Dec 23

Become an ASCII Art Pro Overnight

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Photos, Software, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on July 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNet ASCII

I’m sure that you’ve seen ASCII art similar to the image pictured above. It’s where someone takes a photo and arranges characters in a precise way to accurately represent the original image. Take our logo for example, in the above image a bunch of characters and spaces were placed next to each other until they created something that looked right.

Doing this can be a painstaking process, and frankly it is something that I would never want to do myself. The logo that I created above was done using a service called Photo2Text, where all you have to do is input an image and it will spit out a text file for you to download. You just open that file up in Notepad (with wordwrap turned off) and you’ll see a masterpiece.

I was actually having some fun with this after downloading the Firefox extension, which lets you right-click on any image on the Internet and have it converted to ASCII art. I found a few images to convert and here are the results:

Note: I reduced the font size to 4 so that the images could easily be seen. The larger the font size you pick in Notepad the further away you’ll need to be to recognize the image.

Eiffel Tower:

ASCII Eiffel Tower

2009 Camaro:

ASCII 2009 Camaro

Michael Jordan:

ASCII Michael Jordan

See how easy it was for me to become an ASCII art pro? Go ahead and grab some photos to do this with and head on over to the Photo2Text site. You’ll be impressing your friends in no time, and if you find yourself using it more than you thought it might be beneficial to install the Firefox extension.

Source: Firefox Facts

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Dec 22

CyberNotes: Top 10 Sidebar Sites

Posted in: CyberNotes, Email, Features, Gmail, mobile, Movies, Opera, Today's Chili, twitter, Web Sites

This article was written on August 29, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

I’ve been addicted to sidebars ever since I bought my first widescreen monitor. Sidebars have the ability to provide a lot of information inside a very small space, and it wasn’t until recently that I fully started to utilize them. It all started when I put the Tab-Bar on the side in both my Firefox and Opera installations (video on customizing Opera), and then seeing how Start++ handled the implementation of mobile sites capped it off.

So what I’m going to show you today is my top 10 favorite sites to put in your browser’s sidebar. Most of the sites mentioned were created for mobile devices, which means they load at least twice as fast as the normal site. This makes it even more appealing to me.

Both Opera and Firefox support this kind of feature, so I’ll get started by showing you how to do it in each of those browsers.

–Firefox–

Having a site open in the sidebar is pretty easy in Firefox:

  1. Right-click on one of the URL’s that we provide below, and then bookmark it.
    Firefox Sidebar Instructions
  2. After you have saved the bookmark, go back to the Bookmarks Menu and right-click on the bookmark. Choose the Properties option.
    Firefox Sidebar Instructions
  3. Now check the box that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar:
    Firefox Sidebar Instructions
  4. The next time you open that bookmark it will popup in the sidebar!

–Opera–

Opera is actually a little easier when it comes to placing sites in the sidebar, and they have more features as well. One thing that you should know is that Opera refers to the sidebar as “panels,” and here is how you add a bookmark to a panel:

  1. Right-click on a URL to bookmark it. Then click the button labeled Details, and then check the box that says Show in panel:
    Opera Sidebar Instructions
  2. Now you’ll notice that the bookmark was also added to your list of panels. Note: If the Panel’s bar takes up too much room read our tutorial on making it smaller.

Opera’s additional sidebar features come in handy for displaying sites. When you’re viewing a site in one of the panels, you can adjust the zoom so that the text is bigger or smaller, or you can have the site optimized for small screen display (removes most images, etc…). I recommend that you try out the small screen rendering on all of the sites, and you’ll notice that some of them look better that way:

Opera Sidebar Instructions

–Top 10 Sidebar Sites–

Alright, on to the sites! I’ve gone through dozens of different mobile sites (including ones made for the iPhone) and were able to pick 10 of them that look and work well in the sidebar. So without further ado, here are my favorites in no particular order:

Tip: The site titles are hyperlinked to their mobile sites, and all you have to do is follow the instructions given above for bookmarking them in your browser.

