Hasta La Gadget!

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

Foxmarks is the 13th most popular extension for the Firefox browser, and users who don’t mind test driving a Beta version can get a sneak peek at the upcoming Foxmarks 2.0! Initially you won’t be able to see a lot of differences because most of the work has been happening underneath the surface.

For starters Foxmarks has redesigned the way that they synchronize your bookmarks. Instead of synchronizing all of your bookmarks each time it will not only synchronize those bookmarks that have changed (newly added, renamed, moved, etc…). If you only have a handful of bookmarks you probably won’t notice much of a difference, but it should be a lot faster for those of you with hundreds (or even thousands) of bookmarks.

Foxmarks 2.0 has also implemented a new feature for synchronizing favicons, but from what I gather the favicons are still not shown on the My Foxmarks website. They are, however, synched across all computers that are running Foxmarks 2.0. This is especially great for all of you who use the Favicon Picker to customize the icons for your favorite websites.

There is some important information for those of you who are upgrading from Foxmarks 1.0:

You cannot easily mix Foxmarks 1.0.1 and Foxmarks 2.0; they exist in separate universes. If you do choose to run with Foxmarks 2.0, make sure you update all your existing installations to Foxmarks 2.0. There’s no risk of data loss, but changes you make with one version 1.0.1 won’t find their way to your Foxmarks 2.0 installations until you upgrade (and vice versa). Once you upgrade your first computer to Foxmarks 2.0, going to My Foxmarks will only show you Foxmarks 2.0 data — another reason to upgrade all your machines.

As of right now Foxmarks 2.0 is not compatible with pre-release versions of Firefox 3. The developer has said that he will begin working on a compatible version once Firefox 3 hits the Beta stage.

Get Foxmarks 2.0 Beta

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

A new Firefox extension, called Glubble, is available that adds a parental control system to the Firefox browser. It’s nothing overly extravagant since it only enforces a whitelist of URL’s for the children, but it can give peace of mind to parents out there.

There is a default list of sites that ships with Glubble which are classified as kid-safe, and when setting up the accounts it asks whether the child is a boy or a girl. It uses that information to create a more customized homepage for the child based upon their gender. For example, a girl would have a link to Barbie on their site while a boy would not.

Children can request that certain sites be approved, and a parent can immediately approve the request if they are available to do so. If the parent is not available Firefox will prompt the parent to approve the site the next time they login.

Words don’t really do this justice, so I thought I would walk through a common scenario that might occur at a household. This demonstrates all of the various features that Glubble ships with (click any image to enlarge it):

1. After installing Glubble the parent will be prompted to create an account:
   
2. The parent then creates users, and they’ll be shown on a user management page. I named the users so that you can tell who is who, for example, the parent’s username stands for "I’m a Parent":
   
3. Firefox is locked until a child or parent logs in (this is what you’ll see when starting Firefox from now on):
   
4. A child logs on and is able to search Google, Yahoo, and visit some recommended sites using a customized Firefox skin. Note: When searching it only pulls up results for the approved sites.
   
5. A child can also navigate their sites using the drop-down menu from the top which shows thumbnail previews of the sites:
   
6. If a child tries to visit an unapproved site they will need to get the permission of a parent first:
   
7. If the parent wasn’t around to approve the site, they will be shown the request the next time they login to Firefox:
   
8. If the parent comes across a kid-friendly site while browsing around, they can instantly enable it for any of their kids:
   
9. Or they can manage the sites that are approved for a child:
   
10. And then when the child gets back online they will be notified that their site request had been approved:
    

As you can see this can be an extremely useful tool for parents who are trying to protect their kids from explicit content on the Internet. There is, however, a problem that arises for those people who have technological kids. It’s actually possible to remove (or temporarily move) the folder which contains the extension in the Firefox profile folder. That means the extension would immediately be deactivated and the user is given full access to the Internet, which can also be done by running Firefox in safe mode.

This doesn’t quite match up to the built-in parental controls that Vista has, which lets parents limit the amount of time that a child can use the computer, monitor their activity, and control which games they can play. In the reports the parents can even see the most recent websites that were visited, which applications a child ran, and what files they downloaded…none of which Glubble can do.

Of course Glubble doesn’t cost a thing, and knowledgeable parents not using Vista will hopefully see this as a way to protect their kids. When the final version of Glubble is released in October we’ll hopefully see some reporting features included, but they have definitely got the ball rolling in the right direction.

Download the Glubble Firefox Extension

Source: Spread Firefox

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’m sure many of you are YouTube addicts, and you probably can’t get enough of people jumping off roofs or watching those sonic booms. Now there is a Firefox extension to help match your crazy addiction!

