Make The Most Out Of Pinterest With These Browser Add-ons

Web browser add-ons can improve your Pinterest experience significantly. Let me give you a quick overview of what the service is about. Pinterest lets you pin photos and videos to online pinboards. These are publicly accessible, and all Pinterest users can comment on them, share them or pin them to their pinboards as well. Links to the original site the photos or videos were found on are retained, which makes it a visual bookmarking service as well.

There are three options to pin photos or videos to your own pinboard. You can use the bookmarklet and run it on the page that contains the photo or image, paste the web address of the page on the Pinterest site into a form, or pin an item that has been posted by another Pinterest user.

When you look at browser extensions, you will notice that Google Chrome got the bulk of it, while both Firefox and Opera only one each. Lets take a look at the add-ons:

Pinterest Add-ons

Pin It Buttons – Instead of having to use the bookmarklet, these extensions add a button to the browser that you can click on to pin a photo or video on that website. Chrome: One Click Pinterest Button, Opera: Pinterextension

Right-click Pinning – These add a right-click context menu option to pin the selected item to one of your Pinterest pinboards. Chrome: Pinterest Right click, Firefox: Unofficial Pinterest Addon

Keyboard shortcuts – Adds a shortcut to pin items on a page with a keyboard shortcut. Chrome: Pin It!

Image Zooming – Lets you zoom in on images right on the Pinterest website without having to click on the item. Works similar to Hover Zoom. Chrome: Pinterest Zoom

, Pinterest Image Expander, Pinzy

Pin Screenshots – Lets you pin screenshots of web pages that you are currently on, or upload photos from your desktop to pin those. Chrome: Screen 2 Pin

Closing Words It is interesting to note that there is no userscript, and only one Firefox add-on available for a popular service such as Pinterest. Google Chrome on the other hand has been blessed with extensions in comparisons. Is it because many developers are using that browser now? What’s your opinion here? Also, let me know if you come across other add-ons for Pinterest. And if you are not currently a user, you can grab your Pinterest invites here.

Opera’s New Address Bar Suggestions Face Criticism

Opera, in the most recent stable version of the web browser, and also in the latest snapshot build, has made changes to the browser’s address bar suggestion feature. This feature basically handles the suggestions the browser displays when the user begins to type in the address bar. Users in the Opera forum were the first to spot the differences. Two aspects that got criticized heavily were the reduced number of entries from bookmarks and history, and the drop of interactivity features like middle-clicking to open a result in a new browser tab.

Opera today has announced that improvements are also coming to Opera 12.00, the next version of the browser that is currently under development. The old system, according to Daniel Aleksandersen, matched the terms the user entered against the page url, title or page content and ordered them by last visit.

Opera’s new system assigns a score to each suggestion that is based on additional factors like the position of the term in the url, the number of matches or the position or if the match is a bookmark.

The feature is still in development, as Opera is still working on integrating the browser’s Speed Dial feature and improving the scoring algorithm further.

Suggestions seem to favor search heavily in the current build, which has been one of the points of criticism. Another that it is now more difficulty to distinguish between sources, that site identification has become more difficulty as favicons have been removed, and that it sometimes is not clear why a page has been added to the suggestions.

In my own tests, I was unable to get suggestions if the entered phase did not start at the beginning of the url. The term hack for instance did not list lifehacker or ghacks in the suggestions.

It is my opinion a step in the wrong direction. Keep in mind though that this is not final and may see improvements in future builds. You can download the latest Opera Next version from the Opera Desktop Team blog.

Opera 11.61 Has Been Released

Opera Software has just released a new version of the Opera desktop browser bringing the stable channel of the browser to version 11.61. Opera users should receive update notifications in the browser, those who do not want to wait for them to pop up can run a manual update check the following way: A click on Opera > Help > Check for Updates runs a manual check for updates.

The browser should pick up the new version information from the server and display an update window right away. A click on Download and Install updates the browser to the latest version.

Opera 11.61 is a stability and security upgrade, which makes it a recommended update for all Opera users. Two security issues are fixed in the new version, one that allowed manipulation of framed content to allow cross-site scripting, and another were script events “could be used to reveal the presence of local files”.

