This article was written on August 14, 2008 by CyberNet.
The last few Alpha releases of Ubuntu 8.10 have been a bit controversial because of the dark brown theme, called NewHuman, that it was shipping by default. Good news for those of you who weren’t too fond of that theme… it’s no longer default in Alpha 4! The NewHuman theme is still included as an option, but a new one called Human-Murrine has taken over the default spot.
I downloaded and installed the new Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 theme so that I can see what it was like first-hand, but after installing the latest Alpha build there was a slight error with the theme. Human-Murrine is supposed to be shipping as the default theme, but for one reason or another it’s not completely enabled after setting up the operating system. It’s a known bug, but in the meantime you can manually select the Human-Murrine theme from System -> Preferences -> Appearance. After that it should look fine.
So what’s up with the new theme? It doesn’t look all that different from the Ubuntu 8.04 theme, but things like the progress bars are a bit more fancy. Here’s a screenshot gallery showing off the new theme:
Human-Murrine Theme on Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 (Click to Enlarge)
You’ll notice that the first two screenshots have a messed up title bar because I hadn’t enabled the Human-Murrine theme yet. The remaining six screenshots are all using Human-Murrine. Take note of the redesigned progress bars shown in a few of the screenshots.
What do you think? Are you happy with the new theme or were you expecting something a bit more fancy like what we showed off last time?
This article was written on April 30, 2008 by CyberNet.
Web Browser Wednesday
One of the most popular extensions for Firefox is Greasemonkey simply because it gives developers and users a chance to customize their browsing experience with very little work. The extension has been downloaded over 165,000 times which is pretty incredible, and new scripts that power the extension are always being created.
Given the popularity of the scripting system it comes as no surprise that Internet Explorer has something very similar, but it too requires an add-on before you’ll be able to get it to work. It just so happens that one of the best add-ons for doing so is IE7Pro, which in general is an awesome tool to have installed in Internet Explorer 7.
Once you get IE7Pro installed and running you can check out some of the scripts that it comes with by pulling up the configuration screen. Along the left side you should see a section dedicated to the User Scripts:
It comes with over a dozen different scripts out-of-the-box which is definitely a nice touch. Some are more handy than others, but there are a few that really stand out to me. The Show Password onMouseOver is really nice because it will reveal the contents of a password field when you hover over it with your mouse.
One problem with finding more is that you can’t go and grab a script designed for Greasemonkey because not all of them will work. The creators of IE7Pro realized that, and that’s why they setup their own script site that hosts only the scripts that function properly with their add-on. We thought it would be fun to go through the scripts they have posted, and pull out our favorites. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.
If you’ve ever used any version of Internet Explorer it’s very likely that you’ve been pestered by those annoying popups saying that there is an error with the JavaScript on the page you’re viewing. I’m not sure if anyone really knows why Microsoft decided to show the general population this message when the developers are really the only ones who can do anything about it. Oh well.
This script will, however, save you some frustration by hiding those popups from you. Is it not amazing that something so simple can be the number one script on the site with over 64,000 installs!
If you’ve been wanting to make Google look a little better then this is the perfect opportunity. With this script your Google search results will use up the full width of the screen, and each result will be nicely divided making it a lot easier on the eyes. Check it out:
If the previous Google redesign wasn’t for you, then maybe this one will be! This takes your Google results and splits them up into two different columns. You might find this especially useful if you have a widescreen monitor and like to browse the Internet using all of the screen space that it has to offer.
This script doesn’t actually “do” anything. It’s sole purpose is to make more Greasemonkey scripts compatible with IE7Pro. It consists of over 1,500 lines of code that try to replicate the functions and features provided by Greasemonkey so that it’s a lot more likely for these scripts to work. I’m actually a little surprised that this doesn’t come with IE7Pro.
I find this script to be one of the more essential ones. With it you’re able to resize any text area or input field on a site. If it’s an input field that you’re dealing with (such as the search box on Google’s homepage) just put your mouse along the right side and you should see your cursor turn into the double-ended arrow. You’re then ready to resize the box.
Similarly, if you’re trying to resize a text area (such as our large comment box) you’ll want to put your mouse in the bottom-right corner. The cursor will once again turn into a double-ended arrow indicating that you can begin resizing the box.
Ever come across an MP3 on the Internet that you wanted to play, but didn’t want to download? This script will add a small icon next to any MP3 file that will let you stream the song instead of downloading it first.
–Overview–
Right now the number of scripts that are on the site is quite small, but I suspect that they will be growing as more people realize that they are available. Not only that but with the help of the Greasemonkey compatibility script that I mentioned above you should be able to use most of the scripts that are already out there.
