu, and select the service/location where you want the files uploaded. If you’ve created/synchronized any directories in your FTP account they will also show up in the menu:

It’s important to note that uploading an entire folder will only work with FTP locations. That’s because it replicates the folder structure on the server, and it obviously can’t create folders on sites like TinyPic.

After an upload has been completed you’ll be presented with a list of URL’s that can be formatted in either HTML or BBCode (for forums). Here’s what it looked like when I uploaded two images to the TinyPic service, and applied a BBCode formatting to them:

Notice how I can copy all of the links in a single click? That makes it a lot easier to post images or files in bulk to a site or forum.

–Overview–

This type of program can end up being a huge time saver since it is capable of uploading and providing links to files you have sitting on your desktop. There’s nothing hard to configure, you can just right-click on files or folders to initiate an upload, and it’s free. It’s an all-around winner in my book.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the major reasons Firefox is approaching 400 million downloads is because of how customizable the browser is thanks to extensions. In a way Firefox extensions are bittersweet, because they can provide some unique and useful features, but at the same time they can cause some unwanted problems.

It’s been well over a year since I last took a look at the issues some popular Firefox extensions caused. Most of the extensions listed there caused crashes, memory leaks, and excessive CPU usage. Since then, a Leak Monitor extension has been created to notify users when a certain type of memory leak occurs. This has successfully helped dozens of developers eliminate memory leaks in their extensions.

Unfortunately not all of the problems have not been solved when it comes to the extensions. Some can still cause Firefox to crash, leak memory, or make your CPU usage skyrocket. Today I thought that I would revisit the current status of extensions to see which ones are still causing the problems.

To find the extensions that have problems, I turned to the Mozilla Knowledgebase as well as their bug tracker. I was able to uncover more than a dozen extensions that have performance related issues, and I’m assuming you’re using the most recent versions of the extensions as well as the latest version of Firefox. You’re sure to have even more problems if you’re using older versions of Firefox or extensions that are outdated.

Below is the list that I came up with, and along with each extension I mention the issue along with any known fixes.

Note: You may or may not experience the problems mentioned. If you haven’t had a problem with an extension there is no sense in removing it.

• Adblock
  Issue: Has been known to crash Firefox when trying to use Gmail Chat.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed if you use Gmail Chat.
• All-in-One Gestures
  Issue: Can cause Firefox to crash, and conflicts with the inline spellchecker on Linux and OS X.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed if you’re using Linux or OS X.
• Fasterfox
  Issue: Can interfere with website access, and problems may continue even if Fasterfox is removed.
  Fix: Reset the defaults or start with a new profile in Firefox. Also make sure that you have prefetching disabled in the extension.
• Firebug
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage
  Fix: Disable Firebug when it’s not being used, or create a separate profile to use it in.
• ForecastFox
  Issue: Memory leaks due to satellite imagery.
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install an older version without the satellite imagery.
• Google Browser Sync
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage with GIF animations.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Google Web Accelerator
  Issue: Crashes Firefox when closing the browser.
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• IE Tab
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install IE View Lite as an alternative.
• Loki
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Media Player Connectivity
  Issue: Causes Unresponsive Script Warnings
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• Mouseless Browsing
  Issue: Causes excessive CPU usage
  Fix: None available right now. It’s recommended that the extension be removed.
• SessionSaver
  Issue: Memory leaks
  Fix: Use Session Manager instead.
• Tabbrowser Extensions (TBE)
  Issue: Slows down Firefox, conflicts with other extensions, and can stop Firefox from working.
  Fix: It’s recommended that the extension be removed, or you can install Tab Mix Plus instead.

People running Firefox 3 right now should be careful if using the ForecastFox or FoxClocks extensions. Both of those are known to have memory leaks (ForecastFox report here and FoxClocks report here).

The extensions that I’ve listed above are all currently known to have some sort of problem. The bad news is that not all of the extensions have been as thoroughly tested as the ones mentioned here, and that’s because Mozilla relies on people like you to submit bug reports when you encounter an issue. If you frequently notice memory leaks, try a fresh Firefox profile, and then install the extensions one by one until you find the culprit. The odds are pretty good that the leak will be the result of one of your “more complex” extensions, and so you may want to start with those.

