Tip. Trick. Mod. » Ryan

10 things you didn’t know Google could do

Ryan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:45:38 +0000

Like most of the globe, I use Google every day, however, in the last year or so I’ve noticed I use it less for standard searches and more for some of its slightly obscure, but extremely useful tools.

Here is a list of 10 tips on how to use Google as more than just your regular old search engine. I’ve tried not to simply rehash different ways you can use the “Advanced Search” feature here. Google’s advanced search function is also very useful, and getting down it’s syntax will undoubtedly save much time and effort (ie. using “” to surround phrases, minus signs, boolean logic operators, etc.). However, in this list I want highlight features that while residing “in the search engine” are external to traditional “searches”:

1. Google as a dictionary

As a writer cum blogger, I am endlessly looking up the meanings and spellings of random words. I’ve found no more efficient way of doing this, for my workflow at least, than using Google’s “define: [term]” function.

Simply clack in any word that you want a definition to and Google will return a list of definitions from various sources around the net. If you’re not 100% on the spelling, just like with regular searches, Google will do it’s best to figure out what you reall mean. It can also find definitions for many slang terms and idioms as well: see definitions for “hoser“, “the staw that broke the camel’s back” and “bizzo“.

2. Google as a weatherman

Google's quick and easy weather forecast

Alright, in our widgetized world, most of us have some weather widget kicking around our desktop, but that doesn’t make Google’s handy “weather: [location]” any less useful.

Whether (ahem) you need the weather for your own city, or a city an ocean away, Google’s weather function returns the temperature, weather, wind, humidity and four-day forecast as fast as you can say “snow day”.

3. Google as a currency converter

As a Canadian living in China and often working in US dollars, this is a feature I use virtually every day. Simply type “[X amount] [3-letter currency code] to [3-letter currency code]” (see image above for example) and Google will give you a quick currency conversion. Sure, it may not be exact enough for your hard-core FOREX trader, but for an average joe like me, it’s more than suitable.

4. Google as a weights and measures converter

It’s not just currencies that Google can quickly convert – virtually any weight or measurement can also be converted from metric to imperial or vice versa. Simply query Google with “XX [unit] to [unit]“, ie. “5 cm to inches”, or “6 gal to liter”.

5. Google as a calculator

If you’re like myself and completely inept at all things mathematical, Google’s calculator function is a godsend. Sure sure, a calculator app has been a primary feature of most every OS since long before “googling” made it into our vernacular. But personally, in a tech-world where there are twenty ways to do everything, I prefer to funnel as much as I can into a few key tools. As I’m almost always online and “in browser”, using Google’s calculator just makes sense. Plus I like that I can string together relatively complex calculations visually.

6. Google as a clock

Google's World Clock

Presumably you know what time it is where your butt is pressing the chair, and if not, surely your OS has a clock. However, if you’re quickly looking for a way to find out what time it is in any city around the globe, Google’s time function is an excellent way to do that.

Simply google “time [city]” and you’ll be presented with the time of the most likely city you are looking for, as well as a couple secondary cities with the same name. Handy if you’re planning on making a transcontinental or transoceanic phone call.

7. Google as a stockbroker

Google stock quotes

If you like charts that look like mountainous landscapes, you’re going to love the fact that you can quickly pull up stock quotes with Google simply by throwing in the company’s stock ticker symbol into the search engine.

You are then presented with a daily summary of the stock’s value, as well as links to more detailed information. For example, if you search for “GOOG“, Google’s ticker symbol, you’ll be presented with results represented in the image to the right, and will also be given a quick link to the Google Inc. page on Google Finance. Google Finance also has some neat search query tools, but they’re a topic for another post.

8. Google as an air traffic controller

Google flight information

Fumbling around looking for flight arrival and departure information on airline or airport Web sites can sometimes be a bit cumbersome.

