Oct 03

Firefox 3 to Include Separate Vista & XP Themes

Posted in: Firefox 3, Mozilla, Release Date, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on October 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 Places Mockup Mozilla has started to to post some more information regarding how Firefox 3 will adapt itself to the look of multiple operating systems. One of the big changes that Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s User Experience Leader, mentioned in an article was the two different icon sets that will be created for Windows alone. There will be one for Vista and one for XP. Each set will contain 120 different icons, which means they have 240 icons that they need to make for the two different Windows Operating Systems.

An inventory of the necessary icons have already been posted, but none of them have been updated to reflect the changes that are yet to come. As of right now they are looking for a contributor or a contractor that is willing to produce the icons in the time frame that they have. Here’s what they would like to have done at each milestone:

  • 10 icons done in XP and Vista styles as an initial proof-of-concept by the end of the month
  • the most frequently viewed icons delivered as a first draft in time for Beta 2
  • the full set of icons delivered as a second draft in time for Beta 3
  • the ability to make small revisions before the release candidates

The icon inventory site says that the due date for the second milestone (Beta 2?) is in early December, and the third milestone (Beta 3?) isn’t until February 15th! I thought that Firefox 3 would be out by January of next year, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.

There are also some lower priority items for Vista that will probably not make it into Firefox 3, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed:

A Windows Vista theme which can be installed by Vista users to include Vista-like widgets and control layouts, tabstrip and other changes for Vista look and feel (to be shipped alongside, not with, Firefox 3)

That almost sounds like a theme utilizing the Aero effects available in Vista, much like what Internet Explorer 7 does. That would be truly awesome if that’s the case.

Beltzner has also begun discussions about the new theme for Linux which has got to be a tough cookie to crack. Think about all of the different Linux distributions available and how many of them look different. It’s probably going to be pretty strenuous to develop something that looks good on them all, and lets not forget that they are also working on a Mac-specific theme. There’s no doubt that they have their hands full.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

CyberNotes: Top Tab Extensions for Firefox

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

This article was written on November 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been well over a year since we’ve jotted down some excellent tab-related Firefox extensions, and so we thought that it was time to do another round. Since the last article there have been numerous milestones, including the release of Firefox 2. As you can imagine between then and now a lot of new extensions have made their way out the door.

Almost all of the extensions we’re going to mention in this article have never been highlighted before on our site, and a few of them have not even become popular enough to hit the mainstream Mozilla Add-ons site. So we’re pretty confident that there are at least a handful of the extensions that you haven’t heard of.

–Installing Sandbox Extensions–

Some of the extensions are located in the Mozilla Sandbox, which is essentially a holding room until they become popular. To access the Sandbox you need to have a Mozilla account, but if you really don’t feel like creating one here is a generic username and password you can use:

Username: bugmenot@mailinator.com
Password: bugmenot

We’ll make sure to label all of the extensions below that are still located in the Sandbox.

–Multiple Tab Handler (Homepage)–

One feature that I’ve always wanted in any browser is the ability to manage multiple tabs similar to how I manage files and folders on my computer. Opera comes close with their window manager panel, but it’s not as natural as I would like it to be.

 Multiple Tab Handler

This extension is about as good as it gets, and once installed you’ll be able to Ctrl+Click on tabs to simultaneously select them. Then you can duplicate, reload, bookmark, close, or move the selected tabs to a new window. The only other thing I would like to see in this is the ability to reorder all of the selected tabs.

–Tab Scope (Homepage)–

This is a killer extension that I’ve quickly fallen in love with. Ever since we wrote about this several months ago I’ve become more and more accustomed to using it. At first glance it may look like any ordinary tab preview, but underneath the slick appearance lies some powerful controls.

First off, Tab Scope provides real-time previews of websites. For example, if you’re uploading some images to a site you can watch the progress bar move from within the preview.

The thumbnail preview is also fully navigatable. You can use the forward, back, and refresh buttons located at the top to move throughout the site, or you can click on links. You can also scroll up and down on the website if your mouse has a scroll wheel.

–Ctrl Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

There are all kinds of extensions out there that try to bring the Alt-Tab feature to Firefox. By default in Firefox pressing Ctrl+Tab will cycle through all of your open tabs, but there is no interface for it. This extension not only adds an interface, but adds a pretty slick one if I may say so myself. As you use the Ctrl+Tab key combination you’ll see a popup located at the bottom that shuffles through your open windows. Take a look at the sweet reflections, too:

Ctrl Tab 

–Fancy Numbered Tabs (Homepage)–

This is a rather new extension that provides an extremely simple, yet useful feature. It replaces the red “X” close button on the first 8 tabs with a number corresponding to their position. This makes it easier for you to utilize Firefox’s built in tab switch feature: using CTRL+[1-8] you can switch to the respective tab.

Fancy Numbered Tabs 

[via Firefox Facts]

–Separate Tabs (Homepage)–

Don’t confuse this extension with the Separe extension, because they are similar in name and appearance but differ in how they work. This extension automatically sorts your tabs according to the domain name:

Separate Tabs

One of the things that I noticed is that new tabs are automatically added to the end of the list, and when the site finishes loading it is sorted. If a site hangs up and never gets to finish loading it will probably never get sorted.

