WrapUp: Opera Mini 5 Beta, Getting the Most out of Dropbox, and More

This article was written on September 21, 2009 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

firefox flash.jpgFirefox Users are Upgrading Adobe Flash
When Firefox users upgrade their browser they are shown a page that informs them of whether they’re running the latest version of the Flash plugin. Mozilla has released some stats, and apparently over 10 million users clicked the “upgrade” link in a one-week period. That’s about 30% of the people who upgraded to the latest Firefox 3.5 release, which I’d say is a pretty successful number. Nice job Mozilla!


windows 7 student.jpgMicrosoft Offers Windows 7 for $30 to Students
College and university students can grab a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium for a mere $30. This isn’t a surprising offer since Microsoft also runs “the Ultimate Steal” which provides a copy of Office 2007 at 90% off the retail price. Windows 7 Home Premium retails for $120, which isn’t exactly 90% off, but a good deal nonetheless.


opera mini 5.jpgOpera Mini 5 Beta Gets Speed Dial, Tabs, and More
The Beta release of Opera Mini 5 has some incredible new features including a password manager, Speed Dial for your favorite sites, and even tabs. What’s even better, however, is the fact that it’s also optimized for touchscreen devices, and browsing with it looks pretty darn nice. Videos are available for those of you who want to check it out, but don’t have a device you can install it on.


zune windows 7-1.jpgZune 4.0 Optimized for Windows 7
The new Zune 4.0 software comes with a lot of nice enhancements, but Windows 7 users will also be able to enjoy a few little extras. That includes jump list support and media controls (play, forward, etc…) when viewing the Taskbar preview. Aside from these Windows 7 specific features there’s also a new Quickplay interface, a Smart DJ that will mix your songs, and a Mini Player Mode.  


–News in Brief–

chrome stable.jpgGoogle Chrome 3.0 Leaves Beta
A new stable release of Google Chrome is available, and brings a refreshed new tab page, theme support, and more.


live writer.jpgWindows Live Writer Getting a Ribbon Interface?
Looks like there are some clues pointing to a ribbon-style interface in Windows Live Writer.


hulu.jpgHulu Working on a Subscription-Based Model
Some sources are saying that Hulu is working on a subscription-based version of their online television viewer, but no details are available. Does this mean we could pay to get commercial-free viewing, or maybe they’d even allow users from outside the U.S.?


digsby.jpgDigsby Cleans Up Installer, a Little
Digsby is trying to make amends with some of their users by making it a bit more obvious what you’re getting into when installing their messenger software.


youtube resume.jpgYouTube Adds Resume Support on Longer Videos
If you’re watching a YouTube video longer than 20 minutes, close the page, and then reopen it you should see that the video will pick up where you left off.


snow leopard.jpgInitial Snow Leopard Sales Double that of Leopard
According to a research firm Apple has sold more than double the number of Snow Leopard copies as they did Leopard in 2007.


chrome logo.jpgGoogle Wants Chrome at 10% Market Share in 2-years
In one year Google wants to have 5% of the browser market share, and in two years they want to have 10% market share.


recaptcha.jpgGoogle Acquires reCAPTCHA
The acquisition of reCAPTCHA by Google was a smart one, because they can now use the technology to help with Optimal Character Recognition (OCR) for their books.


bing.jpgBing Grabs Over 10% of the Search Market
Bing’s market share rose another 22% from July to August, which gives them 10% of the overall search market.


google fast flip.jpgGoogle Fast Flip: A New Way to Read News  
Last week Google showed off a new visual approach to keeping up on the lastest news.


wii price cut.jpgWii Price Cut Coming: $199
Several advertisements for retailers are showing a $50 price cut on the Wii that will be coming soon, and will bring it down to $199.


mint.jpgIntuit Acquires Mint for $170 Million
Intuit, the creators of Quicken, can now add Mint to their repertoire of online financial management tools.


bing visual search.jpgBing’s New Way to Search: Visually
Bing now lets users search for items, such as cars, visually. You must have Silverlight installed if you want to try it out.