YouPlayer appears as a sidebar item in your Firefox browser once it is installed. With it you can drag and drop YouTube video URL’s into the player to have it create a playlist.

One of the reasons I found this extremely useful was that I could drag and drop YouTube search results right into the player, and then watch them all without leaving the page that I was currently on. The only downside about doing it that way was that it didn’t retrieve the title of the video, and would have to be manually renamed if you wanted an easy-to-understand playlist. If you go to each videos standalone page, and then drag the tab over the naming convention is similar to what you see in the screenshot I took to the right.

There are a few things that came to my mind which would make this extension a must-have:

• It would be awesome if I could add videos from multiple video sites. Sadly it only supports YouTube right now.
• A bulk video adder seems like a necessity. Think about being able to drag a YouTube search results tab over into the playlist, and then having it automatically add all the videos from that page.
• What about searching YouTube from within the sidebar? Then you could setup “smart” playlists like iTunes has.
• A one-click option to have a playlist generated for the day’s most viewed videos would be nice.

Source: Lifehacker & Mozilla Links

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Cookies in web browsers are an easy way for sites to store authentication/login information, settings, and so much more. One of the things that some sites do for security or privacy purposes is force the cookies to expire after a period of time. Sometimes they expire after a day, a week, a year, or when you close your browser. If there was a way to edit the cookies you would be able to adjust the expiration date so that you didn’t run into that problem.

Oh, but wait, there is a way to edit your browser’s cookies! It’s actually rather easy to do in both Firefox and Opera, so today we’ll take a look at how to edit cookies.

–Opera–

One of the great things about Opera is that they give you a lot of control over the content and properties of a cookie. If you want to alter a cookie it is as simple as heading over to the Preferences and clicking a few buttons.

To change a cookie in Opera go to Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Cookies -> Manage Cookies. Then find the cookie that you want to change, and click the Edit button. You’ll then be presented with a dialog where you can customize the expiration date or any other information contained within the cookie:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see it is rather easy to do in Opera thanks to the built-in advanced editor that the browser comes equipped with.

–Firefox–

Firefox is only able to view your browser’s cookies out-of-the-box, but as expected there are a few extensions available to do the dirty work. My personal favorite is Add N Edit Cookies, which has a simple yet powerful interface for managing and creating cookies.

Once you get the extension installed here’s what you’ll have to do to edit the cookies:

1. Go to Tools -> Cookie Editor, and then perform a search for the cookie you’re looking for. After you find the cookie you want select it and click the Edit button.
   
2. Now you’ll be presented with all of the cookie’s properties that you can edit. To change the expiration date of the cookie fill in the New expiration date bubble located at the bottom of the properties window:

   (Click to enlarge)
   

3. Save your changes, and then close out of the cookie editor.

–Recap–

To sum things up, it is pretty easy to manipulate the cookies in your browser, provided that you have the right tools handy. Some of the websites I visit have the logins expire after a very short period of time or when I close the browser, and it can get rather annoying. By adjusting the dates on some of my cookies I can avoid having to login to many sites over and over again.

Tip: You just need to be careful because often times these short-lived cookies are for your own protection and privacy.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on March 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Okay, so a few days ago we reported that Mozilla had launched their new Add-on Site on the day that they scheduled it. Shortly after they posted it they were forced to remove it because of an overloaded server. I just noticed that the new site is now back up, but I’m not sure if it is for keeps.

All of the new features that I mentioned last time still stand, but now they also added a bunch of extensions to the main site. There are currently about 852 available instead of the measly 152 that were posted last time. I think all of my favorite extensions were pulled out of the Sandbox and are now on the main site, which is good to hear.

If you want to search for extensions that are in the Sandbox area then go ahead and follow the instructions that I posted on the last article. I did, however, try going to Google again to see if they fixed the broken links to existing extensions in the Sandbox. They don’t appear to have changed that as I still receive an error saying “Add-on not found” if the extension is located in the Sandbox.

According to the Mozilla Web Development blog the load on the server with the new site was too much when they updated it last time, and so they had to roll back to the old version. I’m skeptical as to whether this one will actually stick around, or whether they will have to pull it back again. They probably put it up today so that they could analyze it a little further when there isn’t as much traffic. After all, who installs Firefox extensions on a Sunday?

Hopefully the Mozilla Web Development team will find the good news that they are looking for!

Read our previous coverage on the new Add-on Site
Visit the Mozilla Add-ons site

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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