–Tree Style Tab (Homepage)–

This extension is located in the Sandbox. Read the instructions at the beginning of the article on how to download it.

Tree Style Tab Tree Style Tab is a unique extension that not only lets you orient the tab bar vertically, but it also lets you treat the tabs almost like folders. As seen to the right you can nest the tabs within each other, and there is an expand/collapse button available for easy control. When collapsed a number is shown next to the close button representing how many child tabs there are.

By default Tree Style Tab will automatically nest new tabs that are opened from the parent site, but you can also drag and drop tabs onto each other for manual nesting.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 03

Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update video leaks, tours Metro in silence

Posted in: gaming, Microsoft, Software, Today's Chili, video, video games, VideoGames, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, Xbox360, XboxLive, zune




Last month, we sat down with Microsoft for a quick look at the Xbox’s upcoming Dashboard update — it was sleek, searchable, and extremely camera shy. A quick trip to Europe seems to have cured it of its bashful ways, however, and the budding update can now be seen in a slightly blurry piece of French cinema. This leaked video shows a Dashboard with a smidge more polish than the demo we saw in September, and silently plods on without so much as a bleep or bloop. Our mute host briefly peeks at the Xbox Live Marketplace, casually glances at the Bing search page and scrolls leisurely through the new Dash’s very Metro menu. The whole shebang is en français, of course, and the update’s snappy voice-control gimmick is sadly absent. Sure, there’s not a lot of depth here, but if you want a glimpse of what’s coming when the update drops later this Fall, it’s definitely worth a look.

[Thanks, John]

Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update video leaks, tours Metro in silence originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Oct 2011 02:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 02

Batch Resize Images on Mac

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

This article was written on November 23, 2010 by CyberNet.

thumbsup.pngarrow Mac Mac only arrow
I resize images quite a bit on a variety of different computers, including ones running both Windows and Mac OS X. On Windows I typically use an Explorer add-on like this one, but I had never taken the time to find something to use on my Mac. During some browsing around the web I recently stumbled upon a free utility, called ThumbsUp, that handles the job quite nicely though.

I’m sure a lot of you have seen the Mac image resizers that use a mixture of the Finder context menu and AppleScript, but this one is a bit different. It is a standalone app that you keep in the Dock. You can then resize just one or multiple images by dragging-and-dropping them onto the icon. The output is thrown into the same directory as the original images, which makes them easy to find.

You can also configure some of the settings by simply clicking on the icon. Doing so will bring up the same preference pane that is pictured to the right, and here’s a breakdown of the settings that are available:

  • General

    • Extension inserted before (Prefix) or after (Suffix) the name of thumbnail files or name of subfolder where the new thumbnail files are stored.
    • Image format of thumbnails (TIFF, JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG or JPEG 2000).
    • Quit when done (only if the application is launched by a drag-and-drop operation, otherwise the application displays the preferences panel).
  • Create thumbnails – thumbnails with icons or only icons for the original files.
  • Sizing

    • Maximal width and height of thumbnail images, or scale images by percentage.
    • Set the scaling to 100 percent to convert images to other formats.
  • Compression – JPEG compression (the higher the quality is, the bigger the resulting files are).
  • Antialiasing – No, low or high antialiasing of scaled thumbnails.
  • Sharpen – Light, medium, strong or no sharpening of thumbnails.

This is a great app for anyone who regularly has to create thumbnails for images. The only option it lacks is a way to delete the original images if you wanted to, but this apps focus is more on creating thumbnails and not actually replacing the original image.

ThumbsUp Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

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Oct 02

Everything: Search and Find Local or Networked Files

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

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

everything.jpgarrow Windows Windows only arrow
Last year we ran through a couple performance-friendly desktop search applications for those of you that don’t want a program constantly indexing your machine, and today we have another nice alternative. It’s a free Windows app called Everything that, unlike the others mentioned in the article I referenced, does index your drive automatically over time.

So what makes this app stand out? A few things actually. For starters it doesn’t search the contents of files which makes the indexing that much faster. The developer estimates that a fresh Windows XP install (containing about 20,000 files) will take around 1 second to index. I’m sure you’ve got more files than that though, but even at a million files he says it should only take about a minute to index. That’s pretty tough to beat.

How about the search functionality? After all, that is the most important part of an app like this! It supports your standard boolean operators and wildcards, but real geeks will love the fact that you can also throw regular expressions into the search box. Plus you can have it search the full file path to see if any of the directories leading up to a particular file match what you’re searching for. An example they give as to where this would be useful is if you’re wanting to find “.avi” movies that are only in a downloads directory. All you’d have to do is search for “downloads\ .avi”.

The one big downside is that Everything isn’t capable of indexing networked drives, but you can run the app on the server where the drive is connected to. Then you just have to remotely tap into that server’s search index. It takes just a few minutes to setup, and the instructions can be found here.

