Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

I know that there are a lot of you out there who are using the Gmail Redesigned skin, and you’ll be happy to know that version 2 of the theme was recently released for all Firefox users. This new version includes a few dozen bug fixes, but more importantly they focused on increasing the performance. Gmail Redesigned 2.0 is almost half the size of the first one, and is actually available in three different formats:

• Standard – This is the standard compressed version of the script. It will have to load all the images it uses (logo, buttons, etc…) from the developer’s website, which may or may not be something you want to rely on.
• Embedded – This version is also compressed, but the big difference is that it doesn’t retrieve any of the images from the developer’s website. All of the images are embedded directly in the script using base64 URI’s. The bright side is that none of the images have to be downloaded, but this can hinder performance.
• Developer – This is the full uncompressed version of the skin that even includes comments. It’s really geared towards other people who are looking to modify the skin.

Gmail Redesigned 2.0 also supports all versions of Gmail, both new and old, including the HTML-only view. Now that’s impressive!

Lifehacker has gotten around to updating their Better Gmail extension to include the new version of Gmail Redesigned, which means you can enjoy a refreshing Gmail interface without needing Greasemonkey.

The same developers have also released a dark theme for Google Calendar, and a Google Reader version is apparently on the way. Pretty soon all of your favorite Google products will be sporting a fresh new look!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

We 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.

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.

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.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

You’re probably aware of how the Firefox add-on system works by now, but we’ll give a quick recap. Over a year ago Mozilla decided that they needed to add a middle-man to the extension publishing process so that they could ensure that only the quality extensions made it onto the add-ons site. This seemed like the right move since users generally trust the content found on Mozilla’s site, but it has become a sore spot for those who are creating the extensions and themes.

A few weeks ago we released our first extension, CyberSearch, and since then it has received over 3,400 downloads. A few days after its release I decided to put it up for public nomination, which (if accepted) means that it can be downloaded from the add-ons site without needing a username and password. Our extension is currently sitting with 24 reviews (4.40 out of 5.00 stars), and has over 3,700 daily users. So the other day I was wondering why it hadn’t made its way out of the sandbox.

I started searching around, and that’s when I came across this thread in a Mozilla forum. Apparently I wasn’t the only one wondering what was going on. So what’s the hold up? Not enough extension editors/moderators, period. The release of Firefox 3 caused an onslaught of new/updated extensions to get submitted to the site, and they just can’t keep up with the vast quantity of submissions. As of yesterday there were 215 extension updates waiting to get published, and another 461 extensions like ours that are waiting to make their way out of the sandbox.

If you’ve got some spare time you should consider becoming an extension editor yourself. I’m just hoping that this kind of thing doesn’t discourage developers from creating new add-ons for the browser.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

We talked quite a bit yesterday about how pie menus work, and even gave a short video demonstration of them in action. Today I thought that I would walk you through the most productive and usable pie menu system that I have come across. It is in the form of an extension for Firefox, and it’s received many upgrades from the last time that I mentioned it.

The Firefox extension is called easyGestures and it is constantly being updated. If you’ve ever used mouse gestures before, using this will almost come naturally, but it’s something that you can’t give up on right away. You have to get used to the way it works and familiarize yourself with the positioning of the commands before you’ll really start to see a rise in your productivity.

Here are some benefits of using easyGestures:

• Less attention needed
  Pie menus are based on direction: you don’t have to stare at the screen to know reliably which spot you move and click the mouse. You can mouse ahead through a pie menu, fast and accurate, because it’s the direction, not the distance that matters.
• No need to reach the Toolbar
  Clicking on a toolbar’s icons requires nearly as much attention as clicking on drop-down menus. It also requires wide up and down mouse movements that can get you cramps to the hand and eye strain in the case of a long or intensive use.
• More space devoted to web pages display
  Because a pie menu is a popup menu that is not part of the user interface and that can replace the navigation toolbar, you would gain about 5% more space for displaying web pages by hiding your browser’s toolbar and using instead the pie menu.
• No memorizing effort
  The main problem with regular mouse gestures (without UI) is that people can hardly remember all the gestures. Besides the trivial gestures like back or forward and a few others, they require a mental effort that is not worth doing. That’s not the case with pie menus.
• Shorter gestures
  Any other gesture than a straight gesture is definitively a longer gesture and thus slower. Pie menus only require straight moves.

–Using easyGestures–

As soon as easyGestures is installed in Firefox it will be ready to use. By default the easyGestures pie menu will be brought up when you middle click in the browser. After the menu is brought up, just drag your mouse in the direction of one of the commands, and then let go of the middle mouse button. The command will then be activated.

You probably won’t know all of the commands right off the bat, and that is something the easyGesture developer thought of. So if you have the pie menu open long enough you should see some text that appears next to each button:

The first thing that I noticed was that middle-clicking and dragging your mouse to the left or to the right always activates the back/forward commands. That matches up to every mouse gesture application that I’ve ever used for browsers, and makes it easy to adopt this extension into your routine.

You might have also noticed the little up arrow at the top of the pie menu. If you drag your mouse towards it, there will be yet another expanding menu (dragging your mouse back down will collapse the menu):

And there’s still more! If you press the Alt key on the keyboard, an Alternate pie menu will appear with even more options:

–Contextual Pie Menus–

The odds are probably pretty good that the commands in the pie menus pictured above won’t apply if you’re clicking on a link or an image. Don’t worry, easyGestures thought of that as well by offering several different contextual pie menus. These can be activated by holding down the Control key on the keyboard and middle-clicking on a link, image, text box, or something you’ve selected.

