Jul 16

Firebug: The Most Useful Firefox Extension For Web Developers!

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 05, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firebug

Some Firefox extensions are known for the large array of features and usefulness that they add to the browser. I have been impressed by several Firefox extensions before but Firebug takes it to a whole new level. It doesn’t even seem like it could be an extension because it adds that much functionality to Firefox.

I always loved being able to highlight some text on a page, right-click and select “View Selection Source.” That would pull up the source code for what I just highlighted and Firebug has something very similar, but again, it is much better. You can right click on any element or text and select “Inspect Element.” Doing so would pull up a window similar to the one that I have pictured above. It puts that source code in a collapsible tree format so that it isn’t difficult to sift through it looking for a particular spot. Then on the right side it will show you the CSS style element related to what you have selected.

I haven’t even gotten to the coolest thing in Firebug yet! You can actually edit the HTML and CSS code inside of the Firebug window and it will show you the changes live on the page. No more having to edit the CSS and refresh the window to see how it will affect things. Besides just being useful it is fun to tinker around with sites. :)

How long does it take a page to load? Firebug will break down how long it takes individual elements on a page to load and then total it up (this is found on the “Net” tab). According to its calculations CyberNet takes 7.71 seconds to load which is pretty close to what I had measured before…so I would say it is accurate.

I am just starting to tip the iceberg with the features Firebug has so you can go check out the rest. As of right now Firebug is free for everyone to use but it is currently in the Beta stage. The developer is considering the possibility of charging for the extension so that it can continually be improved. As much as I would like to see this remain free there is no doubt that the developer deserves the $25 that he is thinking about charging. If it remains free I’ll probably donate the money anyways because it is so useful.

Update:
Looks like Firebug will remain free and open source!

Thanks to “natmaster” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 15

What do You Think of the Firefox 3 Themes?

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Linux, Mac, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on May 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

skitched-20080519-110406.jpgFirefox 3 is scheduled to be finished in the next month or two, and with it users will begin seeing a completely redesigned interface that is tailored to the operating system that they are using. This version of Firefox has already made significant advances in terms of performance, and it seems as though the only thing people have been criticizing in Firefox 3 are the new themes. When it comes down to it there is a different theme available for Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP.

Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer at Mozilla, put together a rather comprehensive review of how they visually tied Firefox 3 into the different operating systems. Personally the only thing that I really dislike in the themes is the “keyhole” design for the back/forward button. All of the themes, except for Linux, have this type of button. I find it to be gaudy and not flow well with the other aspects of the themes.

Luckily you can easily ditch the keyhole-styled button by enabling small icons. Just right-click on the navigation bar, choose Customize, and then check the Use Small Icons box. Notice how the oversized keyhole design is nowhere to be found?

I was really looking forward to Aero Glass integration in the Vista theme, but that won’t be happening this time around. For the time being we’ll have to rely on an extension to get that job done, that is until the next version of Firefox arrives:

On Vista we do a great job visually integrating with icons and with our set of secondary windows, although the main window is notably missing support for Aero glass. Users will hopefully be able to get this functionality using an extension during the life cycle of Firefox 3, and we will have glass support added to XUL for the next release of Firefox.

Faaborg even went as far as to say that “Safari 3.1 does a number of [visual] things wrong that we get right.” An example he gave was how the navigation buttons are not grayed out in Safari 3.1 when the window is not selected, which isn’t consistent with some other Apple applications. One commenter who goes by the name Superdotman called Faaborg out by saying:

Apple’s attention to detail is huge. If you see something that seems inconsistent, there’s usually a good reason.

Safari glyphs remain dark because when the window is deselected, they still accept click-through. Finder’s don’t.

Aqua controls are used for webclips because webclips are done with a modal dialog. Inline find uses the appropriate textured controls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you guys are trying to integrate more with OS X! Just tone down the ego a bit until you have some more knowledgeable Mac guys to back it up.

Mozilla definitely deserves some credit for being one of the first cross-platform browsers to developer OS-specific themes. I’m curious as to how many of you like the new themes, and how many of you will actually go hunting for a new one to use.

Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 14

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) Released

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Mac, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 16, 2009 by CyberNet.

snagit mac.png
Click to Enlarge

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
I’ve been using a Mac for nearly two years, and with as many screenshots as I take there was just never an app that quite matched the capabilities of SnagIt on Windows. I’ll admit that Skitch was pretty close, but the screenshot editor lacked in a lot of different areas. My biggest pet peeve is the inability to manage/manipulate multiple screenshots on the same canvas… a.k.a. turning more than one screenshot into a single image. That was something SnagIt on Windows really shined at.

Techsmith has heard the pleas from Mac users, and released a Mac-compatible screencast recorder earlier this year. Then yesterday I received an email from them saying that they have officially unveiled the Beta version of SnagIt for taking screenshots on a Mac. The interface is wildly different from the Windows counterpart, but that’s understandable considering that the Windows version uses the Office 2007 Ribbon UI that Microsoft hasn’t made available for Mac applications.

How does SnagIt for Mac handle itself? Right now I’d say very well. It offers an all-in-one capture mode that tries to detect whether you want to grab the full screen, a window, a specific region, or even a scrolling area. That’s cool and all, but it’s the small things I appreciate having again… like the small magnified window when capturing a region:

snagit zoom.png

The awesome thing about the magnified window is that it doesn’t actually appear until your cursor isn’t moving much on the screen. That makes sense because when your cursor is only being nudged a few pixels at a time is when you’re probably trying to get a pixel-perfect screenshot, and that’s when you need the magnified area.

Overall I’d say there are a lot of nice touches in the app. You can use keyboard shortcuts, the Menubar icon, or the hide-away window (pictured in the first screenshot) to initiate a capture. SnagIt for Mac isn’t full-featured yet though, and you’ll notice that as soon as you click on the “Effects” tab where all you’ll see is a “Coming soon” message. The things that are available work very well though.

I like where the app is headed, and I’m already confident that I’ll be purchasing it once it is released. It offers all the intuitiveness that Skitch does, but tacks on a much better screenshot editor. If you hardly edit your screenshots I’d say this isn’t the application for you, but keep in mind that the Beta of SnagIt for Mac is completely free to use until a commercial version is released. They haven’t specified when that will happen, but I’m guessing it will give you more than enough time to try it out to determine whether it’s something you’ll want to buy.

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) Homepage (Mac only; Freeware while in Beta)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 13

Mojopac Freedom – Make Any App Portable

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows XP

This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mojopac Last year we gave away some copies of Mojopac, and a lot of people seemed excited about the features the software offered. With Mojopac you can carry your own your own copy of Windows XP wherever you go, including any applications that you use.

Previously Mojopac ran you $50 to buy, but it can now be downloaded for free! That’s right, the new MojoPac Freedom was recently announced giving you the ability to carry your games, applications, and all of your operating system customizations with you on your iPod or USB drive.

How can they offer it for free? They still have a Deluxe version available for $50 but it hardly differs from the free version. The only added benefit that you really get is the technical support, but I have a feeling that their real money maker is in the Enterprise version. That has a lot of additional features consumers won’t really need, and by offering a free version for personal use they are more likely to get people to spread the word about their program. It’s kind of like how Microsoft offers Windows and Office to students at significantly reduced costs, because they know that if students are familiar with their products then they will carry that into the workplace.

Mojopac should work with almost all of your applications, but you can get a little reassurance by viewing a list of known programs that work with it. On the list you’ll see programs like Microsoft Office, World of Warcraft, iTunes, and dozens more.

Get Mojopac Freedom (Only works with Windows XP, Vista version is being tested)
Mojopac Video Demonstration
Source: jkOnTheRun

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 11

Opera Decides Not To Enable Anti-Phishing By Default?

Posted in: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

Opera Anti-phishing

Opera has one of the best web browser development teams that I have ever seen. When they release products they are always intuitive, useful, and most importantly stable and secure. A few weeks ago Opera announced that the next release of their desktop browser, version 9.10, was going to have anti-phishing capabilities built-in to protect users from identity theft and fraud.

One thing that I don’t understand is why they have now decided to disable the feature by default when new users install the browser?

Fraud protection is not enabled by default anymore. We basically had to turn it on by default in the first weeklies to make sure we got as much feedback as possible in the limited time we had.

