With Firefox 3's Download Day upon us, a lot of folks are getting their first peek at the newest version of the popular browser. One of the first things you'll notice is the "Awesome Bar," a new feature that drops down a list of sites from your history and bookmarks as you type. For example, you could type "d," and your bookmark for Download Squad would pop up, along with downforeveryoneorjustme.com, if you've recently visited it.
For some people, this is going to be handy, but others are going to hate it. We have mixed opinions about the Awesome Bar here at Download Squad, so we're going to show you how to turn it off. First, go to your Firefox settings by putting "about:config" into the location bar. Click past the warning message, and scroll down to browser.urlbar.maxRichResults. This sets how many recommendations the Awesome Bar will display -- it's 12 by default, but you want to change it to 0.
Now your location bar should act more the one you're used to from Firefox 2. It'll still autocomplete addresses of sites you've been to, but the behavior that's been annoying some people so much will be gone. Alternately, an extension called Oldbar will give you back Firefox 2's dropdown behavior.
iBreadcrumbs is a browser toolbar you can use to record the websites you visit while you're working on a particular project, so you can find your research again or share your sources with someone else. Sure, you could do this manually, by posting your finds to del.icio.us or a similar bookmarking service, and giving them all the same tag, but iBreadcrumbs makes that look like way too much work. All you have to do is click start, and everything gets saved automatically.
Your sessions (Breadcrumbs) each get saved to their own dedicated page, where you can organize them and add additional notes. You can combine a new Breadcrumb with an existing one, which makes the service useful for longer research projects. There's also a social aspect to the site: you can add friends for easy collaboration. iBreadcrumbs is flexible enough that we're sure it can be applied to all sorts of non-research functions. Don't be put off by the "University" field in the sign-up process - this service isn't just for academics.
Web telephony service Jaduka has launched a bunch of new tools that make it easy to initiate telephone to telephone calls over the web. The most basic service is called dukaDIAL, and it allows you to enter any two phone numbers to initiative a phone call. DukaDIAL will call one number and then the other and initiate a connection. No computer headset or microphone required. Jaduka doesn't charge anything for these calls, but your telephone provider might.
Jaduka offers several other services that use the same basic technology. For example, dukaBAR is a browser toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer. Once it's installed you can click a button and automatically detect any phone number on any web page. A telephone icon will show up next to those phone numbers, and if you click on that icon, Jaduka will initiate a phone call between your number and the number on the page. Skype offers a similar browser plugin, but with Skype you're making a PC to phone call, while Jaduka initiates phone to phone calls.
There's also a dukaBuzz widget which you can install on any web page to allow visitors to leave listen to voice comments, and a dukaLINK tool for creating clickable links that will initiate phone calls.
Microsoft has just released a new beta of its MSN Toolbar. Wait, wasn't it the Windows Live Toolbar in the last release? It's starting to look like Microsoft might have an identity crisis...
The new MSN Toolbar beta is now powered by Silverlight, Microsoft's own cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering interactive applications on the Web, which has just recently reached version 1.0.
The Toolbar itself is what you've come to expect from Toolbars: a search pane with lots of extra links to content and sites run by the Toolbar's publisher. The MSN Toolbar uses Windows Live Search and includes customizable at-your-fingertips MSN content.
We wish we could tell you that downloading and installing the Toolbar was a snap. Well, it wasn't. Continuing Microsoft's maddening tradition of making its software nigh impossible to download, with the requisite WGA checks, and Live ID passports, etc...downloading the MSN Toolbar was anything but simple.
StumbleUpon is a web discovery service that makes it easy to find cool and interesting web sites. All you have to do is install a browser toolbar and start hitting the "stumble" button whenever you're bored. The service also begins to get a sense of your tastes as you give various pages a thumbs up or down.
