Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

There was a lot of excitement when we wrote about the Greasemonkey script that could be used to switch between multiple Gmail accounts. At that time Thilak commented about a Firefox extension that basically accomplished the same task. With it you create user profiles that you can switch between, and it uses a different set of cookies for each of the profiles.

Since most sites store session information in cookies this is a good method for switching between multiple accounts, whether it be for email, shopping, or just about anything. That’s when it hit me that you can manipulate cookies using JavaScript as well, and I figured there had to be a way to create a bookmarklet to do almost the same thing as the extension.

Before we dive into the bookmarklet lets take a look at the Firefox extension more in depth:

–Firefox Extension–

The extension is called CookieSwap, and once installed you can create multiple profiles that can be used to manage different identities from around the web. They are all controlled from the Status Bar where you can select which identity you want to use.

This is great for switching between multiple email accounts without needing to login to each one, as well as making it easier for several different people to all use the same browser. For example, each person in your family could have their own profile, and then each of them wouldn’t have to constantly bother with logging in and out of websites.

The good news is that all of your information is stored in a cookie, which ensures that no one can see your password in plaintext. Well, that’s at least the case for sites that are designed properly.

One downside that I’ve found to using this is that there’s no way to restrict the cookie swapping to a particular site. The first time you create a new profile you’ll start with a blank slate, and you’ll need to go login to all the sites you want enabled for that particular profile. So it may not be the optimum solution if all you want to do is switch between several different accounts on one particular site.

–Bookmarklet–

Huh?: 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.

We figured there had to be a way to create a bookmarklet to swap between cookies as well, but on a per site basis. As always we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel if we didn’t have to, so we searched around to see what we could find. Jesse Ruderman came to the rescue with a bookmarklet that he wrote to transfer cookies from one browser to another. We took that bookmarklet, modified it a bit, and created something that we think you’ll enjoy.

Here’s how it works. First you’ll need to drag this link into your bookmarks, or right-click on it and select the bookmark option:

Backup Cookies

Now head on over to the site you want to “backup” the cookies for. Click on the bookmarklet you just created, and you should see something like this:

Bookmarking that will store your existing cookies for that site in the form of a bookmarklet. To restore the particular cookies for the site just run that bookmarklet.

Important: You must be on the site corresponding to the bookmarklet before running it. Otherwise your the cookies will not be updated. For example, if you backed up your Yahoo! cookies make sure you are on the Yahoo! website before running the bookmarklet.

In the example pictured above I was logged into Yahoo!, I ran the “Backup Cookies” bookmarklet to save my existing cookies. I was then able to logout of Yahoo! and run the new bookmarklet to restore all of my login credentials. It’s really that simple.

It’s pretty cool how something as simple as cookies can be used to restore your login status, but it’s something you also want to be careful with. Doing this would also mean that if the information ended up in the wrong hands that it could do some severe damage. For security reasons I recommend that you be especially cautious if you synchronize your bookmarks with a third-party online service.

Hat tip to Thilak for pointing out the Firefox Extension!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Many of you with your own web sites know that getting your site to look “Web 2.0ish” can be tricky.  Rounded corners are in, as are rounded tabs, striped backgrounds, and Ajax. Today we’re going to take a look at four different web sites that offer image generators to help web developers create the perfect Web 2.0 look.  I think you’ll find that they’re also huge time savers because each site offers a service that is very simple to use. Let’s take a look…

–Rounded Corner Generator–

Rounded corners are in these days, and so it helps to have a tool like RoundedCornr.com to generate a box with round corners for you. This particular site is great because it provides you with with the HTML and CSS code that you’d need to put rounded corners around content on your site. They also provide you with a link to download the rounded corners as image files.

When you go to the site, you’ll notice three different options for creating rounded corners.  You can do a RoundedCornr with a color gradient, a Rounded Cornr with a border, or a single RoundedCornr Image. For each of the different options for creating rounded corners, you can specify things like the corner radius size, the gradient height, a border color, etc. Below are two examples of what you can do.  The top image shows the rounded corner with a gradient while the other shows you what a rounded corner with a border looks like.

Visit RoundedCornr

–Stripe Generator–

You’ve probably noticed that many sites these days use some type of stripe design in the background whether it’s a thick strip size, or a thin strip size. If you’re wanting some type of striped design for your site, I recommend using www.stripegenerator.com.  Just like the RoundedCornr service, there are so many different options that you can tweak so that your stripe pattern will look exactly like you want it to.

Options you have include:

• strip size
• spacing
• stripe colors
• background style
• shadow
• background colors
• stripe orientation

Another great feature on this site is that there are “shared stripes” that you can get the code for. This stripe generator is perfect for when you want a seamless stripe texture. Of course you could create your own, but this is quick and easy. To boot, it’s got a great interface.