  1. Weather Underground
    What you’ll want to do with this site is visit the URL in your browser first, enter in your Zipcode, and then bookmark that address. Then you won’t have to worry about putting in that information each time. If you’re using Opera I recommend enabling the small screen rendering that I mentioned above.
    Weather in the Sidebar
  2. goMovies
    Just like the previous one, you’ll want to visit the URL, enter in your Zipcode, and then bookmark that address. Then each time you pull up your movie listings, it will automatically retrieve them for the theaters in your area. Opera users should probably set the zoom a little lower (I use about 80%).
    Movies in the Sidebar
  3. Gmail
    The mobile Gmail site not only looks good, but gives you fast access to all of your emails. Using it you can read and compose emails, which makes it an amazing time saver! I’ve been using this for most of my mail needs since it is so much faster than the actual Gmail interface.
  4. Google Calendar
    This gives you a quick overview of your upcoming events, but the best part is that you add items to your calendar from here.
    Google Calendar in the Sidebar
  5. Remember the Milk
    My favorite task manager now has the ability to sit inside of my sidebar. You can add new tasks and see what’s due. I’ve found myself using the service a lot more now that it is so condensed and easily accessible.
  6. Google Notebook
    You can manage your entire Google Notebook from your sidebar.
  7. Digg
    If you’re a Digg addict then I think this is a must. The mobile version of the Digg site gives you a fast-loading alternative to view the news. It’s nice when it only takes a second to load instead of 30-seconds like the normal site does sometimes!
    Digg in the Sidebar
  8. Google Talk
    Chat it up with all your friends with this handy little Flash app.
  9. Facebook
    I know that a lot of you are addicted to Facebook, and so I thought this would fit right in. It displays recent events from your news feed, upcoming events, and lets you change your status.
    Facebook in the Sidebar
  10. Twitter
    This is a really handy site for anyone that uses Twitter. You can update your status, and view recent entries from your friends. The small screen rendering in Opera is also really nice for this one.
    Twitter in the Sidebar

–Overview–

I’m finding myself using sites in the sidebar more and more these days, especially since they often reduce the number of extensions you need to install. If you come across any sites that work well in the sidebar, let us know in the comments below. I’m sure there are a bunch of great ones out there, and I just wanted to get the ball rolling by listing off my top 10!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 21

CyberNotes: Compatibility Issues When Testing Firefox

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday
 

You want to play on the bleeding edge of software so you go ahead and start testing Firefox builds. Maybe you are playing it a little safe and testing Firefox 2.0 or maybe you are pushing the limits and testing Firefox 3.0! Either way you are bound to run into some compatibility issues whether it be when installing extensions or when visiting sites.

I have previously put together a guide that became quite popular on how to test Firefox builds. The guide contained everything that I had learned up to that point, but I have learned some more since then.

Nightly Tester Tools

Extension compatibility is a major issue when testing Firefox builds. The Nightly Tester Tools extension is really amazing and will save you an unbelievable amount of time. It lets you force your Firefox extensions to become compatible with the version of Firefox you are running. When installing an extension, as pictured, there will be a checkbox that you can select which will allow the Nightly Tester Tools to make the extension compatible. Before Nightly Tester Tools came along you had to manually change the version numbers in each extension that you installed.

There are also some sites that check to make sure you are running a compatible browser before you are able to see the installation dialog box. The most notable site for this is Google. If you try and install the Google Toolbar in Firefox 2.0 you will get a dialog box that says “Google Toolbar requires Firefox 1.0 or later.” You can often get around these sites by simply viewing the page source for the site and searching the HTML code for “xpi”. The result should be the direct link to the Firefox extension and doing this for the Google Toolbar will result in dl.google.com/firefox/google-toolbar.xpi. You can do the same thing with Google Notebook and find the direct link to be dl.google.com/firefox/google-notebook.xpi.

