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Jul 24

Mozilla Rallies the Troops for Firefox 3

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

firefox download day.png Since the release of Firefox 3 is right around the corner it comes as no surprise that Mozilla is trying to rally the ~~troops~~ community. Back in 2006 they celebrated World Firefox Day by getting people to invite their friends to try Firefox, and right about the time Firefox 2 launched Mozilla gave the much deserved acknowledgements. This is just one of the several campaigns Mozilla has come up with to help spread the Firefox browser, and it’s obvious that they know how to harness the power of the people.

This year they are doing things a little differently, and they are hoping to set a Guinness World Record for the number of downloads in 24 hours. As I sit here writing this they have over 125,000 people who have pledged to download Firefox 3 in the first 24 hours, which Mozilla says will happen sometime in June 2008. It shouldn’t be hard for them to crush the record… mostly because the record is currently non-existent. They are shooting for 5 million downloads, which is possible since Firefox 2 received 1.6 million downloads on the first day back in 2006. But they will essentially be making it in the record books no matter what.

If you are participating there is one thing you should know if you want your download to count. You actually have to download the full installation, and the download must complete. Updating the browser will not count towards the record, but then again they probably won’t release the automatic update on the first day. They’ll be using a cookie system to try and weed out any duplicate downloads.

You can help spread the word about the Download Day by placing any of these banners on your own site, or in the signature section of your emails. Oh, and there will be a certificate the you can print on Download Day to commemorate the event.

Firefox World Record Homepage
Thanks to Natmaster and Max for the tips!

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Jul 22

CyberSearch 1.0.1: Background Colors are Back

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

This article was written on August 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

Okay, so I wasn’t thinking that I’d have a new version of CyberSearch so soon, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will stop the flood of emails requesting that I revive the customizable background color feature. Yesterday we released CyberSearch 1.0, and with it came a bunch of new features. Along with that I also scrapped the option to customize the background color of the results.

Why would I get rid of this feature? For a few reasons actually:

The new version of the extension put the CyberSearch icon in the upper-right corner of the results making it easy to distinguish without needing a background color. Well, at least that’s I thought, as well as a few other people I asked before releasing the new version.
A few people emailed me saying that the default color doesn’t look great on some themes. One thing I’ve always tried to keep in mind while building this extension is what would be best for the users who will never bother to open up the settings.
When you upgraded to a new version of CyberSearch the background color you had previously customized would get wiped out.
In order to see the updated background color you had to restart the browser, which was a pain for anyone that wanted to try a bunch of colors to see which one they liked the best.

I assumed that people who wanted to customize the background color of the results wouldn’t mind using Stylish, and I provided instructions on how to change the background color using the Stylish extension. That was obviously not what people wanted… they wanted to see the feature back in all its glory.

This isn’t easy for me to say, but I was wrrrr…….ong. There, I said it. Happy?

cybersearch result appearance.png

I’m pleased to say that the customizable background color has returned in CyberSearch 1.0.1! Not only has it returned, but I’ve improved it. In fact I’ve corrected all of the problems I listed above. Your background color preferences is now remembered across all upgrades, and you can see the effects of changing the background color without restarting the browser. There is still no background color by default, but any user that wants to change it will now be able to do so in the CyberSearch settings.

Hopefully this will please everyone, and I apologize to anyone that was upset by me removing this feature. Just take a deep breath… everything will be okay now, I promise. *arms extended waiting for a great big hug*

Grab CyberSearch 1.0.1

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Jul 20

High Sign: Mouse Gesture Application

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

This article was written on March 24, 2009 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows only
Mouse gestures are something that I’ve gotten into the habit of using for years now, and giving them up would almost be like giving up the ability to use keyboard shortcuts. Some gestures have become second nature to me, and when I’m on a computer that doesn’t have that capability I get rather frustrated.

The bad news is that a lot of these apps have a tendency to not get updated very often. A good example of this is with StrokeIt… one of the most popular mouse gesture programs. The last time it was updated was over 4-years ago.

The other day I started doing some searching and found a relatively new app called High Sign, and I like what it has to offer. It’s extremely simple to understand and operate, and has all the right features… like being able to record your own custom gestures.

Once you’ve recorded a gesture you can assign an action to it. This includes minimizing/maximizing a window, switching between apps, running a program or command, and simulating a hotkey combination or keystrokes. With these options you should be able to do just about anything you want, and you can even restrict a gesture to a particular application.