Fortunately Google takes the legwork out of the process by providing a simple way to get basic flight information. Simply google the airline and flight number and you’ll be given a quick summary on whether or not the flight is on time and what its ETD and ETA are. Unfortunately this seems only to work for flights originating in the US or Canada.

9. Google as a movie guide

If you’re looking for showtimes for a certain movie in a certain city, Google does that too. Simply query Google with “movies [movie title] [city]” and you’ll be presented with a short summary of showtimes for a couple cinemas in that city (with links for more). It also, conveniently, gives you the film’s length, rating, genre and links to a trailer and reviews. Similarly, you can simply google “movie: [movie title]” (ie. “movie: x-men”) to get a listing of movies with that title along with a star rating and links to reviews. Likewise, this works with “music:” as well.

10. Google as the Yellow Pages

Google local business listings

A great and growing feature on Google is the ability to quickly find local businesses (shops, restaurants, etc.). Tied in tightly with the most excellent Google Maps, this function allows you to simply type in a business type (ie. “plumbers”, “Thai food restaurant”, “computer repair”) followed by your city to get a listing of businesses fitting your criteria.

The results give the name of the business, the phone number and Google Maps directions to the location. Incidentally, if you happen to run your own local business, be sure to add it to Google’s listings and increase the likelihood of Google-savvy customers finding you.

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Well, there they are, 10 things perhaps you didn’t know Google could do. I guarantee that once you start using these Google tips, they will quickly become an integral part of how you find information. Even better, combining these Google tips with Google Chrome’s ability to search directly from its address bar amounts to even quicker usability – just CTRL-T (new tab), [Google query], ENTER and I’m there.

With all these ways to add to your Google experience, does it come as any surprise that Google also knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

How to search Delicious bookmarks with Chrome

Ryan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:55:14 +0000

Last year shortly after Chrome was released I posted a quick tip on how to make a Delicious “plugin” for Chrome. This was a neccessity, as at that writing Chrome didn’t have a method to migrate the awesome Delicious-Firefox plugin. Well, it’s about 10 months later, and still no plugin support — though some exciting stuff seems just around the corner.

The downside to the bookmarklet method in our last tip is that it doesn’t offer a quick way to search all your bookmarks – tagging and adding bookmarks is essential, but finding them again is sort of the hallmark of a good bookmarking methadology, no?

Thanks to Tip Trick Mod reader MacAnthony here’s an interm solution for quickly searching Delicious bookmarks in Chrome.

In Chrome, right-click the browser’s address bar and select “Edit search engines…” (see right)
Click the “Add” button and fill in the three fields:
- Name: ie. Delicious — this is just for organizational purposes.
- Keyword: ie. delicious — this is the trigger that you’ll type in your address bar to tell Chrome to search your Delicious bookmarks.
- URL: This should be http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts|your_delicious_username&p=%s, where you replace your_delicious_username with, drumroll please, your Delicious username.
Click “OK” and then “Close” and give ‘er a whirl.

After you’ve created the new Delicious-Chrome search, try it out by clicking on your address bar and typing “delicious” followed by your search term — upon hitting enter you should be taken to a Delicious page displaying all your bookmarks related to your search.

Speed Tip: Instead of using the rather cumbersome “delicious” as your keyword for the new search engine, put in something shorter — ie the letter “b” for “bookmark”. Now instead of having to type out “delicious [search_term]” to trigger the search, you can simply type “b [search_term]” instead.

Speed Tip #2: To make things even faster for searching, try using some keyboard shortcuts to access the Chrome address bar.

CTRL-T opens a new tab and highlights the contents of the address bar. As you’ll most likely want to create a new tab for your search results anyway, this is my recommended option.
CTRL-L / ALT-D / F6 will all bring your cursor up to the address bar and highlight the contents — in case you don’t wish to leave the tab you’re on.

Final Note: I recommend using the Latest Beta Version of Chrome. At the time of writing, it contains a lot of usability fixes that the standard release does not contain, and while these will undoubtedly make their way into the stable release eventually, why wait? Despite its “beta” tag, the beta version in my experience is just as stable as the standard release.