Hope this helps some of you who are still using Internet Explorer!
This article was written on November 14, 2008 by CyberNet.
(Click to Enlarge)
Windows only In the past we’ve talked about some mouse gesture applications for Windows including ones that targeted specific applications like Firefox. For some people these gestures can save significant amounts of time day in and day out. If you’re one of those people you should probably know that there’s a new mouse gesture program in town, and it’s called gMote.
There are some things that really make gMote unique. For starters it doesn’t have a predefined set of motions that are used to initiate an action. Instead you record all of your actions so that it knows exactly how you draw them. Your only limitation is what you can draw with your mouse.
The next awesome thing is all of the different actions you have at your disposal ready to be assigned to a gesture. The list includes launching a program, opening a folder, executing a keyboard combination/shortcut, and other common actions like going back/forward in your browser. You can even do things like control your media player.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? To get started all you’ll have to do is download gMote, extract the files, and run it. There’s nothing to install. And for the sake of wetting your appetite even more I’ll leave you with a video that demonstrates some of the things gMote is capable of:
This article was written on January 18, 2007 by CyberNet.
With all the hype focused on Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2, we tend to forget about some of Mozilla’s other great applications. One of them is their calendar application that they offer in two different flavors: Sunbird is the standalone program that will only manage your calendar while Lightning is the Thunderbird add-on that provides both a calendar and email client in one convenient application. We have had the joys of tinkering with version 0.3 of both Sunbird and Lightning for over three months and a new release, version 0.5, is expected sometime this month.
The Calendar project continues to progress quite nicely and there are some new features underway. The first feature that the Calendar Weblog has talked about is the new Advanced Event Dialog which is pictured above. The goal of the dialog was to make it feel like an integrated part of Thunderbird while making Outlook users feel at home when using it.
Besides for that there are several “smaller” features that are being targeted for Calendar 0.5 and those can be found here. One thing that I did really want to point out was that they are working on improving the different Calendar views. To help out they have paid artistic designers millions and millions to draw some mockup images of what the calendar should look like…and here’s the result. Okay, so it’s ASCII art that was put together by the developers, but you still get the idea. The thing that seems to be the biggest problem right now with Lighting (the Thunderbird add-on) is getting the left sidebar to not appear so cluttered. They sum it up pretty well when they refer to the current solution and say ”The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen.“
The usability and integration of the Calendar is not quite there yet, but they are definitely taking steps in the right direction. We should see this next release sometime this month, but they seem pretty ambitious with what they want to get done for having less than two-weeks left. So don’t be surprised if the next release gets pushed back a little.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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!
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.
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.
This article was written on March 07, 2007 by CyberNet.
Web Browser Wednesday
There are all kinds of Firefox tips and tricks available on the Web, and when I come across some of the cool ones (many in forums) I jot them down real quick. That way I don’t have to post about just one of the tricks, and instead I can show you a whole compilation of them. Previously I put together lengthy Firefox 2 tweak guide, and none of the tips that I am about to mention below are in that guide.
For starters, I want to mention that a lot of the tweaks below use custom CSS scripts that need to be integrated with Firefox. You can follow these directions on installing those scripts, or you can also use the Stylish extension which makes it a lot easier. When using the extension you just have to open the extension options and select “Write” to create a new script that you want to use:
Now let’s move on to the tips…
—Removing Menu Items—
Sometimes the menu items (File, Edit, etc…) just seem to get in the way and you never seem to use them. I’m sure many people, for instance, never use the Help menu. Or, if you have an extension managing your bookmarks, you might never use the Bookmarks menu. It is really simple to hide certain menu items using the Stylish extension mentioned above. Just create a new script and insert the following code:
The “50px” in both lines represents the width (in pixels) that you want the Search Box to be. I would probably use around 200px because 50px is pretty small.
—Block Blinking Text—
It is a sad day when you come across a site that still uses blinking text to try and get the reader’s attention. I still see them from time to time, but with a simple about:config trick we can prevent it from happening. If you’re not familiar with the about:config screen please see this quick tutorial I put together.
All you have to do is open the about:config screen, find the option browser.blink_allowed and double-click on it so that the value will change to false.
