Archive for the 'Software' Category

FireFox StumbleUpon Stumble Button

July 22, 2008 in Software and Tutorials. 12 Comments

This isn’t the typical stumble button that shows/hides the StumbleUpon toolbar. This is the actual stumble button which loads random pages.

StumbleUpon is an excellent way to browse the web by randomly ’stumbling’ upon websites you probably have never heard of, based on your taste. Most modern browsers have plugins or extensions to facilitate the task of ’stumbling’, usually in the form of a clunky toolbar, such as StumbleUpon’s Official FireFox Extension. This toolbar works fine but might seem like overkill for many, adding what many think is an unnecessary toolbar full of many features one might not even use. It’s possible to disable/hide many of these features, but the toolbar remains, taking up vertical screen real-estate. After much dabbling around, I managed to hack up an easy way to make it so that it only shows the stumble button. Then you can move this button around to wherever you like. Here is the end result:

Stumble Button

Stumble Button

To achieve this, you will need to of course have the StumbleUpon Official FireFox Extension installed, make a simple edit to about:config, and then add a userchrome style using the Stylish Extension.

First, install the StumbleUpon extension and go to its settings, which can be found by going to your add ons window and clicking on StumbleUpon, then Options. Now, make sure that it looks exactly like this:

StumbleUpon Settings

StumbleUpon Settings

Once you have it like that, you should only have the stumble button and the thumbs up/down icons on the toolbar. Next, you will want to install Stylish. Once installed, go to the Stumble Button UserStyle Page and click the Load Into Stylish button, and confirm the action.

Finally, you will have to head over to about:config by copying and pasting that into the address bar, then hitting enter. Once there, type stumble.right-justify-width into the filter box, and you should get one result. Double click on it and set it to 0, then restart FireFox.

Upon restarting, you should now be able to move the button around to wherever you like, by right clicking anywhere on the menu bar (Like on the file menu) and hitting customize. Now you can click the stumble button to land on a random page based on your StumbleUpon settings (If you chose you like technology stuff, it’ll give you technology pages, or a combination of all your favorite categories, etc.).

If you would still like to be able to rate sites without having the thumbs up and down buttons, you can go to the StumbleUpon Extension settings and go to the Shortcuts tab. Enable the stumbling shortcuts and configure to your taste.

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How to Add Netvibes as an RSS Reader in FireFox 3

July 4, 2008 in Software, Tutorials and Web. 2 Comments

I recently switched to NetVibes from iGoogle. I had been an iGoogle user for a long time now, a few years, but it was beginning to look too clunky and unhelpful. An update is due (And developers already have access to it) but it still seems pretty lacking and the only major addition seems to be a sidebar on the left. I had known about Netvibes but never really meant to switch. I recently tried it, loved it, and have been using it ever since. One thing that I noticed right away was that I wasn’t able to add feeds to my Netvibes page through FireFox as I was with iGoogle. For feed reading I use Google Reader, but I do like to add a few feeds to my home pages for simple things. For example I’m subscribed to Urban Dictionary’s Urban Word of the Day. I obviously limit this to just one item.

Anyways, instead of having to copy the URL, going to Netvibes, and going through the whole process of adding a feed, I figured out a way to add it as an option to FireFox 3. You will want to head on over to about:config and in the Filter box type browser.contentHandlers.types , this isn’t necessary but it helps with focusing on what we’re going to do. You should see options like browser.contentHandlers.types followed by a number. Yours should go up to 5 (Meaning 5 is the highest number used by any of the options), but either way, when you add the following options, choose a number above the highest number you see. Next you will want to right click anywhere on the window and click New > String. Add these three:

Format is: Preference Name = Value
browser.contentHandlers.types.#.title = Netvibes
browser.contentHandlers.types.#.type = application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
browser.contentHandlers.types.#.uri = http://www.netvibes.com/subscribe.php?url=%s

Obviously make sure to replace the # sign with the number which I explained in the previous paragraph. Note that the last option ends in uri not url. So in my case, this is what the end result looks like:

Netvibes Settings

Now you can go to RSS feeds and add them using NetVibes!

Adding an RSS Feed using Netvibes

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Random Album Artwork on iPod

June 9, 2008 in Software. 3 Comments

You’re listening to your iPod and suddenly you notice that the album artwork is different for the song you’re listening to. You’re like “What the heck?” so you go to see if this has affected any other songs and to your dismay, it has :(

Don’t worry, there’s a good chance you could fix this. First, in iTunes, click on your iPod. Now click the Music tab and uncheck Display album artwork on your ipod. Do this and at the top where it usually has the information of the currently playing song, it will say Deleting artwork from your iPod, don’t freak out this doesn’t mean you’ll have to get it all over again. Once it’s completely done, CHECK Display album artwork on your ipod over again and it will then say Optimizing artwork for your iPod at the top. Once it’s done, disconnect your iPod and you should have your artwork back! :D

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awxDTools Menu Disappears

May 23, 2008 in Software. 0 Comments

If you use Daemon Tools chances are you also use the awxDTools which adds a nice little context menu whenever you right click on an image file so that you can easily mount disk images.

awxDTools

Well one problem that sometimes happens to me is that it mysteriously disappears. After some searching, I realized that it was a combination of PowerISO and MagicISO that were causing the problem. In MagiISO, I went to View > Settings. Then in the File Associations tab I clicked Clear All. This brought the icon back, but this isn’t absolutely necessary so if it didn’t do it for you don’t panic.

MagicISO

Next in PowerISO I went to Options > Configuration and unchecked Enable Shell Integration.

PowerISO

Now go to Start > All Programs > arniWORX > awxDTools > Re-Register Extension. This is like a ‘refresh’ of the extension on the system. Next, you might have to restart (Or you can terminate explorer.exe and start it over again but just restart if you’re confused). You should now see the menu again! If you’re wondering why I use both PowerISO and MagicISO it’s because stupid kids on the Internetz think it’s cool to upload all types of image files. PowerISO is the only one that supports DAA and MagiISO is the only one that supports UIF. Other than that, Daemon Tools supports any other one like Alochol’s MDF etc.

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