Considering a change

I'm wondering if perhaps it's time to re-organize my Firefox bookmarks, delete the ones I really don't read too much, and keep only the ones I want.  Oh, I'd still keep the bookmarks, but I'd store them online instead of on Firefox.  Things like this can easily be done online these days. 

If I do this, I'll probably just keep using Yahoo! Bookmarks.  I think most of my bookmarks are there anyhow.  There's a risk that any online service could be shut down (although I think it's not as likely with something as big as Yahoo!), but it's easy to export your bookmarks from Yahoo!'s service. 

The one downside I can see is that I'd lose the awesome search capabilities built into Firefox.  You can easily search bookmarks right from the URL bar, and you can also easily use the Places manager. 

I'll definitely consider doing this, because my bookmarks are long past getting out of control.  Any thoughts from my readers?  Is this the way to go, or should I stick with using Firefox's bookmarks?

Five Years Of Firefox

The Firefox web browser is five years old now!  I've been using it for most of those five years.  I love it because it's so customizable and because using it makes me feel part of a larger community.  Firefox is the first browser to be seen as 'cool' and 'in.'  I'm still using it, and I'll keep using it as long as it still works for me.

In honor of Firefox's fifth birthday, here are my Top Five Firefox Add-Ons:

1.  Session Manager

This is a life saver.  If you need to restart your computer, or if it crashes, or if your browser crashes - you're covered.  

2.  Toolbar Buttons

Keyboard shortcuts are great, but they don't cover everything.  I like the ability to add buttons for functions and extensions that I can place wherever in the browser I wish them to be.

3.  Quickdrag

This makes opening links and searching so much faster!  Just highlight or click and drag.  Very, very useful.

4.  Stumbleupon

You need never be bored again with Stumbleupon.  I've found many great sites with this tool.

5.  NoScript

It makes browsing much safer, yet it's easy to use.  Just keep in mind that it's not a replacement for your brain.

Ya gotta have themes too, and my favorite (in fact, the only one I really use) is Whitehart

Firefox slow? Try this

Today I'm browsing around in the Firefox Add-Ons, and I found a little gem that seems like it's going to help me a lot:

Places Cleaner

In the past month or two, I've noticed Firefox's performance slipping.  The program tends to freeze up a lot, especially when I'm typing in a URL or looking through my bookmarks in the organizer.  I figured it was just Windows being Windows or Firefox being Firefox.

Then, I found Places Cleaner and it seems like all will be right with the world once again.

What does it do?  It takes the database of your bookmarks and history and defragments it.  This should lead to a speedier performance and fewer lockups.  I've only used it for ten minutes and I already notice a huge difference.  The organizer launches incredibly quickly now, and searching from the address bar doesn't slow things down.  Of course, I'll realize I'm wrong the first time I do have problems again, but right now it seems like this add-on really works!

I also added Tab Mix Plus last night.  Why didn't I do that sooner?  It's an awesome extension, almost too powerful in some ways.

Yes, I'm geeking out.  Deal with it.

Cool and useful Firefox extension - Cool Previews

Tonight, I discovered a very, very cool extension for Firefox. This could seriously change your browsing habits, and save you time too.

It's called Cool Previews, by the Cooliris company.

Why and how did I download this extension? Well, I was browsing on the New York Times site and wondered if there was a way to preview what appears in a link before you click it. It would be useful for me to know whether to bother clicking the link, you know?

I searched around on the Firefox website and found Cool Previews. It is a Firefox-recommended extension. I decided to install it, and I'm very glad I did.

What does it do? Its basic function is to preview any link you come across on the web. That sounds nice, but it is much better than a simple preview. It's like a browser within the browser! With Cool Previews installed and activated, you will see little blue icons when you mouse over a hyperlink. Hover on the icon (or click - you can choose how to open the preview) and a box will pop up. Inside this box is the website the link goes to, fully functional! You can move the box around and resize it. You really wouldn't need to click on the link at all. There is a limit, though - you can't preview links within the preview box. You can open links in a new tab, though, just like you can with any regular link.

