Remember when your less than cool cousin started blogging and used black text on a background covered in multi-colored flames? And you shortly developed a headache, not only from the content but from squinting and tilting your head to the side just so you could sort of read the text. If you are color blind your every day web browsing might be a bit like this as well.
DLS reader, Eric, sent us a question, wondering if there was anything out there to help color blind web surfers see things, like weather maps, a little bit more clearly. "Like 8-10% of males, I have a degree of red-green colorblindness. Unfortunately, many web designers do not take this group into account when designing web sites and applications. This leaves many features most people enjoy daily unusable or at least hard to read for people with this condition" Eric says.
The simply named Colorblind Web Page Filter may be a solution. It's not fancy and it's still in development stages, but if you type in a URL and pick your color filter (red/green colorblind, grayscale, etc.) according to the type of colorblindness you have it will load up a page that you can hopefully read a little bit better than that white text over kittens. If not, break out the 3D glasses to really spice things up!
Have you ever accidentally visited MySpace? Yeah, we probably have too, though, it was never a noticeable problem. In fact, we can't even remember it happening, but it seems like it has to have happened... right?
Well, this Firefox add-on promises to detect MySpace in Firefox, and provide a pop-up menu to stop unsuspecting web-browsers from hitting up the social network. The plug-in is obviously a joke, but we found a great use for it anyway -- avoiding phishing.
It's called AmIOnMySpace.com? and it can be used to detect the real MySpace site. If for any reason the message doesn't pop-up upon first visiting the social network, you're not on the real site. The biggest problem with using this as a way of avoiding phishing sites is that it doesn't alert users when leaving MySpace, so it's still possible to get attacked from within.
While the Firefox 3 web browser is still in beta, it offers a ton of features that you won't find in Firefox 2. There's full page zoom, full history search, and vastly improved speed and performance with many web services. But there's a downside: many add-ons designed for earlier versions of Firefox will not work with Firefox 3 beta. This week that list got a tiny bit shorter as social bookmarking service del.icio.us released a beta version of a Firefox 3 plugin.
For the most part, the plugin works just like the Firefox 2 plugin, allowing users to quickly tag pages or open a sortable list of bookmarks and tabs in their Firefox sidebar. But there are a few new features includng a new layout for saving bookmarks, a status bar showing network activity, and the ability to jump to tags by pressing F2.
Firefox might not always be the first web browser to get cool new features. But pretty much any time a competitor launches something cool you'll find a Firefox plugin with the same features thanks to the open-source web browser's plugin system and enthusiastic developer base. When Opera launched a "speed dial" system for accessing your most frequently used web pages, Firefox developers released a plugin. And now that Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 8 beta 1, Firefox developers have released a series of plugins that emulate IE8's coolest features.
Activities is an IE8 feature that lets you select web services to add to your right-click context menu. Just select a snippet of text and you can search for it on eBay, plot it on a map, or translate it with Windows Live Translator. Developer Michael Kaply has created a Firefox version of Activities that works exactly the same way. In fact, in order to add services, you download them directly from Microsoft's web page.
Meanwhile Daniel Glazman has created WebChunks, a port of IE8's WebSlices feature. When you add a WebSlice to your browser toolbar, you can essentially see up to date information from a web site without clicking through to the site. For example, weather updates, movie showtimes, or article headlines. WebChunks is designed for Firefox 3 beta, and will not work with Firefox 2.
BookmarkPreviews is an awesome, but kind of useless plugin for Firefox that lets you scroll through thumbnails of bookmarked web pages using an Apple Cover Flow-style browser. When you install the add-on, BookmarkPreviews will create a snapshot every time you visit a page you've already bookmarked. Then when you open your bookmark manager you can scroll through them in graphical form.
The only problem is that we can't imagine a circumstance where it would be faster to scroll through your bookmarks this way than to just click on the one you're looking for. Plus most folks we know use online bookmarking services like del.icio.us to store their bookmarks anyway.