But there's at least one problem with StumbleUpon: There're no toolbar for Opera, Safari, or any web browsers besides Internet Explorer and Firefox. So what's a bored Opera users to do? Well, fortunately StumbleUpon has a nifty demo feature that lets you stumble pages using a virtual toolbar. All you have to do is enter http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url= into your browser's URL window, and then add the site that you want to start at. For example, http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url=http://www.downloadsquad.com/.
You should now see a virtual toolbar with all the features of the regular StumbleUpon toolbar. But since this is just a demo, you can't actually vote on sites or submit new sites. And there's no way to enter your account information. But you can hit the stumble button as many times as you like.
When you're using a Google service like Gmail or Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you'll notice a little menu bar at the top of your screen with links to other Google services. This is kind of handy if you can't remember the URLs for each service, but otherwise it's not particularly useful.
iGoogleBar is a Firefox add-on that adds a little oomph to that menu bar by showing previews for each Google app. For example, if you're using Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can tell at a glance how many unread items you have in Google Reader or Gmail. Or you can click on the icons for a preview of your latest messages.
The toolbar only shows up when you're visiting a Google page, and it doesn't work with all Google services. For example, while you can preview your Google Notebook contents, when you're actually on the Google Notebook page the toolbar doesn't show up. It also takes a moment for the toolbar to load, so you might not notice it at first.
Web design has come a long way in the last ten years. But some people still just don't seem to understand that there are a handful of mistakes that will make a web page pretty much unreadable.
While dark gray may be your favorite color, setting your page background to that color and then leaving the text black is just going to make your web page unreadable.
Fine print may be fun if you're trying to trick readers into signing away their firstborn child when they register for a service, but that's about all small fonts are good for.
Pages with textured backgrounds.
IE Surfgear provides solutions to each of these problems. The application adds three icons to your Internet Explorer toolbar. One will automatically resize any text in a tiny font to a readable font size while leaving other text on the page untouched. The next will remove background colors from any text. And the third removes textured page backgrounds.
IE Surfgear is freeware, but if you'd like to see how it works before downloading it, check out the demo on the product home page.
Are you the sort of person who likes to bookmark interesting web pages on del.icio.us, submit important or odd articles to digg, share rumors with Truemors, and send funny pictures of cats to your Twitter followers? Then have we got a Firefox add-on for you.
Sharealic is a Firefox add-on that works with Firefox 2, 3, and Flock and Songbird. It adds a handy menu to Firefox that lets you submit any web page to a ton of social bookmarking sites or similar services with just a few clicks. Sure, there are plenty of other ways to share items with your friends, but if you like to spread your love across multiple services, Shareaholic can save you a lot of time.
Shareaholic also lets you know at a glance how many times a page has been dugg or submitted to del.icio.us. Of course, if you'd rather submit a site to multiple services all at once, you might want to check out the Mahalo multi-submit toolbar. Shareaholic requires you to submit your links to one service at a time.
Google Toolbar version 5 for Internet Explorer has just been made available as a public beta. Does the beta tag scare you? Not to worry; Google's beta tag has traditionally meant something a little more polished than most beta software (for example, Gmail is still in beta, as is Picasa).
Version 5 introduces a number of new features, including access to your Toolbar settings from any computer that you log into with your Google Account, improved suggestions for broken links, and new keyboard navigation and access.
The keyboard navigation is simple and sweet. From inside a browser with Toolbar installed, the global shortcut Alt+G places your cursor in the Google Toolbar search box. Pressing the Tab key brings keyboard focus to the button placed immediately after the search box, and right and left arrow keys move focus between buttons.
The ability to access your Toolbar settings after signing into your Google account fits into Google's focus for giving unity to your browsing experience, whether you be on your home, work, or laptop computer. Google already has other tools to help accomplish this (e.g. Google Browser Sync, though that is only available as a plugin for Firefox), and Toolbar access is a nice addition.
You'll need Internet Explorer 6.0 or later in order to install Google Toolbar version 5.
