Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

I just saw a post on the Flock blog today reminding everyone of the test day last week for a pre-release version of Flock 0.8. The point of these test days are to find bugs and problems in Flock before it is released to the public, and it sounds like it should be in final form within a month or so.

Early this year I updated you on what was happening with this release, and it has progressed quite nicely since then. Since I’m a pre-release junkie I couldn’t help but see what has improved since my last look at the browser. After installation of the latest nightly I was presented with a nice loading screen:

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Then the first thing that I saw…a stunning new interface. The placement of the bookmark toolbar (and it’s appearance) is perfect as it sits alongside of the shortcuts for many Flock-specific services. Oh yeah, and I can’t forget to mention the prominent notification bar that alerts users when feeds, and a few other things, are available:

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A lot of the configuration and management of social networks is done through the sidebar now. This is a nice change because you’re no longer dealing with hordes of popups or wasted screen space when trying to manage accounts:

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The blog editor could still use a little TLC because it really only offers the most basic features for writing articles. Seeing that this browser is built around social networks I would think that adding YouTube videos or Flickr images would be astoundingly easy, but such a feature appears to be missing. At least they do make your clipboard readily accessible:

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Next up, the Flock feed reader. Not much has changed here, but as always it provides a quick and flexible way to read through your news. You can choose between viewing feeds in one or two columns, as well as a headlines or full-text view. It will automatically mark the feeds as read once you scroll past a news story, and will also scale any images in the articles so that they fit the width of the column:

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This last screenshot helps put it all in perspective. It shows the bookmark manager for the sidebar, the Media Streams bar, and the My World start page. The Media Streams bar is cool because it lets you search sites like Flickr and YouTube while displaying the results right there in the bar, without having to visit a site. If you double-click on any of the results it will instantly take you to the page where that result was found.

My World is simply a start page for Flock that gives you a quick overview of everything that has been going on. It summarizes what your favorite sites, feeds, and media are so that they are only a click away. In other words it’s a homepage customized to you:

 
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And I can’t forget one of the best improvements for the new Flock: Firefox 2! Now that Firefox 2 is used as the backbone (instead of Firefox 1.5) new features like spell checking, anti-phishing, and session restore are all part of the browser. Flock is shaping up to be a great browser for anyone actively involved in social networks, and when the final release hits the Web I’m sure there will be a lot of people raving about it.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

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RSS Bandit is probably one of the most well-known desktop feed readers available, and it just got a nice overhaul. The new RSS Bandit 1.5 has all sorts of cool new stuff, but the thing I found most interesting with it is the comment watching feature. With it you’re able to read all of the comments currently available on a site right there in RSS Bandit.

In order for it to work the feed will need to be setup with providing the number of comments, which ours currently doesn’t do, but once that is done the readers of your site will surely reap the benefits. In the screenshot above you can see what the comment tracking looks like, and if you come across a post that you want to monitor for new comments all you have to do is right-click and select “Watch Comments”. Every time a new comment is made you’ll be notified…can’t get much easier than that!

Here is a list of other features that you’ll find in this release, along with links that explains each of them in a little more detail:

• Comment Watching
• Items marked as read when viewed in the Newspaper
• Date-based grouping in the list view
• Options for opening tabs in the background
• Favicons
• Enclosures treated as attachments
• Certain user defined enclosures treated as podcasts including adding to playlists in iTunes and Windows media player
• Remembering application state on restart – This will work similar to the Session Saver extension in Firefox in that open tabs and the tree view state will be remembered on restart
• Revamping the search feature – We’ve moved the implementation of feed search to Lucene.Net from our custom feed search implementation which should make searches faster and provide richer search options.
• Support for Atom Threading Extensions
• Easily configurable keyboard shortcuts – Just right-click when hovering over the toolbar menu and choose “Customize”.

I tried out RSS Bandit and it is one of the best feed readers that I have used. The only thing that holds me back from using it as my own feed reader is that there is no easy way to switch from feed to feed. I need a shortcut that will take me from one unread feed to another, and the only option that it currently has is a shortcut to go from one unread item to another. Some of my feeds I subscribe to will have 10 to 20 new posts each time I view them, and I don’t want to go from item to item in order to get to the next feed. I could always just click on the next feed with my mouse, but that could get tedious with more than 200 feeds to go through.

RSS Bandit is an open source feed reader so it won’t cost you a penny, which is something that attracts a lot of users. So play with it a little, see if you like it, and the worst thing that could happen is you would uninstall it.