What else does it do? It has a temporary bookmarking feature called 'stacking.' It has the ability to preview images. It allows you to email links to friends directly from the preview. It puts a button on the statusbar so you can turn the previews on and off.

If you like what you've read (and I think this is a great extension after using it for barely half an hour), you can download it from the link above or from its Firefox page.

My Favorite Firefox Extensions

Inspired by my friend Beth's post about her favorite online tools, I thought I would make a similar post of my own. These are a few of my favorite extensions for Firefox 3. If you use Firefox, you should look into these cool extensions, if you aren't already using them.

UPDATES:

10/5/08 - Cool Previews (get a preview of nearly any web link.)

All-in-One Sidebar

This extension gives you a powerful, useful sidebar to make everything easier to access. What can you do with this sidebar? Quite a lot! You can view your history, your add-ons, your downloads, and site information. The best thing about it, I think, is the ability to view your bookmarks in the sidebar. You won't have to mess around with the drop-down menu again! You can also view any webpage in the sidebar (very handy for RSS readers, for example). If you use Showcase, you can view all your tabs in the sidebar.

The sidebar lives in your browser as a thin bar on either side of the window. Click it, and the sidebar opens. There are buttons on the side panel where you access all the features. This extension also has a great number of options you can play with.

Copy Plain Text

This is a very simple, yet useful, extension. All it does is add an option to the Firefox right-click menu that allows you to copy the selected text without any formatting. This is very handy if you're blogging, posting on a message board, or copying text into a word processor. Sometimes, all you want is the text, and this Copy Plain Texts allows you to do just that - copy the plain text.

Extension List Dumper

This is a very important one. It takes information about all of your Firefox add-ons and copies it to the clipboard so you can save it in a word processor. Why do you need this? Well, if for some reason you lose your extensions, or have a corrupt profile, you now have a list of what you installed. You won't have to remember what you were using before your information was lost.

This extension is also great if you simply want to list all of the extensions you have installed. This could be especially helpful if you need some help in the Firefox forums.

Firefox Showcase

I don't usually use too many tabs, but I know some people use dozens. This extension opens a window (or new tab) giving you a view of all the tabs you currently have open. Viewing all the tabs allows you to quickly access what you want without needing to scroll on the tab bar. I use this when I'm making my Flickr Fun Saturday posts. I can quickly see which photos I've opened and easily delete the ones I'm not going to use. The best thing about this extension is the ability to middle-click any tab in the Showcase window to get a larger view of it.

PDF Download

Adobe Acrobat's browser plugin can frequently crash your browser when you open a PDF on the web. PDF Download fights that by allowing you to open a PDF in the external Acrobat software. You have other options too, like saving the PDF or viewing it as an HTML document.

Unfortunately, some websites seem to bypass this extension and somehow force their PDF files to open in the browser. I haven't had any crashes lately, but it's still annoying when it happens.

Quickdrag

Isn't it bothersome to copy and paste URLs just to see a page that isn't linked? Quickdrag makes things much easier. With this, you only need to select a URL and drag it anywhere in the window to open it. I haven't found a way to make the URL open in a new tab except by dragging it to the tab bar. That's not too hard a task, though, so it's not much of a pain. You can also select any text and drag it to make a search. The engine used will be whichever engine is focused in your search bar.

Read It Later

I never thought I would download this one, but it is actually quite useful. It's also quite simple, which I really like. Basically, with this extension you mark links to read later, and they appear in a list accessible via a toobar button. To save a page to read later, just click the check mark in the URL bar. You can also save links through the right-click menu. When you're done reading, just click the check mark again.

If you frequently come across interesting links that you just don't want to read immediately, this is the extension for you.

Session Manager

Browser crashes. Restarts. People who snoop. There are many reasons why you occasionally need to close your browser while you're viewing sites. Session Manager allows you to save your current session so you can open it again at a later time. Firefox does this too, but usually only in the case of a restart. The advantage with Session Manager is that you can save as many sessions as you'd like. You could create a session with just news sites, or your favorite blogs.

When you close the browser, Session Manager asks you if you'd like to save the session, not save the session, or save the session and load it the next time Firefox is started. If you've chosen the first option, Session Manager asks which session you'd like to open when you start Firefox.

