Consumer Corner : browsers

Google Chrome Extensions in the Works

Mike Phillips — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Google's Chrome browser will be getting extensions very soon, welcome news to users. According to analysis from CNET, Chrome currently has about 3.6% market share: far behind Safari (18.2%), Firefox (37.4%) and Internet Explorer (40.7%). Expect that to change. Firefox was a hit with early adopters, then became a real force when the extensions started pouring in, accounting for their narrow gap behind IE. While Chrome has a long way to go, it will certainly gain share once the extensions become available.

One of the first extensions rolled out will be an ad blocker - a very user-centric application, and apparently the single most requested. Also planned are Flashblock, Privacy control and Parenetal control. Another extension will come from Web of Trust (WOT), a security watchdog for online threats that will display rankings of trustworthiness next to links. That's kind of interesting when you think of Yahoo's latest push to users, claiming to be the most secure browser on the 'Net.

For website owners, it will become increasingly important to test your site in Chrome - especially if your site caters to the tech-savvy, early adopter crowd. For developers, this presents a tremendous opportunity to get in front of users. Check out Chromium's (Google's open source development tool) guidelines to developing extensions to get a head start on what will be a heated race.

Firefox Friday: Split Browser Add-on

Mike Phillips — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:28:00 GMT

Tabbed browsing is great, constantly swtiching between tabs is not. If you need to view two or more tabs at the same time, check out the Split Browser add-on. Click on any tab, then select "Split" from your browser menu. You can choose to split left, right, above or below, and tile all current tabs vertically or horizontally. This can be extremely useful when you need to reference while you're writing, editing or updating a Web page, or want to browse a few sites simultaneously.

The split tab is fairly independent. It can be refreshed by clicking on the top bar and you can navigate to other pages through the drop-down navigation bar. One point of interest: some Web pages will automatically refresh when you split the tab, so be careful if you're working on something important. You might want to save your work before splitting the tab.

Comment, Collaborate on Any Element of Any Web Page

Mike Phillips — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:17:00 GMT

Reframe It is an extension (available for both Firefox and IE) that allows you to make comments on any page or portion of a page and share that comment with the entire Reframe It community, or your chosen contacts.

Here's how it works: Sign up for an account and download the extension. A toolbar is installed on the right side of your browser. When you find something of interest on a Web page, extend the toolbar and highlight the portion of the page. Then you can make a comment on whatever it is you highlight. You can then choose to make those comments public or private. Of course, for others to see your comments, they will need to download the extension as well. You can create groups that are either public, semi-private, or exclusive to those you invite.

Below is a partial screen shot of me making a comment on WebsiteMagazine.com's home page, and selected to share the comment both publicly in a group and exclusively with the newly-created Website Magazine group. You can see the highlighted portion of the page, the expanded toolbar, my comments and my sharing selections.

It's hard to imagine that this extension will see Internet-wide adoption (because a download is necessary and because you have to use the toolbar), but I do see some practical uses. It could serve as a nice collaboration tool for businesses - both for use in design and for gathering input and feedback from around the Web. It could be a nice way to generate and share ideas throughout your company, across all pages of your website - even on competitors' sites. Should you have considerable website traffic and participation, it could even serve as a way to get feedback from your consumers. Although, it will probably be a tough sell to get them to download an application.

So far, the biggest drawback (outside of the need for collaborating parties to install the extension) is the toolbar on the right. It's stuck there. I would prefer a small button in my existing toolbars or somewhere else on the browser page, even in the "Tools" menu. I don't need the toolbar there at all times.

One-click Visual Access and Sharing of Your Favorite Sites

Mike Phillips — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:04:00 GMT

I recently wrote about Apptism, a Firefox extension that presents a visual of thumbnails of your favorite websites to speed up your daily browsing habits. It follows on the heels of Chrome and it's popular feature of showing thumbnails of your most visited sites. There's a new player in the game in Tizmos. This site has much of the same functionality, displaying thumbnails of your chosen sites. But there is an interesting feature.

After signing up for an account, you can choose to make your page public. Then, if you share the link www.tizmos.com/yourusername, others will be able to see your collection of chosen sites. This might be an interesting way to keep your followers up-to-date about new and interesting sites you've found, or a link to include in a newsletter about some great new resources for your audience. After all, visual is almost always better.

Featured Add-on: Fast Dial Brings a Little Chrome to Firefox

Mike Phillips — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:38:00 GMT

One of the early popular features of Google's Chrome Browser is the start page - where all of your most recently visited pages are displayed in a thumbnail view - also a feature in Opera with Speed Dial.

There is a new, updated Firefox extension out there that not only mimics this functionality, but it works pretty well too. Fast Dial (more than six million downloads) sits in your Firefox toolbar - click it and you can start adding websites by clicking on the empty thumbnail view and entering a URL (see image below - a small part of my Fast Dial page.) Right-click anywhere outside of your thumbnails and you can customize the page by adding more thumbnails (up to 100), adjusting thumbnail size, fonts, background colors and more.