About:Config New

Hunting for those download links can be a little tedious at times and to make it easier you can change the User Agent. To do that you can either use the User Agent Switcher extension or you can follow these steps:

  1. Type about:config in the address bar of FireFox.
  2. Right-click and select New->String.
  3. Type general.useragent.override and press OK.
  4. Type Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4 and press OK.
  5. You DO NOT have to restart Firefox for this setting to take effect.

Your Firefox browser will now be treated just like Firefox 1.5.0.4 gets treated. If you wanted to choose a different browser then you can view this long list of User Agents that are available. You could also make Firefox pretend to be Internet Explorer but you may run into issues when viewing some sites.

Hopefully this will help you along as you run into compatibility issues when testing Firefox. Unfortunately there are some extensions that are truly incompatible with future Firefox versions and need to be debugged in order to work properly.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 20

WordPress for iPhone: Ultimate Photo Blogging Tool?

Posted in: Freeware, Google, iPhone, Newly Released, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

wordpress iphone.jpg

There are a lot of great applications that are coming through Apple’s App Store for both the iPhone and iPod Touch, but one of my new favorites would have to be the 100% free WordPress for iPhone. You might recall that TypePad users have had a blogging tool since day 1 of the App Store launch, and that program was also “free.” The catch, however, was that you are required to have a paid subscription to TypePad which is a minimum of $5 per month.

The WordPress application, on the other hand, will work with multiple WordPress.com accounts and any WordPress blogs you’ve setup on your own servers. The only requirement is that you be running WordPress 2.5.1 or higher.

How well does it work? It took me less than 30 seconds to get it setup on my iPhone, and it does almost everything that I would want from a mobile blogging client. You can add photos, manage existing posts, and even see a live preview of what it will look like on your blog using the embedded Safari browser.

One of the first things that popped into my head after using this is how great it would be for photo blogging on-the-go. You can snap a bunch of photos on your iPhone from within the WordPress software (or pull from your camera roll), write up a quick post explaining what the people are seeing in the images, and publish it to a blog. Want to restrict who can see the post? No problem, just password protect it right from the iPhone. To be honest I plan on creating a free WordPress.com blog just for posting photos in this way.

Right now there’s just one downside when using this for photo blogging. Images are uploaded at the medium resolution (640×480) which may or may not be something you want. In the future I’d like to see it offer a full resolution upload option, but the scaled down photos are faster to upload when you’re on-the-go.

Aside from that there are just a few other things I’d like to see this include:

  • Comment management – being able to approve/pull comments would be handy.
  • Search posts – right now you can see up to the most recent 50 posts on the blog, but that is it. At the very least you should be able to search through past posts, and possibly navigate through “pages” of recent posts.

WordPress for iPhone Homepage
WordPress iTunes Link (opens in iTunes)

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Dec 19

Spread Firefox Add-ons Promotional Contest

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Spread Firefox

I was just over at the FFExtensionGuru’s blog and noticed that Spread Firefox started a promotional contest for people who have written reviews of extensions. It is actually a really great idea, but only seems to be on a small scale right now.

All you have to do is write a review of a Firefox extension. All reviews published after February 1st, 2007 will count so I went ahead and submitted the three that we have posted. The contest will last for two months (which puts the deadline at early April) which means you’ll have plenty of time to write your review(s). I do, however, recommend getting it in early because the whole process is done by users voting, and the sooner you get your review done the better chance you have to get more votes.

UPDATE: I didn’t realize it but the 4 judges are actually the ones who pick the winners, so I guess the voting thing is kinda just for fun.

The prizes for first, second, and third place are as follows:

  1. A Firefox T-shirt.
  2. 24 USD of music downloads from magnatune.com.
  3. A 1-year registration of a .info domain name.

The rules are posted in the images at the beginning of this article, and to submit your review(s) you have to leave a comment on the Spread Firefox post. They will then go ahead and add your extension to the Squidoo page so that other users can read and vote on it (you have to be registered to vote) put your extension on this page for users to vote.