Stumbleupon

Stumbleupon goes beyond being a mere extension. It's a bookmark service, social site, and discovery tool. To use it, you sign up for an account and install the Stumbleupon toolbar. You don't have to use the full toolbar - you can move it to another bar if you'd like. I have mine on the menu bar.

How do you use it? What does it do? There are three important buttons - Stumble, thumbs up, and thumbs down. To get a new site, click the Stumble button. When you sign up, you tell the service what you're interested in. There are many categories and many dozens of topics to choose from. When you Stumble, the service gives you a randomly-selected page that matches your selected interests. You can also stumble through Wikipedia, news sites, other stumblers' pages, or do a search.

If you like a site, give it a thumbs up and it will be saved to your Stumbleupon profile. You can edit tags and give the site a review. You can give a thumbs up to any site you like, even if you didn't stumble it. If you don't like a site, give it a thumbs down. The more you use it, the better it gets.

Stumbleupon is an excellent time-waster and one of the best extensions out there.

Toolbar Buttons

Firefox's toolbars are very useful, but the number of buttons available is limited. If there's a task you wish you had a button for, it might exist in this extension. Toolbar Buttons gives you many more buttons to add to your toolbars. Name a task for Firefox, and this extension has probably given it a button. I downloaded this specifically to get a button for the Bookmarks manager.

UpDown

This extension is so useful, you'll wonder why it isn't already a default feature in Firefox. When you download this, it adds a button to your statusbar. Left click on the button, and you're taken to the top of whatever webpage you're viewing. Right click it, and you'll be taken to the bottom of the same page. This saves you so much scrolling! I find it especially useful for Flickr pages, where I can instantly go to the bottom to add a comment.


If these extensions sound good to you, click on the links and download them! If you have any good recommendations for me, leave them in the comments.

All organized

I spent most of today tagging my Firefox bookmarks. Firefox now allows you to do that, and I finally decided to take advantage. I actually enjoyed the process somewhat. Firefox made the process very easy. In the Bookmark Organizer, the main panel lists the bookmarks for the selected folder. Click on a bookmark, and you can edit the title, URL and tags. Type in the tags and separate them with commas, and they'll automatically appear. New tags are saved as you type. If you can't remember what tags you've created, Firefox has given you a list of your tags underneath the editing area! Check the relevant tags, and you're done.

The only things I think could make the bookmark tag editing better are mass tagging and auto-complete. However, you can copy and paste the tags between different bookmarks to make things easier.

Now, when I want to find a site, I simply need to search for it. I can search by title or tag. I can even search multiple tags in case I want to see, for instance, all the sites I've tagged with "articles," "music" and "humor."

I also appreciate the fact that I won't have to paste a bookmark into multiple folders unless I choose to do so. If a bookmark fits in more than one place, it gets more than one tag!

A few days ago, I also completed my photo-tagging project for Picasa. I really hope I don't have to re-do that ever again. Picasa does not make it easy to tag. There is no list of tags to browse. It does have auto-complete, though!

I realize this is a completely boring post. All the same, I wanted to share my activities on my blog.

Firefoxing

I have finally upgraded to Firefox 3! I was waiting for my extensions to upgrade before I installed the new version. Most of my extensions are now compatible with FF 3, and I really wanted to check it out, so I installed it this morning.

The visual look of the browser has really changed! I made the icons small, because I thought the default was far too large. This new version is quite a bit faster than FF 2! When I restart the browser, all the tabs reload very quickly. On the previous version, I would have to wait, and wait, and wait for the tabbed pages to fully come back. I think pages load faster generally in this new version.

I actually like the new Awesome Bar feature. It's good for a quick search for a site. Also, you can search for the actual title of the page, not just the URL.

I haven't tried the new bookmarking system yet. I'm very used to my setup of folders, so I don't know if I want to play around with tagging too.

One thing that I am not happy about is the behavior of my Yahoo! Toolbar in FF 3. I haven't been able to log into it to see my personalized buttons. No matter how many times I refresh, it won't show anything but the standard buttons. I hope I can get that figured out soon.

Overall, I'm very happy with Firefox 3 so far. It has enough new features to feel new, but works enough like the old version that I can use it just like I used to.