—Make JavaScript HyperLinks Noticeable—
I like to be conscious about the links that I am clicking on for a site, and I’m a even more careful when I see a JavaScript link on a site that I’m not familiar with. For that reason you should think about making the JavaScript links more noticeable, and an easy way to do that is altering the cursor when you hover over them. In this example the cursor will change to a crosshair whenever you hover over a hyperlink that actually contains JavaScript:
a[href^="javascript:"]{ cursor: crosshair; }
The result when hovering over a JavaScript hyperlink would look like this:
Find As You Type is one of my favorite features in Firefox. This feature will start searching a page for text as you type it, which makes finding something specific on a page a lot easier.
I like having the Find As You Type automatically begin as soon as I start typing so on every Firefox installation I always go in and change the setting to enable this:
Some of you may not like having it work like that, so there is a way that you can use the “Find As You Type” without setting that option. If you want to initiate a Find As You Type just press the forward slash key (“/”) on the keyboard and begin typing your query. You should see a box popup on the bottom of the browser window that displays the characters that are currently being searched for:
That Quick Find will search all of the text on the page, but what if you’re looking for a link? No problem, instead of typing a forward slash press the apostrophe (‘) key and that will initiate a Quick Find that will only search links. When would this be useful? Sometimes I use it if I have a hard time finding a download link on a site, in which case I’ll do the Quick Find (just searching links) for the word “download.”
—Overview—
Those are the tweaks that I have accumulated over the past few weeks, so I hope that you enjoyed them. One of the things that makes Firefox so great is the customizability that it includes. The deeper you dig, the more tricks you’ll find. Even with everything that I have found up to now, I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface.
In time I’m sure I’ll find more, but if you have any of your own tweaks that you use, make sure you let us know in the comments below!
This article was written on October 28, 2007 by CyberNet.
Have you ever wanted to morph multiple images together? You know, take a picture of your friend and have it morph into a monkey or something? I accidentally came across a free application today called Sqirlz Morph that will do just that.
A screenshot of the program can be seen above, but don’t let the stripped-down toolbars deceive you. This program has a powerful array of options that will help you morph images with ease. With that being said it took me 5 or 10 minutes before I fully understood how the program worked, and so I thought I would give some pointers:
You can use as many photos as you want in the morphing process, but the more images you use the more work you’re going to cause yourself. So you may want to be selective.
After you have your images open you’ll need to add a few morphing points to start with. This is done with the green plus sign on the side toolbar. When you add a morphing point on one image it will be added to all of them.
What you need to do now is switch over to the other photos that you’ve opened, and move the points around so that the key features match up between all of the images. You can move the points around by clicking the black arrow in the side toolbar, and then clicking on a morphing point. In the example above you can see that I made sure the eyes, mouth, and edges of the face matched up.
Go to Image -> Animation Order if you want to change the image morphing order.
I chose to output my morphed images in a GIF format so that I could easily post the result in this article, but you can also save it as an AVI. When saving the image it asked for a frame rate, and 15 frames per second is pretty standard. I, however, chose just 3 frames per second so that you could clearly see the morphing process:
Adding the morphing points to the photos are a critical part of how Sqirlz Morph works. The result will not look right if you don’t take the time to properly align the points on the photos. That’s why in Step 1 I told you to be selective in how many photos you choose to use.
I have to admit that this is a pretty cool program, and I haven’t seen any other freeware that does the same sort of thing. You may not see a purpose for it right now, but at some point you may realize that this is just what you’re looking for. Bookmark it even if you don’t plan on using it right now.
Post links below to any images you decide to morph together. Can’t wait to see what some of you come up with.
This article was written on May 01, 2008 by CyberNet.
Yahoo Messenger is the number one instant messaging service, and they are really starting to show off the talent their development team has. It’s been over a year now since we first got a glimpse of what their Vista-specific messenger looked like. And disappointingly a lot of time has passed since it was last updated causing debate as to whether the project was still alive.
About two months ago they assured us that a new version was on the way, and they weren’t lying! The Yahoo Messenger blog announced today that the app has entered the Beta stage, and is ready to be downloaded. I have to admit that they have added some really nice features to this version, and it’s definitely not lacking in the eye candy department. Here’s an overview of what’s new:
Additional features and enhancements: – New and Optimized for Vista – WPF Interface – Skin Chooser – Customizable Contact List – Vector-based – Tabbed Conversations – Windows Sidebar Gadget
So the big news would have to be the voice support and SMS messaging. The video below shows the cool visualizations that users see when they are engaged in a voice conversation, and it’s pretty slick if I may say so myself. The SMS messaging is something that I really like. When you send a message to one of your friends using SMS it will automatically direct the replies back to the messenger, which eliminates the need to grab your cellphone. Very smart!
Kudos to the Yahoo Messenger team on a job well done, and I’m thinking the only thing this lacks now is video support.
