CyberNotes: How to Convert your Files for Free (PDF, DOC, etc…)

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

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Every time you try to use a file in a program it always seems like it needs some obscure file format that you have never even heard about. Or maybe you are trying to post a video to your website but you want a file format that works well in all browsers. There are all kinds of file conversion websites and applications that you can use for free…and they put the power at your fingertips.

Here I will cover 3 online solutions and 2 applications that are all completely free for you to use. All of them support conversions into multiple formats meaning you’ll probably be able to find a lot of use for them.

Remember: With online solutions you will have to upload the file first which can take a considerable amount of time if the file needing to be converted is large.

 

–Online: Zamzar

Zamzar This is probably one of the most popular online conversion services that is on the Internet. It can input a file from a list of supported filetypes and have it converted to another format much like you would expect. The list of filetypes is simply astounding and you can even convert things like PowerPoint presentations to an OpenDocument presentation format (compatible with OpenOffice.org).

You’ll also need to enter in an email address after you select the file and conversion format. This is so that Zamzar can email you the link to download the file. There is a 100MB filesize restriction and the link in the email will remain active for a 24-hour period. The 100MB limit can either be for a single file or up to 5 files. If you “bulk” upload files to the service for conversion (which is limited to 5 at a time) they will email you a download link with all of the converted files zipped into a single file.

 


–Online: Media Convert

Media Convert Media Convert is another online conversion solution that is sure to wow you with the different filetypes they have available. It is slightly different than Zamzar with the more unique feature being that you can provide a URL for the input file. This means that you can provide a URL to an image file, for example, and have that image converted to another image format. There are even some “advanced” options depending on the file type you are inputting, and when the file is an image you can have it resized as well.

The fun doesn’t stop there either. You should take full advantage of being able to enter in URL’s because Media Convert will offer the option to save a website as an image file, which also serves the purpose of creating a screenshot. I have had it shoot back some errors while trying to do this but it works fine most of the time . If you really want to go out on a limb maybe you should try and convert some text to Morse Code. ;)

The other great thing about Media Convert is that the downloads are available within minutes whereas Zamzar has taken up to an 30-minutes to email me my resulting file. There is, however, a small countdown timer that you will have to wait out before being able to actually download your file.

 


–Online: PDF Online

PDF Online This online site doesn’t offer much that makes it unique since its only purpose is to create PDF files. The reason that I do like it, however, is that it seems to do a better job of creating PDF files. The resulting PDF looks a lot more like it should compared to the other two services who sometimes mess up the layout of the document that I am trying to convert.

Here is a list of filetypes that can be converted to PDF’s:

  • Documents: DOC, RTF, PPT, PPS, PUB, XLS, MHT, TXT
  • Images: JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF, GIF

After selecting the file to be uploaded you are required to enter in a valid email address (like Zamzar) for them to send the PDF to. Yes, this does seem like some blatant attempt for them acquire a database of email addresses to sell, but rest assured that their privacy policy does say that the email addresses will not be given to a 3rd party.

Now if only they would allow users to upload files larger than 2MB.

 


–Application: Super

Super Now onto the applications that you can install on your PC…starting with the ever popular Super! Personally I prefer to use software that I have installed on my own PC to convert files because the process is tremendously quicker. After you jump through the hoops that the online services require you have to sit there and wait for them to convert your file, and there is really no telling how long that can be. Of course, the worst part about the online services is probably the length of time that it takes for you to upload the file…which is completely bypassed when using your own computer for the conversion.

The list of files that Super converts is essentially unmatched compared to any other application and online service. Now I haven’t sat there and counted the number of file formats it can actually convert but lets just say that it leaves me speechless.

Super doesn’t just do a conversion, instead, it lets you customize the whole conversion process allowing you to tweak things like the bitrate and number of frames per second. These are all things that advanced users love to have control over but it might look a little intimidating for anyone unfamiliar with the lingo.

This free software also has an option to save Internet Media Streams (such as mms://, rtsp://, and http://) so that you can listen to them whenever you feel like it. Maybe that doesn’t sound too useful right now but I have had several instances where I have wanted to save a Media Stream, but at the time I did not know about this great tool.

