We all love Firefox for many reasons. One of them is its feature to store usernames and passwords. The best thing about this is, we can see saved usernames and passwords if we forgot them. Here is an excellent add-on which can allow you to export and import saved passwords. Such exported data comes handy when Firefox crashes or you want to set-up a new Firefox on another machine, e.g. laptop.
Tag: Software
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Orkut Theme Generator
One of most frequently asked question by Orkut users to me, is how to generate/create own custom orkut theme. By custom theme, they do not mean anything serious but just want to put their favorite actress’ wallpaper as background on orkut!
Thanks to Gaurav Dua, now any person can create such theme for orkut without any technical knowledge. Just head over to Orkut theme generator page and paste link to your favorite online pic. I linked to my favorite Devils workshop wallpaper created by Johnson. Next select a theme name and hit “Create Theme” button.
On next screen you will see link to your ready and hosted orkut theme.
This is basically a Greasemonkey script so you will need Firefox as well Greasemonkey extension to use this theme. Below is preview of Devils Workshop theme.
Please note one thing that theme created like this can be seen only by you. These are unofficial themes and can not be seen by your friends. If you want to “show” you style to your friends, you have to limit your choice to official Orkut themes only.
Link: Orkut Theme Generator
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Gmail’s 10 Latest Lab Features
Gmail introduced a lab edition in June with 13 features. Over the time they kept adding these features and here is post listing latest lab features.
But before exploring further, for those who missed these lab features completely, these can be activated selectively by going to Lab tab under Gmail Settings.
And here are some cool and latest features:
Right-side chat
Move the chat box to the right side of the inbox. This is good if you have longer chat list which pushes your labels box below. By the way there is a small “options” link below chat box, which let you resize it to 4 different sizes.
Right-side labels
Move the labels box to the right side of the inbox. This is good if you use labels a lot. You can move labels or chat or both boxes on right side.
Default ‘Reply to all’
Make ‘Reply to all’ your default option for responding to emails. Good for developers who collaborate on projects as you will never forget copying to someone in group.
Quote selected text
Quote the text you have selected when you reply to a message. This works best if you use keyboard shortcuts. This type of quoting replies is quite popular with people who spend lots of time on forums or mailing lists.
Navbar drag and drop
Allows you to reorder the items in your navbar using drag and drop. Some Lab features adds extra boxes to your navbar. Enabling this feature can save a lot of scrolling in some cases.
Forgotten Attachment Detector
Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so. There was a greasemonkey script to do this from long time.
Vacation Time!
Lets you specify starting and ending dates for the vacation autoresponder. This is good for guys who forget to setup vacation responder in last minute rush. Using this you can set a vacation responder as soon as you make reservations for your vacation.
Custom Label Colors
Lets you create your own combination of colors for labels. Instead of choosing one of the standard colors from the label dropdown menu, click on Add custom colors. Pick your combination of colors, hit Apply, and enjoy.
Mark as Read Button
Tired of spending all that effort to click on the more actions menu every time you want to mark messages as read without reading them? Now just enable this lab and that is just a button click away!
Go to label
Enable keyboard shortcuts and hit ‘g’ then ‘l’ to display a popup for selecting a label to go to. Quite useful for guys who use labels a lot. Personally I will use labels more often now.
Let us know which lab features you are enjoying and which one feature you are missing in Gmail. Personally, I miss to-do list a lot in Gmail.
Related: 13 More Gmail Lab Features
This is for all Greasemonkey developers who also use Firebug. Firebug is one of the best Firefox extension for developers.
To start with, almost every Greasemonkey developer uses built-in API method “GM_log()” to log debugging messages to Firefox’s javascript console.
While normal javascript developers use Firebug’s API method “console.log()” to log debugging messages to Firebug console.
Now problem is, if you try calling “console.log()” directly from Greasemonkey scripts, it will not work. As Firebug’s console object reside outside Greasemonkey scripts scope.
There are few workarounds to use Firebug console to log Greasemonkey debugging messages. But one which always work for me is detailed below.