This article was written on September 03, 2007 by CyberNet.
CyberNet Exclusive Look
We’ve decided to break away from our normal CyberNotes today to take an exclusive look at the features in Opera 9.5 (codename Kestrel). Opera has done a remarkable job of keeping the specs and features of Opera 9.5 under wraps. The Opera Desktop Team wrote a post last week that detailed some of the under-the-hood work that has been going on in 9.5, but as expected, they steered clear of mentioning the most notable features. After all, they want to save the excitement for the big Alpha release tomorrow!
Luckily I was able to test drive Opera 9.5 a little bit early, and it’s only fair that I share my findings with you (and we have Opera’s permission of course). I’ve put together a 5-minute video review that details four of what I believe to be Kestrel’s most notable features. So you can start out by watching the video, or you can read through the article as I cover each feature there as well.
–Video Introduction–
I thought it would be best if I start with a video of Opera 9.5’s new features. All of these are covered in detail below, but this will give you a really good idea of what you can expect tomorrow when Opera 9.5 Alpha is released.
–Rendering Engine–
It’s been over a year since Opera’s rendering engine has seen any significant improvements, and this time around there are some significant improvements. Kestrel is now running the same rendering engine that powers the Wii Internet Channel browser as well as Opera Mini 4 Beta, and there are some astonishing differences…probably due to the thousands of bugs they’ve fixed.
I’ve been told to expect to see the rendering speed get better as further builds get released, but I have a hard time believing that they can get better than what I’ve seen. I decided to do a rather unofficial speed test to see how fast the different browsers rank in terms of loading our site (with an empty cache). I did three tests for each browser and averaged out the time it took for each to completely load our site. Here are the results with the slowest browsers first:
Internet Explorer 7: 18 seconds
Firefox 2: 15 seconds
Opera 9.23: 12 seconds
Firefox 3 Nightly: 11 seconds
Opera 9.5 Alpha: 8 seconds
Aside from speed improvements, the site compatibility has also gotten much better. They’ve fixed problems with various Google sites, some issues with the default WordPress template, and corrected a few things with some of the JavaScript libraries. Opera 9.5 can now handle many more sites…with ease!
Here are some of the other updates in Kestrel related to the rendering engine:
A lot more CSS3 support, including complete Selectors
Support for JavaScript 1.5 Getters and Setters
AJAX compatibility has been improved
New JavaScript engine that is faster and more efficient
Improved HTML table layout algorithm
–Open With… (in the video)–
Despite all of the hurdles Opera has overcome with their new rendering engine, there are still some sites that probably won’t work as they should. Opera isn’t going to deny that it happens, and they are actually going to do what they can to help the situation. You can now right-click on any site and choose to open it in another browser that is installed on your computer!
I’ve also been told that the “open with” command will work with some files as well, but complete support hasn’t been added yet. I would like to see this feature extended to things like images so that I can right-click on an image and have it open in Paint.NET without needing to save it first.
–Restore Windows (in the video)–
Opera has a little trash can on the Tab Bar that is normally used to restore tabs you’ve recently closed (which can also be done with Ctrl+Z). Kestrel has introduced a new feature that will let you restore entire windows that you have closed, which includes all of the tabs contained within that window. I don’t open multiple windows very often, but I know this feature will come in handy.
–Sync Bookmarks (in the video)–
This is one of those things that I had said Opera needs to work on the most. By this point, most Firefox users have grown accustomed to keeping their bookmarks synchronized with an online service. Now Opera users will have the same pleasure! All you need is a free My Opera account, and you’ll be able to privately synchronize your bookmarks, Speed Dial sites, and Personal Bar with their server. You’ll then be able to access that data whether you’re at work, home, or anywhere!
To setup synchronization just select the “Synchronize with My Opera” option from the File Menu.
–Full History Search (in the video)–
The search capabilities in Opera 9.23 vs. Opera 9.5 are like night and day. They have now introduced full history search that looks back over all of the pages you’ve visited. I’m not talking about just scanning the URL and title of the page either…it looks at all the text contained within each site!
There are two ways that you can take advantage of this feature, and the most common one will be straight from the address bar. As you can see in the screenshot above, I was typing in “thumb” into the address bar, and the resulting page that was returned is our homepage. That’s because I had recently visited CyberNet where “Thumbnails” was one of the words used, but it wasn’t in the title or the URL, it was just in the body of the article.