A Few Of My Favorite Things, Part 3: Websites and Blog Posts

I'm back again with more lists:

Favorite newly-discovered websites of 2007:

1) Netvibes. I like to use this as my start page. You can put anything on it - RSS feeds, search boxes, to-do lists, and much more.
2) Stumbleupon. It's a social site. It's a bookmark service. It's a Firefox extension. It's the coolest thing ever! With Stumbleupon, you have no excuse to be bored online. You can find my Stumbleupon page here.
3) NPR Monitor Mix. Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney, now writes a blog for NPR, and it's great! She asks very thoughtful questions and does much more than the typical music blogger. And she has the credibility of being a famous musician.
4) New York in Black and White. Not really a site, but a collection of historical black-and-white photos of New York City. If you love photography, NYC, or both, you'll love this page. (Doesn't seem to be loading on 12/21/07. I hope the photos aren't gone!)
5) Makeuseof. This helpful site finds the best sites, tools, freeware, and more, and tells you all about it. Good stuff!
6) Good Reads. I've always wanted to keep track of the books I read, and now I can!
7) Eugene Weekly Blog. This is the local 'alternative' liberal paper. It's free, and free to read online, and now their writers have a blog. You never know what they'll post about next, and I really like that.
8) The A.V. Club. If it has to do with pop culture, the writers at this site will usually write about it, and well.
9) Basic Instructions. One of the funniest comics (web or otherwise) I've ever seen.

Favorite 'Welcome To The Pond' Blog Posts of 2007:

• January 15 - The last.fm meme.
• January 18 - 'Revolver Soul.'
• March 3 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Funny cats.'
• March 6 - Take Me Back Tuesday 'party songs.'
• March 11 - We are the champions!
• Flickr Fun Saturday's Year In Review (here, here, here and here.)
• March 29 - The best of my Black and White U of Oregon photo set.
• March 30 - Top Five on Friday 'top five albums you can't live without.'
• April 6 - My roller coaster rant.
• April 10 - Take Me Back Tuesday 'Friends.'
• May 7 - Monday Music Mambo 'Music University.'
• May 25 - VH1 Rock Honors.
• June 1 - Top Five On Friday 'Impulse albums.'
• June 1 - 40 years of Sgt. Pepper.
• June 30 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Fruit.'
• July 9 - Monday Music Mambo 'Rock and roll favorites.'
• July 10 - First impression of Smashing Pumpkins' new album.
• July 21 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Photographical band.'
• July 26 - Thoughts on Elvis Costello.
• July 28 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Colorful.'
• Scandinavian Festival memories and two reports from this year.
• August 7 - Live review of Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True.
• August 10 - Top Five On Friday 'Artists you loved in college.'
• August 14 - Jonny Lang and Los Lonely Boys concert report.
• August 21 - The first 'No Reservations' post.
• August 22 - Pond Prompts 'Friends.'
• August 23 - Top Five On Friday 'Recommended albums.'
• August 23 - I discover twice-posted photos.
• August 27 - Rave with the Raventones.
• September 3 - 'No Reservations' in Hong Kong.
• September 5 - The 'Reconsidering Machina' project.
• September 8 - Five years of my blog.
• September 10 - VMAs rant.
• September 11 - College kids and pot music.
• September 14 - Favorite Beatles song.
• September 17 - Pond Prompts 'defining kindness.'
• September 21 - Top Five On Friday 'theme songs.'
• September 22 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'colors.'
• September 24 - Pond Prompts: Beautiful art and being someone else.
• September 28 - Rock Hall of Fame thoughts.
• September 30 - Pond Prompts 'I remember when.'
• October 4 - Pond Prompts 'A perfect winter day.'
• October 5 - Top Five on Friday 'Cover songs.'
• October 15 - I complain about Bloglines Beta, and they respond!
• November 3 - At the UO v. ASU football game.
• November 10 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Food photography.'
• November 21 - Things that need to go away.
• December 10 - Flickr Fun Saturday 'Happiness.'
• December 14 - Odds and ends.