Once you get High Sign installed it will be in training mode so that you can create some new actions, but it does already come pre-configured with a few popular ones. To start using High Sign you’ll want to exit out of Training Mode by right-clicking on the System Tray icon, and then just hold down the right mouse button to start drawing.

High Sign is an open source and freeware application for Windows only

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Jul 18

Firefox 3 Places Gets “Smart Folders”

Posted in: Features, Firefox 3, Freeware, Mozilla, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has been working hard to get Places into Firefox 3, and they are making some good progress. Back in September we saw a nice mockup of what to expect from the Places Organizer, and about a week after that Oropher pointed out in our forum that the first major UI change occurred.

At the time the only modification was the move away from the classic Menu Bar that resides in the current Firefox 2 bookmark organizer, but just today another new feature landed in the latest nightly build. It’s one that I have been anticipating for quite some time … “smart folders” (I made up the name). There are 6 smart folders that come with Firefox 3, and the bookmarks listed in each are generated on-the-fly like the Smart Playlists in iTunes. Here are the six folders that you’ll see in the latest nightly build:

Recently starred pages
Recently visited starred pages
Most visited starred pages
Recently used tags
Most used tags
Most visited pages

Below is a screenshot of what the smart folders and redesigned Places Organizer look like. What’s left to do in Places? They still have to add the history and downloads to it, but other than that they just need to add some polish. Oh, and they need to get the “Preview” feature working as you can see in the screenshot below. It’s supposed to show a thumbnail of the bookmark you have selected, but right now it is just a place holder.

Overall things are looking pretty good for the next milestone that’s due out on October 30th.

Firefox 3 Places

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Jul 14

Make Windows Shortcuts Open Mac-Style Stacks

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

This article was written on June 30, 2009 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Remember when we wrote about the nifty Stacks docklet? Well, I received an email from a reader pointing out that you can get the same functionality without one of the Windows dock apps. All you need is a free program called StandaloneStack that adds the same functionality to any Windows shortcut you decide to create.

For the most part all you have to do is create a shortcut to the executable, and run it (FreewareGenius has screenshots of the setup process). When you do that you’ll be prompted to choose what directory you want the stack pointed to, how you want the items sorted, and whether you want the stack displayed in a grid (pictured above) or fan view.

I have to say that this can make those shortcuts in your QuickLaunch bar a lot more useful. Plus it will even work for shortcuts that are placed on your desktop. Basically you can have your whole computer littered with these things if that’s what you want. Go nuts, you have my permission.

StandaloneStack Homepage (Windows only; free)
Thank MisT for the tip!

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Jul 13

Opera 9.5 is Almost Done

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

This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows Win; Mac Mac; Linux Linux
Hot on the heels of Firefox 3, the Opera team announced today that they are preparing for the launch of Opera 9.5, and they are doing so by shooting out the first (and possibly last) Release Candidate to the public. This comes just about one week after they added a new default theme to the browser. The Mac version of the theme is depicted in the screenshot above, and the Windows version can be seen here.

Here’s what the Opera team had to say about the big news today:

You might have noticed we’ve focused on stabilizing the Opera 9.5 snapshots lately, waxing the new look and feel of Opera, improving performance, security and most of all fixing a lot of bugs. Almost two years after the release of Opera 9.0, Opera 9.5 is now (almost) ready to be released.

This will be a pretty big release for Opera since this is the first version of their desktop browser to include the new Opera Link technology. With it users can synchronize their bookmarks between both Opera 9.5 desktop and Opera Mini, which is a killer combo.

There’s no mention of a release date for Opera 9.5, but they make it sound like it’s coming very soon. Maybe we can expect to see it out in June?

P.S. If you decide to install the Release Candidate in Windows it’s important to know that it will overwrite your existing (stable) Opera installation.

Get Opera 9.5 RC
Thanks for the tip Cody!

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Jul 12

CyberNotes: 7-Zip Command Line Backups

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 03, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

The tool that I used for a long time for extracting and compressing archives is 7-Zip. It’s free, open-source, and has a powerful set of command line options that is perfect for performing backups. And today that’s exactly what we’re going to use it for.

We’re going to use a special version of 7-Zip that has no user interface whatsoever. It has to be used via the command line, and one of the benefits for using this version is that the entire application is self-contained in one single executable file. That makes it a great tool to carry around with you on a USB drive, and extremely easy to work with.

