Feb 15

CyberNotes: Remove Broken and Duplicate Bookmarks

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Software, Today's Chili

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

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

I’m not sure about you, but I have a collection of bookmarks that is almost unmanageable. Some of the bookmarks I probably haven’t touched for years, and I thought it was time for a little spring winter cleaning!

So I started browsing around looking for a utility that would assist me in the daunting chore. Sure there are Firefox extensions out there that can check for duplicate bookmarks and look for dead links, but all of my bookmarks aren’t in Firefox alone. I needed something a little more universal.

That’s when I stumbled across a free Windows-only program called AM-DeadLink. It’s a nifty little tool that can check your Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera bookmarks for both dead links and duplicate entries. This would really be a killer application if it didn’t require any installation, but I’ll take what I can get.

–Dead Links–

If you’re a bookmarking fanatic you probably have some pretty ancient sites saved that don’t even exist anymore. Just startup AM-DeadLink, select your browser, and click the green button with the checkmark in it. The app will begin scanning all of your bookmarks 10 at a time (number of concurrent connections is adjustable in the settings), and it will alert you of its findings:

DeadLink Check
Click to Enlarge

The nice thing is that it will ignore local bookmarks and bookmarklets which would likely return an error. You’ll also notice that it points out when a bookmark is redirected to another site. Unfortunately there is no option to automatically update the address of all the redirected bookmarks, but that might be a nice feature for the developer to add in the future.

If you find a broken bookmark that you want to delete you don’t have to worry about opening the browser to remove it. Just select the bookmark from the list (Ctrl+Click to select multiple bookmarks), and then click on the Recycling Bin button located at the end of the toolbar.

–Duplicate Bookmarks–

There is an option located on the toolbar that will filter out all of the displayed bookmarks except for those that have duplicates. This is great for finding those sites you’ve bookmarked one too many times:

DeadLink Duplicates
Click to Enlarge

–And More–

AM-DeadLink has a few other features as well, such as the ability to download favicons for all of the websites in your bookmarks. If you find that the browser doesn’t have a lot of favicons for your bookmarks this is a fast and easy way to do it yourself.

And since your bookmarks are so important it only makes sense that the app lets you back them all up. In just a few clicks they will be saved to your computer in a compressed ZIP file.

–Overview–

In the end AM-DeadLink managed to hunt down 23 dead links and 6 duplicates in my hundreds of bookmarks. It might not be a huge amount, but I thought that I did a good enough job managing my bookmarks that it would have a hard time finding anything wrong with them. Guess everyone should clean “house” once in awhile!

Download AM-DeadLink (Windows only, requires installation)

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Feb 15

Rip DVD’s to AVI Files

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on January 29, 2009 by CyberNet.

bitripper.png

arrow Windows Windows only arrow
Have you been wanting to get your DVD library onto your PC, but are trying to figure out the best way to do that? A free application called bitRipper might be just the solution you’re looking for.

When you first launch the application you’ll be presented with an extremely simple interface that should confuse no one, but there are still plenty of customizations you can make if you really want to dig in. Here are some of the app’s highlights:

  • On-the-fly DVD to AVI conversion.
    You don’t need gigabytes of free disk space to store intermediate data. Your DVD is converted in your PC memory and written directly to your hard drive.
  • Extreme simplicity.
    You don’t need to be computer expert to convert a DVD using bitRipper, all you should do is to insert disc and click a button.
  • Splendid customization.
    You may tune any parameters if you want, but until you decide they will never distract you.
  • Everything included.
    You don’t need to download additional modules, codecs and other software. We bundled everything that bitRipper requires yet saving it’s size.
  • Existing sources usage.
    bitRipper may use any codec which is already installed in your system choosing the most optimal one of them unless you specify the other.
  • High software performance.
    We did everything to make a DVD to AVI conversion process as fast as possible. The speed only depends on your hardware.

On the download page the developer does say that bitRipper is 100% free, but if you are prompted to register a complimentary serial number is provided. I’m guessing this is just in case you download an older version from somewhere else that still requires a serial number.

bitRipper Homepage
Thanks “Seanster” for the tip!

