Archive for the Category ◊ browsers ◊

Ever wonder what's behind those TinyURLs?
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 | Author:

Especially if you’re a Twitter user, you’re familiar with TinyURLs. Those URLs that when clicked on take you to a much longer and very different URL. While they have their usefulness, they don’t exactly tell you where they’re sending you and sometimes it’s somewhere you don’t want to end up. Firefox users, once again, you’re in luck. Just install the bit.ly Preview Plugin and the next time you see a TinyURL, just hover your mouse pointer over it to see the name of the site you’ll be sent to, the URL of that site, and the number of other users that have so far clicked on that particular TinyURL.(Other cool tools can also be found on the bit.ly site.)

bit.ly addon

Category: browsers, Web tools  | Leave a Comment
Who is this person?
Friday, December 26th, 2008 | Author:

image Here’s another Firefox add-on for you. Once you’ve installed Who Is This Person?, just highlight a name in any Web page, right click, and send their name off to LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google, or one of several other sources. You never know what you’ll find out about someone.

Category: browsers, searching  | Leave a Comment
BitTorrent is finally simple
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | Author:

Once you get the hang of it, downloading via BitTorrent isn’t that difficult. Trouble is, getting the hang of it is the difficult part. That is, until now. The folks at fireaddons have created firetorrent a Firefox add on that treats downloading via BitTorrent no harder than downloading any other file. Once installed, just click on a link to a .torrent file and the downloading begins.

For those familiar with BitTorrent, some of the same rules still apply. The more seeds, the faster the download. Fewer seeds, slower download. Also, this client doesn’t seed as far as I can tell so it’s download only. So, if you’re really wanting to truly participate in the world of torrents, you’re better off with something like Vuze which will not only download but also upload back to the community.

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Private browsing in Firefox, now
Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Author:

http://abcdefu.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/firefox.jpgChrome has it now. Firefox 3.1 and IE 8 will but they’re not out yet. Want it in Firefox 3? Just install the Private Browsing add-on and you’re all set. So, just what is private browsing? Well, it has been nicknamed "porn mode". Basically, whenever you’re in private mode no record of any of your surfing survives the closing of the browser. (Once the new versions of IE and Firefox are released with this feature built in, I plan on recommending that on public computers, this mode is set as default. I’ll blog more about that when the time comes.)

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Attention IE 8.0 beta testers & Web designers
Friday, December 19th, 2008 | Author:

Report a problem in IE8 BetaHave you tested your Web site in the IE 8 beta yet? If you’ve found a problem be sure to have installed the Report a Webpage Problem Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta Add-On which will add a simple menu item that will generate a report to send to Microsoft in which you can point out exactly what IE 8 got wrong.

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The Web of Trust
Tuesday, December 09th, 2008 | Author:

image Are you concerned about visiting random sites that may be unreliable or not to be trusted? What if there was a way to know what other Internet users thought of that site you’re about to visit? Well, there is the Web of Trust, a Firefox and IE add-on which will signal you green, yellow, or red on Google search results. Green means it’s safe, yellow is questionable, and red means stay away. For each result you can get detailed information on just why that rating exists. Additionally, you can rate sites and contribute back to the community. If you’re still not sure how this can help you check out the short online demo video.

Category: browsers, security  | Leave a Comment
Need another browser?
Monday, December 08th, 2008 | Author:

Did you know that version five of the Lunascape browser has been released?

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Make Firefox slick with Greasemonkey
Friday, December 05th, 2008 | Author:

See full size imageIf you’re a Firefox user and you don’t have the Greasemonkey add-on installed you’re missing out. If you’re not familiar with Greasemonkey, it allows others to write scripts that will change how certain Web pages work.

You can find all sorts of Greasemonkey scripts  to extend your browser at http://www.greasespot.net/ but here are some of my favorites and recommendations from some of my online colleagues:

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Introducing Geode
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 | Author:

Geode is a new project from Mozilla Labs which is working to add geo-location services to Firefox. While not exactly ready for prime time, and not exactly useful on a non-portable device, my initial tests were interesting. Below shows a screen from one of the demo applications of this technology. I’m the blue dot and the other locations are coffee and tea shops in my area. I didn’t tell it where I was, the software figured it out for me with pretty much 100% accuracy.

Geode

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What's on my tabs?
Friday, October 03rd, 2008 | Author:

imageIf you’re an IE7 user and like to have a lot of tabs open, you may eventually find yourself with so many open that you can’t see them all. Here’s a neat little keyboard shortcut: use CTRL-Q to get a graphical display of all your open tabs. To switch to a tab just click on it with your mouse.

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