Note: This can be configured in the Options to not require the Control key to activate the contextual pie menus.

–Options–

Oh man…there are a lot of options! I didn’t even know where to begin listing the things that you can customize, so I just took a bunch of screenshots to show you what can be done. To get to the options just double-click on the icon located in the Status Bar of Firefox.

Note: Click on any of the following screenshots for a fullsize version

–Stats–

I’m sure you will want to know how productive you are with easyGestures, and so it tells you that as well. If you visit the stats section, you’ll find out which commands you are using the most, and which paths your mouse frequently travels. You’ll also find out how addicted you are to the extension with its three-star rating in the upper-right corner.

–Overview–

I would say that this is one of the only true productive uses of a pie menu currently available. It’s extremely customizable, and if you so wish it can even be setup to replace the right-click menu in Firefox. And before you know it, you won’t even be looking at the icons because you’ll have the corresponding gestures memorized!

I think this demonstrates very well how pie menus would make an operating system more usable…especially with a customized menu system for different types of files and different applications. If you didn’t catch the article from yesterday regarding how pie menus work make sure you check it out because I offer a lot of pointers on why they are so great.

easyGestures Homepage

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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

Web Browser Wednesday

Could you imagine going through a day of using your computer without being able to copy and paste stuff? I know, it sounds crazy! Being able to copy and paste saves me unbelievable amounts of time every day, and I have a huge appreciation for the copy/paste keyboard shortcuts.

With the help of some Firefox extensions we’re going to demonstrate how something as simple as copying and pasting can be taken to a new level! I’m sure you’ll find at least one or two extensions that can make you more productive. Here are our top 10 Firefox extensions for copying and pasting:

1. CoLT (Homepage)
   Do you find yourself copying and pasting hyperlinks into forums or sites that require specially formatted links? This extension will take care of that problem by copying the selected link into any format that you designate, and if it doesn’t include what you need out-of-the-box you can always add your own.
   
2. Paste and Go (Homepage)
   Imagine for a minute that you have copied some text or a URL from within your browser. What do you plan on doing with it now? Maybe you’ll paste the URL into the Address Bar to open it up, or maybe you’ll paste the text into the search box to pull up the search results? Paste and Go simplifies the process of doing either task with a simple context menu entry or buttons that you can add to the toolbar. With it you’ll be able to paste a URL and go to it, or paste some text and perform a search all with a single click!
   
3. PasteIP (Homepage)
   How often do you go hunting around for your current IP address? Let Firefox do the work for you with this simple extension. Whenever you decide that you want to insert your IP address just right-click in the text field and select the “Paste IP Address” option.
   
4. Copy All URL’s (Homepage)
   With this extension you’re able to copy all of your open tabs to the clipboard, and then paste them into a new window. It also has some more advanced options that make sharing your open tabs with other people a little more convenient. Take a look at the options to see the different ways that you can format the output.
   
5. Table2Clipboard (Homepage)
   If you’ve ever tried to copy and paste a table from the browser into Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc you may have noticed that things do not copy over as well as they should. This extension aims to ease the tedious burden of reformatting an HTML table to look right in a desktop application such as Excel. Just highlight the cells that you want to copy, and in the context menu there is a new “Copy table elements” option that will take care of the formatting for you. Then go ahead and paste them into the application just as you normally would.
   
6. Extended Copy Menu (Homepage)
   You’re probably familiar with copying content from Firefox and pasting it into a word processor. All of the formatting and everything is typically carried over, but with this extension you’ll be able to specify whether you want the text copied as “plain text.” Not only that but you’ll also be able to grab the underlying HTML using the “Copy as HTML” option in the context menu:
   
7. Lorem2Clipboard (Homepage)
   You can never get enough Lorem Ipsum text, can you? This extension will let you quickly copy a few paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum text to the clipboard so that you can use it in any way you desire. All you have to do is click the button located in the Status Bar to have it automatically copied to the clipboard:
   
8. Auto Copy (Homepage)
   This is an extremely simple extension that serves a valuable purpose for a lot of people. The Auto Copy extension, as the name implies, will take any text that you highlight and copy it to the clipboard automatically. No right clicks and no keyboard shortcuts… it’s automatic baby!
9. Copy Links (Homepage)
   I’m sure it’s happened to you before where you’ve wanted to copy several different hyperlinks that appear in a body of text. With Copy Links you can actually do that. Just select a body of text and hit up the respective option in the context menu.
   
10. Copy/Paste Form (Homepage)
    Note: This is an experimental add-on and will require that you login before being able to install it.

    Have you ever gotten burned out of filling in the same form one after another? Copy/Paste Form will let you copy every field from a given form, and paste it directly into another form! Or even better… save the form and paste the content back in later on. It supports text fields, passwords, selections, checkboxes, and radio buttons.
    

Now I know that not every one of those extensions will apply to you, but hopefully there are a few that sound like they could be helpful. Copying and pasting content has always been about being more productive, and many of these extensions assist in that area. Let us know in the comments how you make the most of copying and pasting.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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