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Feb 14

Sync Bookmarks in Internet Explorer with IE7Pro

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

This article was written on September 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the most notable features available in Opera 9.5 Alpha is the new bookmark synchronization feature. With it all of your bookmarks, among other things, are stored on a remote server so that no matter where you go your bookmarks are accessible. It’s a truly great feature which takes almost no thought to use.

IE7 Pro Sync Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) users will be benefiting from a similar option in the upcoming release of IE7Pro 1.1. With this new version you can have your bookmarks automatically synced, but the first thing you’ll need to do is create an account. This can be done by right-clicking on the IE7Pro icon in the Status Bar, and then going to Online Service -> Login. You can then manually upload/download your bookmarks with the service, or in the Preferences you can set it to automatically sync the bookmarks. Any bookmarks that have been uploaded can also be viewed online at http://my.ie7pro.com/.

This version of IE7Pro can even save your tab session so that you can selectively restore some of the tabs when Internet Explorer is restarted. This is a great addition to IE, but I’m starting to fear that IE7Pro is becoming excessively cluttered with options. The Preferences screen has become overwhelming to say the least, and even I find it to be intimidating:

ie7prosettings

I love that all of these new features keep rolling in, but I think they need to offer some of these things as optional plugins so that the interface is more simplified. They should even consider breaking up the Status Bar icon into multiple icons, such as one for the bookmark syncing and one for tab operations. That way the right-click menu wouldn’t be bursting at the seams either.

Download IE7Pro 1.1 Beta 2 (Download Mirror by MajorGeeks)

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Feb 13

CyberNotes: Customize Firefox Sidebars

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

This article was written on February 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

One of the areas that I’ve always felt Firefox has lacked in is sidebar configurability. Other browsers, such as Opera, come with way more sidebar options out-of-the-box making it easy to throw a sidebar onto any side of the browser. The beauty of Firefox, however, is that there are plenty of extensions to solve any complaints.

We sifted through over a hundred different extensions that deal with the sidebars in Firefox, and handpicked three of them that offer outstanding customization options. Things like adding multiple sidebars, undocking the sidebars, and much more.

–MultiSidebar (Homepage)–

Hat tip: I have Tonino to thank for pointing out this extension to us.

MultiSidebar is a great example of the functionality I would love to see Mozilla incorporate into the browser by default. Once installed you can right-click on the header of any sidebar and have it open on the left, right, top, or bottom side of the browser. So if you want your bookmarks open on the right side, and your history open on the left side it’s a piece of cake:

Firefox MultiSidebar

The best part is the MultiSidebar remembers your options for the next time you go to open a particular sidebar, and that saves a lot of headaches. It even works great with the websites that you’ve setup to open in the sidebar.

–All-in-One Sidebar (Homepage)–

The All-in-One Sidebar is pretty much what the name says it is. It’s a highly-configurable extension that will let you place one “almighty” sidebar on either the left or right side of the browser. You can then add icons to the slim toolbar located next to the sidebar so that you can easily switch between the different sidebars that are available. One of my favorite features, however, has got to be the quick access to your downloads and extensions:

Firefox All In One Sidebar

This also works well for those of you who are trying to conserve your precious screenspace. That *really* thin bar along the left side serves as a quick way to collapse the sidebar, and it can be set to expand the sidebar when you hover over it with your mouse.

–Ez Sidebar (Homepage)–

Sometimes it is nice being able to undock the sidebar from the browser for one reason or another. Personally what I like to do is open up my bookmarks in the sidebar, undock them from the browser, and align the window along the left side of my monitor. That space on my computer is, for the most part, reserved solely for my bookmarks. By doing that I can have extremely fast access to any bookmark no matter what application I’m in.

This is all made possible because of Ez Sidebar which provides docking and undocking capabilities for the Firefox sidebar:

Firefox Ez Sidebar

The other thing that is really cool about this is that you can add “panels” which is equivalent to setting a website to open in the sidebar. Using Ez Sidebar to do this is nice for two reasons: it’s a much faster process and doesn’t clutter up your bookmarks.

–Overview–

So those are three tools that any frequent sidebar user is sure to drool over. If you know of any other sidebar configuration tools I would love to hear about them in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Feb 13

Helpful Tip: Middle-Click to Close Programs

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Taskbar Shuffle Middle Click Close I can’t even begin to count how many people have become addicted to closing tabs in their browser using the middle mouse button. If you’re one of those people I’m here to tell you that you can carry that feature outside of your browser and onto the Windows Taskbar!