 


–Application: MediaCoder

MediaCoder Lastly, the open source MediaCoder application. Its claim-to-fame is being able to transcode audio and video files into a wide range of formats. Here is a list of the various filetypes that are supported:

  • MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio
  • FLAC, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, OptimFrog, AAC Lossless, WMA Lossless, WAV
  • H.264, Xvid, DivX, MPEG 1/2/4, H.263, Flash Video, 3ivx*, RealVideo*, Windows Media
  • AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia*, ASF/WMV*, Quicktime*, OGM*
  • CD, VCD, DVD, CUE Sheet

* supported as input only

You can use MediaCoder for all sorts of things related to audio/video files. If you really want you can extract audio files from a video file or even rip an audio/video disc. This can all be done without needing to have a media player installed since it has the necessary codecs built-in.

 

–Overview–

This post was inspired by everyone who emailed me with tips regarding online conversion utilities. Lewis pointed out Media Convert and Josh pointed out MediaCoder, both of which are excellent conversion tools. I thought it was time to share these recommendations with everyone, but if you know of a better solution feel free to let us know in the comments below. Thanks again for the tips!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberNotes: How To Upgrade Your Portable Firefox

This article was written on August 02, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday
 
How To Upgrade Your Portable FirefoxPortable Firefox (now known to the world as Firefox Portable) makes it easy to always take a great Web browser with you. Besides for the usefulness of portability users can also use it to test experimental builds without fear of losing their existing settings, passwords, and bookmarks.

John Haller recently updated Portable Firefox to the most recent builds but before that I frequently received requests from people to update the build for them. It is actually super easy to do and so I thought I would walk you through the few steps that you need to do in order to upgrade Firefox builds yourself.

The first option that I will recommend is going to your Help menu and selecting “Check For Updates.” The new version of Portable Firefox supports the partial updates for Firefox but previous versions will still be able to update properly. The older versions will normally have to download the entire Firefox file which is around 7MB instead of being able to download a small patch that is just 400KB.

If checking for updates doesn’t work then you can just do it manually. It really isn’t difficult to do and the funny thing is that an extra step is required for versions of Firefox that have been released. It is a little easier for the test builds of Firefox that are released every night.

–Instructions for Released Builds–

  1. Download the released version of Firefox that you want to run unless you have already installed that version on a computer. If you have installed it then skip to step 3.
  2. You have to install Firefox because Mozilla doesn’t offer a ZIP version of builds they release.
  3. Download Portable Firefox (argh, I just can’t get use to the Firefox Portable name so excuse me if I don’t say the proper name throughout the article). Extract the contents wherever you would like.
  4. Find the installation folder of Firefox which is “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox” by default. Just right-click on the Mozilla Firefox folder and select “Copy”.

    Portable Firefox

  5. Browse to where you extracted Portable Firefox and open the App folder. Delete the folder named “firefox”.

    Portable Firefox

  6. Paste the Mozilla Firefox folder into this directory and rename it to “firefox” (without the quotes).
  7. That’s it, go ahead and execute the FirefoxPortable.exe file.

–Instructions for Nightly Builds–

  1. Download the ZIP file of the Firefox nightly build you want to run. The latest nightly build of Firefox 2.0 can be found here.
  2. Download Portable Firefox. Extract the contents wherever you would like.
  3. Extract the contents of the nightly build you downloaded in step 1. Copy the folder named “firefox”.

    Portable Firefox

  4. Browse to where you extracted Portable Firefox and open the App folder. Delete the folder named “firefox”.

    Portable Firefox

  5. Paste the “firefox” folder from step 3 into this directory.
  6. That’s it, go ahead and execute the FirefoxPortable.exe file.

By doing it that way you are able to keep all of your settings, bookmarks, extensions, and anything else that you do to customize your Firefox. If you don’t mind waiting for a release of Portable Firefox to come out then you can always copy your profile over from your old installation to your new installation. You can locate your Portable Firefox profile in the “FirefoxPortable\Data\” and once you are there just copy the “profile” folder over to the same directory in your new Portable Firefox.