UPDATE: Sept 13/09 – Since publishing this tip it appears Delicious has changed the formatting of their search URL. As such, I’ve updated the URL structure in #2 to the following: http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts|your_delicious_username&p=%s

Syncing and sharing files with Dropbox

Ryan — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:42:34 +0000

As a Web designer I am always looking for convenient ways to share large files between myself, collaborators and clients. I’ve tried several different methods: FTPs; drops like Drop.io; folder-sharing services like Windows Live Sync, and a plethora of file share startups like sendspace, 4shared, Lime Wire.

And while they all work (most of them anyway) decent enough, none of them blew me away as a real solution for my file sharing needs. Then I was introduced to Dropbox. The free service offers a rather liberal helping of 2GB of storage, with it easily bumped up to 5GB through referring friends. If 2-5GB isn’t enough space, a premium service of 50GB of space can be got for $10 bucks a month (which, is comparable to Mac’s iDisk, but 30GB tastier).

Open Dropbox locally or through Web interface easily.

Dropbox’s simple interface and slick OS integration make it brilliant to use. After downloading and installing the cross-platform software a Dropbox icon appears in your tray which you can use to quickly open the local Dropbox folder on your computer, or launch it in Web browser mode.

The beauty of Dropbox is that it syncs in the background. So, for example, if I copy “familyphoto.jpg” (or an entire folder of photos) to my local Dropbox folder (Explorer in Windows and Finder on Mac) it will automatically begin syncing with the Web storage. Then, booting up another computer I have Dropbox installed on, the folder begins syncing (downloading) the new files.

It’s a fantastic way to share folders and files between two computers (in my case my Dell desktop and MacBook), but its usefulness compounds with the ability to share specific folders with other Dropbox members, or non-members by way of public folders.

Dropbox Web Interface

Sharing a folder with specific Dropbox users — say a client who needs to review some large files, a colleague you want to collaborate with, or (as in my case) a bunch of buddies who want to pool their guitar tabs) — is dead easy. Simply right-click on the folder in Explorer/Finder and scroll down to the “Dropbox” submenu, choose “Sharing Options” and you’ll be brought to your Dropbox Web Interface.

Click the image to the right to expand the screenshot. The Web Interface breaks things down in a simple and straightforward management UI. (1) A list of the files in the current folder you are viewing. Everything is Ajax-ifed for easy drag and drop functionality. (2) Recent Event notifications allow you to quickly see what things have changed – ie. if someone uploaded some new files to a shared folder. (3) A to-the-point info box gives you folder information on how much space a folder is taking up and how many members are sharing it. (4) An auto-fill box makes it easy to invite members to share a folder. (5) A list of the members sharing the current folder.

Dropbox also tackles the fact that not everybody you want to share files with is going to want to signup for an account. By allowing you to send them a direct link (via e-mail, IM or whatever) to a file you’ve put in one of your “Public” bins, you’ll be able to share files with anyone you want.

What’s more, Dropbox (for the moment at least) is sweet on speed. Being that I live in Asia, this is always a problem for me, as the majority of file sharing services I’ve used in the past are deadly slow here and simply time out with large files. I’ve yet to incounter any similar problem with Dropbox, and that all downloading/syncing happens in the background makes it all the more seamless.

List of the best open source software applications

Ryan — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:29:36 +0000

There’s nothing new about the term “open source” as it relates to software – it’s been around for more than a decade now. However, as being a tad tech-suave has settled into the collective consciousness, the reliance on commercial software solutions is dropping daily.

Whereas the connotation initially was that open source projects were buggy and unstable (I mean, how could anything being worked on for free not be?), and commercial software was solid and trusted – over the last 10 years these ideas have changed – if not virtually reversed.

Though there is an “official definition” of what open source is; simply put, open source is any software or webware which has been released with its code available for review, modification, adaptation and improvement. Oh yeah, and it’s usually free.