Have your ever been randomly searching for something online, only to realize you closed a window and cannot for the life of you remember what website you were on? You might be able to check your browser history or use a bookmarking tool. But what if you want to share your browsing records and let other users see where you've been?
Hooeey lets you record eveyr site you visit. You need a hooey account and a browser toolbar in order for hooey to do its thing. The toolbar then tracks the sites you have visited in online folders allowing you to check out analytical reports and share links.
So if you are up for letting friends know where you have been, hooeey will gladly share your browsing patterns with them.
When we heard that AOL (this blog's parent company) was coming out with a new version of Desktop for Mac, we were pretty excited to see what they'd been up to since the last release five years ago. Now that we've had a chance to play with it, we like it but think it's still got a ways to go before there's a compelling reason to leave behind whatever browser / IM / email combo you're using now.
Though this new version of Desktop for Mac is still in beta, it seems stable. We tested Desktop on a new generation iMac and a MacBook Pro and it ran just fine on both. System requirements include a PowerPC G4 or greater, OS X 10.4 or higher, and at least 256 MB RAM. Surprisingly, Desktop only needs 60 MB of hard drive space (Firefox alone needs 52 MB).
Last year eBay entered into an advertising agreement with Yahoo, part of that agreement was to build a co-branded toolbar. It's now available.
The new eBay toolbar uses both Yahoo and eBay features to power it. With it users can search for items on eBay or Half.com, and search with Yahoo using Yahoo Local, Yahoo Video and Yahoo Answers among others. The toolbar also has one click access to Yahoo Mail, and gives direct access to eBay.com. Complete with account guard to protect auction accounts and eBay auction Alerts.
The eBay toolbar featuring Yahoo is currently available for Internet Explorer Windows users only, with a Firefox version in development.
Could Mister Wong hold the fortune cookie you've been waiting for in social bookmarking? European users think so.
Mister Wong is a social bookmarking site from Germany that's up against the strong del.icio.us, Furl, Sphere and Ma.gnolia. They have a lot of traffic hitting their European specific sites, but what could their recently launched English specific site offer that differentiates them from others currently on the market? Mister Wong has all of the things you would expect from an online bookmarking tool including a Firefox toolbar where bookmarks can be checked and submitted. They also have some interesting features like the ability to make bookmarks private, groups, buddymatching bookmarks, and private messaging. Mister Wong is also accessible on mobile devices.
Mister Wong was hitting more than 2 million visitors in Europe alone, that tops what Furl and Blinklist currently have so it's growing, just not into del.ici.ous territory as of yet. That could change as Wong users can choose to import their bookmarks from del.icio.us. Mister Wong's English site is currently in closed beta, you can sign up on their site to be notified when it's open.
LeapTag is a new way to discover all of the content you are interested in. Its way to read RSS feeds that enables users to locate news, blogs, books and other sources of material that match personal interests. However, it is not an RSS feed reader.
Users can sign up and download a browser toolbar. Through this toolbar you subscribe to tags and topics. LeapTag then scowers the web and finds links that you might like. The system learns by how much you like the items, and improves the results it lays out.
The download for this application is quite heavy, and it is still in beta form so things could change. Not only does LeapTag require a browser based toolbar with a new sidebar, but it also requires a Windows or Mac application to keep things running. For an alternative check out StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us.
Compete aims to help users by showcasing websites that are trusted, transparent and add value to both the end user and the internet in general.
Compete has a few different products running, SnapShot, Toolbar, and Search. Snapshot is a handy service that provides traffic history and competitive analysis (similar to Statsaholic), which is great for search gurus and online marketing individuals. Toolbar is a browsing tool for IE and Firefox that provides real time SnapShot information to its users. Complete Search is built on Yahoo's search technology, and weaves in SnapShot results to provide trust scores and search results.
This site and the tools it offers isn't for everyone, but those that only care to be presented with what Compete sees as safe, popular and valuable to visitors might find it useful.
iBreadcrumbs
