Posts Tagged ‘Firefox’

• Tools: Live Labs Thumbtack

  Date: 2009.01.18 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Tech'd Out | Response: 0

  At first glance, Thumbtack from Live Labs looks pretty interesting (see video below). It’s supposed to allow you to highlight anything on webpage, copy it, then paste it on to (essentially) a virtual cork board. My first thought was “great, I can use it when collecting ideas for content to blog about”. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.
  Video: Thumbtack Introduction

  For the purpose of testing Thumbtack, I decided to imagine that I was planning a trip to Egypt. I was able to copy text, so I could get an idea of the terrain and what the weather would be like. I even managed to copy the lyrics to the national anthem. However, when I tried copying a picture, I was told “Your browser security settings have prevented us from accessing your clipboard. Please paste again by pressing ctrl + V”. Doing this doesn’t allow pictures.

  Examining further into the issue, it seems you can only copy and paste text using Mozilla Firefox. To be able to do anything further, you must be using Internet Explorer (IE). On top of not being able to copy images, when pasting it doesn’t even keep format of the text copied, it is often unformatted.

  Thumbtack does allow users to publish and share their notes, however given that it is simply just text at this time if fails to be of service. If I have to email them a link to text, I might as well just email them the text itself.

  A simple conclusion is that this service falls short of being useful, just as Google Notebook was before support was canceled. If you truly need to keep notes, just use notepad.

• 'cause Webnotes stick on me!

  Date: 2008.11.19 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Geeking | Response: 0

  Now with invites and annotations!

  Ever wish that you could have a cheat sheet for a webpage? Get through all that useless junk that the author wrote? I’m sure that most of my readers do. And thus comes Webnotes.

  Webnotes is a new web-working tool designed at letting users add annotations and highlighting to websites. They combine two of my personal favorite things: Post-it notes and websites, it was just a matter of time. The utility is easy to use, just install the toolbar (Firefox plug-in FTW) and you’re set. There is a button to create a sticky note, button to highlight text and a button to share what you’ve done. It’s that easy.

  

  Once you have that done, it’s easy to place sticky notes around. I know I’m going to have the bad habit of putting them on every site I visit (I have 29 of them in sight right now around my desk offline, yikes!). The good use for this is that you’ll be able to see a site, put your options on it then send it to your friend so they can see it how you see it. Here, check out I R Blogging with some annotations I put in (I may have put a few too many…).

  

  Some uses for this that I came up with:

  • Looking at somebody’s website and giving them pointers.
  • Studying notes and highlighting the parts that would be important.
  • Adding reminders for the next time you visit the site (like checking out a certain link that you know will be a time-sink)
  • Being used as a bookmark when going through archives.

  The only thing I can think of right now that this is missing is a social aspect of this. For example, if I could make my notes, send it to a friend then have them add some of their notes and send it back to me (displaying both sets of annotations) it would make it a great collaboration tool. Also, being able to select the color of sticky note would be pretty cool as well.

  I was lucky enough to get my hands on a few invites (Thanks Ryan!), so for those of you interested in some just leave a comment to this post. Be sure to include your email address when filling out the comment form, I’ll be using it to know where to send it.

• Google Chrome

  Date: 2008.09.08 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Tech'd Out | Response: 0

  Finally, Google has released a browser!

  “I don’t really need a new browser, I finally have Firefox working exactly as I want it to” is going to be the first thought through many people’s minds and to be truthfully honest, I’m still kind of feeling that way now even after checking out the eye pleasing Google Chrome.

  At first glance, this thing is simply beautiful, because it’s so beautifully simple. They removed all the clutter and open space that seems to built up around the buttons, helping to trim it down a lot. They also removed the menu bar up top and replaced it with two buttons beside the address/unified bar. This gives it a clean look.

  The address bar has been turned into the unified bar, which allows you to type an address, search and also has suggestions. This is useful I guess, But Firefox does nearly the same thing and to be honest I don’t think I’ll be searching for “www.irbl” anytime soon. This feature may need a bit of tweaking.

