Showing posts with label Web browser. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Open a Collection of Tabs in Safari using AppleScript

AppleScript to open a collection of Safari tabs

Apr 18, '11 07:30:01AM • Contributed by: Dana Nau

Here's a simple AppleScript that replaces the current Safari window with a collection of tabs, each open to a different URL. I've seen several scripts that attempt to do something similar, but this one improves on them in a couple of ways:

It closes all of the old tabs, rather than just adding new ones.
It opens the new tabs directly in AppleScript, which is much faster than using system events.

The URLs in the script are just an example; obviously you'll want to replace them with others.

tell application "Safari"
  activate
  -- close all but one tab of the front window
  try
    repeat
      close tab 2 of window 1
    end repeat
  end try
  -- open the URLs in separate tabs
  tell window 1
    set URL of tab 1 to "http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USMD0100.html"
    make new tab with properties {URL:"http://www.weather.com/weather/today/College+Park+MD+20740"}
    make new tab with properties {URL:"http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=20742"}
    make new tab with properties {URL:"http://www.accuweather.com/us/md/college-park/20742/city-weather-forecast.asp"}
    make new tab with properties {URL:"http://weather.weatherbug.com/MD/College%20Park-weather.html?zcode=z6286&zip=20742"}
  end tell
end tell

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Firefox 3.5 Web Browser Review

Image via Wikipedia

Firefox 3.5 Web Browser Review

Source: macworld.com

Pros

Easy to use

Impressively extensible

Superb, thoughtful privacy features

Cons

Not a huge improvement on its predecessor

Speed boost claims don’t tell the whole story

After the great leap forward in speed, design, and overall polish that Mozilla's open source Firefox Web browser enjoyed in version 3.0 (), it's probably understandable that version 3.5 represents a more modest advancement.

While it doesn't stand out dramatically from its predecessor, the new version does bring Firefox closer to the cutting edge of Web standards, and offers a handful of clever innovations in privacy that its rivals would do well to steal for themselves.
But the browser's much-ballyhooed claims of a big speed boost aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Benchmarking the beast

On its Web site, Mozilla touts version 3.5 as "the fastest Firefox ever." But that claim refers solely to its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which handles many of the Web's interactive elements, but not the fundamental rendering of HTML code.

Its assertion that Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as its predecessor here is true - but Mozilla doesn't elaborate on how the new version compares to rivals.
And while its JavaScript performance has definitely improved from 3.0, Firefox 3.5's speed in other areas actually seems to have decreased.
Mozilla bases its speed-boost claims on results from the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark.
My own SunSpider tests, on a 2GHZ aluminum MacBook with 2GB of RAM, roughly matched Mozilla's results.
Firefox 3.0.10 completed the test in 3,645.8 milliseconds, while Firefox 3.5 roared past it in 1,464.4 milliseconds.
But Mozilla understandably does not mention that Apple's rival Safari 4 () browser could soundly thump both of them in the same test, clocking in at 756.4 milliseconds - nearly twice as fast as Firefox 3.5.
Safari 4 also bested Firefox 3.5 in the XHTML and CSS rendering tests I ran - but surprisingly, so did Firefox 3.0.
Firefox 3.5 displayed a local copy of the XHTML test file in 2.66 seconds, compared to 2.55 seconds for Firefox 3.0 and 0.49 seconds for Safari 4.

In CSS rendering, Firefox 3.5 took 361 milliseconds to complete the same locally hosted test that took Firefox 3.0 355 milliseconds, and Safari 4 just 35 milliseconds.
However, Firefox 3.5 fared much better than its predecessor in Web standards compliance. (Safari 4 got perfect scores on both tests.)
Despite these test results, it's important to note that Firefox 3.5 never felt sluggish in normal use. In my tests, it rendered Web pages quickly, displayed code that thwarted earlier browsers without a hiccup, and seemed just as nimble and responsive as Safari 4.

The Forget About This Site feature lets you trim entire sites from your browser's history - although the version we tested sometimes wasn't forgetful enough.

The latest tech

Firefox 3.5, like Safari 4, includes support for the latest additions to the still-developing HTML 5 markup language, including the ability to play video and audio files without any special plug-ins.

Unfortunately, Apple and Mozilla each support only one of the two video formats HTML 5 embraces.

Apple prefers its homegrown H.264 codec, while Mozilla advocates the open-source Ogg Theora standard.

