Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the most valuable pieces of data your browser can hold are your bookmarks. For some people it’s not only important to access your bookmarks no matter where you’re at, but also from whatever browser you are using. That’s why today we are taking a look at some different ways you’ll be able to sync bookmarks between the different browsers.

Something I spent a lot of time doing was hunting around for a solution that would work in several different browsers, instead of just Firefox and Internet Explorer. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could find because some browsers, like Opera, don’t make it easy for third-party bookmarking services to be integrated.

Luckily Opera 9.5 (currently in the Beta stage) will include bookmark synchronization with Opera’s own servers. What I would like to see is Opera open up their bookmarking service and create an API that other developers could use. That way their service could become the one-stop shop for remote & cross-browser bookmark synchronization. But until that happens here are some alternative solutions:

–FavoriteSync & PlainOldFavorites–

PlainOldFavorites is a Firefox extension that gives users direct access to the Internet Explorer Favorites. With it you can access, add, and organize your favorites from within Firefox. Once installed this will add a new menu option that will be adjacent to your existing Firefox Bookmarks menu, and the two bookmarking systems are always kept separate from each other.

You can make the system even more powerful if you combine it with the free FavoriteSync utility. This will synchronize your Internet Explorer Favorites with a remote server so that the bookmarks can be accessed from any computer.

–Del.icio.us–

Del.icio.us is one of the most popular online bookmarking services, and they offer a variety of tools that integrate with it. There is an add-on for Internet Explorer, a Firefox extension, and bookmarklets that should work in the other browsers.

I’ve tried out Del.icio.us before, but for some reason it never really struck me as all that great. It’s nice that your bookmarks are accessible from any browser via their website, but I just don’t feel like I have the control over my bookmarks that I would like to have. I guess you could say that I’m more of a folder guy rather than a tagger.

–Diigo–

Diigo is really more than just a bookmarking service. In addition to letting you save and organize bookmarks, you can also clip text and images from websites. Just like Del.icio.us they have an add-on for Internet Explorer, extension for Firefox, and bookmarklets designed for the other major browsers.

Don’t shrug off the bookmarklet as a weaker version of the add-ons. Diigo’s bookmarklet is surprisingly powerful, and you’ll find almost all of the features contained within the add-ons. If you’re using a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox Diigo would be a perfect fit for you.

–Zinkmo–

We’ve previously written about Zinkmo and explained about how it works, so we won’t go too much in depth here. It’s an all-in-one solution for people who want to synchronize their bookmarks between Firefox and Internet Explorer…remotely! They’ll store your bookmarks on a remote server, which makes this an ideal solution for people who use one browser at home, and a different one at work.

–Google Bookmarks–

Google Bookmarks is integrated into the Google Toolbar for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but Firefox users also have the GMarks extension for even more control. Google’s bookmarking system is similar to Del.icio.us in that it uses a labeling/tagging system for organizing the bookmarks. The tools used to display the bookmarks will transform these tags into a folder-like system.

If you’re using a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox just drag this bookmarklet into your bookmarks:

Google Bookmark

That bookmarklet will let you bookmark the site currently being viewed in the browser. Unfortunately the only way to view and manage your existing bookmarks is to visit the official Google Bookmarks homepage.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 15, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’m sure that you’ve seen ASCII art similar to the image pictured above. It’s where someone takes a photo and arranges characters in a precise way to accurately represent the original image. Take our logo for example, in the above image a bunch of characters and spaces were placed next to each other until they created something that looked right.

Doing this can be a painstaking process, and frankly it is something that I would never want to do myself. The logo that I created above was done using a service called Photo2Text, where all you have to do is input an image and it will spit out a text file for you to download. You just open that file up in Notepad (with wordwrap turned off) and you’ll see a masterpiece.

I was actually having some fun with this after downloading the Firefox extension, which lets you right-click on any image on the Internet and have it converted to ASCII art. I found a few images to convert and here are the results:

Note: I reduced the font size to 4 so that the images could easily be seen. The larger the font size you pick in Notepad the further away you’ll need to be to recognize the image.

Eiffel Tower:

2009 Camaro:

Michael Jordan:

See how easy it was for me to become an ASCII art pro? Go ahead and grab some photos to do this with and head on over to the Photo2Text site. You’ll be impressing your friends in no time, and if you find yourself using it more than you thought it might be beneficial to install the Firefox extension.

Source: Firefox Facts

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Are you one of those people who like to conserve every square inch of screen space when it’s possible? If so we have a treat for you today! We’re going to demonstrate how you can become the ultimate Firefox minimalist with the help of some extensions and themes. If you implement everything that we have listed below you’ll wonder where half of your browser has gone. You might also go cross-eyed… don’t say we didn’t warn you.

–Themes–

The first major step that a minimalist Firefox user takes is often in changing their theme. By choosing a more compact theme you can eliminate nearly any and all spacing found throughout Firefox, and the end result can save a lot of area in your browser.

The screenshot to the right shows the Classic Compact Firefox theme laid overtop of the classic theme. The double-ended arrows indicate how much space you save by simply applying this theme. There are a few other themes (like miniFox) that are similar, but Classic Compact is really the one that has won the hearts of minimalists around the globe.

–Toolbars & Menus–

There is a lot of “fat” that lies within the toolbars and menus in Firefox. The themes aim to take some pounds off the toolbars, but there are some extensions that can take the minimalist design to a whole new level:

• Searchbar Autosizer [Homepage]
  Keep the browser’s search box small when it’s not being used. This will let you have a really small search box that expands as you type. That means your Address Bar gets even more room!
• Faviconize Tab [Homepage]
  You’ll be able to double-click on a tab and have it collapsed down to only it’s icon. Now you won’t feel like such a pig when you have 40 different tabs open.
  