Visit Stripe Generator 2.0 – The Ultimate Tool for Web 2.0 Designers

–Tab Generator–

Brought to you by the same people that created Stripe Generator, Tab Generator is the simple and easy way to create great looking tabs for your site.  Much like the stripe generator, there are plenty of options to choose from so that you can create the perfect tab.

Options include:

• height
• width
• border size
• corner radius
• background
• fill style
• fill colors
• border color
• orientation

Once you’ve specified how you’d like your tab to look, you can download the code and then it’ll be ready to use on your site. This is one of the simplest ways I know of to create perfect tabs.

Visit Tabs Generator

–Ajax Loading Generator–

Ajax has become a staple of many Web 2.0 sites.  A site called Ajaxload.info will help you come up with the perfect Ajax loader icon for your site.  All you have to do is select the type of indicator that you want (there are over 30 different types of indicators), select the background color you’d want, and then enter the foreground color that you want.  From there you just click generate and then you’ll see a preview of what your loading indicator will look like.  If it looks good, just click “Download it” and it’ll be ready to use.

Visit Ajax Loading Generator

If you know of other tools that will help out web designers, let us know!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Million Dollar Monday

Aspiring airline, Virgin America is doing as much as it can to get its’ planes off the ground and filled with passengers to participate in an in-flight gadget festival. You’re probably familiar with Virgin Atlantic which is a popular international carrier. Virgin America is under the same ownership, but is facing difficulties getting licensed by the D.O.T. (U.S. Department of Transportation) because of ownership issues. While they’re grounded, Virgin America is doing what they can to lure in the gadget and technology enthusiasts with decked out planes for interactive, and entertaining flights.

There are lots of differences to expect on a Virgin America flight compared to other American carriers.  First class passengers can expect plush leather seating with a flipout LCD screen, and the Main cabin is a huge step above from your classic coach with black leather seating with lumbar support and a personal nine-inch widescreen entertainment system.

Other huge advantages include 110-volt power outlets, USB ports, and Ethernet jacks which would all come in handy for any tech savvy, or business traveler.  Their in-flight entertainment includes the expected Live TV, music, and Pay-per-view movies on-demand. Then there’s the multi-player games available along with email, sms, instant messaging, and chat-rooms which gives you an airborne social network.

Not only can you play games, and chat, but you can also shop for food right from the widescreen TV at your seat.  All of this is done using an embedded version of Linux. There are many quality electronics products that Linux is behind which many people are unaware of, and this is no exception. In the planes belly, you’ll find three file servers which stream video, among other things.

Just yesterday, they announced their plans for inviting open source game developers to participate in their Inflight Entertainment System. This wouldn’t be paid participation, rather just a chance for you to get your hard work out there for people to use.  If you’re interested in creating a game, you can find all the details here.

Another nice feature to have would be an easy-to-use online video interface that integrates with YouTube, Google Video, and other services. If they’re trying to appeal to the tech-savvy, that would definitely do it.

While all of this sounds great and a huge step above any domestic US carrier, for now they’re left trying to convince people to sign their petition to demand that the DOT give them permission to fly. Below is a YouTube demo of all of the cool gadgets to expect on Virgin America if they ever manage to get themselves up in the air.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Microsoft Monday

Apple touts their Time Machine feature in OS X as a breakthrough automatic backup system, but they’re not the only ones that offer such a thing.  Believe it or not, Windows Vista has a feature that is much like Time Machine, except I’d like to think that it’s better. I’ll explain…

–Apple’s Time Machine Defined–

Since we are going to be explaining how Vista can do exactly what Time Machine can, I thought we should start by explaining what Time Machine is for those of you who are unfamiliar.  Apple defines it as:

Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that’s built right into Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac — digital photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything.

The big downside here is that you have to have an external drive connected to your Mac to be able to use this feature.  Once you have the external drive connected, it will do it automatically for you.

Vista’s Previous Versions Feature

We’ve mentioned little known features in Vista before before, and there are several. One of them is “Previous Versions” which essentially does what Time Machine does on a Mac except you don’t need an external hard drive connected. That’s what makes it great! The only thing it’s missing is a snazzy interface.  It’s a bare-bones feature, and creating a easy-on-the-eyes interface clearly wasn’t a top priority for Microsoft like it was for Apple. Additionally, keep in mind that this feature is available only in Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise versions of Vista.

Previous Versions are accessed by right clicking on any document or folder (yes, even whole folders are backed-up) and then clicking on “Restore Previous Versions.”  Previous versions come from shadow copies, which are saved automatically to your hard drive. If you need a refresher on what a shadow copy is, reference this article.