Whatever way you choose to use Portable Firefox I am sure it will be a good one. Testing the nightly builds would be a little more cumbersome without using Portable Firefox but it can still be done.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberNotes: Understanding Tweaking the Firefox 3 Address Bar

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

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

The new Firefox 3 address bar is one of those things that you either love or hate, and it’s quite amazing how much buzz such a simple aspect of the browser can cause. The new address bar is often referred to as the AwesomeBar because of how useful it can be, but more officially it is considered the Smart Location Bar.

Why does the Smart Location Bar get so much attention? In most browsers the address bar only looks at the sites you’ve previously typed directly into the bar, but in Firefox 3 it also includes results from both your history and bookmarks. This kind of behavior definitely takes some getting used to, and it wasn’t until I had been using it for a few weeks that I really began to love it.

We’ve got a bunch of different things in store for you to today. To get the ball rolling we’re going to briefly explain how Firefox 3 calculates what results should be at the top of the address bar when you’re typing, and what should be at the bottom. Then we’ve got a bunch of tips on how you can tweak and alter various aspects of the location bar until it’s exactly what you want it to be.

–The Algorithm: Frecency–

frecency.pngFirefox 3 assigns a rank to every site that you visit, and it uses multiple criteria to do so. The two main things that factor into how a URL’s value is calculated are how often you visit that site in conjunction with when the site was visited. This value is often called the Frecency: frequency combined with recency.

That sounds simple enough, but as Mozilla’s documentation demonstrates there is a lot more to it. Bonuses are given to sites that you manually type into the address bar, bookmarks that you visit, and more. Plus more weight is given depending on whether you visited the URL in the last 4 days, 14 days, 31 days, or 90 days. All of this plays into what appears in the address bar when you start typing.

The good news is that you can essentially customize each aspect of the algorithm using about:config in the browser. If you pull up about:config and type frecency into the filter list you’ll find all of the different values associated with the algorithm. It’s helpful to know the formula used in the calculation because it will help explain what each of the different entries represent:

Visit Value = Bucket Weight * (Visit Bonus / 100)

The bucket weight values appear in in the about:config as firstBucketWeight, secondBucketWeight, and so on. These “buckets” correspond to the recency of your visit (4 days, 14 days, etc…) which can be adjusted with the firstBucketCutoff, secondBucketCutoff, etc… settings.

Visit bonuses are given to various URL’s depending on a variety of factors, including whether a site is bookmarked, whether it was visited by clicking a link, or whether it was visited by entering the address into the location bar. All of these values can be adjusted as well, and of them have the word “Bonus” on the end of them in the about:config frecency section.

–Deleting Entries & Resetting Stats–

clear private data.jpgAlthough the system seems overly complicated it’s pretty easy to mange what items appear. For example, I’ve read stories by several people saying that they don’t want results from their history showing up in the address bar because of questionable sites that they visit. Well, the results that are available are only those that are in your history, which means clearing out your history will wipe out those “questionable sites.”

You can do this in a variety of ways. If you want to wipe out your entire history (and therefore reset the stats) you can go to Tools -> Clear Private Data, and from there you can erase your browsing history among other things. Alternatively you can go to History -> Show All History where you can manage individual items, and you can also search through your entire history. Just select the items you want to remove and press the Delete key.

If you want a really fast way to remove items from your history you can use the… address bar! That’s right. Select an item from the address bar using the keyboard arrows, and then press the Delete key (Shift+Delete on a Mac) to see it get removed immediately.

–Removing History & Bookmarks–

If you don’t want the address bar searching both your history and bookmarks there is actually a quick fix. Open up the about:config, navigate to browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped, and change the value to true. Now the address bar will behave just like it did in Firefox 2 where it only searches those addresses you’ve typed into it.

–Removing Bookmarks–

Believe it or not you can prevent your bookmarks from showing up in the results without giving up the history results. Just open up the about:config and set places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus both to 0 (that’s the number zero). The next thing you’ll want to do is restart Firefox and clear your history. This is because Firefox has the frecency values stored, and without clearing the history your bookmarks will likely still show up.

Tip: If you want bookmarks appearing that you have visited only set the “unvisited” option to zero. That way your visited bookmarks will continue to show up as normal.