  One of the nicest parts about Chrome is that they’ve decided to move the tabs to the top of the page (giving it the old ‘At Ease’ look from former macs), which makes it really spiffy looking. You’re able to drag these around to order them how you like, and even drag them out to be open in a new window (though other than being able to see the web page tiny and being dragged around looking like a cool folder, I can’t see myself finding a real use for this). This simple rearranging of the tabs is the largest improvement I can see for most users.

  Also, it seems they decided to rework how the browser functions. In simple terms: Each tab is it’s own program, within a program. For example: In the past when 1 tab would screw up and crash in Firefox or IE, the whole browser would crash. What Google claims is that if 1 tabs screws up in Chrome, you’ll be able to continue using the other tabs without any interruption and just the problematic tab will be closed. They’ve developed a task manager (nearly identical to that in Windows) for each tab. In fact, while writing this I got the oppertunity to put this to the test.

  While having 3 tabs open (WordPress Dashboard, Google Chrome Website and Worlds in Motion) I started to play one of the demonstration videos on the Chrome site. To my surprise, it decided to lag and freeze while trying to load the video. Thinking this would be of no concern, I tabbed back to the Dashboard and was shocked to see Chrome stop responding to my clicks completely. On top of having no control over my browser at all anymore (something Google claims does not happen) I was unable to pull up the Chrome Task Manager and was left here waiting to see if I was going to have to retype this review. After about 2 minutes of huffing, a pop-up showed saying the Google Chrome tab wasn’t responding, but went away again before I was able to select an option to fix the issue and Chrome fixed itself. Isn’t this what all other browsers do already? Chances are high that if a program stops working, eventually it usually rights itself. I was severely let down by the hopes Chrome would be different and actually hold true to the ‘invincible’ idea it let off.

  A nice thing, though minor to say the least, is Chrome’s default start page when you open new tabs. It creates a map of your most visited sites based on your history, recent bookmarks, closed tabs and a search box. It’s simple and I know it’s been done a million times but it might be interesting to keep around for awhile before setting back to about:blank again.

  A final note, I do notice that for spell check it seems to underline the words, but right clicking doesn’t give me a dictionary of suggested spellings. I hope this gets fixed because my spelling is atrocious. What will really show the power (or just hype) of chrome will be when developers start releasing plug-ins and perhaps themes. With the lead that Firefox seems to have however on Chrome in this aspect, it’s going to take some time for Google to actually become a competitor to those who already have things set up to meet standards. That said, I think I’ll give this a run at work (simple is good when you’re doing very little but doing it a lot) but until I see some progress made I’m going to stick with my loyal FF.

• Firefox: Fancy Numbered Tabs

  Date: 2007.11.07 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Tech'd Out | Response: 0

  I found another helpful Firefox to display today, this time it’s called Fancy Numbered Tabs. If the name wasn’t a complete give away, the extension simply changes the class close button on tabs into numbers, thus making it easier when using the the CTRL + number function in Firefox to jump to tabs. Can also be helpful when trying to explain to somebody how to do something (and they won’t let you push them out of the way )

  See also Lifehacker

• Firefox: Morning Coffee

  Date: 2007.11.05 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Tech'd Out | Response: 0

  If you’re like me, even with all the tricks and tips in the world you’re still going to be rushed in the morning because you wanted to sleep those extra minutes. Well the Morning Coffee extension for Firefox can help out there.

  Everybody has those sites they check out on a daily basis be it gossip, horoscope, daily news, webcomics, whatever. For me it’s all about the webcomics, I must have around 2 dozen of them now that I read on religious basis. However they don’t all update everyday, some are only Mon/Wed/Fri so it’s a waste of time to memorize that for each of them: Thus where Morning Coffee comes in. With morning coffee you put the site address in the list for that day and when that day is upon you click the Coffee button and Voila, your sites for the day open.

  I honestly love this extension, I love being able to sit here and read my ‘morning coffee’ while actually drinking my morning coffee (and eating Eggos!).

  Morning Coffee can be downloaded on Mozilla’s site HERE