However, it’s a new feature and we think users may need some time to get used to this idea, so we’ve made it an opt-in feature for now. Opera is about giving users the choice, after all.

I agree that it is new and users will need to get used to it but this is a huge security feature and I think it should be enabled by default. Other browsers that have similar features, such as Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7, enable it and if the user wants to disable it they are more than welcome to at anytime. As they say, “Opera is about giving users the choice,” but why not the choice to disable it?

I still love Opera and this isn’t going to change what I think about it, but for the security of the users who don’t know to look for that feature they should enable it. With that being said you can go download the latest weekly if you want to test out the anti-phishing feature but it looks like you’ll need to enable it after the installation.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 11

GIMP 2.4 Features

Posted in: Freeware, Pre-Release, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

GIMP 2.4Gimp 2.4 is on the verge of being released. Right now it is in the release candidate stage with all the new features being complete and the API is frozen. All that’s left is a few bugs and some minor changes and we’ll be seeing a whole new GIMP!

GIMP was in dire need of a makeover, and so is their current website. Don’t worry, there is a new site ready for the launch of GIMP 2.4! The release notes for version 2.4 is still being worked on, but here is an overview I put together of what’s new in the upcoming version:

  • Refreshed look with new default icons (pictured above). I must say that it looks a heck of a lot better!
  • Scalable brushes let you dynamically change the size of the brush.
  • Advanced selection tools let you select items even more precisely. You can now select using a rounded-corner rectangle and even have it be antialiased.
  • Improved color picker lets you choose colors from anywhere on your screen, and not just in the picture your viewing.
  • Fullscreen editing lets GIMP utilize the full size of your monitor.
  • Improved cropping tool makes cropping an image more natural.
  • Layer alignment tool makes it easier to specify the position of your layers.
  • Startup speed and applying filters is much faster.
  • and many more bug fixes and few other features!

Below is a screenshot of the new GIMP running on Vista, and in the left-most window you will see the new selection tools:

GIMP 2.4 Preview
Click to Enlarge

If you’re wanting to try out GIMP 2.4 RC1 you’ll need to compile the source code. Windows users can always download GIMP 2.3.19 if they want to get a taste of what it’s like, and this was the last preview version released before the number was rolled over to 2.4. As seen in the release notes there were only a few bug fixes in 2.3.19 before they jumped to 2.4, so you won’t be missing too much.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 10

Hackers do Apple’s Job, Again

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, Hacks, ipod, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, videos

This article was written on October 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

iPod Classic on 5G

I think Apple needs to start taking some of their cues from hackers because they are truly demonstrating what the masses want. When the iPhone was originally released hackers were forced to find a way to get real third-party applications onto the device, and it didn’t take long for that to happen. Now Apple is trying to make amends by releasing a true SDK in February for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

And then Microsoft announced that the original Zune will be getting the same firmware update that the Zune 2 will have, and many people were angry that Apple didn’t do the same thing with the iPod Classic. Hackers went at it again and were able to port over the firmware to 5G and 5.5G iPods!

Information on the hacked firmware can be found here, and here is the page that you’ll need to download it from. If after installation your iPod doesn’t get past the Apple logo you’ll need to press and hold the center and play buttons at the same time until “Disk Mode” appears on the screen. From there you can restore your iPod’s firmware back to the original. The developer claims that this firmware update “cannot, and will not brick your iPod.”

Here’s a video demonstration that shows what the new firmware looks like on a 5G iPod:

[via iLounge]
Thanks for the tip Pieter!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 09

Extension to Auto-hide the Firefox Tab Bar

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

I just tried out a new extension and the purpose of it is to auto-hide my Firefox Tab Bar. After all, an entire toolbar takes up a good chunk of space and every little bit of room matters to a power user.

I read about this extension over at Mozilla Links who installed what looks like the latest stable version available on the Mozilla extensions site. However, I read through the description a little bit and saw a thing saying “Version 1.0 is coming soon” and then they said that testers are welcomed for pre-release versions. Seeing that I’m a big fan of unstable software (almost to the point that it is an addiction) I jumped over to the forum where the latest unstable version was posted.