–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

dropbox.jpgUsing Dropbox for more than File Syncing
I’ve got into using Dropbox for a lot more than just syncing files, and this guide covers some of the things I’m using it for. One of my favorites is being able to remotely kick off a torrent download so that it’s completed by the time I get home. The list also covers syncing your passwords, your Pidgin profile, and portable applications.


rip music.jpgHow to Rip Your Music
Gizmodo has put together a great guide for anyone looking to rip some CD’s on both Windows and Mac. Many audio players, such as iTunes, include this kind of functionality. Music fanatics, however, might not like the lack of control they have over how their music is ripped. This guide puts the control back in your hands.


spreadtweet.jpgHide Your Tweeting While at Work
This article covers two different apps that will mask your tweeting habits while your at work: one that simulates the command prompt, and another that looks like a spreadsheet. My favorite is the spreadsheet app, called Spreadtweet, that can resemble iWork, Office 2003, or Office 2007. It will certainly make you do a double-take the first time you see it.


backup wireless.jpgBackup Your Wireless Settings in Windows 7
Windows 7 includes a nice new feature that lets you save your wireless settings to an executable. These settings can then be restored simply by running the executable. How is this useful? Well, if you have a complicated security key this could make it easy for guests to connect to your network without walking them through a long set of instructions.


–Tips in Brief–

auto screen resolution.jpgAutomatically Adjust Screen Resolutions for Each PC User
This free app will let you set screen resolutions based upon which user is currently logged in to the machine.


zune logo-1.jpgRestore Zune 4.0′s “Missing” Features (users outside the U.S.)
Are you missing some of the cool new features in the Zune 4.0 software simply because you live outside the U.S.? This is your solution.


win7shell.jpgWindows 7 Jump List Support for Winamp
Winamp may not natively include Jump List support in Windows 7, but a plugin is available that can add the jumpy goodness to your Taskbar.


hideoiutlook.jpgHide Outlook to the System Tray
Trying to conserve some of your precious Taskbar space? Throw Outlook into your System Tray with this app.


medalfolders-1.jpgLaunch Apps from Your System Tray
This application launcher lets you store shortcuts to all of your favorite apps in one easy-access System Tray icon.


recycle bin.jpgAdd the Recycle Bin to the Windows 7 Taskbar
Want faster access to the Recycle Bin in Windows 7? This trick will let you have it right on the Taskbar.


bookrags.jpgAlternative Sites to CliffsNotes
Not the kind of person that likes reading books? Bookmark these 7 sites… they’ll come in handy.


–Downloads–

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Helpful Tip: Recover Lost Bookmarks in Firefox 3

This article was written on August 12, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox 3 bookmark backup-1.png

Last year we provided a thorough guide on how you can recover lost bookmarks in Firefox, but as an anonymous reader pointed out some of the tips provided no longer work in Firefox 3. This is because Mozilla revamped the bookmarking system so that it performs better, and is also capable of more advanced functionality such as tagging. The good news is that recovering lost bookmarks in Firefox 3 is even easier than it was before!

What you need to do now is go to Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Restore, and then select the date of one of the backups (the date is in year-month-day format). You’ll then receive a prompt asking if you’re sure you want to replace all of your existing bookmarks with those from the backup, and once you hit the OK button you’ll be all set.

Any site you’ve bookmarked since the last backup will be lost since this does replace your current bookmarks. For that reason you may want to consider performing a manual backup before proceeding with restoring your old bookmarks. This can be done using the Backup option located right above the Restore option. You’ll then be asked where you want to save the file, and restoring them is as simple as going to Restore -> Choose File.

Feel free to adjust the number of automatic bookmark backups kept by Firefox 3, which is still the same from our previous guide.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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CyberSearch Tops 25,000 Downloads

This article was written on January 07, 2009 by CyberNet.

cybersearch.pngIt’s definitely hard to believe, but after 6-months of being released the CyberSearch extension has been downloaded over 25,000 times from Mozilla’s add-ons site. The stats page for our add-on appears to be a bit screwed up since it’s only reporting that we have 3 active users, but the average number of you actively using CyberSearch is around 4,000… which is probably a bit more accurate.