Here is a list of what I feel to be the best or most notable open source applications:

Browsers / Mail / Office Suite

Mozilla Firefox: Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser, which is the second-most popular browser in current use worldwide, after Internet Explorer. Firefox is a standards-compliant browser which uses the Gecko layout engine. It includes tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and an integrated search system. Its strongest feature, however, is that it can be infinitely expanded through countless additional add-ons created by third-party developers.

OpenOffice.org: OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages (as of v3, it can even read MS Office’s Docx format). It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Mozilla Thunderbird: Like it’s browser cousin, Firefox, Thunderbird is free and open source. A full featured e-mail client, it easily replaces Microsoft’s Outlook Express, and through the use of add-ons, is quickly gaining ground on the power of MS Office’s Outlook

(see how to add full appointment/calendar functions to Thunderbird).

Google Chrome: Though quite new, Google’s open source entrance into the Internet browser market shows quite a bit of potential. It is lacking some of the slick add-ons that Firefox features, but it’s isolated sandbox and ground-up modern build make it a fast and secure alternative that is destined for great things down the road.

Multimedia / Audio / Video

Miro: Miro is a free open source application for watching channels of internet video (aka video podcasts and video rss). Miro is easy to use and offers full-screen viewing abilities. You simply “subscribe” to the video (or audio) podcast you want to watch and Miro will then automatically download the latest videos for skipless and stutter-free viewing. You can tell Miro to automatically download the newest videos, only download the ones you wish, and if you’re short on hard drive space you can specify how long the downloaded videos stay on your system before being cleaned up.

VLC Media Player: VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols – basically it can pretty much play whatever you throw at it. Additionally, it is able to stream over networks and to transcode multimedia files and save them into various different formats. It is one of the most platform-independent players available, with versions for BeOS, Syllable, BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, MorphOS and Solaris, and is widely used with over 100 million downloads.

Audacity: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use cross-platform audio editor and recorder. You can use Audacity to record live audio; convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs; edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files; cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together; change the speed or pitch of a recording; and more. With the proliferation of home recording and podcasting, Audacity is a program that should be in everyone’s toolbox.

Songbird: Though still under “active” development, Songbird is a promising open source music player. Features included (or to be included) are library management, multi-language support, media importing, album art display, meta data management, customizable UI and automatic updates. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s a project to be watched.

MediaCoder: MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding.

HandBrake: HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter. Basically, it’ll rip any DVD (or DVD-like) source into an MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM. It also supports the ripping of subtitles (burned into the video).

Graphics / Design

GIMP: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program that can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. Like it’s commercial counter-part, Photoshop, it is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything.

Inkscape: An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.), and it’s streamlined interface makes it easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.

Paint.net: An alternative to GIMP – or commercial apps such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Photo Editor – Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It offers support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Blender: Blender is a full-featured open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. I don’t know the first thing about 3D modeling, but one look at the Blender Gallery and it’s easy to tell this is an impressively powerful free program.

OS / Utilities / Misc

Ubuntu: Deriving its name from the Zulu word for “humanity”, Ubuntu is a free, open source, operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux. Generally considered the most popular Linux distribution, and there are a lot of them, Ubuntu does pretty much everything your OS should – what can we say, it’s an OS, not inherently interesting. It’s decently pretty, damn simple to install and use, and has an extremely active community of users/developers.

Pidgin: Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. It supports [deep breath]: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, and Zephyr. About the only big IM it doesn’t cover is Skype, because Skype’s protocol isn’t open.

Filezilla: If you have reason to connect to a server via FTP, FileZilla is the FTP program of choice. The FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. It also supports drag and drop transfers, resumption of upload/download, configurable speed limits, keep-alive scripting and automatic upgrades.