Judging from the screenshot that Mozilla Links posted and the one I’ve posted below, I would say the latest pre-release version has a lot of great new features:

Auto-Hide Tab Bar

Auto-Hide Tab BarThe “Show pin button” option is actually quite nifty. It will add a little button at the end of the Tab Bar so that you can “pin” the Tab Bar to keep it open. A screenshot of the pin button can be seen to the right, but yours will look a little different since I’m not using the default Firefox theme. You can also use Ctrl+F11 to toggle the Tab Bar on or off.

At first I thought that I would want the Tab Bar to popup real quick when a new tab opens up (which is an optional setting), but it is quite nice having it nicely tucked away. There are several settings like this that you’ll just have to play with until you get everything how you want it.

I haven’t been using the extension for too long today, but I have the pre-release version installed on Firefox 3 nightlies. It seems to do pretty well, but every now and then it will look like it closes a tab even though it still shows up in the drop-down menu next to the pin button. I’m hoping this is only related to Firefox 3 and later on I hope to try it out on Firefox 2 to see if there are any issues.

Hide Tab Bar Homepage
Latest Pre-Release of Hide Tab Bar

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 08

Count Mouse Clicks and Keyboard Presses

Posted in: Freeware, Software, stats, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on July 16, 2010 by CyberNet.

winometer.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Most geeks love stats, and what could be more interesting than to see how many times you click your mouse or press a key on the keyboard each day? If you want to do something like that you’ll need to hop on over and grab the free WinOMeter app. It doesn’t require any installation to use, and I know you may be hesitant to have a “novelty” item like this using your system resources. You can rest easy knowing that this will consume less than 1MB of memory while running.

I haven’t put this to full use yet, and in the screenshot above I merely “simulated” several days so that you could see that it tracks your history. I plan to run it for awhile though to see what my real stats are like. I have a feeling that I will be rather shocked at how many mouse clicks and keyboard presses I perform on a regular basis. I might even have some fun with it to see how few mouse clicks I can use by resorting to keyboard shortcuts.

I know what you’re thinking… why doesn’t it show some pretty graphs? No problem – the data can be exported to CSV which you can then pull into Microsoft Excel or Google Docs. From there you can generate those pretty graphs your heart so desperately desires.

WinOMeter Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Jul 07

WOT Keeps You Safe On the Internet, Tops Bloated SiteAdvisor

Posted in: Features, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Reviews, search, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on September 25, 2009 by CyberNet.

wot google.png

SiteAdvisor started out as a really good idea. Whenever you went to a site, the SiteAdvisor label would turn green (safe), yellow (shady) or red (dangerous) to indicate the safety of that site. But then McAfee got involved and bundled SiteAdvisor with a search bar, a resident Windows service and other common signs of bloatware. Fortunately, the Web of Trust (WOT) extension stepped up to fill the gap that SiteAdvisor left.

Setup

wot download.jpgWhen installing Web of Trust for the first time, the extension asks you how it should behave. Depending on your needs, you can go with the full package (Basic), a less intrusive version (Light) or a child-safe version. The latter will first check whether or not the site your kid wants to navigate to is safe. If no ratings are available, the site will be blocked. Interestingly, an accessibility setting for color blind people is also available. After choosing which version you want to go with, WOT will prompt you to create an account with them to unlock the full potential of the extension.


How it works

wot cybernet.jpgAfter installing WOT, a color indicator will be placed in the navigation toolbar. Much like SiteAdvisor, a quick glance at this icon lets you know whether you’re safe or not. Additionally, you can click the indicator to reveal more information about the site. WOT keeps track of trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. It is also possible to read user reviews by clicking ‘View scorecard for rating details’.

WOT also protects you when you’re searching with Google, Yahoo and Bing. Depending on your settings, you can choose to have WOT always display a rating next to every search result, only display the rating if it’s not green or not display ratings at all. Similarly, if you’re a Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo Mail user, WOT will display these icons in your incoming e-mails too.


Blocking features

wot blocked.jpgDepending on how cautious you are, you might want to set up WOT like a passive advisor or rather like a mom who is always on your side to keep you out of bad neighborhoods. Either way, you can pull up the settings panel and configure the lowest permissible safety level for each category. Depending on your choice, WOT will either alert you or block you from visiting sites that do not meet your customized safety criteria.

WOT Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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