One thing I’ve really tried to do with the extension is listen and respond to the feedback of the people who are using it. I try to respond to every email I receive regarding the extension, and I’ve also come to learn that there are quite a few of you who are using it in pre-release versions of Firefox. That’s one reason I have a strong focus on the compatibility with both stable and nightly releases.

So hopefully all of you using CyberSearch are still enjoying it! I’m rather amazed that it has a 5-star average out of the 66 reviews thus far, and hopefully it will continue on that streak. What I’d really love to see some day is CyberSearch get front and center on the Add-ons homepage, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

CyberSearch Homepage
CyberSearch on Mozilla Add-ons

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Google Ditches Browser Sync Extension for Firefox 3

This article was written on June 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

google browser sync.jpgWith every new release of Firefox there’s always going to be a few extensions that just don’t make the cut. Developers let the extensions fade into the dust as users keep their fingers crossed that someone else will pickup the project. Google Browser Sync is exactly one of those extensions, and it looks like there is very little chance of a resuscitation. That means you’ll no longer be able to sync your bookmarks, history, cookies, passwords, and tabs between browsers!

According to Lifehacker Google has no intention of making the extension compatible with Firefox 3 which is due out on Tuesday. Here’s part of the response that one of their readers received from the Google Team when inquiring about the future of the project:

Thanks for trying out Google Browser Sync and for all of your feedback. It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

The response then goes on to talk about how Firefox 2 users who are still running the extension will only receive support throughout 2008. Looks like there’s really no point in someone trying to get it to work in Firefox 3 then if Google won’t be providing the hosting that’s needed to store the information.

My question is how many of you still use Google Browser Sync? I thought it was pretty cool when it first came out, but it didn’t last long on my computer. I just wasn’t comfortable with Google having that much of my information, and right now all I use is Foxmarks merely as a way to keep my bookmarks backed up.

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Mozilla’s Progress on Platform-Specific Themes

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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Quickly Tag & Bookmark Sites in Firefox 3

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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Updating Portable Firefox with a Script

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

One of the requests that I frequently receive with every Firefox 3 Alpha release is to put together a portable build that people can play with. That way they don’t need to worry about messing up their existing Firefox installation or profile, and when they have had enough with it they can simply delete the folder it resides in.

Download Squad found a site that ingeniously created a script which automatically downloads the latest nightly release of Firefox. That means right now it is grabbing the nightly builds of Firefox 3, and after that branches off it will begin grabbing Firefox 4 nightly releases.

Firefox Updater

All you have to do is download the version of Portable Firefox that includes the updater (Download Mirror). After you extract the files you’ll see a file called Updater.exe, and that’s what you need to run first. The download of the latest Firefox 3 nightly build will be initiated, and you should see the download progress in the System Tray (similar to the screenshot I took above). After the download is done the Updater will extract the contents using 7-Zip (already included), and it will place the files in the appropriate directory.

How long the actual process takes depends on how fast your Internet connection is, and for me it was done in less than a minute. Overall this is a great idea, and I think it would be even more awesome if there was an option to specify the URL of the download. That way you could pick and choose which version you wanted to run!

Instructions on doing this process manually can be found here, which also includes details on copying your existing Firefox profile over to the portable setup.

Get the Portable Firefox Updater (Download Mirror)

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CyberNotes: Mouse Gestures in Firefox, IE, and Opera

This article was written on May 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

mouse gesture.pngKeyboard shortcuts step aside! Mouse gestures have been around for quite some time, and are often used as a way to quickly issue commands. One of the places that these are used the most is in the web browser, and that’s because a lot of repetitive actions are performed there. Just think about how many times each day you click the back or refresh buttons.