And we're back! After a brief hiatus (sorry about that!), the Squadcast returns, this time with tips on how to trick out your WordPress install to make it as "bloggerrific" as possible. Grant and Christina catch up with uber-WordPresser Alex King to talk about why so many bloggers swear by WordPress.
The Squadcast's The Five takes a look at five of Download Squad's favorite WordPress plugins. Download this episode (mp4) (iPod, iPhone, Nano, AppleTV, Quicktime, VLC)
Compiz Fusion, the merger of Beryl and Compiz 3d desktop managers for Linux, has added a few new toys for the adventurous Linux geek.
First, a colorize filter that frankly doesn't look very useful to us. Ok, so it might be fun to tint everything green, red, or blue for a few minutes but, beyond that it just seems like it would get annoying.
The second, "Shift Window Switcher" is actually pretty sharp. Shift adds Windows Vista style 3d tab switching to the already slick Compiz Fusion package. We're going to go ahead and ask (beg) that Ubuntu 7.10 include this plugin by default. Please? Pretty please?
If you've ever wanted to listen to your iTunes remotely, or share your library between your friends, now you can. SimplifyMedia is a plugin for iTunes (both PC and Mac) which allows limited sharing and encrypted streaming across several computers.
Adding a friend to share is just as easy as adding a buddy in IM, cool!
WordPress is a powerful and very extensible blogging engine that is gaining more CMS (Content Management System) features with each release. As anyone who has downloaded a copy can probably tell, the directory structure is pretty friendly to hacks and plug-ins, but unless you are your own WordPress coding ninja, you might be asking yourself: where exactly can all these themes, plug-ins and hacks be found? Thus the idea for a short roundup of WordPress download sites and communities was born. Following is a starter list of sites for themes, plug-ins, tips and tricks of all kinds, ripe for helping you take your WordPress-powered site as far as you need to go. Since we're sure we haven't found every site for WordPress goodness, feel free to add your favorites in the comments and we'll update this post with the good ones.
Gmail could very well be one of the most hackable web services of all time. One only needs to check our Gmail tag to see what tools are available for enhancing one's experience, and now we have a slick new cross-platform Firefox add-on to link to from our friends at Lifehacker: Better Gmail. As its name suggests, Better Gmail rounds up a number of popular Greasemonkey scripts and other extras into a handy management UI, complete with links to homepages if you need to find out more about any of the included extras. As you can see, this add-on packs a wallop, including many of our old (and new) favorites such as the Macros script (for many more keyboard shortcuts Gmail should really have in the first place), an Unlabelled label hack and a Filter Assistant which brings that handy email client functionality of building filters from a currently selected message. Of course, one could run out and find all these scripts on their own, but Better Gmail takes the clicking out of that process and wraps all this great stuff into one handy extension, complete with the ability to disable it all in one fell swoop in case you need to get back to Gmail's basics.
We're big fans of Backpack, the online PIM organizer with a pioneering KISS philosophy from the wildly successful 37signals. At times, however, Backpack can appear too simple, making it seem like the only way to interact with the service is through its pleasantly minimal web interface. Fortunately, this is entirely not so, and we just stumbled across two handy Firefox add-ons that bring quick navigation and easy clipping to this increasingly useful online info organizer.
First up is Backpack Pages, a simple toolbar button that acts as a simple drop-down bookmark menu for all your pages. As usually with any external Backpack tool, simply enter your username and private API key to get the ball rolling.
Second is a really useful add-on especially for users of Google Notebook or any other web clipping tool out there: Backpack Publish (pictured). Setup is again pretty standard, and now you can select text on any webpage and use this add-on's menu to create a List Item or Note to add to any of your pages without breaking your workflow.
ThinkFree has launched a few different ways for people to startup their own little applications and mashups.