The change log lists about 50 additional changes and fixes that went into the new version of the browser. This includes several crash related fixes, including the following ones:

• Crash when clicking “Use master password to protect saved passwords” checkbox
• Occasional crash when clicking a link or opening a new tab
• Opera crashes when closing a tab that has the Star Menu opened
• Opera crashes on updating mail from version 9.27
• Crash in host resolver when closing browser after loading large number of tabs simultaneously

Interested users can access all change logs on this page. Opera 11.61 has been released for all supported operating systems. New users and those who do not want to use the internal updater can download the latest version of the browser from the official Opera download page. It is suggested to update as soon as possible to fix the security vulnerabilities in the browser.

Opera 64-bit, and Out-of-process Plugins Now Available For Testing

Opera Software, as a Christmas present to their user base, has released an experimental Opera Labs build of Opera for all supported operating systems that adds two significant features to the web browser.

You have probably heard about out-of-process plugins before. Chrome and Firefox are using the technology to split the core browser process from installed plugins. This is done to improve the stability and security of the browser. The reasoning behind the move is that plugins can be the cause for browser crashes. Without out-of-process plugins, the whole browser would crash and need to be restarted. With out-of-process plugins, only the plugin crashes and the browser remains open.

This is also important from a security perspective as exploits use crashes sometimes to execute code that they would otherwise not be able to run.

The new opera_plugin_wrapper process is started whenever a plugin needs to be loaded to display web contents. The process is closed automatically when the plugin is no longer needed.

Opera won’t crash if a plugin crashes, and the plugin page will be reloaded to fix the issue.

Opera Linux users have benefited from the browser’s out-of-process architecture for some time now. Windows and Mac users will see out-of-process plugins integrated for their versions of Opera in the future.

The second big change are 64-bit for Windows and Mac systems. According to the announcement, the 64-bit versions of Opera offer “performance improvements in some specific areas and allow Opera to have more freedom in allocating memory”.

Keep in mind that the versions that have been released at Opera’s Dev site are experimental, and not necessarily suitable for work environments. They can be installed next to existing installations of the browser.

How can you find out if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit editions of the Opera browser? Easy. Just enter about:opera in the address bar and hit enter. The platform value indicates if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Opera.

Downloads are offered at the Dev Labs page linked above. (thanks to Howard for the tip)

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Opera 11.60 Final Available

Opera Software has published a recommended upgrade for the stable channel of their browser. Opera 11.60 includes security and stability enhancements as well as new and improved features. This version is the intermediary version of Opera 11 which will be followed by Opera 12 (there may be small patches for Opera 11.60 though).

The new version of Opera 11.60 is already available on the official Opera website. Existing Opera users can consult the release notes for their operating system to find out what’s new in the release.

When you look at the changes you will notice that Opera has packed a lot of them in the release. Opera Mail users will find that the mail client has received a redesigned interface. New features include automatic mail grouping by date, pinning of messages which corresponds to Imap’s flagged feature and Gmail’s starred message feature, a new settings dialog and two lined message lists.

New HTML5 and CSS technologies have been implemented in the browser. This includes the HTML5 parsing algorithm, HTML5 audio and video attributes such as preload or muted, HTML5 microdata support, HTML5 custom scheme and content handler support, ECMA Script 5.1 support, XMLHttpRequest Level 2 support, full support for radial-gradient and repeated-radial-gradiant as well as support for applying image-rendering properties to HTML contents.

Dozens of bugs and issues have been fixed in Opera 11.60. This includes problems opening the Google Mail inbox, a mouse gestures crash, a 100% cpu usage on subpages of the Cisco domain or an inline find crash.

The security section lists five security related issues that have been fixed in the new version of the web browser.

It is recommended to upgrade Opera stable versions to the latest version as soon as possible.

You can read the announcement over at the Opera Desktop Team blog.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Modify Facebook To Your Liking With Social Fixer

Most Facebook users probably have one or two page elements or features that annoy the hell out of them. This can be a small recent change like the top posts feature that promotes some posts and modifies the timeline by doing so, or something bigger like the new photo viewer interface or the highly annoying Facebook Ticker. Tools like Social Fixer, a web browser add-on for Chrome, Firefox and Opera, can be used to make modifications to Facebook. The better ones even add new features to the social networking site that make their life on the site easier.

Social Fixer, previously known as better Facebook, introduces dozens of changes and feature additions to the Facebook web page. The majority of changes can be activated individually which leaves it up to the user if a particular feature is changed on or added to Facebook.

When you install Social Fixer in your browser you are asked if you want to start with a minimal version or the complete package. The minimal version makes only slight changes to Facebook and keeps most features deactivated. Users can then open the extension’s options that are displayed directly on the Facebook page to modify Facebook page elements selectively. The program runs a setup wizard after installation which informs the user about the core features that it provides.