Today we’re going to demonstrate the various ways that you can use mouse gestures in Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer. The only problem you’ll run into is trying to absorb everything you can do with the mouse gestures. ;)

–Firefox–

arrow Windows Windows; Mac Mac; Linux Linux arrow
As you can imagine there are quite a few Firefox extensions out there that provide some sort of mouse gesture support. Here are two of my favorites (they both work with Firefox 3, although they are not officially compatible yet):

  • FireGestures [Homepage]
    This is everything that you would expect from a mouse gesture system, and more. There are dozens of different commands you can associate with your own gestures, and you can even take it one step further by creating your own commands. My guess is that you’ll be more than satisfied with the built-in commands though.

    (Click to Enlarge)
    firegesture-1.png

  • Easy DragToGo [Homepage]
    This isn’t a full-fledged mouse gesture extension like the one above, but it does use mouse movement to perform useful actions. What you can do is set it up so that when you drag-and-drop text, links, or images in a certain direction it will perform a special action. This can be an easy way to open links in a new tab, perform a Google search for text, or save images to your computer.

    (Click to Enlarge)
    easy dragtogo-1.png

–Opera–

arrow Windows Windows; Mac Mac; Linux Linux arrow
Opera has got to be the easiest browser to use mouse gestures simply because they are included out-of-the-box. You can perform a gesture by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse in one of the basic patterns described here, or one of the more advanced gestures here.

The first time you perform a mouse gesture it will prompt you with a box asking whether you want the gestures to be enabled. Alternatively you can open the Preferences and go to Advanced -> Shortcuts to turn them on. While you’re in the preferences you can also have it flip-flop the back and forward gestures if you’re left handed.

If you find yourself having trouble remembering the various gestures then you may want to consider adding this site as a panel in the sidebar. You can do this by bookmarking the site and choosing the option to show it as a panel. You’ll be more inclined to use the mouse gestures if you leave that site open in the sidebar for a few days while you grow accustomed to the various mouse gestures.

–Internet Explorer–

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Of course Internet Explorer isn’t without mouse gestures. There are two plug-ins that I believe do a good job of executing mouse gestures in Internet Explorer, and the best part is that both come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors! Here they are:

  • Mouse Gestures [Homepage]
    What I really love about this mouse gesture system is that it integrates very well into the browser. You can assign gestures to dozens of different commands, and it is also capable of opening a bookmark or simulating a keyboard shortcut.

    (Click to Enlarge)
    mouse gestures-1.png

  • IE7Pro [Homepage]
    This is a pretty popular plug-in for Internet Explorer, but if you’re looking only for mouse gestures this won’t likely be what you want. It’s a feature-packed add-on that does dozens of other things besides just gestures. Not only that but the configurability of the mouse gestures is not nearly as good as the previous plug-in that we mentioned. However, if you’re already using IE7Pro for some of the other features then you might as well take advantage of the mouse gestures.

    (Click to Enlarge)
    ie7pro.png

–Overview–

As you can see mouse gestures are all over the place, and can be found in all the major browsers. Do you use mouse gestures, or are they not your thing? Personally I’m more of a keyboard shortcut person myself, but I’m sure many of you would rather keep your hand on the mouse.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Mozilla’s Take on Acid3 Test

This article was written on April 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

acid3 pass For about a month now browser developers have been eyeing the new Acid3 test to see how they can push to meet the standards it tests for. Shortly after the test was released we took a look at how the browsers stacked up to each other, but none of them passed the test. Then just last week both Opera and Safari released test builds that demonstrate their compliance.

What about Firefox? Mozilla co-founder Mike Shaver wrote about his thoughts on Ian Hixie’s Acid3 test, and I think it’s safe to say that he’s not overly fond of it:

Ian’s Acid 3, unlike its predecessors, is not about establishing a baseline of useful web capabilities. It’s quite explicitly about making browser developers jump — Ian specifically sought out tests that were broken in WebKit, Opera, and Gecko, perhaps out of a twisted attempt at fairness. But the Acid tests shouldn’t be fair to browsers, they should be fair to the web; they should be based on how good the web will be as a platform if all browsers conform, not about how far any given browser has to stretch to get there.