Here’s how to use the 7-Zip command line options to create backups at the click of a mouse:

The first thing you’ll want to do is go download the command line version of 7-zip. After you extract the contents you’ll notice that there are five files available. All we need is the 7za.exe, so you can delete the rest if you wish.
Open up Notepad, and now we’re going to create a batch file that will backup a folder location of our choosing. I’ve decided to backup everything on my desktop this time around, but it will work for any location as long as you know the path.
7za.exe a cybernet.7z "C:\Users\Ryan\Desktop"
Be sure to include quotation marks around any paths that have spaces in them. For this example I didn’t have to put quotation marks around my path, but it never hurts to include them.
This will archive the documents in the 7-Zip format, which means you’ll need to have 7-Zip to extract it. It’s good because the compression ratio is very high, which means the backup file will be rather small compared to the other compression formats. If you were going to send this to someone they may have troubles opening it, but you can choose save the file as a ZIP by replacing “7z” with “zip” in that line of code.
Now we need to save the batch file in the same place where the 7za.exe is located. In Notepad go to File -> Save As, and choose any filename. The only thing you need to make sure of is that at the end of the filename you include the .BAT extension:
Now all you have left to do is double-click on the batch file that you just created to run it. The resulting backup file will be located in the same place as the 7za.exe and the batch file, unless you’ve specified an alternate location in Step 2.
Extra Credit: You can always create a scheduled task that will run your batch file automatically at a time/date that you specify. That can be done by using the built-in Windows Scheduled Tasks wizard, which can be found in the Control Panel.

One other tip that I wanted to provide is how to automatically insert the current year, month, and day into the resulting filename. This would be useful for anyone looking to schedule backups, without wanting to overwrite the previous backup. In Step 2 from our example above you would want to replace:

cybernet.7z

with:

%DATE:~-4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%_cybernet.7z

which for today would give a result of:

2008-01-03_cybernet.7z

Now every backup will remain in tact, assuming that you create no more than one backup per day.

For those of you who want to dive a little deeper in to the 7-Zip command line options, here are the different things that the “a” can be replaced with in Step 2:

a: Add to an existing archive, or create a new one
d: Delete files from an archive
e: Extract files from an archive
t: Test the integrity of an archive
u: Update the files in an archive

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Jul 08

Vista Transformation Pack 6 for Windows XP/2003 Released…Wow!

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

This article was written on December 26, 2006 by CyberNet.

Vista Transformation Pack 6

What a Christmas present this was! Vista Transformation Pack 6 was just released yesterday with all kinds of new goodies including 3rd-party applications for providing features like Taskbar thumbnail previews and a remarkable sidebar just like Vista’s. In case you are unfamiliar with this application I will forewarn you that there is a tendency for it not to uninstall all the way in case you decide that you don’t like it. I think most of the time the problem lies within replacing the icons with the old Windows XP ones, but I have personally never had issues.

With that being said I want to give credit to “Windows X” for making this release better than all previous versions. After installing the Vista Transformation Pack you’ll notice that all of the following have been changed to appear more like Vista:

Boot screen
Welcome Screen / Logon Screen
New msstyles files (visual styles)
New desktop and file icons
New toolbar icons
Progress Dialogs
Sounds scheme
System Tray icons
New Wallpapers
Windows Media Player Skins

Besides for bug fixes, here is a list of what’s new in version 6:

Additional Vista related applications:
- Vista Sidebar
- VisualTooltip (Taskbar thumbnail view and also have docking mode)
- Styler with Kaye Ireneâ€™s Vista Perfection X4 Styler Toolbar
- Start Orb (fix cutting edge start orb in msstyles)
- Vista Live Messenger RC skin
Applying Vista setup screen transformation in setup integration
Browsable System files source for uninstallation so user can restore original system files from setup CD during uninstallation
Display configuration for the best view of machineâ€™s display
Fixing fileâ€™s PE checksum after resource patching to keep files more secure
Launch & Maintenance Center in transformation destination in case user already have transformed the system
Partially x64 support for Vista visual stuff but not for system files (experimental)
Option to reserved updated system files after uninstallation or not
Skipping system file verification patch on setup integration
Vista RTM system applications transformation:
- Photo printing wizard
- Remote Desktop Connection
- Volume Control
- Windows Task Manager
- System Restore
- Connection Manager
- Windows Update Client
- Media Center

Those of you attempting to upgrade from a previous version of Vista Transformation Pack shouldn’t have a problem, but if you do please mention it in the comments so others know what to expect. This application is so close to Vista that I bet you could trick 99% of the population that don’t have hands-on experience with Vista. So if you are looking to give your XP machine a fresh new look you should check out the new Vista Transformation Pack 6!