That took a long time, and apparently I posted many good things in September. As you can see, I posted quite often in 2007! Many of the posts were plain ol' memes, but I think the above are my favorite and/or best posts.

Block this!

Here's something interesting: Firefox ad-blocker extension causes angst. Yahoo! News doesn't archive articles, so here's the scoop: Jack Lewis, owner of the blog jacklewis.net, has blocked Firefox users from viewing his site. He says that Firefox users who install the Adblock Plus extension are, essentially, taking money away from web site owners who depend on ad revenue to run their sites. On the opposite side, Adblock Plus creator Wladimir Palant says that his extension wouldn't be needed if people weren't annoyed by ads in the first place.

My take? I don't mind ads on the internet. Most of the time I don't even notice them. Sometimes they might even be funny or amusing. I've been known to "kick the football through the tire" on those "get a ringtone if you do this" ads. It's kind of fun to do.

What I don't enjoy are ads that interfere with the browsing experience. Ads that make noise when you don't want it (I appreciate ads that let you turn the audio off or on, with 'off' as default). Ads that pop up right in the browser, making you find that little 'x' to close it. Ads that flash on and off. Ads that occasionally malfunction and block some of the text. And, of course, ads that pop up.

Site owners who use those kinds of ads are no better than spammers or mail advertisers. It should be my decision to make, either pay attention to an ad or focus on the actual content of the site. Ads that demand attention get on my bad side.

For the record, I use Firefox and do not use the Adblock extension. I find it's just more trouble than it's worth.

Finally Done

Well that took long enough! I've finally added labels to the majority of all 1300-some posts on this blog! Now you can read all 638 (and growing!) meme posts I've done, or see all my music-related posts, or all of my concert reports. Navigating this old thing just got easier!

I don't think I'm quite done messing with the labels, though. I can think of some that I would like to add or adjust. I used my gut instinct for many of them - what constitutes "news," for example? The "news" label, to me, is for anything on this blog that I brought to your attention either about myself, this blog, or anything else. "Random" refers to posts with more than one subject or posts that are outside of my usual topics. Like I said, I just went with my gut. If you see any posts you think are mis-labeled, let me know and I'll make the appropriate changes if I think they're needed.

Things I've learned from this experience:

- I'm quite disturbed by the number of memes I've done on this blog. My first meme came in the first two weeks of writing, and the madness hasn't stopped since that day. I think the "meme" label will be useless to you all, so feel free to click on the individual meme names.

- I get far more comments than I think I do. Of course, past a certain date, there are no comments because I switched comment providers (enetations to Blogger comments) midway through my blogging experience.

- Firefox 2.0 is awesome for including the new spell-checking feature! I'm not a bad speller, I just mis-type things sometimes. I won't say that I'm perfect, because sometimes I do simply spell a word wrong, but this new spell-checker has come quite in handy. Now I won't look like an incompetent fool who pretends he's a writer.

Overall, I really enjoy this new Blogger. It's better, faster and easier to use, and it looks similar to the last version of Blogger! Typing all these labels on the old version would have taken three times as long because each post would have to re-publish. Not so with the beta! Thank you, Google!

I just love Firefox. I have a folder of blog links in my bookmarks. These are blogs I haven't linked to yet, but still enjoy reading. Today I randomly wondered if I could put the folder on my toolbar and have the list of blogs drop down for easy access. Well, I found out that I can! If I want to read a blog now, I can just click on the toolbar and read instead of clicking on the bookmark menu, clicking on the blogs folder and THEN finally selecting a blog to read.

Firefox may be relatively new, but I think it will become more popular and easier to use over the years. Go here to get the Firefox browser and discover how easy things can be!

I got with the program, joined the cool kids, and FINALLY downloaded the Firefox browser. I've been using Netscape for a while and didn't really see any reason to change, but the fact you can get the Yahoo! toolbar with Firefox changed my mind. Firefox is actually REALLY easy to install and use. You can import your favorites/bookmarks from IE or Netscape, and it will even add any toolbar buttons and internet history you had with your old browser!

I've only used it for like ten minutes, but so far I like it a lot. At the very least, I now have three browser options instead of just two. Now I'm one of the cool people with Firefox!!