Mike then went on to say how they won’t be getting support for the Acid3 test into the Firefox 3 browser, which is completely understandable. It’s very unlikely that Opera and Internet Explorer will be adding support Acid3 for their next major milestone releases either. And Safari just released a new version of their browser, and so their next milestone won’t exactly be soon. It’s obvious that the browser developers need time to test the necessary changes, and I don’t think anyone will criticize them for that.

Ian Hixie, one of the developers of the Acid 3 test, responded to Mike in the comments of his post. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:

I would love to have tested innerHTML and setTimeout and all kinds of stuff like that, but sadly there is no spec for those yet (other than the very much in-progress HTML5 drafts). We can’t write Acid tests for things that we don’t have a spec for. I’ve been working my ass off for the past few years to write a spec for these things. Hopefully by, say, Acid5, we’ll be able to write an Acid test for them.

With Acid2, the original “first cut” failed a lot in IE, Mozilla, and Safari, but actually did pretty well in Opera. We (Håkon and I) then went on a hunt for Opera bugs and made Opera fare much worse on the test. With Acid3, IE and Opera ended up doing really badly on the first cut, and Firefox and Safari did well, so we added some more things that failed in Firefox and Safari. (Then we added even more stuff that failed in Safari, because they kept fixing the damn bugs as I was adding them to the test.)

Of course you wouldn’t want a bunch of the browsers to pass the test immediately after it is released because it wouldn’t really be doing any good. What are your thoughts about this?

[via ZDNet] Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

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Helpful Tip: Getting More out of CyberSearch Keywords

This article was written on July 15, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybersearch.pngWe know that you’ve had less than two weeks to kick around our CyberSearch extension, and we hope by this point you’re finding it to be an indispensable tool. The true power lies in the keyword system that it comes with, but it might take a little time to really understand how it works. Our video demonstration should be enough to get your creative juices flowing though.

The whole reason that I created this extension was because I saw how it could make me more productive. I laid out a plan with the features I knew I’d use (namely a keyword system), and dove in head first. The end result didn’t turn out half bad, and what I want to show you today are some ways that you can maximize the usefulness of the extension.

1) Using Firefox’s Built-in Keyword System

Our extension uses Google to do all of its searching, and I know that a lot of you would love for our extension to search more sites directly. In fact that is one of the things I’ve received the most requests about. The reason why that isn’t feasible is that there aren’t many sites out there that are designed to return results in a text-based fashion that is performance friendly. Google, on the other hand, is capable of returning search results in a no-frills format that we can quickly pull data from. Other sites… not so much.

If you want to search sites directly the best way you can do this is by setting up a keyword search in your browser that is identical to one of your CyberSearch keywords. For example, setup a keyword search in Firefox for Google called “goog”. The CyberSearch extension ships with a keyword already named “goog”, and these will work well together.

firefox search keyword.png

Once you have duplicated some of your important keywords you can start taking advantage of them. Now when you type “goog” followed by a word/phrase it will show you the instant results in the address bar thanks to our extension. If you don’t see what you need just press enter and the built-in Firefox keyword search will kick in. You’ll then be taken directly to the results page for the keyword that you have setup.

2) Search More Specific Pages

When you’re setting up a keyword there’s a good chance that you’ll restrict the search to a specific domain, but don’t be afraid to use longer URL’s to get precisely the data you’re looking for. What do I mean? Imagine setting up a keyword search that returns results for Firefox add-ons. Don’t vaguely specify “mozilla.org” as the domain you want to search. Instead use “addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/” so that only pages from the Firefox add-ons site are returned.

cybersearch long url.png

3) Search Multiple Sites Simultaneously

Sure it’s nice being able to search one site with a keyword, but don’t forget that you can also search multiple sites! In the website URL field all you have to do is separate multiple sites by commas. Then when you perform a search using that keyword the results from all of those sites will be intermingled.

When would this be useful? There are a few different things that pop into my mind, but one of my favorites would be searching all of your favorite BitTorrent sites at the same time.

cybersearch multiple sites.png

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