The program lists dozens of preferences in the options. Take a look at the following screenshot that is showing the options in the Firefox web browser.

The extension even comes with a search to find options quickly. Options are displayed in groups like layout, display, chat or theme that all display multiple preferences.

Here is a list of some of the options that the extension offers:

• Show full image previews when hovering your mouse over pictures
• Disable the “Lightbox” (aka “Theater”) photo viewer popup
• Change font size to px for posts and px for comments
• Fix “Enter” key behavior to be a newline when adding comments, rather than submit
• Lock the blue header bar at the top even if the screen is small
• Reorder posts to be chronological and hide “Top Stories”
• Add “Reply” links to comments and float the reply box up to the comment
• Show “Friend Tracker” to get Unfriend notifications
• Display the “Control Panel” at the top. It can be used to mark messages read, reload or mute all.
• Hide the Ticker Feed of friend activities (Hide Facebeook Ticker)
• Hide friends’ real-time Game activity
• Hide the “Top Story” triangle indicators in the upper left of posts
• Fix timestamps to show actual date/time (“one hour ago” becomes “12:34am (one hour ago)”)
• Automatically mark a post as “read” after commenting on it
• Auto-expand comments on Questions post pages
• Left align the page rather than center
• Show old stories as grayed out rather than hiding them completely
• Turn off the chat sidebar on the far right (if it exists) and go back to popup chat list
• Group friends by online status (active on top, idle below)
• Install themes or skins on Facebook
• Enable Filters to hide specific post types in the news feed
• Add custom CSS styles

Those options are just the top of the iceberg. Social Fixer is a handy extension for Facebook users who want to modify the Facebook page to their liking. It is particularly effective in removing annoying page elements like the Facebook Ticker.

Social Fixer is available on the project website for all supported browser versions. It is also directly available on the respective add-on repositories.

An alternative is the userscript Facebook Fixer.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: facebook, facebook tips, firefox add-ons, google chrome extensions, opera extensions

NotScripts Brings Firefox NoScript Protection To Opera

When it comes to add-ons, the noScript add-on for the Firefox web browser is my favorite one. It basically blocks script from running on domains until I allow them to run. NoScript offers more functionality than that like XSS protection among a plethora of others. I have covered the Google Chrome extension NotScript in the past which offers a somewhat limited NoScript experience on that browser. And Swapnil (thanks) just informed me that Opera too has a NotScript extension available.

NotScripts is available for Opera 11.10 or newer. the installation process is a bit on the complicated side. Here are the instructions on how to install NotScripts correctly.

• Install the extension. You can install the latest NotScripts version right from the Opera Extensions repository.
• Close the Opera window and re-open Opera.
• Click the NotScripts button in the Opera toolbar.
  It would show you a message saying you to set User JS Storage Quota to 5000. Click the message and it will take you to the ‘User JS Storage Quota’ setting.
• Change the value of the setting from 0 to 5000.
• Click the Save button. You might need to scroll down to find the Save button.
• You may need to restart the Opera browser before the changes take effect.

Opera’s Notscript, unlike NoScript comes with three different script blocking mode. The default mode is whitelist which blocks all scripts except those that are run from whitelisted domains. Blacklist, the other option allows all scripts by default and blocks only scripts on a user maintained blacklist (much like the Firefox add-on YesScript). The last mode Whitelist + Same Origin uses the whitelist approach to block all scripts but allows scripts running on the same domain the user is on automatically.

So more choice in this regard which is really nice. When you visit a site you need to click on the NotScript icon to display the list of blocked scripts. There is no indicator that scripts where blocked which is probably the biggest usability issue. A click on the icon displays the scripts which options to allow, block or temporarily allow them individually.

If you run the blacklist mode (allow all scripts except selected ones) then you see a script listing similar to that on the screenshot above. The blue action is the current one for that script on that particular site. Just like with NoScript you can allow all scripts, globally allow all temporarily until revoked or temporarily allow the shown scripts.

NotScript seems to work considerably well. I have two big gripes with it. First the missing notification as it is a guess game if a script has been blocked or not and second that the developer has not updated the script in a while (the last update dates back to April 2011).

The extension itself works and that’s the most important aspect obviously. It is not a 100% port of NoScript but a port that brings the most important feature of the Firefox security extension to Opera. For that, it is highly recommended to be installed.

An alternative to that is the Opera NoScript Alternative BlockIt which I have reviewed in the linked article.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: noscript, notscript, Opera, opera extension, opera security, web browser