Feb 13
The LEGO Movie Review
Posted in: Today's ChiliI took my 3-year-old daughter to The LEGO Movie this week and she sat through the entire 100-minute film in quiet reverence. End of review. I’m an adult male who … Continue reading
Feb 12
President Obama has launched the new Cybersecurity Framework, the Whitehouse’s guide for infrastructure providers like gas, electric, and water, as well as banks and power plants to fend off digital … Continue reading
Feb 12
Wearable tech will break the consumer market in 2014 after the segment was buoyed in 2013 by fitness-tracking bands, one research firm has predicted, though smartwatches are expected to cannibalize … Continue reading
Feb 12
This week a set of anonymous tipsters have suggested that Apple will be bringing on their newest set-top box to the market as early as April. While we’ve expected a … Continue reading
Feb 12
Verizon has refilled its Windows Phone flagship spot, with the Nokia Lumia Icon distilling what we liked from the Lumia 1520 into a 5-inch form-factor with a crisp metal chassis … Continue reading
Feb 11
Sony has revealed its latest Alpha camera, the A6000, a 24.3-megapixel compact DLSR slotting in-between the NEX-5T and the A65 and promising the fastest autofocus in the world. Measuring in … Continue reading
Feb 11
Today’s the day: The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance. That’s the message from the EFF, Free Press, Demand Progress, and other organizations fighting against the NSA’s data collection … Continue reading
Feb 10
It would seem that the elusive Nokia Android smartphone has been tipped as close to release this week, with a full collection of Microsoft and Nokia-created apps inside instead of … Continue reading
Feb 10
This article was written on October 25, 2007 by CyberNet.
Tutorial Thursday
One of the hot new ways for viewing photos is using a JavaScript technique called LightBox. I’m sure you’ve seen it before on sites where you click on a thumbnail, and a fullsize version of the image is superimposed on the page that your viewing. It then grays out the background so that it’s easy for the viewer to focus on the image. Here’s a working example of LightBox that demonstrates the feature.
Personally I’ve never been a big fan of LightBox, but there are a lot of people who swear by it. When I came across a free program called LightBox Web Gallery Generator, I knew it would be an extremely handy tool for many of you.
What’s so great about it? Not only is it open source, but you also don’t have a thing to install. Once you download the LightBox Gallery Generator you can start working with it immediately!
–Basic Settings–
When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll notice that it’s extremely simple, and there isn’t much you can configure. It’s important to know that the LightBox Gallery Generator will only work with JPG images, but that’s the format that most cameras use so you shouldn’t have any problems.
You’ll want to select the folder with the images, and the folder that you want to output the gallery to. The program will generate thumbnails for all of the images and align them to a grid with however many columns and rows you specify. If you have more photos than can fit on the page it will show next/previous buttons on the generated site as well as page numbers.
The “Image” section in the program is used to specify what the dimensions are of the photos that are shown when the thumbnails are clicked on. By having them resized it helps cut back on the bandwidth needed especially when the original image is gigantic! You can always provide a link to the original image by checking the “Add link to hi-res image” option.
–Advanced Settings–
At first I didn’t really realize that the program had any advanced settings because the text links at the bottom looked like they were hyperlinks for a website. When I clicked on one of them it actually expanded the program’s window to show more settings that you can change to truly customize the look and feel of the gallery that is generated.
The “CSS” option is used to specify your own custom styles to the site. This is where you can customize border, background colors, font types, and more:
At the top of the gallery is a breadcrumb trail that visitors can use to navigate to other pages on your site. This is where you can specify your own custom homepage link or turn it off all together:
The “Master Page” option is truly the heart and soul of the LightBox Gallery Generator. You can create your own custom HTML template to be used with the galleries that you generate. How’s that useful? It means you can put your own header, footer, and sidebars on the site with the gallery being placed in the center of it all.
–The Result–
**drum roll** The end result is what you’ve worked so hard for, well, I use the term “work” loosely. The screenshots below are from a gallery that I generated in under a minute after starting the program up for the first time. The one on the left shows what the thumbnail gallery looks like complete with navigation links, and the one on the right is the “fullsize” image that visitors are shown when a thumbnail is clicked.
If you chose to include a link to the high resolution images you’ll see that next to the title of each photo:
This program doesn’t quite stack up to the JAlbum software in terms of configuration options, but this is definitely the simplest gallery generator that I’ve ever used. If you need to quickly create a photo gallery with some pizzazz I don’t think there is a better option.
LightBox Web Gallery Generator
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
Feb 09
This article was written on August 22, 2007 by CyberNet.