One of my favorite free apps, Taskbar Shuffle, has had this feature for quite some time now. It’s enabled by default, but I didn’t realize it came with this it until about a month ago. With it you can middle-click on any Taskbar button to quickly close the program! Now how cool is that?

For those of you not familiar with Taskbar Shuffle it is well known for its ability to reorder the items in your Taskbar using a simple drag-and-drop motion. One of the more recent releases also made it possible to rearrange icons in your System Tray, and when you put all of this together you get one amazingly small, free, and powerful application.

There are two versions of Taskbar Shuffle available, one that is bundled with an installer for easy setup, and another that includes only the files critical for running the app. The latter is great for people who want to run this from a USB drive, or just don’t want to install yet another program on their computer!

Download the free Taskbar Shuffle

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Feb 13

Best Greasemonkey Scripts: LookItUp2

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

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

lookitup2.jpg

I’m sure you often find yourself in a situation where you’re reading an article, and then come across a word that you want to lookup. Maybe you jump over to Wikipedia or an online dictionary to get a definition, but the LookItUp2 Greasemonkey script can save you a lot of time.

The screenshot above sums up everything that the script is capable of doing. When you highlight a word on the page just press Ctrl+Shift+Space to activate LookItUp2. Along the right side of the window you’ll be shown the Wikipedia page by default, but you can click on any of the tabs to navigate between other services. They include Google Images, Google, Urban Dictionary, Answers.com, Merriam-Webster, Wictionary, and more.

If you click on the drop-down menu you can see a full list of the services that are supported, and they are listed in order as they appear in the tabs. Using a single letter for each of the tabs may not always help identify which service is associated with a tab, but they do serve a dual purpose. If, for example, you highlight a word on the page and press the “w” key on the keyboard it will bring up the Wikipedia result for that word. Similarly highlighting a word and pressing “m” will bring up results from the Merriam-Webster dictionary. So the single-letter tabs also double as keyboard shortcuts. What’s awesome is that this only works if you have a word highlighted on the page, which means it plays nice with Firefox’s find-as-you-type feature.

If you’ve been looking for a way to lookup words and definitions faster this simple Greasemonkey script can definitely do the deed.

Get LookItUp2

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Feb 12

Import/Export Firefox Extension Preferences

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

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

opie extension
(Click to Enlarge)

Earlier this year we wrote about two different solutions that could be used to backup your Firefox profile, but it’s possible that you aren’t looking to back everything up. One of the areas that is extremely valuable to most Firefox users is the extensions, and some of them really take awhile to get configured just the way you like them.

Don’t worry, the same developer who created the FEBE extension for backing up your Firefox profile has also created an extension for saving only extension preferences. The Ordered Preference Import/Export (OPIE) extension will present you with an intuitive interface for selectively saving preferences in any of the extensions that are installed in the browser.

One reason that I really like this is that it’s now a bit easier to wipe out your Firefox profile and start fresh. With OPIE you can only restore the settings for the extensions that you plan on reinstalling, and leave behind the additional clutter. Believe it or not your preferences are normally not removed when you uninstall an extension, and so I always like to start with a fresh profile (after backing up my bookmarks of course) every few months.

OPIE Homepage
Kudos to Mark for the tip!

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Feb 12

Download The New Opera Mini 3.0 (Five Video Demos Here)

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

This article was written on November 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

Opera MiniOpera just announced the official release of the Opera Mini 3.0 web browser. It is the perfect piece of software to run on your cellphone that will cater to all of your browsing needs. The cool thing about Opera Mini is that you don’t have to pay a single dime for it! Here is the summary from the Press Release that was just made:

  • Today, Opera Software introduces Opera Mini 3.0, the latest version of the award-winning mobile browser already used by eight million people worldwide
  • The upgrade available today introduces new features that enhance mobile social networking abilities on all community sites: photo sharing, RSS feed reader and secure connections.
  • Opera Mini is not tied to any single service, so it offers a personal Web experience that can be used to easily browse and upload pictures to all online community sites, including MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Facebook and My Opera, as well as securely using popular webmail such as Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
  • Featuring secure connections, Opera Mini makes all Web transactions safe, including banking or shopping on eBay or Amazon.
  • Opera Mini is globally available free of charge and enables Web browsing on almost any mobile phone. Only an Internet data plan through your carrier/operator is needed to access the Internet.