Everything is free and runs on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7. You can also grab a portable version if you just want to check it out, or if you simply don’t want to install yet another app on your computer. Either way… it’s definitely one of the fastest search utilities I’ve used, but as I mentioned before this doesn’t search the contents of files which may or may not suit your needs.

Everything Homepage

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Oct 02

Free Designer Templates for Microsoft Office

Posted in: Freeware, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

office designer themes.jpg

Microsoft Office is a powerhouse suite, and it does of course include templates for the various applications. What it doesn’t really have, however, are templates that tie together the different apps within the suite. It looks as though Microsoft may have realized this pitfall, and so they posted six very nice (and free) designer templates that each come in nine different color schemes.

The best part about this is that each design has templates for presentations, spreadsheets, invoices, letterheads, business cards, email blasts, and newsletters. Just go to this site, select the design from the thumbnails along the top, choose a color at the bottom, and click download. What you’ll get is a ZIP file that contains all of the templates, and they’ll work with Office 2007. Most of the templates will also open in Mac Office 2008, except for those designed for Publisher.

So if you’re using Microsoft Office 2007 or Office 2008 you should definitely go checkout these free designer templates. They can bring a whole new sense of professionalism to your documents and presentations. Plus these are templates that people have probably never seen before, and they might think that you had them custom designed. ;)

Microsoft Designer Templates [via WinSuperSite]

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Oct 02

Microsoft Redesigns The Windows Vista Site

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

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

Microsoft Redesigns The Windows Vista Site

Microsoft has redesigned the Microsoft Windows Vista Home Page to make it more graphically enhanced. They also added more screenshots and has plans on going more in depth into the new features that are going to be implemented.

One of the most unknown features that is part of Microsoft Windows Vista is the Flip3D functionality (pictured above). With this feature the user is able to ‘flip’ through the open windows, and the flipping can even be controlled by the scroll wheel on the mouse. Of course this feature isn’t going to be functional on every computer, but will be available on those with the graphic capabilities to handle the Aero Graphics Engine.

View More Screenshots: Microsoft

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Oct 02

Windows Crossbow Leaked…Download Readily Available

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

This article was written on January 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you haven’t heard of Windows Crossbow then you shouldn’t be too ashamed. It is the next version of the Windows Mobile operating system and is not a codename for the next desktop operating system like some people might think (the codename for that is Vienna). We’ve had some previous coverage on Windows Crossbow, but it was merely screenshots. Now there is actually a leaked version of Windows Mobile 6.0 Crossbow!

The download of Windows Crossbow is here and it weighs in at about 53MB. The site who posted the leaked download says that the operating system is not complete right now and is missing some things, but it supposedly functions just fine. Unfortunately they don’t go on to say exactly what is missing but it looks good from this video:

Here is the more detailed information on the download:

  • Filename: WM6PreRelease.rar (52.9MB)
  • Build Date: 1/12/2006
  • Build Number: 15341.4.2.0
  • Rom: 2.00.02.pv
  • External Rom: 2.02 PDAVIET

If you really want to give this a shot you should make sure you back up your entire mobile device, which is pretty easy to do with ActiveSync. That way if you find something that is completely not usable it would be extremely easy to go back to what you had. I would try this on my Pocket PC but I think it is a little too outdated to be able to run this (iPaq 5455).

News Source: MobileWhack [via CrunchGear]

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Oct 02

ThumbGen: Batch Create Image Thumbnails

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

This article was written on September 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Batch Create Image Thumbnails with ThumbGen

Making image thumbnails in bulk can be a rough process. Until now I’ve used Easy Thumbnails to batch create the thumbnails on Windows, but I just found a program called ThumbGen today that is extremely simple to use.

With ThumbGen all you have to do is drag over the images from Windows Explorer that you want thumbnails for. Then you pick the constraints on the dimensions, the prefix/suffix, and the resulting file type (JPG, GIF, BMP, or PNG). That’s it!

I’ll admit that it isn’t as full-featured as it could be (can’t add a watermark, border, etc…), but it’s free and straightforward. I also think that there should be a portable version of this offered since it is a mere 451KB download, and it only adds a handful of files to your computer (It does save some settings in your Windows profile though). I’d love to carry this thing around on my USB drive.

If you’ve got a better batch thumbnail creator that’s free be sure to let us know, but ThumbGen is looking pretty darn good.

ThumbGen Homepage

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Oct 02

Windows Vista Beta 2 ATI & nVidia Drivers Available

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on May 23, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Vista Beta 2 ATI & nVidia Drivers Available

Finally! Vista users get video card support from ATI and nVidia. The only downside is that not every video card is supported but this is a good step.

It is very important that video card manufacturers release these drivers before the beta testing is opened to the public. If people have troubles installing Vista and getting their video cards to work then they will be more likely to give up on testing it. Let’s hope we see this trend continue!

Download nVidia Vista x86 Beta 2 Forceware Driver
Download ATI Catalyst Driver for Vista Beta 2
nVidia Driver Release Notes
News Source: JCXP.net

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