RSS Bandit Homepage (Download Mirror for RSS Bandit 1.5.0.10)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

Stardock is all about offering a ton of applications for customizing the appearance of your computer, and the logon screen is no exception. They offer their LogonStudio application at no cost, and with it you’ll be able to alter the background that you see when logging into your Vista or XP machine.

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By default there are only four backgrounds that ship with LogonStudio, but if you head over to WinCustomize there are many more available. The thing I really found to be cool was that you can click the Load button in LogonStudio, and actually setup your own background image to apply. In just a few clicks you can have a completely revamped login screen that is sure to catch the attention of your friends, such as this one:

One thing I wish the program did do was offer an option to rotate through backgrounds. Maybe randomly select images from your pictures photo to display at each login? That would pretty awesome!

If you find any sweet backgrounds to use with LogonStudio let me know, because I’m looking to spiffify my computer. 🙂

LogonStudio Homepage

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on September 27, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

What was going on this week at CyberNet News and Learn Firefox? Here’s your chance to catch-up if you missed something!

I periodically receive inquiries from friends asking for the easiest way to access files and folders on a FTP server. They normally have their own FTP server setup at home, and they want to ensure fast access to their files without having to mess with third-party applications. Is it possible to quickly map a FTP to a drive? You bet!

The solution I’m about to show you doesn’t exactly assign a drive letter to the FTP server, but it will essentially serve the same purpose as a drive. Through Windows Explorer you’ll have one-click access to your files, and they will even be accessible through the standard Open/Save dialog boxes in apps such as Microsoft Word.

Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Open Windows Explorer and choose the “Map Network Drive” option.
   Vista location: Along the top toolbar
   XP location: Tools Menu
   
2. Choose the option at the bottom that reads:
   Vista: “Connect to a Web site that you can use to store your documents and pictures”
   XP: “Sign up for online storage or connect to a network server”
   
3. Click “Choose a custom network location”:
   
4. Enter in the FTP address for the site:
   
5. Enter the username for the FTP server (you will be prompted for the password when you connect):
   
6. Enter a name:
   
7. Finish up the wizard, and then you’ll be ready to connect! You’ll be prompted for the password the first time that you try and connect, but you can have the password saved after that if you wish.
   

That process will take less than 30-seconds to complete after you become familiar with doing it. There is a way to assign a drive letter to a FTP server, but it does take some addition work. I’ve found three sources that try to make it a little easier:

1. Tutorial – This is a relatively quick process and would be my first choice out of the three mentioned here. It requires no third-party apps to make it work, and it truly lets you map a FTP server to a drive. It does require using the command line.
2. NetDrive – This is a free program offered by Novell that has a GUI interface for setting up FTP servers as drives on your computer.
3. FTP Drive – This is a small free program that also brings a GUI interface to the configuration, but the program always has to be running if you want the mapped drive to work.

While those solutions make it possible to assign a drive letter to the FTP, I don’t see an added advantage by doing so. The steps that I walked you through in this article will give nearly every program access to your FTP, and it is super easy to setup. I’m sure there is some reason that you would want a drive letter though…I just haven’t found them. 🙂

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on September 17, 2009 by CyberNet.

There have been a few themes that have been developed using the mockups Mozilla made for Firefox 4.0. What’s funny is that while Firefox 4.0 is over a year away you can already get the same beautiful design without having to wait.

As you can see in the screenshot above the theme is extremely close to this particular mockup from Mozilla. Unfortunately, however, there are a few things that you have to install other than just a theme in order to get the full affect. The good news is that the theme developer outlines all of the different things you’ll want depending on exactly how far you want to go:

• Strata40 – This is pretty essential… because it’s the theme itself.
• StrataGlass – Needed for Aero glass effects on Windows 7/Vista.
• Personal Menu – Needed for tools and bookmarks toolbar buttons. I noticed that if you hide the Menu bar that you’ll want to disable the ability to press the Alt key to quickly display the toolbar. If you don’t there is a small group of text that isn’t properly hidden by the theme.
• Omnibar – Not essential but great for using the address bar for searching instead of the search box. You’ll probably want this because the theme seems to have a little bit of troubles if you have the search box displayed. Our CyberSearch add-on may also be handy in this respect.
• Fission – Needed for “progress line” feature. Shows the page’s loading progress as a small line below the address bar.
• The mockups also include a tabs on top version. If you would like a tabs on top version install an addon called Stylish, and then install this style.

It may sound like a lot of work, but I was actually able to get it all setup in less than 5-minutes. And there’s no need to say that I’ve had several people ask what browser I’m using when they’ve seen me running this.

Strata40 Firefox Theme [via ghacks]

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com