7zip: A fantastic replacement to Windows’ default ZIP archiver, 7-Zip is open source software that offers a 2-10% compression increase over PKZip or WinZip. It also packs and unpacks 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR files; while also supporting the ability to unpack RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS files. Additionally it fully integrates with Windows and offers localizations for 69 languages.

You’ll notice that this list is entirely client-based software applications – no web apps. I’ve intentionally left that for part two – coming soon(ish).

Know some great open source applications that haven’t been mentioned here? Please share them in the comments below.

Improve Vista’s Start Menu

Ryan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:07:53 +0000

If you’re a little befuddled by Windows Vista’s start menu and it’s general lack of any sort of organization – check out Vista Start Menu, a freeware program (with a pro upgrade) that enhances the Vista start menu.

On top of the organizational and customizational benefits, the Vista Start Menu’s developers have taken into account the human brain’s cognitive abilities and limitations – particularly that your brain is darn good at using visual memory to find stuff.

h/t to Tekzilla for the tip.

How to make a Delicious “plugin” for Chrome

Ryan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:13:07 +0000

When I migrated my browsing habits to Chrome a couple weeks back one of my big holdups was that Google Chrome didn’t have a Delicious plugin for quickly bookmarking links.

However, with just a tad of javascript you can correct this Chrome shortcoming.

Simply drag the following link to your Google Chrome Bookmarks bar:

Delicious Bookmark

Now, when you want to bookmark a page on Delicious, simply click the bookmark. Easy, huh?

Sadly, unlike Firefox’s plugin, this does nothing to integrate Del.icio.us bookmarks with Google Chrome’s bookmarks, but hopefully a fix for that is not far away.

Tip credit to Ninja Plan.

4 free online personal finance tools

Ryan — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:38:41 +0000

I’ve recently dug in and decided to add some method to the madness that is my finances.

Perhaps not unlike many of you, I’m quite clueless when it comes to financial planning. It, in the same way as exercise, is one of those things I know I should do, I put large amounts of effort into thinking about doing, but never actually get off my ass and do it.

Well, no more. I’m power walking my dog twice a day and am going to contemplate my stock portfolio, or lack thereof, the entire trip!

To balance my virtual checkbook (I’ve not had an actual checkbook in nearly a decade) I decided to turn to the wonderful Web 2.0 world and see if it had a solution for me. Here are four free services I found and my notes on each.

A couple things first – (a) I’m Canadian, so being able to add Canadian banks is a must. (b) I use Paypal quite a lot and so used that as a bit of a litmus test for the various services.

Geezeo (www.geezeo.com)

Summary: Of the four, I liked Geezeo (pronounced G-Z-O) the most. It seemed to offer the best combination of practical features with superfluous tools.

Allows for auto-updating of transactions from most US and Canadian banks, but doesn’t seem to offer connectivity outside of those two countries. However, you can upload an OFX file to import transaction histories and manually create accounts.
Because manual account creation is limited to the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) format, currently it can’t handle Paypal accounts, or any account that doesn’t export OFX format. Part of the blame goes to Paypal for not exporting to this format, and part goes to Quicken-creators Intuit for charging a licensing fee to financial institutions that use it – this is a big con for me as tracking Paypal is essential.
Geezeo’s budgeting tools look nice and are straight-forward.
Allows mobile access to your account.
Offers a system to create goals (both unique or community generated) and track progress by assigning the goal to an account or tag (ie. if “savings” equals or is higher than $6000, “3-month cushion goal” is reached). However, despite adding several goals, I couldn’t get them to display or access them after creation. Rather than having a page listing all your goals, the “My Goals” link oddly brings you to a sidebar module on the program’s dashboard. Promising in concept, but falls short in actually working.
Inline editing of transactions for quick adding of tags, categories, amounts, etc.

A Geezeo tour video with painfully mixed “background” music can be found here – if you’re able to hear half of what the screencast says over the music, you’re doing better than me.