Firefox Logo LaptopOne thing that I was really hoping for as a prize was a round Firefox sticker to put on the outside of your laptop. It sounds so simple but I have looked all over the place for these, and have always failed to find anyone selling or giving them away. The one place that I did find was on the Spread Firefox site and they were giving 1,000 of these away! I, however, was too late…and the Mozilla Store doesn’t even sell them. :(  Someday I will have one of these on the outside of my laptop. *walks away sulking*

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 18

Firefox 1.5.0.3 Candidate Builds Now Available On Mozilla FTP

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox 1.5.0.3 Candidate Builds Now Available On Mozilla FTP

Firefox 1.5.0.3 is going to be released within the next few days in order to fix a critical security update that was found earlier this week. For those people that cannot wait for the build to officially be released please visit the download link below. These are candidate builds which are very likely to be released as the final version but they are undergoing some testing to make sure they are stable.

The download list is quite long because of the huge list of languages available. If you are looking for the full installers then you will find that the list for those start about halfway down the page. This build seems to be running nice and smooth for me (of course it is such a minor update that I shouldn’t notice any differences).

Download Firefox 1.5.0.3 Candidate Builds

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Dec 17

Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users

Posted in: Today's Chili, video

We’re assuming it would still prefer you use Internet Explorer for all your web browsing needs, but Microsoft is now lending something of a helping hand to Windows 7 users that insist on using Firefox for one reason or another. It’s just released a plug-in that gets around Firefox’s current limitations in handling H.264-encoded videos on HTML5 pages by taking advantage of the H.264 support built into Windows 7. On a more technical level, that means the plug-in parses HTML5 pages and replaces the Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in, which then allows the content to be played right in the browser. Sound like just what you’ve been waiting for? Hit up the link below to download the add-on and try it yourself.

Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET  |  sourceMicrosoft Interoperability Bridges and Labs Center  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 16

Mozilla’s Progress on Platform-Specific Themes

Posted in: Firefox 3, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 17, 2008 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 Mac 
(Click to Enlarge)

We’ve known about Mozilla’s plans to provide platform specific themes to users in Firefox 3, and it looks as though some glimpses of what the future holds is now in our hands. Those of you on a Mac and testing out Firefox 3 nightlies are able to install an extension dubbed as Proto for Mac OS X. Once installed you’ll be able to see all of the eye candy that’s pictured above.

Proto is an official add-on that’s currently being offered as an easy way for people to checkout the new theme. The latest version was just released today, and sports a new look for the add-ons window, revamped find bar, better downloads window, and more.

Don’t worry, they haven’t forgotten about the Linux users either. An article written last week demonstrates how the appearance of Firefox 3 is changing for Linux users:

Firefox 3 Linux 
(Click to Enlarge)

And then there are also supposed to be separate Windows XP and Vista themes in the works which will use the icons that we’ve already seen. It will be interesting to see just how much the two different operating systems differ from each other, but as of right now there’s no word on when they plan to have the Windows theme integrated.

There’s still no mention of the next Firefox 3 milestone, but we’ll keep our eyes open.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 15

CyberNotes: A Minimalist Firefox

Posted in: CyberNotes, Firefox Extensions, Screenshots, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

Are you one of those people who like to conserve every square inch of screen space when it’s possible? If so we have a treat for you today! We’re going to demonstrate how you can become the ultimate Firefox minimalist with the help of some extensions and themes. If you implement everything that we have listed below you’ll wonder where half of your browser has gone. You might also go cross-eyed… don’t say we didn’t warn you. ;)

–Themes–

compact firefox.pngThe first major step that a minimalist Firefox user takes is often in changing their theme. By choosing a more compact theme you can eliminate nearly any and all spacing found throughout Firefox, and the end result can save a lot of area in your browser.

The screenshot to the right shows the Classic Compact Firefox theme laid overtop of the classic theme. The double-ended arrows indicate how much space you save by simply applying this theme. There are a few other themes (like miniFox) that are similar, but Classic Compact is really the one that has won the hearts of minimalists around the globe.