• Personal Menu [Homepage]
  How often do you really use those menus (File, Edit, etc…) anyway? If it’s not very often you can stuff them into a single icon by using this extension. All of the menus will still be accessible, but they will just take an extra click to get to them.
• Smart Bookmarks Bar [Homepage]
  If you’re not ready to give up your Bookmarks Bar then maybe this extension will help keep things a little more tidy. By default it will only show the icons for the sites located on the Bookmarks Bar, and then when you hover over them it will expand to show the name as well.
  

–Status Bar–

I wouldn’t say that the Status Bar is the hugest space consumer, but hey, we’re trying to scrounge up every pixel that’s possible. Right? So we’ve got a few specialized styles and one extension that can clean up your Status Bar a little bit.

• Mouseover for Clutter [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  This will hide the excessive number of icons that you probably have in the Firefox Status Bar, but they will reappear each time you hover over the bar. That way you’re not really losing any functionality, unless of course one of those icons also serves as some sort of notifier (such as a new mail notifier).
• Autohide Status Bar [Homepage] Requires Stylish
  Get the Status Bar completely out of the way with this style. Once installed it will create an area that is just one pixel in height, and when you hover over that it will show the Status Bar.
• autoHideStatusbar [Homepage]
  This is an extension that’s similar to how the previous style operates, except that it goes one step further. With this extension you can set it so that when you hover over hyperlinks it will show the Status Bar, which means you can still see where the links point to. The Status Bar can also be shown when the page is loading so that you can monitor the progress.
  Note: This extension is currently experimental, and you’ll need to login to your Mozilla account before downloading it.

–Overview–

I think you have a pretty good set of tools to work with so that you can be well on your way to becoming a Firefox minimalist. I’m sure many of you have trimmed down your Firefox in one way or another, and I would love to hear how you’ve managed to conserve space in Firefox! Shoot us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

At first glance it may seem like Firefox lacks a lot of configuration options, hoever, much of the fine tuning lies underneath. Most Firefox power users will know about the about:config window which can sometimes be a tedious tool ,but there are a lot of customizable options located there.

Mozilla actually warns users that they should not change settings in the about:config window unless they really know what they are doing. Often times it is compared to editing the Windows Registry, where one wrong setting can crash Windows.

To help users out we have provided our own guide to configuring Firefox using about:config, which also includes a long list of tweaks. If it just doesn’t seem worth the hassle, then you’ll want to continue reading this article because there are now much easier ways to tweak those “hidden” settings…

—Preferential (Homepage)—

Nogg3r5 pointed out this great extension over in the CyberNet forum. It is a great extension because it takes everything from the about:config and breaks it up into categories. To top it off, they provide a description for all of the entries so that you know what they do without needing to visit Mozilla’s knowledgebase!

After installing the extension you’ll notice a new entry in the Tools menu immediately below the Options choice:

Then you’ll be presented with a bunch of collapsed menus which look something like this:

Click to Enlarge

You can now start browsing through the settings to find the ones you are looking for. From what I have seen, the largest category of settings can be found in the browser section:

Click to Enlarge

This is definitely something that Mozilla should look at including in Firefox as a better way to edit the entries in the about:config screen.

—Configuration Mania (Homepage)—

Now if that still seemed too complicated, you need something that breaks it down even further. How about something that puts the settings in an easy-to-understand interface similar to the existing configuration screen for the Options? Let’s now turn our attention to Configuration Mania!

This extension is cool because it puts a ton of settings together in a way that makes them very easy to understand and manipulate. Before now, almost all of these settings had to be configured through the about:config screen, but now they will almost seem as if they were naturally integrated in Firefox.

Just like the Preferential extension, Configuration Mania has its options located in the Tools menu:

Starting up that extension will present you with a screen similar to this one:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see this one also has collapsible menus, but it organizes the settings a little nicer. Oh, and don’t be deceived by the small appearance because there are a lot of settings there for you to tinker with. Here is a screenshot of what all the browser settings look like when they’re expanded:

Click to Enlarge

And that is only the settings from one of the 5 tabs! Here are a few more screenshots from the rest of the tabs:

   
Click to Enlarge

As you can see there are a lot of different things available for you to configure and play with, but it will take some time to go through all of the settings presented here. Let us know if you find any you didn’t know about!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Despite the fact that the list of online image editing services continues to get longer and longer, there is still one that has been sitting at the top of my list for quite a while – Picnik. We first wrote about Picnik back in April, and since then, it has managed to get better and better. If you’re a fan of Picnik and you’re a Firefox user, you’re going to love an extension that I recently came across which makes importing images into Picnik even easier.

To start, you’ll want to install the Picnik Firefox extension (download found here), and of course restart your browser. Once you’ve done this, right click on any image and notice the option that’s been added which says “Edit Image in Picnik.” There’s also an option to “Send Page to Picnik.” The “Send Page” option is great because you can essentially take a screenshot of any website and send it to Picnik for editing- either the visible page, or the full page. That means all it takes is two clicks before you’re editing a photo or web page from anywhere on the web. This extension is extremely handy and makes editing photos on your browser easy.

Now remember, Picnik offers all kinds of options for photo-editing like the capability to crop, rotate, resize, sharpen, or even remove red-eyes, so I think you’ll find it useful. And because it’s an online service, there’s nothing that has to be downloaded. To boot, it can be used on a Mac, a PC with Windows, or even Linux. Picnik has always been awesome, but this Firefox extension makes it even better!

Download Firefox Extension for Picnik here

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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