Simplest way is to use…
unsafeWindow.console.log()
You can use other firebug logging functions similarly by prefixing unsafeWindow to them. Complete information about Firebug console can be found here.
Next what if you are editing your older Greasemonkey script! A simple way to use text-editors search-and-replace feature and replace all occurrences of “GM_log” with “unsafeWindow.console.log”.
Well it may be nice for some but geeks way is different! I will recommend adding following lines of code at the beginning of your Greasemonkey scripts.
if(unsafeWindow.console){
var GM_log = unsafeWindow.console.log;
}
The beauty of above codes is, it will first check if Firebug console is available. If yes, then all output from GM_log will be sent to Firebug console. And when Firebug is not available, it will simply use Firefox’s built-in javascript console without any error!
Next if you want to switch back to Firefox’s built-in javascript console, you can do that by just removing or commenting above code.
Disable logging for all GM_log calls…
While developing Greasemonkey scripts, we use GM_log a lot to speed-up coding. But once we are done, ideally we should remove all unnecessary GM_log calls from script as keep Firefox or Firebug console busy.
But this may not sound good idea for some guys who code scritps for sites which changes so often. So better approach is to disable logging via GM_log by adding one line of code, as below, in the beginning of script.
var GM_log = function (){};
This will basically assign an empty function to GM_log. Even smarter approach is to use code like below…
var GM_Debug = 0;
if(!GM_Debug) {
var GM_log = function(){};
}
Now all you have to change one character to enable/disable logging.
If you have noticed you are basically assigning a different function to GM_log to override it. Those who are new to javascript may find it little strange, but its perfectly valid!
There are many websites which prefer to disable right-clicking on web-pages specially images. To do this they normally use one of JavaScript ways.
The most popular way is to add following code to element tag on which you want to disable right-clicking.
oncontextmenu="return false;"
For example, say you have code for an image like below…
<img src=”something” />
Change it to…
<img src=”something” oncontextmenu="return false;"/>
Now reason I am posting about this is, popular social networking site Orkut, which I use quite often, started using code like above and disabled right-clicking on album images.
So as usual, we got to do something to get back our right to “right-click”!
GreaseMonkey Script: If you use Firefox and GreaseMonkey, then easiest way to enable right click on any website is to install right to “right-click” script.
JavaScript: If you are not fond of GreaseMonkey, then you can try following JavaScript.
javascript: var items = document.evaluate('//*[@oncontextmenu="return false;"]', document, null, 7 , null); for ( i = 0; i < items.snapshotLength; i++){items.snapshotItem(i).removeAttribute('oncontextmenu');};void(0);
Bookmarklet: You can also use this bookmarklet in Firefox and other standard-compliant browser.
Internet Explorer: If you are an IE user, specially IE 6 then paste following code in address bar and hit enter whenever you stuck. Please note code below is for Orkut only and most likely to break anytime.
javascript: document.getElementById('m').oncontextmenu="";void(0);
Important Note:
From above all solutions, I am planning to take GreaseMonkey solution further. I will add more anti right-clicks hacks soon. As of now this script takes care of most famous way so it should work on many sites.
We can not blindly set “oncontextmenu” attribute to null or “return true” as some sites provides useful functions by overriding browser context-menu. WordPress, Google docs are some popular examples.
If you find a site where right-click is disabled and this script is failing to work, please leave a comment below with page URL and element description where it failed to work. I will try to update this script ASAP.
Link: Install Right to “Right-Click” Script (How?)
I have just created a Greasemonkey script exclusively for Dreamhost. So those who do not use Dreamhost may not find this of any use.
Now this script makes it easy to track your pending rewards under Dreamhost referral program. If you ever used it, then you may know that whenever someone sign-up using your referral link, any commission you earned kept pending for 97 days.
By default, Dreamhost reward panel shows date of joining with other information. I found its quite painful to calculate mechanically how many days left for each pending referral to cash-out. So this script simply add “X days Left” kind of meta-information next to each pending link.