Opera is really on top of their game because this browser looks like it is really remarkable. The videos below cover a variety of features and show the Opera Mini in action which really makes me want to install this on my phone. Right now I don’t have Internet service on my cellphone but this makes me wish that I did…

Download Opera Mini 3.0
Opera Mini 3.0 Feature Guide

Update:
Opera has a simulator available if you want to see what a site looks like on the phone. Thanks to Opera Watch for pointing that out.

Here are all of the videos:

Opera Mini – What is it?

 

Opera Mini – Photo blogging on MySpace

 

Opera Mini – Secure shopping on eBay

 

Opera Mini – RSS on Yahoo News

 

Opera Mini – Content Folding on BBC Sports

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Feb 11

Flock 0.8 Should Be Getting Close To Release – Based On Firefox 2

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

This article was written on November 03, 2006 by CyberNet.

I’m starting to get really excited now because the last time I checked out how Flock was coming along with Firefox 2 integration there was still a lot that needed to be done. The team must be getting close to releasing Flock 0.8 Daphne because I was just playing around with the latest test build and it is looking very nice.

There are still a few bugs that I noticed, like not being able to delete feeds from the News Reader, but I’m sure there are several things they probably want to fix before they officially release it.

The first thing I noticed when installing it is that they have already changed the branding to Flock 1.0 RC1:

Flock Setup

 

After getting everything installed I started the browser just to notice that they let you import your Firefox 1.x and Firefox 2.x bookmarks:

Flock Import Firefox Bookmarks

 

What’s the first thing that I check after getting it up and running? The inline spell check of course! Works like a charm:

Flock Inline Spell Checker

 

What would Flock be without their awesome News Reader? It is definitely my favorite part about the browser but unfortunately at this time I wasn’t able to delete any feeds, configure the typical Flock feed options, or add any feeds by using the “enter an URL” option. I went to our website in order to add our feed and was then prompted with the “Subscribe to this feed” window which still worked.

Flock will actually mark articles as read once you scroll by them. It is very similar to what Google Reader does except I like Flock’s reader much better than any online reader.

Flock News Reader

 

Lastly, the Options screen. All of the options have been pulled from Firefox 2 but Flock still has their nice search configuration tab available:

Flock Options

 

That’s all for right now. I figured I should show everyone what has been going on with Flock since I do it with Firefox all of the time. Once Flock gets full integration with Firefox 2 and eliminates the bugs it will be an amazing browser. You can test out the latest trunk build but remember that there will be bugs since this version hasn’t been released.

In the meantime you can download Flock 0.7.7 which they just made available the other day as a maintenance release.

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Feb 11

Enso – A Good Alternative to Launchy?

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on February 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Enso

I’m a huge fan of of the free Launchy because it is a well-developed application launcher. A new program that I recently decided to give a whirl is called Enso, and it is also free. In many aspects I would also say that it is even better than Launchy.

To really get the gist of Enso you’ll need to watch their video demonstration. The reason why it is special is that it can be used as an application launcher, spell checker, media controller, translation tool, and much more. In the future users will be able to expand Enso by creating their own add-ons for it.

To activate Enso after you’ve got it installed just hold down the Caps Lock key and type in one of the supported commands. You’ll begin to see results as you type, and they are shown in large text to ensure that you don’t have to strain your eyes. When you’re done typing just release the Caps Lock key to process the command. To see a list of supported commands type “command list” while holding down the Caps Lock key.

Tip: In the preferences you can force Enso to act like other application launchers, where a single key activates the program and the Enter key processes the command.

The Enso Launcher is my favorite aspect of the program because you can maximize/minimize windows, switch between running programs, and close/start an application in just seconds. What’s even more amazing is that the “go” command, which is used to switch between running programs, also recognizes tabs in the browser.

The developers of Enso are also the ones who created Songza, which Ashley recently reviewed. Some of them were also just brought on to the Mozilla team to work on Firefox, which is a good indication that they know what they are doing. Now I can’t wait to see what Enso 2.0 is like!

Enso Homepage
Thanks for the tip Jack of all Trades!

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