–Hide Unvisited Extension–

The Hide Unvisited add-on is similar to the method I described above for removing your bookmarks from the results, but it eliminates some of the hassle. What it does is set the following values in the about:config to zero:

  • places.frecency.unvisitedTypedBonus
  • places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus

After those have been set to zero it will erase the frecency values for the bookmarks that you haven’t visited before. This prevents you from having to wipe out your browser’s history in order to see the new values take effect.

This doesn’t, however, prevent your bookmarks from being displayed all together. This only affects those bookmarks that you haven’t visited since the last time you cleared your browser’s cache.

–Alter the Appearance–

The OldBar add-on for Firefox 3 won’t touch the address bar’s algorithm, but it will change the appearance to make the results look like they did in Firefox 2.

oldbar.jpg

–Displaying Google Results–

We’ve supercharged the Firefox 3 address bar with our own homegrown CyberSearch extension. In a nutshell it lets you search Google and see the results right there in the address bar. It’s highly customizable and can make you a lot more productive.

cybersearch web.png

–Distinguishing the Types of Results–

If you want it to be easier to recognize the different types of results in the address bar you may have to look no further than this style designed for the Stylish extension.If you don’t mind diving into the CSS code you can (of course) customize the color scheme, too. With it results from tags will be highlighted in light yellow, bookmarks in light blue, and history items in light green. Similarly our CyberSearch extension has a built-in customization option so that you can pick what background color its results use, and so this works well with it.

address bar style.jpg

Thanks for the tip Mark! [via Ghacks]

–Overview–

Hopefully this article has helped you understand exactly how the Firefox 3 address bar functions, and how you can make it work for you. Be sure to checkout our other Firefox 3 tips, and let us know in the comments how you’ve gone about customizing the address bar.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberNotes: View and Share Panoramic Images at Panoye

This article was written on May 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Weekend Website

I’m one of those that tends to go to photo sites like Flickr if I have a minute to spare just to search for the name of a place I’d like to visit someday so that I can see photos that people have taken from there. It sure doesn’t beat actually going there, but if it’s as close as I’ll get to say, The Eiffel Tower, I’ll take it. Recently I stumbled upon a site that can make seeing these various places via photo even better. It’s called Panoye and it’s a site dedicated to panoramic photos. Today we’ll be taking a look at all that Panoye has to offer.

What is Panoramic Photography?

Panoye.pngBefore we get into Panoye, let’s first go over what panoramic photography is all about. To help with the explanation, I decided to go to Wikipedia to see how they explained it. They say “while there is no formal definition for the point at which “wide-angle” leaves off and “panoramic” begins, truly panoramic images are thought to capture a field of view comparable to, or greater than, that of the human eye – about 160 degrees by 75 degrees – and should do so while maintaining details across the entire picture.”

Panoramic photos offer complete views of an area which is why they’re so cool. Sometimes there are segmented panoramic photos meaning that they were assembled from a collection of multiple overlapping pictures. It’s actually fairly easy to create your own panoramic image which is something Ryan has explained how to do in the past.

What is Panoye?

As mentioned, Panoye is dedicated to panoramic photos. There you can upload, organize, geo-tag and publish your panoramas. As they say on their site, “Help us build a virtual tour all around the Earth.” Another important aspect of the site is going there simply as a viewer to see what people have published.

Navigating…

The easiest way to navigate Panoye is to use the Google Map that they have embedded at the top of the page. Remember, all of the images that people submit are geo-tagged so it’s easy to find a photo from a specific city or place. Another simple way to navigate is to just view the tags. Beaches, castles, parks, and volcanos are all examples of tags available. There are also tags specific to different cities and countries as well.

Panoye map.png

On their homepage, they have two columns of panoramas, one for popular ones and another for those that are new. This is another simple way that you can find great images on the site.

Once you click on an image, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Panoye example.png

The box that shows your image actually pans so that it looks like a person is standing in a single spot and rotating around in a circle. Some panoramic images are 360 degrees so the images pan around seamlessly. If it’s what they call a “partial” image, it still pans but it moves back and forth from side to side. The owners of the images are also able to add messages that appear at the top of the panorama while it’s scrolling.

Want to add your own Panoramas?

If you’re someone who takes panoramic pictures or assembles your own, you may want to think about sharing your work on Panoye. All you have to do is register for an account, and then you can start adding and sharing your content. You’re even able to organize your content into folders. Registration is free.