Additional resources from Mozilla include the Reducing Firefox Memory Usage page and the long list of Problematic Extensions.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

As websites continue to become more and more AJAXified I believe that bookmarklets are going to become a larger driving force. Some of you may not be familiar with bookmarklets, so I was trying to think of a good way I could explain them. When I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article I thought it couldn’t be said any better:

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be stored as a URL within a bookmark in most popular web browsers, or within hyperlinks on a web page. Because Internet Explorer uses the term favorites instead of bookmarks, bookmarklets are also less commonly called favelets by users.

Bookmarklets can be saved and used like normal web page bookmarks. Therefore, they are simple “one-click” tools that can add substantial functionality to the browser. For example, they can:

• Modify the way a web page is displayed within the browser (e.g., change the font size, background color, etc.).
• Extract data from a web page (e.g., hyperlinks, images, text, etc.).
• Jump directly to a search engine, with the search term(s) input either from a new dialog box, or from a selection already made on a web page.
• Submit the page to a validation service.

There are all kinds of services that provide bookmarks, especially for browsers that don’t support extensions or add-ons, like Opera. The problem is trying to find ones that are actually useful to you. Below I have categorized the different bookmarklets depending on what you are trying to do. I have quite an extensive collection of bookmarklets that I have gathered over the years with my two primary sources being SquareFree and OperaWiki. I’ll be mashing the two sources together to bring you my favorites, and each one will have images signaling which browsers they work with (Firefox 2 , Internet Explorer 7 , and Opera 9 ).

Note: To use any of the following bookmarklets just hold down the left mouse button and drag the hyperlink to the bookmark toolbar in your browser. 

–Hyperlink Manipulation–

• Color code links  
  Makes all internal links on a site red, external links blue, and links pointing to the current page (internal bookmarks) orange.
• Hide visited hyperlinks  
  Removes all hyperlinks that you have already visited on a site, therefore making it easier to see which links you still need to open.
• Rewrite redirects  
  This script will rewrite all URL’s to point directly to the source instead of routing through a redirect URL.
• Increment URL  
  Increases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Next” link.
• Decrement URL  
  Decreases the last number in the URL by 1. This will often work with sites where you go through multiple pages, and therefore simulates pressing the “Previous” link.
• Generate TinyURL   
  Creates a TinyURL for the current site.
• Linkify
  Make all plain-text URL’s into hyperlinks.

–Form Manipulation–

• View password  
  Shows password field in plain text instead of asterisks. 
• Remember passwords
  Some sites try to block passwords from being stored by using the “autocomplete=off” option in the form. If a website is blocking the storage of a password using this option (such as Yahoo! Mail) then it will remove it from the HTML so that the browser can store the password. 

 –Appearance Manipulation–

• Remove bloat  
  Eliminates all occurrences of Flash, Java, music, and third-party iframes.
• Disable StyleSheets  
  Turns off all stylesheets which might be useful for hard-to-read websites.
• Slowly load the site
  Choose how many characters to load on the site each second. Might be useful to test what your site looks like on a dial-up connection by setting the character limit to something low.
• Duplicate tab
  Opens the current site in a new tab. 
• Highlight search term   (submitted by “edwest”)
  Prompts for a search term that you would like to highlight on the current page.
• Ultimate Highlight   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Prompts for a search term to be highlighted. It will also display a box in the upper-right corner of the screen with the number of results on the page and a link to start a new search.

–Cookie Manipulation–

• Remove site’s cookies  
  Deletes all cookies created by the current site.
• View site’s cookies  
  View all cookies created by the current site.
• Transfer site’s cookies  
  Transfer cookies created by the current site to a different browser. This bookmarklet will give you the necessary code to re-create a specific cookie in a different browser.

–Other Bookmarklets– 

• Calculator  
  A popup window where you can enter in a simple calculation such as “7 + 4″ and have it return the sum of those two numbers.
• ASCII table  
  Shows the ASCII character table in a new window
• WebColors  
  Shows the 216 “browser-safe” colors with their corresponding hex codes.
• Scroll by Dragging   (submitted by “Chad-)”)
  Executing this bookmarklet will turn the cursor into a scroller and executing it again will return it back to normal.

There you go…now you can start to utilize the power of bookmarklets. If you’re a Firefox user, than many of the bookmarklets mentioned above can also be found in extensions, such as the Linkify. Personally I prefer to use the bookmarklets so that I keep my extensions list to a minimum, and also because I don’t want an extension analyzing every site that I visit when it really isn’t necessary.

There are many more bookmarklets available, so I tried to keep the list concise, yet thorough. If you know of a bookmarklet that you can’t live without, let us know so that we can add it to the list.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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