Wesabe (www.wesabe.com)

Summary: Wesabe is similar to Geezeo in a lot of ways. Both focus heavily on offering social networking features such as “groups” and “tips”.

No auto-update from bank. To create an account you must download the transaction history from your bank and then upload it to Wesabe. Supports OFX, QFX, QIF, OFC file formats.
Slick graphs and charts show you where your money is coming from and going to right from the dashboard.
Doesn’t allow you to add individual transactions to your checking/saving accounts. Manual insertion of transactions is limited to “Cash Account” mode.
“Goals” system a bit clunky and confusing. I couldn’t get my goals to connect to tags and I couldn’t find a way to show the goal’s progress over multiple months.
No intuitive budgeting tools.
Inline editing of transactions for quick adding of tags, categories, amounts, etc.

Check out a video tour of Wesabe’s features.

Mint (www.mint.com)

Summary: Mint.com was the site that originally kicked off my exploration of free online personal finance tools. I stumbled upon Mint while getting some financial advice at The Motely Fool. Sadly Mint is only available to users of US-based financial institutions with no way to manually create accounts with downloaded financial data. The site looks sharp though, and if the tour is anything to judge by, when Mint finally does burst out of Île de America they’ll have a user in me.

Yodlee (www.yodlee.com)

Summary: My least favourite of the group. Whereas the others have focused on creating Web 2.0 Web app features (perhaps overly so), Yodlee’s Moneycenter looks very much like an online banking interface – which, fittingly, is the company’s core business.

Registration is stupid – no information is given about the program or its features. I had no choice but to sign up, just to find out if it was actually remotely the service I was looking for. And though registration allows you to choose one of a long list of countries, you MUST enter a valid US state and zip code. Clever, huh.
For what its worth, despite all the sites going to great lengths to tout their tight security measures, Yodlee really makes the user “feel” secure. Multiple security checks illustrate the site’s all business.
The site will automatically download financial information from a number of accounts – including my Canadian accounts and Paypal – however, I had nothing but problems with the results of the downloads. It would only download the current month’s transactions from my financial institution and only downloaded outgoing money from Paypal – additionally, wrongly indicating that I had a zero balance. This effectively ended my review of the site.

Conclusions

From my points above I feel that the sites have a little bit further to go before they replace their desktop counterparts. Online financial management is a service that virtually everyone can use – it’s not limited to if you like digital photography, blogging, sharing videos – so that the sites haven’t matured further than they have is a bit surprising, and I have to admit, a bit disappointing.

That said, they all (with the exception of Yodlee) show a lot of potential and will definitely be worth watching as they improve their features.

One thing that the sites will need to be careful to balance is the over-implementation of “web 2.0 features” such as “groups” “friends” etc. These are definitely interesting and appealing features, and I’m sure it’s them that are bringing in the venture capital and keeping the lights on. However, when it comes to personal finance services, basic intuitive features that allow the inexperienced (like myself) to quickly understand their money are key – way key.

While writing this I came across the following comment on the Consumerist. Just FYI:

Be aware that when you store information online, it can be accessed by the government with a subpoena rather than with a search warrant. This doesn’t matter to most people, and honestly they can get a lot of that information with subpoenas anyway by going directly to your financial institutions, but if you have any records that you don’t want the government grabbing, I’d recommend against storing your financial life online.

Google Chrome brings new shine to browser market

Ryan — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:41:30 +0000

It’s no secret that near everything Google touches turns to gold, but as of yesterday the company has plans to embed an entirely different metal on your desktop – Chrome.

Google Chrome is a new Internet browser that has been designed from the ground up to simplify the user interface and, perhaps more importantly, streamline and speed-up the multitude of processing that happens behind the scenes when you visit a Web site.

As would be expected from a modern browser, all the bits we’re used to are there – tabbed browsing, bookmarks, a bookmark bar. However, unlike Firefox and the more recent versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome’s tabs operate in isolated “sandboxes”.