If you’re looking for a more detailed way to search your entire history, just type opera:historysearch into the address bar. The result will be a Google-like search page where you can type the keyword(s) that you are looking for. It will then return the results that matched just like in this screenshot:
–What You Don’t See–
It’s very obvious that there has been a lot of under-the-hood work in Opera 9.5, and you’ll be able to see that as soon as you start using it. There has particularly been a lot of fixing up for the built-in Mail Client. Now it has a new indexing and storage backend that doesn’t use as much memory and runs faster. IMAP also works much better, and the browser isn’t supposed to freeze anymore when checking for new mail or feeds.
Of course Opera still starts almost instantaneously, which is one of its best qualities. And memory usage has (somehow) gotten better. I’ve never seen Opera 9.2 climb over the 250MB marker, and that was when I would have 50 to 100 tabs open at the same time (hey, I go through a lot of news in a days time). Now it seems to run at about 80% of the memory usage that it used to, and for most people it will hover between 25MB and 70MB.
–And There’s More!–
I’ve covered most of the big stuff above, but that’s not everything! Here’s a list of some other things that have been improved in Opera 9.5:
The Status Bar is enabled by default…yay!
The “Save your password” dialog box does not stop the page from loading behind it. That way you can verify that the username and password you entered works before actually saving it. What a great feature!
Content blocking is better
A “drag to scroll” feature has been added that will let you scroll by “grabbing” the page, much like in a PDF reader. You can enable it by typing opera:config#UserPrefs|ScrollIsPan into the address bar.
It supposedly looks better on a Mac, and conforms to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Unfortunately I don’t have a Mac to try that out on.
–Making it Better–
There are some things that I believe Opera can do to make the final product even better, but one of the most important is inline spell checking. This is often the first complaint I hear from existing Firefox users who try Opera, and I think it is an extremely useful feature.
–Overview–
There’s no doubt in my mind that Opera 9.5 is going to be a truly amazing browser once it is released, and it will likely raise the bar for other browsers. However, the build being released tomorrow is an Alpha, and it will have issues at first. There might be sites that don’t work properly with it, and if you decide to try this out, make sure to install it in a separate location from your stable Opera installation.
For more details on some of the backend work done to Kestrel, read this article posted by the Opera Desktop Team.
This article was written on January 26, 2007 by CyberNet.
Now I’ve seen some interesting Firefox themes in my day, but this one surely takes the cake. Mario comes back to life in this theme and the intricate details are sure to leave a warm feeling in the heart of anyone who pounded away at the Nintendo controllers trying to beat King Koopa and his kids.
Ah, those were the days…what am I talking about? I still play these classic games online all the time. They have become so adored that they can be found in seconds by doing a Google search, and let’s not forget to mention the emulators that you can download to play all of your favorite pastime games.
This Firefox theme will simply amaze you with the things they thought to add in. One of my favorite things would have to be the scroll bars which are pipes that look like the tunnels Mario would travel through. Buttons are, of course, the unmovable blocks that we could jump on to help Mario reach his destination and all of the navigation buttons are cleverly skinned.
I give mad props to the person who thought up and actually designed this theme. There is no doubt in my mind that I could leave some of my friends in awe by showing them this…and maybe even get some new Firefox converts!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
If you’ve ever used any version of Internet Explorer it’s very likely that you’ve been pestered by those annoying popups saying that there is an error with the JavaScript on the page you’re viewing. I’m not sure if anyone really knows why Microsoft decided to show the general population this message when the developers are really the only ones who can do anything about it. Oh well.
I find this script to be one of the more essential ones. With it you’re able to resize any text area or input field on a site. If it’s an input field that you’re dealing with (such as the search box on Google’s homepage) just put your mouse along the right side and you should see your cursor turn into the double-ended arrow. You’re then ready to resize the box.
Ever come across an MP3 on the Internet that you wanted to play, but didn’t want to download? This script will add a small icon next to any MP3 file that will let you stream the song instead of downloading it first.
Windows only 
With all the hype focused on Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2, we tend to forget about some of Mozilla’s other great applications. One of them is their calendar application that they offer in two different flavors: 
The thing that seems to be the biggest problem right now with Lighting (the Thunderbird add-on) is getting the left sidebar to not appear so cluttered. They sum it up pretty well when they refer to the current solution and say ”The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen.“
It’s very obvious that there has been a lot of under-the-hood work in Opera 9.5, and you’ll be able to see that as soon as you start using it. There has particularly been a lot of fixing up for the built-in Mail Client. Now it has a new indexing and storage backend that doesn’t use as much memory and runs faster. IMAP also works much better, and the browser isn’t supposed to freeze anymore when checking for new mail or feeds.