Once you have your page loaded, click on the thumbnail to be taken to that page. Right-click any of the thumbnails and you can adjust the properties, remove or refresh the thumbnail. A nice feature of Fast Dial is that whenever you open a new tab, it is loaded with all of your thumbnails for easy access to those pages - this keeps you from needing to type in a URL or start clicking around for your bookmarks. Or, you can click the Fast Dial icon in your toolbar to open your page in the current tab. Should you visit a page that you would like to add to your Fast Dial page, simply right-click the tab and you will see the option to "Add to Fast Dial."

Overall this extension provides an easy way to navigate to pages you frequent. When you become accustomed to using Fast Dial, you'll notice that it shaves a little time off your browsing experience and can even make you a little more productive. Along with Google Chrome, you're also getting a taste of a more visual browsing experience, something you're going to see more of in the future. Next week, we'll take a look at some of the emerging 3D and visual browsers available today to consumers.

Editor's note: After installing the add-on, you will need to relaunch Firefox. There have been some complaints that Fast Dial interferes with the address bar in some browsers. I experienced some brief difficulties, but was able to fix the problem by simply closing, then restarting Firefox once again. I have not experienced any problems since.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Productivity

Mike Phillips — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:23:00 GMT

You might be surprised at how much more effective you can be online with the proper keyboard shortcuts. Reaching for you mouse, right-clicking, double-clicking, dragging ... it can all be very time consuming. While it may seem like a lot to take in at first, learning shortcuts can make your online and offline experience much more productive (CTRL+Z is a life-saver). And you will be amazed at how quickly you can commit them to memory. Below are some resources for shortcuts. Take some time to learn a few important ones and you'll be hooked.

Mashed Life Offers One-Click Secure Login to All Your Sites

Mike Phillips — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:49:00 GMT

With the abundance of social networks out there and the need to login to just about every site you visit to get what you want, remembering passwords and login IDs can be a major hassle. Not to mention the security risk presented when using the same password for every site, just so you can remember them.

Mashed life offers a browser, bookmark-based system that lets you log in to all of your favorite sites with one click. When you set up an account, you enter all your user names and passwords for each site. Then, when you're ready to visit that site, you click on the Mashed life bookmark and you're instantly logged in. You can also share site logins with others and track their usage of your login ID sessions.

For iPhone and iPod touch users, this could be a real time-saver. Instead of finding the login space on a small screen, expanding the window, then using the touch keypad, you can launch Mashed life on your device and instantly login to any site.

There's nothing worse than forgetting an ID or password, then needing to get an email sent, recover the info, reset the password ... Mashed life seems to be a viable solution. The site is endorsed by TURSTe, the Better Business Bureau and VeriSign, so security seems to be a top priority.

Browsing Far and Wide with Widexplorer

Mike Phillips — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

I'm always skeptical of new browsing techniques. Mostly, because they never seem to deliver on their promises and can never offer anything that I didn't already have.

Widexplorer is different.

This site offers side-scroll browsing over multiple sites. Instead of opening new tabs and navigating to individual sites, then clicking back-and-forth between tabs, you get it all in one shot. Perhaps the best feature is the tabs across the top. Click "buzz" for example, and you get side-by-side, fully-interactive pages from Digg, Yahoo Buzz, Delicious, Reddit, Mixx, Technorati and popurls. Click on a link and a new window opens with that page.

If you decide to search, enter your term(s) and you are presented results from Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, YouTube, MSN Live Search, Scribd and Delicious. And if you're using two or more monitors, stretch the window across all screens for an even better experience. It does take some time to load all the pages, so expect to wait for a few seconds. But it's worth it. Try it out. You will be impressed.

Mozilla Names Best Firefox 3 Extensions

Mike Phillips — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:18:00 GMT

Mozilla's Firefox browser opened the door to a custom browsing experience for millions, so its no surprise that they would run a contest to feature the best in their customization tools. Extend Firefox 3 examined over 100 new extensions and add-ons and came up with a few winners.

They include some Web design tools and a music extension from last.fm, but mostly focus on bookmarking utilities and tagging. Take a look at the official site for the winners and accompanying descriptions.

Mozilla's Concept Series

Mike Phillips — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:48:00 GMT

Embracing change, the community and open-source software has been a real strong suit for Mozilla. And they are continuing their winning ways with the Concept Series. In short, Mozilla wants to know your vision of the future of the Web. They're looking for designers, developers and regular Jane and John Doe's to share ideas for the next generation of the Web. You can submit mockups, working prototypes or even just some ideas to get the ball rolling. Visit the Concept Series site to see a few early concepts and to share your ideas with the community.