These “sandboxes” prevent one tab from bringing the whole browser down, and provide improved protection from malicious sites by using some intelligent access control.

The most exciting and lauded feature of Chrome though is a bit that most users have likely never considered and will likely never actively notice – Chrome utilizes the most powerful JavaScript engine to date, V8, making it geared to process not just modern Web apps, but the stuff that’s yet to come.

Developers Note

Web designers and developers will be happy to note that Chrome isn’t a whole new game when it comes to browser compatibility. Chrome uses Apple’s Webkit rendering engine, so if your design worked in Safari, it’ll look smashing in Chrome.

Additionally, Chrome comes standard with a decent element inspector. It’s not Firebug, but it does a a pretty decent job out of the box.

I know, I know – I love Firefox too, and though Firefox 3 has brought with it a lot of improvements, my money’s on Chrome becoming the defacto browser of choice among average users and net junkies alike.

My reasoning is thus – Google’s damn smart. I mean, they’re really smart. This is the company that not only indexes the entire Internet, but they’ve also mapped virtually the entire planet. Mozilla, while cool, is going to have a tough time competing with that – and Microsoft Internet Explorer? Well, about the ONLY thing that browser has going for it is a monopolisitic entrenchment that survives on user apathy.

Plus, unlike IE but much like Firefox, it is completely open-source, which means people are welcome, – encouraged even, to take the code and improve it – without a doubt the reason why Firefox and Mozilla rock.

I’ve been using Chrome all day and, if you haven’t guessed, absolutely love it. Here are the few things I like:

Slick tab addition and deletion – adding tabs in any other browser is going to feel clunky and brash after you’ve used Chrome.
Tab pull-outs – you can easily pull off your tab, making it a new window, and vice versa, you can slap an independent browser window into a tab.
New tab quick links – rather than have a blank screen greeting you when you open a new tab, Google Chrome displays a collection of screenshots of sites you frequently visit, rightly assuming you’re likely to be going to one of them.
Omnibox Address/Search bar – the “Omnibox” is Google Chrome’s intelligent address bar. It allows you to input an address or a search term (your choice of search engine) and offers smart auto-complete.
Pop-up control – all pop-ups are “blocked” by default, with a notice allowing you to open them or not.
Incognito window – If you’re looking for a bit of browsing privacy, Chrome allows you to easily open up an “Incognito tab” which isn’t recorded in the browsers history – you know, for when you are looking at porn buying your wife a surprise gift.

However, not everything is yet perfect in Chromeville. The biggest downside Google will need to combat if they want to sway the relatively newborn masses of Firefox users is the absense of extensions/add-ons. There is currently no ability to add extensions (outside of plugins like Flash, Java, etc.), so if you are stuck on some Firefox add-ons, you’ll need to be patient and see if abilities are added after the browser comes out of beta.

And yeah, it’s beta – so it’s still technically being tested. As mentioned, I’ve been running it all day without a glitch, but fellow Twitterholics have reported some problems – whether they’re Chrome related or system related is unknown.

Additionally, Google Chrome is not yet available for Mac or Linux users – for the time being it is strictly Windows-based. However, I’m certain we can expect Mac and Linux versions in the near future.

If you’d like to dive a bit deeper into how Chrome works and why it’s being touted as “a revolutionary new browser”, check out this easy to follow comic. You can download and try Chrome for yourself without uninstalling your current browser(s). Oh, and be sure to check out Matt Cutts’ answers to common Google Chrome objections.

Let us know what you think.

Check IE6 design layout on Vista

Ryan — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:40:34 +0000

Whether you’re putting together a full-featured Web site or are just maintaining your personal blog – seeing how the layout looks in different browsers is essential in assuring that all your visitors experience the same thing.

In the battle for consistent design there is no more fearsome foe than Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. Despite the browser quickly coming up on its eighth birthday, it is still in wide use – particularly in markets where software piracy is more wide-spread and users aren’t able to upgrade to the “Windows Genuine Advantage”-required IE7 or IE8.