–Toolbars & Menus–

There is a lot of “fat” that lies within the toolbars and menus in Firefox. The themes aim to take some pounds off the toolbars, but there are some extensions that can take the minimalist design to a whole new level:

  • Searchbar Autosizer [Homepage]
    Keep the browser’s search box small when it’s not being used. This will let you have a really small search box that expands as you type. That means your Address Bar gets even more room!
  • Faviconize Tab [Homepage]
    You’ll be able to double-click on a tab and have it collapsed down to only it’s icon. Now you won’t feel like such a pig when you have 40 different tabs open.
    faviconize tab.png
  • Personal Menu [Homepage]
    How often do you really use those menus (File, Edit, etc…) anyway? If it’s not very often you can stuff them into a single icon by using this extension. All of the menus will still be accessible, but they will just take an extra click to get to them.
  • Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
    If you’re not ready to give up your Bookmarks Bar then maybe this extension will help keep things a little more tidy. By default it will only show the icons for the sites located on the Bookmarks Bar, and then when you hover over them it will expand to show the name as well.
    smart bookmarks bar.png

–Status Bar–

I wouldn’t say that the Status Bar is the hugest space consumer, but hey, we’re trying to scrounge up every pixel that’s possible. Right? So we’ve got a few specialized styles and one extension that can clean up your Status Bar a little bit.

  • Mouseover for Clutter [Homepage] Requires Stylish
    This will hide the excessive number of icons that you probably have in the Firefox Status Bar, but they will reappear each time you hover over the bar. That way you’re not really losing any functionality, unless of course one of those icons also serves as some sort of notifier (such as a new mail notifier).
  • Autohide Status Bar [Homepage] Requires Stylish
    Get the Status Bar completely out of the way with this style. Once installed it will create an area that is just one pixel in height, and when you hover over that it will show the Status Bar.
  • autoHideStatusbar [Homepage]
    This is an extension that’s similar to how the previous style operates, except that it goes one step further. With this extension you can set it so that when you hover over hyperlinks it will show the Status Bar, which means you can still see where the links point to. The Status Bar can also be shown when the page is loading so that you can monitor the progress.
    Note: This extension is currently experimental, and you’ll need to login to your Mozilla account before downloading it.

–Overview–

I think you have a pretty good set of tools to work with so that you can be well on your way to becoming a Firefox minimalist. I’m sure many of you have trimmed down your Firefox in one way or another, and I would love to hear how you’ve managed to conserve space in Firefox! Shoot us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Dec 13

Quickly Tag & Bookmark Sites in Firefox 3

Posted in: Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

One thing that I absolutely love about the new Firefox 3 is its ability to bookmark a site in one-click using the star button in the address bar. It doesn’t organize my bookmarks, but it makes for a great way to temporary bookmark a site.

With the new TagMarks extension you can alleviate part of that problem. What it does is display additional icons in the address bar that only appear when you hover over the gold star. Clicking on one of the icons will bookmark the site, but it will also apply a specific tag to the bookmark depending on what icon you clicked. You can apply multiple tags by clicking on as many of the icons as you want.

tagmarks.jpg

There are a few ways that the extension tries to keep the clutter to a minimum. First off, when you’re not hovering over the gold star the icons will be hidden, except for those you’ve applied to the current site. Secondly, only a handful of icons are shown when hovering over the star. To see more of the icons you need to place your mouse over the arrow located next to the leftmost icon.

If you take a look in your Bookmarks menu you’ll also see an option to open up a page containing your TagMarks. From there you can click on one of the respective icons to see all of the bookmarks with that tag.

tagmarks homepage.jpg

Overall I’d say that this extension is can be very helpful in making sense of your one-click bookmarks, but I think it needs some customizability. Users should be able to choose which icons show up in the bar, and also what tag gets applied when selecting a particular icon.

TagMarks Extension [via Firefox Facts]

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