Mozilla 3.5 does a great job playing Ogg Theora files, but chokes on YouTube's HTML 5 test page and its H.264-based clip.

Other HTML 5 features, including support for the canvas element (used to draw graphics using scripting), worked perfectly in Firefox 3.5, and it handled example pages of the emerging JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data format just fine.

Firefox 3.5, like Safari 4, also supports the ability to display downloadable fonts, but this feature's not yet in common use on the Web. In addition, Firefox 3.5 boasts support for location-aware browsing, a new feature that may strike some users as incredibly cool, and others as creepily Orwellian.

Sites that employ location-aware browsing can use data about the network to which you're connected to plot your geographic position - for example, to automatically bring up a list of all the restaurants within three blocks of your computer. Privacy buffs will be glad to know that this feature's strictly opt-in.

Firefox 3.5 clearly warns you when a site wants to learn your location, and it lets you grant sites access on a case-by-case basis.

Besides, for now the feature seems to exist only on a handful of test pages, in which it's used only to display your current location on a map.

Protecting privacy

Firefox 3.5 does more than any previous version of the browser to keep your surfing safe from prying eyes.

Mozilla has finally implemented its own version of Safari's "Private Browsing" feature, which works as advertised; once in private mode, you can surf to all the sites you like, and leave no trace behind in your history.

I also noticed one particularly big improvement in Firefox's ability to automatically erase your private data when you quit the program: It no longer pops up an aggravating dialogue box to get your permission every time.

Instead, you can set which parts of the browser you want wiped within the Preferences menu, and never worry about it again.

Another savvy addition proves better in theory than in practice.

While browsing your history, you can right-click any site and select "Forget This Site," to remove all traces of it from your browser - with one catch. Firefox deletes pages from a site based on the exact domain name.

So if you initially surf to "google.com," and subsequent links from that page take you to "www.google.com," selecting "Forget About This Site" on one of the "www.google.com" pages won't remove the "google.com" one.

Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox development, said the programmers were "erring on the side of caution," since different subdomains could represent entirely different sites. However, he said refinements to this feature are under consideration for future releases.

All the old favorites

Look, Ma, no plug-ins! Firefox 3.5 supports HTML 5’s ability to play videos in the open-source Ogg Theora format without a plug-in.

Firefox 3.5 supports HTML 5's ability to play videos in the open-source Ogg Theora format without a plug-in. The numerous features that set Firefox apart from its peers haven't gone anywhere in version 3.5.

The browser still works with an army's worth of user-created add-ons, which handily do everything from debugging JavaScript to blocking suspicious scripts to letting you update your blogs or listen to Web radio while you surf.

Tabbed browsing gets an extra layer of polish in Firefox 3.5. You can not only drag and drop tabs to reorganize them within a given window, but also drag a tab out of an existing window to automatically create a new window of its own.

Firefox's ability to remember your tabs even after you've quit the browser hasn't gotten any less handy, and its Recently Closed Tabs option in the History menu remains ideal for those moments when you accidentally hit the wrong button or keystroke.

What Mozilla dubs the "Awesome Bar" continues to live up to its name, pulling useful suggestions from your history, user-created tags, and bookmarks as you type a URL.

Users of Apple's newer laptops will also enjoy Firefox 3.5's full support for gestural controls, including swiping to move back and forward and pinching to zoom in and out.

And if you've got a burning need to surf the Web in any language from Amharic to Zulu, Firefox 3.5 and its 70-plus native language options now have you covered.
(Unlike Safari, whose multilingual support bloats the application's size to 80MB, Firefox 3.5 crams all this fluency, and all its other features, into a relatively svelte 50MB.)

If you have the need for speed above all else, Firefox 3.5 can't hold a candle to Safari's raw power. But for most users, the difference will be negligible.

Firefox has evolved into a beautiful, polished program that's a pleasure to use. When it comes to customization and flexibility, it's light-years beyond any other browser on the market.

Nathan Alderman is a location-aware writer and copy editor in Alexandria, Va.

Google's Chrome passes Safari in U.S. browser share

Google WebM video format: Future of HTML5 video?

Concepts:

Firefox, browser, Mozilla, Mac, reviews, Safari, features, privacy, video, Macworld, HDTV, Compare, plug-ins, support, HTML.

Monday, May 31, 2010

10 Must-Have Toolbar Buttons for Thunderbird 3

Image by adria.richards via Flickr

Source: makeuseof.com

Concepts:

thunderbird, , folders, accounts, extension, MakeUseOf, windows, Guide, exit, custom, Editors, Mac, filters, install, Tina.