As such, it’s important that you be able to test your design, theme/template, or even your blog tweaks to assure that they work alright in the archaic and anarchistic browser.

One problem – due to kernal code differences, it isn’t possible to install Internet Explorer 6 or lower on a machine running Windows Vista. So where handy bundles like the MultipleIE package worked well on XP – they’re a no go on Vista.

There are some great static checks you can do using Web apps like Browser Shots and IE NetRenderer, but sometimes you need to interact with the design to see where things are, or aren’t, functioning.

Enter IETester. Created by the same developer as the IE DebugBar, the free Web browser offers up the rendering and javascript abilities of IE5.5 to IE8.

Not only are you able to test how your layouts will look in various IE versions, with the use of the browser’s tabs, you can test multiple versions in the same browser window.

What’s more – it works on both XP and Vista (sorry Mac and Linux users). It’s not flawless, and preliminary usage showed a couple hiccups in the page loading – but for an alpha release, and with nothing else to turn to, who’s complaining.

With users slowly overcoming their adversity of pushing away from the Microsoft monopoly, there’s hope that IE6 will die the death it so rightly deserves, but until then apps like IETester are a welcome helping hand.

Flip 3D-like solutions for XP and Home Basic

Ryan — Sat, 31 May 2008 10:33:55 +0000

If you happen to be one of the many folks that have a system pre-loaded with an OEM version of Windows Vista Home Basic, or just haven’t stepped into Microsoft’s new generation of OS and are still running XP, here’s a little tip on how you can have your system mimic Vista Aero’s slick new Flip 3D task switcher.

First, I should preface this with the tidbit that I spent a couple hours looking around the net for some way to hack my lousy Home Basic to enable the Aero theme (glass/transparent windows, thumbnail preview and Flip 3D task switching). Despite the claims of about a zillion Web sites all touting the same registry hack – it appears this isn’t possible. What follows is part one of my free “Aero alternatives”.

Shock Aero 3D

Shock Aero 3D is pretty damn close to the actual Flip 3D effect, and at this price (it’s freeware), we’re certainly willing to overlook any small discrepancies. The program allows you to choose between a flat “tile” display, or the cooler “flip” effect that stacks your open program windows on a 3D z-axis.

The utility also gives you quite a bit of control over animation effects and background styles, both so you’re able to customize things and so you’re able to disable more graphic-intensive processes should your system not be able to handle them.

You can grab Shock Aero 3D here, and be sure to check out the developer’s other cool apps for customizing your desktop experience.

Shock Aero works on XP/2000/2003/Vista systems with OpenGL support.

Madotate

I’ve no idea who comes up with these names, but considering this comes out of Japan, I guess we can allow for a bit of a tongue-twisting moniker. Madotate is similar to Shock Aero in the style of its effect (throwing your open apps onto a 3D axis), however where Shock Aero separates the application selection from your desktop, Madotate integrates right into it.

By a small button which the program adds to the top-right of your windows (beside the minimize, maximize, close buttons), you are able to instantly slide the open app into 3D-mode and out of your way. The windows automatically dock to the screen edge they are closest to.

Madotate comes with a rather comprehensive set of options to customize things. You can turn transparency of the 3D-ified windows on or off, tag the windows, change the angle and distance of the effect, set hot keys to effect both the active program and all programs, and a few more.

As mentioned, Mandotate is a Japanese program, but some kind folks went to the trouble of translating it into English. Grab the English version here, or if you’d rather, get the original from the site of the author, Takayuki Shinohara.

Madotate works on pretty much every version of Windows since Windows 95.

Both of the programs have their pluses. Shock Aero has a slightly simpler functionality about it, while Madotate has more organizational/workflow possibilities. When it comes to resources though, Madotate wins hands down, barely pushing the 6MB mark on memory resources.

Know of any other apps that add some pizazz to the otherwise rather mundane task-switching functionality? Leave us a comment.