A list of archived copies will be displayed in the “Previous Versions” tab, and they’re all sorted by date. Remember, these were all done automatically — without the need of an external drive. Retrieving the archived copies is simple, and you have a few different options for doing so. They include:

• Copy – copy the entire folder and paste it on your desktop or wherever else you’d like to
• Browse – Open the folder to see what’s in it
• Restore – This will replace any existing copy that you have on your computer.

This feature is perfect for any files or folders you may have accidentally deleted or changed. Below you’ll see a screenshot of the “Previous Versions” tab for a folder on my computer containing music from the B-52′s:

Backup and Restore Center

While the Previous Versions feature is great, there are other options included with Vista that will help you keep backup files and restore them if necessary.  To access the Backup and Restore Center, click on the start menu and type “Backup and Restore Center” into the search box and hit enter.

Depending on the version of Vista that you have, you can do various things in the Backup and Restore Center.  One of the nicest features is the option to “Back up files.” Like Time Machine, this does require an external drive of some sort whether it be a hard drive, USB drive, or an optical drive. Clicking on it will pull up a box where you can choose which files types you want to backup.  The screenshot below shows you what this looks like:

Once you select the types of files you want backed-up, you can decide how often you want a backup created as shown below:

For those of you running Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions, you can do the following:

• Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore – this is a comprehensive, image-based backup tool that will “help you out of a tight spot if you need to recover your entire system.” It can be accessed from inside Windows Vista- or even from the Windows Vista installation CD should your computer have issues with starting up normally

Wrapping it up

To me, the Previous Versions Feature is something that Microsoft should have offered with Vista Home Premium.  Because they don’t offer it with Home Premium, they should at least talk it up as an incentive for buying Ultimate because it’s a great feature to have.  What I like about it best is that you do not need an external hard drive connected (like Apple’s Time Machine) to make use of it.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on May 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

We have raved about the free PhraseExpress software before, and we are going to do it again! They recently released version 4 of their application, and the enhancements it has will make you so much more productive that you’ll be wondering how you got by without using it!

The concept behind PhraseExpress is extremely simple: you type some text in an application and PhraseExpress will automatically replace that text with something else. When would that be useful? Well, I’m sure you use abbreviations all of the time without even thinking about it. Take for example a chat conversation where you type messages like BRB (be right back) or TTYL (talk to you later). You probably use those abbreviations because they are faster to type, but you can setup PhraseExpress to automatically kick the habit of sending abbreviated phrases!

The newest version of PhraseExpress has all sorts of enhancements that take the program beyond just being a simple text replacement utility:

• Formatted text and bitmaps: This is great news for people who have signatures that they automatically want inserted when composing an email or document. I’ll explain more about this below.
  
• Automatic spelling corrections: This is just like Microsoft Word because PhraseExpress will automatically correct misspellings of thousands of the most common words. Having this feature when composing emails or typing comments in a browser is extremely handy!
• Assign multiple phrases to an Autotext: With this feature you can essentially have multiple phrases assigned to a single “keyword.” Whenever you type that keyword you will be presented with a drop-down menu for you to select which phrase you would like inserted:
  
• Assign multiple Autotexts to a phrase: This is the opposite of the previous bullet because this lets you setup multiple Autotexts (or keywords as I like to call them) for a single phrase. This is useful if you have a hard time remembering what Autotext you assigned to a phrase. An example of this is seen below with the default “.com” auto replacement that is setup. If you mistype “.com” with any of the variations listed it will automatically correct it for you.
  

There is a whole lot more that is new in PhraseExpress 4, but what I have listed above are the most beneficial for me. There are a few kinks that I have noticed with the formatted text and bitmaps addition though:

• To copy a Bitmap image or formatted text into a signature you actually need to highlight it in either a browser or in a document. Then click on the PhraseExpress icon in the System Tray and select the “Create new phrase” option. This will prompt you with a dialog box to save the highlighted text, but you need to make sure the “Save text formatting” box is checked. Click here for more detailed instructions.
• Saving formatting in Firefox doesn’t seem to work, so you’ll either need to use Internet Explorer or an application that supports text formatting/bitmaps if you want to save anything besides for a plain text phrase.
• When originally seeing the image support feature I must have bypassed the word “Bitmap” in the description. I spent about 15 minutes trying to get a JPEG image to be saved in an email signature, but it just wouldn’t work. I’m guessing that the image must be saved in the Bitmap format for this feature to work properly.

There’s a lot more that you can do in PhraseExpress, which are all explained more in the manual. Here are a few of the tips that might be the most helpful for you:

• Add the current date to a phrase
• Call a phrase within another phrase
• Add manual text input to a phrase
• Create an email from a phrase
• Launch an application from a phrase
• Open a file from a phrase
• Open a webpage from a phrase
• Add a special key into a phrase

Download PhraseExpress 4

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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