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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 02 Issue 22
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 2, Issue 22
Go out and vote.
Whew! Got that over with. Now I can discuss more enjoyable
things -- like the fact that, despite her current crying state --
having my daughter at home is much better than not having her
here. I discovered this in the last week while she and her mom
were down in Texas visiting with Grandma and Grandpa. As with
every gray cloud, though, there was a silver lining. I ended up
having a lot more time to check out more extensions to Firefox.
Check out my report below.
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: Extending Your Reach
2. Shameless Self-Promotion
3. The Fine Print
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1. Article: Extending Your Reach
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In the last issue I talked about some of the extensions I've been
using in Firefox. Some were specific to my work as a Web
programmer, but others had general usefulness. This issue has a
similarly mixed bag. Still I hope one or two might prove to be
of use.
1. Colorzilla. This is a relatively simple little tool which
allows you to "sample" the colors on the browser window to
find out what they are. This really helps out when I'm doing
the layout for a website. I don't use this as much anymore
now that I have Firebug (which I talked about last issue), but
it can be convenient for just doing a quick color grab.
2. Google Notebook. This extension gives you direct access to
your Google Notebook. I find this useful for nabbing quick
clips from a web page. Sometimes it's just a short concept
that I might use later in my writing. Sometimes I'll be doing
research for a project and I'll find the perfect reference
that I want to remember. This one isn't available in the
Mozilla add-on library. You have to go directly to the Google
page if you want to try it --
http://www.google.com/notebook/download/
3. MeasureIt. This is another of my "quick and dirty" web
development add-ons. In this case I can use this to draw a
small box on the screen and display its dimensions. This
comes in handy when I want to verify the amount of padding
between two objects on the screen. The folks who slave long
and hard over the way their website looks actually do care if
I put ten pixels instead of nine in between their name and
their picture.
4. NoScript. My buddy Spencer Thomas recommended this one after
last issue. I'm still on the fence. What it does is disable
every script on every webpage you might visit. Why would you
want to do this? Well, there are a number of nefarious
characters out there who make it a practice to try to ruin
your day with malevolent scripts. On a less dire note, many
advertisements on the Web require scripting. The flip side is
that you'd be surprised by the number of sites which require
scripting in order to provide you with the services you want.
With this extension active, the first time you visit one of
these "good scripting" sites, you'll have to tell NoScript
that it's OK to let the scripts on this site run. Not a huge
deal, but annoying at times.
I might have one or two more to talk about next time. I'm
playing around with one called Zotero right now, but I'll fill
you in on it when I've had more chance to explore. As always,
I'd love to hear about your experience extending Firefox. What
tools do you use? Drop me a line at
gpeters@cyberdatasolutionsllc.com.
Take care and talk with you next time.
Copyright 2008, Greg Peters
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2. Shameless Self-Promotion
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg
Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data
Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better
web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us
on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your
webmaster.
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3. The Fine Print
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