Article Summary:

Are you wasting too much time going through Thunderbird's menus to accomplish simple tasks?

Can you never remember the keyboard shortcuts?

It may be time to install some visual shortcuts.

Thunderbird toolbar buttons provide one-click access to some of Thunderbird's most useful features.

In addition, there are buttons that add new functionality that you would otherwise miss out on.

Here are 10 toolbar buttons for Thunderbird 3 that you must have!

To add the buttons, you need to> right-click onto your Thunderbird navigation bar or toolbar and select> Customize...

1. Get all mails

Thunderbird 3 does contain a Get Mail button.

However, it takes two clicks to get mail for all your accounts.

If you don't ever check mails for just one account, you should get this button.

It skips the selection and automatically fetches new mail from all your accounts.

2. Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)

With this extension, you can search and remove duplicate messages.

By clicking the little arrow in the bottom right, you can set the comparison criteria.

These include author, recipients, CC list, status flags, message ID, numbers of lines in message, send time, size, subject, folder, and body.

In the example below I picked author as the sole criteria.

The extension searches all folders of one eMail account.

3. Mark All Read

Sometimes you have this odd unread message in a random folder or you received a dozen eMails you just want to read later.

Now you can skip searching or clicking each and every message, just hit the Mark All Read button.

4. Restart Thunderbird

Thunderbird 3 provides a restart option only after installing a new addon.

This button lays the decision when to restart Thunderbird into your hands or rather at the tip of your finger.

5. Exit Button

To properly close Thunderbird, you need to go through> File> Exit.

Sure, closing Thunderbird via the Windows' "close window" button is much quicker, but it rarely shuts the application down.

Thunderbird will continue to run in the background.

The Exit button puts the Exit option directly into your toolbar and saves you one click.

6. New Tab Button

Thunderbird 3 supports tabs. I've even listed the 5 Extensions For Tabbed Email Browsing in Thunderbird 3.

If you enjoy using the internal Thunderbird browser, you will find the New Tab Button extension very useful.

Be sure to have a look at the options for this extension.

Here you can define where the button should be added, among other options.

7. Xpunge

The Thunderbird profile folder tends to grow very large.

In part that's because eMail are never really deleted.

If you want to make sure all your deleted eMails are really gone forever, you will have to compact your folders.

Xpunge adds a toolbar button to empty the trash folder and compact folders in one or multiple accounts in one go.

8. Filter Button

Filters are rules, based on which mails are sorted into different folders.

This button lets you run your filters with one click.

Also, check out How to Set Up Message Filters In Thunderbird.

9. Toolbar Buttons

Tired of downloading one extension after another?

Try this one, which comes with 50 buttons for Thunderbird and many more for Firefox and Sunbird.

It contains a ton of super useful buttons.

Moreover, the extension provides options to finetune its buttons.

You can select which language the translate button should use, set a "favorite page", toggle proxy, or set news and mail client paths.

10. Custom Buttons

Custom Buttons allows you to convert bookmarklets into buttons or otherwise use it to build, maintain, import, and export custom toolbar buttons.

In case you can't be bothered or are lacking the skills, you can use this extension to import existing buttons provided on the Custom ButtonsÂ² website.

Which Thunderbird toolbar button is your favorite?

For me, using the Windows close button sometimes does close Thunderbird down properly and sometimes it doesn't, so it still runs in the background.

That's why I found the exit button a quick and safe way to shut it down with just one click.

As for the Get Mail button, it's fine if you have just one account set up.

In that case clicking Get Mail will get your mail for that account.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Enable visual tab switcher in Firefox 3.6 beta

Image via CrunchBase

Enable visual tab switcher in Firefox 3.6 beta

Source: macworld.com

While Firefox 3.5.5 is the current official release of Mozilla’s browser, the developer is already hard at work on its successor, Firefox 3.6. As of today, you can download and install Firefox 3.6b4, which contains a number of new features and bug fixes from the 3.5 series. As but a sampling, Firefox 3.6 will include a new version of the Gecko web rendering platform, integration of the Personas plug-in for simple appearance changes, much faster JavaScript performance, and improved application loading time.

Now, I’m not one to recommend running a beta browser as your primary browser, but if you like living on the edge and peering into the future, the Firefox 3.6 beta isn’t a bad way to do so—most everything seems to work reasonably well, and I’ve not had any crashes in my time with it.