Socializing on Panoye

There is a social side to the site – users can leave comments or rate any panorama. There are also forums, although not very active, where you can go if you have any questions or what to discuss panoramic images.

RSS Feeds

Panoye offers three different feeds. If you subscribe to their main feed, you’ll be able to easily keep up with the latest panorama images that have been added. You can also subscribe to the comments or the forum which would be helpful for those of you who decided to register for an account and uploaded panoramic images.

Wrapping it up…

On each image page you’ll see a link that says “show image.” This will allow you to view the full image without any panning, and will probably require scrolling unless you have a dual monitor set-up and are able to stretch the image across two screens. Here’s a quick suggestion – if you find an image that you like and you’re using two monitors, you could easily use it for a background image.

While Panoye doesn’t have thousands upon thousands of images, it is a work in progress and has grown quite a bit since it first launched. Stop and take a minute to look around at some of the panoramas out there because they really are pretty amazing.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberNotes: Free RapidShare Premium Accounts

This article was written on July 04, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday
 

Broadband Internet access is becoming standard in homes around the world. With fast Internet access comes file sharing, and that is where RapidShare comes in. RapidShare lets people upload files to their servers and they will host the files at no cost. This is a great solution but some people get annoyed with the limitations RapidShare places on free accounts. If you do not have a Premium RapidShare account then you will have to wait 30 seconds before you can download each file and you are limited to downloading just 30MB/hour.

So how do you get a Premium RapidShare account? You can purchase it for about $12.60 each month or you can watch for free accounts that they giveaway. They periodically give 2-day Premium accounts out on a first-come first-serve basis. You can prevent these accounts from expiring by uploading files and getting people to download the files.

Rapidshare often posts 10’s of thousands free accounts at a time and let people come and get them. There is plenty of software available if you want to get notified of free accounts being posted or you can constantly check their Free Account site. Here is two different pieces of software that will notify you when to get a free account:

Option #1: RapidShare Free Account Notifier

  • Checks availability of free Premium RapidShare Accounts
  • Manual Check
  • Programmable timer
  • Starts with Windows
  • Runs in system tray
  • Popups balloon/plays sound/opens RS page when there are free accounts
  • Proxy support
  • Extreme fast (uses GZIP)



Option #2: RapidCheck

  • Checks availability of free Premium RapidShare Accounts
  • Manual Check
  • Customizable interval
  • Popups balloon and plays a sound when there are free accounts
  • Proxy support
  • Customizable sounds

As you can see both pieces of software are very similar. It doesn’t really matter which one you choose because they will both get you the same result: a free Premium RapidShare account. It is always nice to have a watchful eye doing the checking for us!

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberNotes: Best Firefox Feed Readers

This article was written on October 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox Feed Reader One thing that the Firefox developers have stayed clear of thus far is implementing a full RSS feed reader into the browser. Firefox does have a built in system called Live Bookmarks that are supposed to compensate for needing a feed reader in the browser, but as many of you know it falls short.

When it comes to browsers having an integrated feed reader many of them leave users wanting more. Almost all of them lack the power, design, and usability that I love so much, except for one of them. Hands down Flock has the best built-in feed reader, and it far surpasses what any other browser has. You can quickly customize how you’re viewing the feeds, organize them with the intuitive sidebar, and much more.

Today we want to demonstrate the best feed readers for Firefox that don’t require any online services. Some of them are simple, and some of them are rather impressive. What it really boils down to, however, is how usable they are.

The first three listed below are more of the full featured readers, while the last three are toolbar marquees and scrollers. With each extension we provide a screenshot so that you can see what it looks like while being used, and you can click on the thumbnails for a full-size view.

Note: At the end I’ll announce the “winners”

–Beatnik (Homepage)–

Beatnik Firefox Feed Reader Overview: If you’re looking for something that you can configure this is not your feed reader. It is a light weight feed reader that requires absolutely no additional work if you’re already using the built-in Firefox Live Bookmarks.