We covered the company last year when it returned from the dead and began offering a web based application suite. ThinkFree now has a plugin available that was released yesterday that gives Wordpress bloggers the ability to drop in MS Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations that can be viewable even if the end viewer does not have the associated Office or Acrobat applications installed. This opens up the ability for bloggers to drop in a powerpoint presentation into their blog posts, or embed excel spreadsheets of information.
The company has also announced their Viewer API which gives people the opportunity to create mashups and applications using the Viewer utility. ThinkFree wants to get the ball rolling with web service companies who they hope will create mashups and applications using the utility. With the API, designers can integrate Viewer files, doc's, xls, or ppt files directly into an online application, giving end users, regardless of Operating systems or plugins, the ability to view files.
ThinkFree is also working on a document exchange product called ThinkFree Docs that has been described as a Flickr for Office files. Through this new location ThinkFree will enable content creators to read, share, get feedback, and source office documents. There is a demo up online now, but the actual site will be up with a redesign in the near future.
Lists of top [anything] are a big hit across the interwebs. They pack a lot of information into a neat list that's easy to comb for exactly what you need. As WordPress keeps gaining momentum and popularity, more and more bloggers are posting lists of their favorite plugins that help them stay on top of their game. Instead of posting a top X list, however, DLS reader Staska decided to aggregate. By using the power of community and this listof top WordPress plugin posts from bloggers around the world, Staska created a Top 30 WordPress Plugins list by tallying each plugin's mention from all those bloggers.
That's a lot of lists, and a lot of aggregating.
The result is a great success, with a strong list that should have something for everyone, and commentary from Staska on the wide array of WordPress plugins that keep the blogosphere runing.
One of the appeals of just about any blogging service, especially one you can install in your own hosting space, is the ability to really make it your own. Whether you have to hack and slash through PHP by hand or you can enjoy the luxury of a vast plugin community, it just feels a little more like a (digital) home when you can put your spin on your own blog. WordPress has just such a booming plugin community, but until now, they've never had their own true resource for posting and downloading plugins. Thanks to the new, official WordPress Plugin directory, the days of aimlessly googling for a plugin to do this or that are a thing of the past. Granted it has a ways to go before it can be called 'comprehensive,' but this is exactly what WordPress has needed for quite some time now. Three columns on the main directory site tell visitors which plugins are popular, fresh out of the oven or recently updated, with a Featured Plugin area front and center to host the flavor of the day. Plugin authors can easily add their plugins to the database via this form, and all the WordPress crew ask is that plugins be GPL Compatible. The only gripe we have so far is that there's no RSS feed for the plugin directory itself. Kind of ironic for a blogging engine, no?
As reported earlier, Launchy is a quick and light launching application for the Windows platform. With the quick press of your Alt + Space Bar keys, a tiny little window will appear awaiting your command.
Wit this new release, Launchy is now better than ever! It comes with a large hand full of skins and you can also choose a different skin by downloading one from the Skin Forums. So you can choose to have that sleek Vista look or that old school Windows Notepad look. Either way, you will be able to get everything up and running in no time now that you do not need to search your computer for that freshly installed application. But the fun doesn't stop there with this newly released full version. Launchy now supports plug-ins as well! It already comes with four plug-ins allowing you to do extra functions such as searching your computer, entering a web address and then being taken to that site and Launchy also automatically catalogs your Firefox bookmarks. The creators will also be creating more plug-ins and they anticipate that other users of the program will create additional plug-ins as well.
WordPress is a powerful and very extensible blogging engine that is gaining more CMS (Content Management System) features with each release. As anyone who has downloaded a copy can probably tell, the directory structure is pretty friendly to hacks and plug-ins, but unless you are your own WordPress coding ninja, you might be asking yourself: where exactly can all these themes, plug-ins and hacks be found? Thus the idea for a short roundup of WordPress download sites and communities was born. Following is a starter list of sites for themes, plug-ins, tips and tricks of all kinds, ripe for helping you take your WordPress-powered site as far as you need to go. Since we're sure we haven't found every site for WordPress goodness, feel free to add your favorites in the comments and we'll update this post with the good ones.