Web Browser Wednesday
Like many of you, I use bookmarklets on a daily basis to complete tasks a bit faster. Many of them offer features that normally require Firefox extensions to do, and I am one of those people that try to minimize the number of extensions I use. Not only that but if you use other browsers, such as Opera or Internet Explorer, then you’re forced to look for an alternate method of doing some things.
What is a bookmarklet? Here is Wikipedia’s definition:
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.
This article is the second installment in our “Best Bookmarklets” series. In the first edition we covered over 20 great bookmarklets that let you do everything from delete a site’s cookies all the way to searching a page for text. This time around we have about another 20, and we have personally tested each one in 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.
–Hyperlinks and Navigation–
- Open All
Loads any URL’s found in the text you highlight. - Target Alert
Adds an icon next to URL’s that open in a new window, point to a different site, link to a movie clip, link to an audio clip, or the source is a PDF. -
Makes internal links red, external links blue, and same-page links orange.
%7Bwith(document)%7Bfor(i=0;i%20%3Clinks.length;++i)%7Bwith(links%5Bi%5D)%7Bf=function(s)%7Bif(s)%7Bwith(appendChild(createElement('IMG')))%7Bsrc='http://www.w3.org/icons/small/'+s+'.gif';width=height=16%7D%7D%7D;f((s=target)&&s!='_self'?'burst':'');f((s=hostname)&&s!=location.hostname?'forward':'');f(protocol!='http:'?'key':'');f(pathname.match(/%5C.pdf$/)?'text':pathname.match(/%5C.(mpe?g%7Cwmv%7Cmoo?v%7Cqt%7Cra?m?%7Cavi%7Cswf)$/)?'movie':pathname.match(/%5C.(mp3%7Cwma%7Cwav%7Cau%7Cmid%7Cstd%7Crmi%7Cmif%7Cswa)$/)?'sound':'')%7D%7D%7D%7D)()){kind=link}
–Cache–
- Rewrite All – Google
This will rewrite every link on the current page to point to the Google Cache version. - Rewrite All – Coral
This will rewrite every link on the current page to point to the Coral Cache
version. - Archive
Pulls up a listing of archives for the current page on Archive.org.
–Websites–
- Digg All
Diggs all of the articles submitted by your friends. All you have to do is go to your Friend’s submission page and run the bookmarklet. Be careful because you could probably get banned if you’re Digging too many articles too fast. - MultiSubmit
Submit an article to over a dozen social network sites at one time. The link for the bookmarklet points to a page where you can customize which services are used. Note: You will have to be logged into each service for it to work. - In IE
Opens the current site in Internet Explorer. - In Firefox
Opens the current site in Firefox.
–Web Development–
- Show Comments
Shows and highlights any HTML comments that would otherwise not be seen. - Show DIVs
Outlines all of the DIV elements on the page. - View Selection Source
Lets you highlight some text/images on the page and view the source code for that section. Firefox has this built-in to the right-click menu, but this does kind of work for it if you need it. - Get Site Size
Returns the dimensions of the website. - Show/Hide Grid
Puts a grid on the current page divided out into boxes that are 50-pixels on each side. This makes measuring a bit easier.
);void(myBody=document.getElementsByTagName('body')%5B0%5D);if(myDiv!=null)%7Bvoid(myBody.removeChild(myDiv));%7Delse%7Bvoid(myDiv=document.createElement%20('div'));void(myDiv.id='_grid_div_mrb');void(myDiv.style.background='url(http://www.andybudd.com/images/layoutgrid.png)');void(myDiv.style.position='absolute');void(myDiv.style.width=myBody.offsetWidth+%20'px');void(myDiv.style.height=myBody.offsetHeight+'px');void(myDiv.style.top='0');void(myDiv.style.left='0');void(myBody.appendChild(myDiv));%7D){kind=link}
–Other–
- Edit Site
This lets you edit the content of a site. You can add/remove images, text, and just about anything. A great tool for taking screenshots and removing personal information from the page first. -
Click on elements throughout the page to remove them, and then print the page. Great for removing ink-eating ads and sidebars before you send a page to the printer. - Anonymous Form Filler
Fills in forms and email address fields with anonymous information. Great for commenting on sites where you don’t want to enter in your information. - Word Count
Counts the number of words from the text you’ve selected.
We would love to hear about any bookmarklets you might be using. Let us know in the comments below if you have found any great ones, and we’ll add them to the list!
Sources for the above bookmarklets: Opera Watch, Jesse Ruderman, Bookmarklets, Masatomo Kobayashi, Opera Wiki, and Andy Budd
Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com
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