addons Archives - Trippnology

Make the new Twitter profiles more readable

Twitter is currently rolling out it’s redesigned profile pages, mainly to make Twitter more appealing for new users who may already be used to other social networks (read: Facebook).

That’s all well and good, but what about us, more seasoned users? Tough. Instead of a nice compact stream of information, we’re stuck with masses of whitespace and wildly varying font sizes. At times, this results in seeing as few as 4 tweets at a time, even on a 1080p desktop display.

If you’re using a modern browser (and you really should be), this won’t be a problem for long. If you don’t already have it, install the Stylish add-on [ Firefox | Chrome ] and our Twitter Profile Compactor user style.

This little chunk of CSS removes the excess whitespace and ensures the font sizes of tweets are all uniform. That’s a bit better!

If you get stuck at any point, give us a shout on Twitter and if you have any ideas for making this work better with the new Twitter profiles, the code is up on GitHub.

Firefox for Power Users – Greasemonkey [Part 4]

Ever wanted to make a few tweaks to your favourite websites? Greasemonkey is for you!

Hot user scripts
Google Monkeyr – Google search results formatted how you like. Now also directly compatible with Opera and Chrome.
RSS+Atom Feed Subscribe Button Generator – Finds RSS and/or Atom links on a page and inserts feed subscription links for use by aggregators.

[Attention] This article is in progress. Help make it better by contributing your favourite userscripts in the comments.

Firefox for Power Users – Addons [Part 1]

The first part of our series showing you how to take using Firefox to the next level. We’re kicking off with a round up of some of the most useful and downright cool addons.

Mozilla provide a whole site dedicated to Firefox addons and make a point of featuring some of the best. They also have a showcase site; Rock Your Firefox, featuring the cream of the crop.

Toolbar Buttons
One of Firefox’s best features is how customisable it is. It’s your browser, use it your way. You can literally rearrange all of the controls to your liking (go to the Firefox menu > Options > Toolbar Layout) and even bring some less often used controls to the fore with this addon: Toolbar Buttons. If you don’t think that you’ll need that many buttons, the Toolbar Buttons site allows you to simply make your own custom extension with their extension maker.

Adblock Plus
Next up is an extension that most Firefox users soon consider essential: Adblock Plus. It blocks almost all of the annoying adverts that you see around the web. We’ve already talked about how to improve your browsing speed and stay safe with Adblock Plus so check that article for more info.

Textarea Cache
Don’t you hate it when you type something onto a website (like a forum post or webmail) and just as you hit submit, something goes wrong and you lose your carefully crafted text? This is where Textarea Cache comes in. It saves the last chunk of text you typed and provides an easy way to copy it to the clipboard for re-posting.

Cooliris
Now we’re talking. Cooliris isn’t just useful, it’s pretty darn cool too (good name then huh?). It’s an image and video search tool that presents your results in a 3D, scrollable virtual wall which looks amazing and allows you to quickly skim through hundreds of images in no time.
Unfortunately, you need a reasonably powerful computer and a decent internet connection to really get the best out of it but do still give it a try on modest hardware – you may be surprised how well it runs.

Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is more than just an addon – it’s the gateway to a whole world of customisation. Most of the addons above are changing how Firefox works – greasemonkey changes how the web itself works. It allows you to customize the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript.
Don’t be scared off by the mention of JavaScript, you don’t have to learn about that as there are a myriad of scripts already written for you and made available via userscripts.org.
Greasemonkey is so powerful and wide reaching that we will be covering it more in depth in a later tutorial in this series.
Tip: A good way to get more out of Greasemonkey is to also include it’s companion extension Greasefire which links you to scripts available for the current page you are viewing.

Also worth a mention…

British English Dictionary – Spell check everywhere.
BugMeNot – Bypass compulsory web registration with the context menu.
Chatzilla – Internet Relay Chat in your browser.
Disconnect – Stop major third parties from tracking the webpages you go to.
Download Statusbar – View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way.
Video DownloadHelper – The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites.
HTTPS-Everywhere – Encrypts your communications with a number of major websites.
Sage – A lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader.
Tab Mix Plus – Enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities including: duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo
closed tabs and windows, plus much more.

Let us know about your favourite addons in the comments here or on Facebook and remember to share this post with your networks.

Firefox for Power Users [Series]

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be producing a series of tutorials to show you how to take using Firefox to the next level. These will include:

Addons – An overview of some useful and just plain cool addons.
Search – Tips to save you time when searching your favourite sites.
Change the Look – Customise the look and feel of Firefox to your liking.
Greasemonkey – Mentioned in the addons chapter, it is so powerful it deserves a better explanation.

Let us know if you have any particular part of Firefox you would like to see covered in the comments here or on Facebook.

Improve your browsing speed and stay safe with Adblock Plus

It often takes longer to download the ads on a page than the page content itself (in the case of flash ads anyway) and how annoying are those ads covering the bottom section of YouTube videos!? Firefox and Chrome addon Adblock Plus is here to save the day.

Ads are not just annoying, they are potentially harmful too. Although the site you’re visiting may be legit, the ads they carry (which are often out of their control) can infect your machine with all kinds of malware so blocking them is a very good idea.

Download Adblock Plus for Firefox or Chrome and never see another ad again!

Unfortunately, Adblock Plus isn’t available for Internet Explorer. Yet another reason to ditch Internet Explorer for a better internet experience.

Let us know what you think in the comments here or on Facebook and remember to share with your networks.