The Good:

  • The feed reader itself does not utilize the browser’s sidebar, which means you can still have your bookmarks sidebar open while viewing feeds
  • Automatically pulls in feeds from your Live Bookmarks making it an easy upgrade for all Live Bookmark users
  • Sidebar is resizable
  • Expandable/contractible feed items

The Bad:

  • Has absolutely no options to configure
  • Can’t organize feeds into folders
  • The only way to add feeds is by making a Live Bookmark
  • Can’t import feeds form an OPML file

–Wizz RSS Reader (Homepage)–

Wizz RSS Reader Overview: A slightly more extravagant feed reader that has many advanced management features. It doesn’t let you read the entire feed item from the reader though.

The Good:

  • Can import feeds from Live Bookmarks and OPML file
  • The reader can be put in the sidebar or popped out into a new window
  • Save items for quick access later on
  • Setup an email template for sending items to your friends

The Bad:

  • Does not let you preview the entire article, and instead takes you to the article’s website to read it
  • Can’t customize the interval at which the feeds are updated
  • Can be a bit cramped trying to do all your reading in the sidebar

–Sage (Homepage)–

Sage Firefox Feed Reader Overview: Sage is nice because it displays the contents of feeds in a clean and intuitive manner. If you have hundreds of feeds to read this is the Firefox feed reader for you.

The Good:

  • You can manually have it refresh all of the feeds
  • Customizable stylesheets let you change how the contents of feeds are displayed
  • The feed subscriber shows you the last time a feed was updated
  • Two column reading of the news
  • Scales images to fit the width of the content area
  • Import feeds from OPML file
  • Search your feeds
  • Can organize the feeds into folders

The Bad:

  • Would be nice to switch between full feed views and short descriptions
  • Can’t customize the interval at which the feeds are updated

–infoRSS (Homepage)–

infoRSS Overview: This extension puts a scrolling marquee in the Status Bar that shuffles through the news. It is extremely customizable, but there are so many different options that it can be overwhelming.

The Good:

  • Extremely customizable
  • Filter headlines for keywords
  • Create groups of feeds so that you can quickly switch between different types of news
  • Specify the update interval on a per-feed basis or change the default value
  • Report feature shows you how many items haven’t been read in each feed, last time the feed was updated, and more
  • Synchronize with FTP
  • The marquee can be moved from the Status Bar to a toolbar at the top

The Bad:

  • The number of options can be overwhelming for some people, and they aren’t very well organized
  • The marquee animation can be a bit choppy at times, so you might want to change it to a different type of animation

–RSS Ticker (Homepage)–

RSS Ticker Firefox Feed Reader Overview: A superb marquee feed reader that has all the right options.

The Good:

  • Smooth marquee animation
  • Elegant article summary popup
  • Grabs all of your Live Bookmarks right away without any additional configuration
  • Customize the update interval
  • Choose the placement (below the Status Bar or below the Bookmarks Bar)
  • Feed enabling and disabling
  • Makes good use of the room

The Bad:

  • All feeds have to be Live bookmarks, although you can disable them on an individual basis
  • It always has to have its own toolbar to display feeds, which can occupy precious screen space

–Simple RSS Reader (Homepage)–

Simple RSS Reader Overview: This is just a toolbar that cycles through the feeds that you specify. The configuration options are a little limited.

The Good:

  • Nice manager for adding/removing feeds
  • The toolbar is a nice condensed way to keep up with the news
  • Control buttons to move on to the next item, next feed, or restart the cycle

The Bad:

  • Takes awhile to go through a lot of feeds
  • Can’t import feeds
  • Can’t customize the interval at which the feeds are updated
  • Only shows one item at a time

–The Winners–

I’m a little disappointed by the quality of the feed reading options available for Firefox, but some were clearly better than others. For the more full featured feed readers (the first three in this article) I would have to say that Sage is the best. It has the right amount of features, and definitely feels like a feed reader. To my surprise, however, Beatnik comes in a very close second place. There is something about it’s simplicity that I really like.

When it comes to the marquee style feed readers (the latter three in the article) I would put RSS Ticker up on a pedestal above the others. It has smooth animations, an elegant interface, and a sufficient number of options. However, if your heart lies with customizability I would jump on the infoRSS bandwagon, because it is sure to make you drool!

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

This article was written on March 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Sunday’s Summary

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

  • Calc – Adds a simple calculator to your Firefox sidebar.

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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