One other interesting feature in Firefox 3.6 is support for a visual tab switcher, much like the Command-Tab application switcher in OS X. By default, if you press Control-Tab, Firefox 3.6 will cycle through your open tabs (and Shift-Control-Tab will cycle backwards). With a simple configuration switch, though, Control-Tab will instead display a visual tab switcher, like this (click for a larger version):

Firefox 3.6's visual tab switcher

The switcher will only show the six most-recently-used tabs, but a button at the bottom of the switcher lets you see all open tabs in a multi-row display. In this mode, there’s even a search box that lets you find open tabs based on words in the URL or page title.

So how do you activate the visual tab switcher? In an empty Firefox 3.6 tab, type about:config in the URL entry area, then press Return. You’ll see a warning about voiding your warranty; click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to continue.

Once you’ve accepted the warning, the screen will fill with a long list of Firefox’s preferences. To enable tab previews, type ctrltab.prev; this should be enough typing such that the list of matches contains only one preference: browser.ctrlTab.previews. Double-click anywhere on the browser.ctrlTab.previews row to enable this feature—the Status column will change to User Set, and the Value column will change to True.

Once enabled, the visual tab switcher is immediately available; press Control-Tab to try it out. If you later decide you don’t like it, go back into the configuration screen, find the browser.ctrlTab.previews entry, and double-click it again. I’m not sure if this feature will ship enabled or disabled, but you can try it out now for yourself, if you like.

Personally, I’m undecided about its functionality—I like it, but I wish there were some way to force it to always show all tabs, as it’s usually an older tab I’m trying to switch to. (There’s a preference named browser.allTabs.previews, and I tried setting that to true, but it didn’t change the number of displayed previews in the Control-Tab switcher.)

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Microsoft Backtracks on Browser-less Windows 7 E

Source: sitepoint.com

Microsoft will offer a choice of competing web browsers with European versions of Windows 7 when the new OS is released in October 2009. The company hopes the action will adhere with European Union legislation and fend off further anti-trust fines. Although Windows 7 is selling well, Microsoft revenues are down by almost a fifth and costly court cases will not help.

Microsoft’s original proposal was to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7 E (European version). Anyone pre-ordering Windows 7 in Europe is currently shown a warning that the OS will not provide a browser. For example, Amazon UK published detailed browser download instructions (although anyone needing these probably shouldn’t attempt an OS installation!) Hardware vendors would have been free to install the web browser of their choice, but IE was likely to remain the most popular choice.

The European Commission did not consider Windows 7 sans-browser to be a viable solution. It was too similar to the failed versions of Windows without a media player — they preferred a ballot screen to restore browser competition. Although full details are yet to be finalized, Microsoft has issued the following proposal:

Microsoft — rather than hardware manufacturers — will control the browser ballot screen.
Windows 7 E will be provided with Internet Explorer.
New installations of Windows 7 in Europe will show a web page offering a choice of five popular web browsers.
European Windows XP and Vista users will see the same ballot screen during a future automatic update (if IE is set as their default browser).
The list of alternative browsers will be based on 6-month usage statistics and will be reviewed twice per year.
Is this the right decision for Microsoft? I suspect so — the EU could have fined the company and ordered far more draconian changes to the OS. At least Microsoft have overall control of the ballot screen and can install IE without fear of legislative reprisals.

think-act-do

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Open a Collection of Tabs in Safari using AppleScript

AppleScript to open a collection of Safari tabs

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Firefox 3.5 Web Browser Review

Firefox 3.5 Web Browser Review

Benchmarking the beast

The latest tech

Protecting privacy

All the old favorites

Concepts:

Monday, May 31, 2010

10 Must-Have Toolbar Buttons for Thunderbird 3

Concepts:

Article Summary:

1. Get all mails

2. Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate)

3. Mark All Read

4. Restart Thunderbird

5. Exit Button

6. New Tab Button

7. Xpunge

8. Filter Button

9. Toolbar Buttons

10. Custom Buttons

Friday, December 18, 2009

Enable visual tab switcher in Firefox 3.6 beta

Enable visual tab switcher in Firefox 3.6 beta

Firefox 3.6's visual tab switcher

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Microsoft Backtracks on Browser-less Windows 7 E

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

AppleScript to open a collection of Safari tabs

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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

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Friday, December 18, 2009

Enable visual tab switcher in Firefox 3.6 beta

Firefox 3.6's visual tab switcher

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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