Here are screenshots…
#Before Script:
#After Script:
This is Greasemonkey script. So you will need Firefox and Greasemonkey to make it work.
Link: Dreamhost Pending Reward Days Calculator
Related: Get $50 off while signing-up for Dreamhost (Read More…)
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Saving Display Pic of Any Orkut Profile…
This is one of the most wanted topic related to orkut. Saving display pic of any orkut profile is not just as easy as you are thinking. Right clicking on the profile picture and using “save picture as” option doesn’t work. So solution is to install Single Click Profile Optimizer, a grease monkey script. (how?)
After installing it, just right-click on the profile picture given in your friend list or scrapbook further click on the picture that is opened by the profile optimizer and click on the option of save picture as….
Check the screenshot for further clarification…. (click on it for larger image)
Link: Single Click Profile Optimizer (by Dhruva Sagar)
Just yesterday, I posted about orkuts new “remove friends” option on profiles which made deleting unwanted people from friend-list easy. Today I noticed that a similar option is also added to manage friends page.
As shown in screenshot below, apart from moving friends between different groups, a new option, remove friends, is added to drop-down action menu.
To clean pending friend requests…
- Go to open friend requests tab, on manage friends page.
- Click on Select All option, just beside actions menu.
- Next click on remove friends option from actions menu.
This will delete 20 friend requests at once. If you have like 380 pending friend requests like me, better use greasemonkey script, orkut pending friend requests cleaner. The script will delete all pending friend requests without any human intervention.
Related: Removing unwanted people from orkut friend-list (easy way)
Last month, I posted about ReadAir – an application to read Google Reader from desktop. Now one of the top free desktop-based feed reader, RSS Bandit has added support for Google reader.
RSS Bandit nicely synchronize with Google Reader. If your read an item from Google Reader in RSS Bandit, it will be marked as read and will not show-up again when you log into online Google Reader.
RSS Bandit supports Newsgator already and with added support for Google Reader it will attract many users. Personally RSS Bandit will be my first desktop-based feed reader from now on.
Its free but only for Windows and it requires latest .NET Framework 3.5. Although RSS Bandit is small, please note that .NET 3.5 setup is approximately 200MB in size, so go for direct download if you have slow connection.
Link: RSS Bandit | .NET Framework 3.5
Related: ReadAir – Desktop App for Google Reader (Windows/Linux/Mac)
(via Digital Inspiration)
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Orkuts Theme Feature – FAQ!
Form last few days Orkuts theme feature is creating buzz. I am receiving lots of mails/comments with same questions again and again. This post is an attempt to answer some common FAQ…
Q. Are Orkut Themes officially available for all users?
One word answer is NO. They are limited to few Indian users only as mentioned in this official orkut blog post. But don’t get disappointed, as you can still enjoy this theme feature by using a greasemonkey script as explained here.
Q. How to know if you can use orkuts theme feature officially?
All of below indicate theme feature is available to you…
- When you log into your account you will see ‘change theme’ link beside logout option in top-right corner.
- When you can see themes on your friend profiles. Just check ‘get this theme’ option which will appear then near logout option in top-right corner.
- Go to Edit Profile option. A new tab, themes will be there!
Q. Can these themes be seen my friend on orkut?
If the person visiting your orkut profile also have this theme feature enabled on their account, they will see your profile in your selected theme unless they choose to disable the feature manually as explained below.
This is better than old greasemonkey script & userstyle themes.
Q. I hate themes, I want old, clean & simple orkut back…
YES, you can do that. In fact I have disabled themes on my account.
To disable theme feature completely on your account, go to Edit Skins option and check Disable themes option. You will now get old Orkut interface throughout the site.
If you just want to keep your theme to old orkut but like to see how colorful your friends are then just select the orkut blue theme.
If you still have any other question regarding orkut themes please post it here via comments. I will try to answer it. 🙂
Related: Enjoy orkut themes before they enable on your account