View Larger Screenshots

Download FAST from FileHo (I setup this mirror because their mirrors were going slow)
Download from SendSpace, SaveFile, or SoftVisia.

Discussion at JCXP.net

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Jul 04

AOL Radio 2.0 for Mac

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

This article was written on July 31, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mac only
AOL has retired the older version of their radio application for the Mac OS X operating system in favor of the new AOL Radio 2.0. The application is powered by CBS Radio, and includes over 200 radio stations including 150+ CBS Radio stations that are spread out across the United States.

The interface isn’t overly fancy, but it has some nice features including:

Save your favorite stations to presets.
Browse through stations according to genre.
When a new song starts playing a transparent overlay appears in the middle of the screen notifying you of the artist, song title, and displays the album cover. There are no preferences in the app yet, which means this feature can’t be turned off. The notification is fast so it’s not too annoying.
The dock icon for AOL Radio changes from song to song to show you what the album looks like. This is pretty sweet.

aol radio.png

I had never actually used the AOL Radio service until the iPhone application came out, and then I found several stations that I really liked. So when I saw that they released a compact application for the Mac I was pretty excited.

With that being said there are still some things they need to work out. Particularly the fact that they don’t have any preferences implemented yet, which means you can’t turn off things like the on-screen notifications. Plus there’s no way to search through the available radio stations. This is just the first Beta, so I’ll cut them some slack.

If you want access to AOL Radio without using an application you can jump over to the online version. You’ll need to have Flash installed, but it works on any operating system that way. Plus with the web interface you can actually skip the songs you don’t want to listen to.

Note: I’m not sure if the entire AOL Radio service is for the United States only. The iPhone app is only available for U.S. residents though.

Download AOL Radio 2 for Mac

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Jul 03

Mobile Firefox in the Works (No Release Date)

Posted in: Firefox Extensions, Freeware, mobile, Mozilla, Release Date, Software, Today's Chili

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

Firefox Mobile

Mozilla made an announcement today regarding their future plans to deliver a Mobile Firefox. This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard of something like this from Mozilla, but this time they sound extremely serious.

There are already mobile Mozilla browsers available today, one of which is pictured above and is only available to Nokia N800 and N770 users. It offers full AJAX support, RSS feed previews, add-ons, and more.

There is also the Minimo browser for Pocket PC’s, and the recently released Joey service. Mozilla plans on continuing to develop Joey further, but Minimo is unfortunately getting kicked to the curb. I actually use Minimo as my main browser on my Pocket PC because it is one of the few free tabbed alternatives for Windows Mobile. Mozilla has said that Minimo was a valuable experiment that has given them information on how Gecko (Mozilla’s rendering engine) operates in mobile environments, but it will no longer be developed.

The best news they posted is the idea of Mobile Firefox having support for extensions. This could make it easy to integrate the browser into services like Flickr, Twitter, email accounts, and more without needing to install additional applications. This can be pretty amazing depending on how well Mozilla is able to implement it, and what kind of control they are able to give to developers.

Mozilla is expanding the team of contributors for the mobile project, but when is the Mobile Firefox release date? That’s a good question, and Mozilla has said that it will certainly not be before 2008. The mobile project will use new technology that won’t be available until after Firefox 3 ships, but they can probably pump out some barebones test versions by the middle of next year.

The inevitable question that comes to my mind now is how will this affect Opera Mini usage? Opera has almost been alone in this market for quite some time, but will Mozilla be able to capture the large market that Opera Mini already has? For last month Opera Mini had a 0.39% market share, which isn’t bad when that’s putting it up against desktop browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Source: Mozilla Blog & Download Squad
Thanks for the tip “s”!

Related Posts:

Hasta La Gadget!

Mozilla Rallies the Troops for Firefox 3

CyberSearch 1.0.1: Background Colors are Back

High Sign: Mouse Gesture Application

Firefox 3 Places Gets “Smart Folders”

Make Windows Shortcuts Open Mac-Style Stacks

Opera 9.5 is Almost Done

CyberNotes: 7-Zip Command Line Backups

Vista Transformation Pack 6 for Windows XP/2003 Released…Wow!

AOL Radio 2.0 for Mac

Mobile Firefox in the Works (No Release Date)

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