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Stylish Firefox add-on plus Google Redesigned equals pretty Gmail

I know that Gmail and Firefox don’t really have anything to do with WordPress, but I decided to write about them anyways because:

1. I have nothing earth-shattering to say about WordPress right now. Everyone else is talking about version 2.5, and I still haven’t installed it (my bad) so I don’t have anything to add to the conversation.
2. I would guess that most WP users are Firefox fans and probably Gmail fans too, so…so nothing. That’s not a very good argument, so I’ll stop right here.

ANYWAYS, Gmail is ugly. The interface is so eye-poppingly cluttered and unimaginative that this is actually one of the reasons I haven’t really gotten into Gmail. I just found it hard to get my eyes used to.

Well, now there’s a solution! There is a cool Firefox add-on called Stylish, that lets you define custom styles for any page on the web. For example, if you didn’t like the brown on WordPress Garage and prefer a nice shade of magenta, you could use Stylish and define a new CSS style that will make all text on this site magenta. Basically, as they say on the Gmail Redesigned page, “Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript.”

ANYWAYS, the people at Globex Designs have created a special Stylish style for Gmail - Gmail Redesigned. They have taken the over 1500 (!!) styles and very complicated structure of Gmail and redesigned it. They are updating the styles almost daily, and if you’ve already installed Gmail Redesigned and you visit their site, it will tell you if any updates have been made since your last install and you can update with one click.

I installed it, and I can tell you it makes a world of difference. Gmail is now…pretty. Pretty Gmail is no longer an oxymoron.

Gmail Redesigned says it currently only supports English, but Hebrew worked for me too, and is not supported with the “Better Gmail 2″ or the “Remember The Milk” extensions. Support for these extensions will be added in the future.

And now, a partial screenshot of my Gmail account with all incriminating evidence either archived or painted over (hopefully):

Posted in Tips | Tags: firefox, gmail | 2 Comments »

Add Google Calendar to Your Firefox Sidebar

If you’re an avid Google Calendar user, it would probably make your life easier if you could access it easily all the time. BNET describes a really easy way to get your Google Calendar to appear in your Firefox sidebar at all times.

This type allows you to put any website in your sidebar, which is really really handy.

Add Google Calendar to Your Firefox Sidebar on BNET

Posted in Shorties | Tags: firefox, Google | No Comments »

IDT Labs - Free Software Tools from Internet Duct Tape

Free Software Tools from Internet Duct Tape - Blog productivity tools for Firefox and WordPress.

Posted in Shorties | Tags: blogging, firefox | No Comments »

The best Firefox shortcut ever - scroll through tabs with ease!

I love Firefox, and it is my browser of choice without a doubt. But there is one thing that annoys me whenever I’m using it - the fact that I can’t use a shortcut to easily move between tabs, i.e. there’s no alt-tab type of shortcut like there is for moving between open windows. I’ve searched for such a solution, and never found one, and since I often have tens of tabs open, it can get pretty hard to move between them.

I also love my baby (bear with me), but tend to find working with her on my lap a bit of a challenge. She likes to eat my mouse (there’s no accounting for taste), and bang on the keyboard as I work, which pretty much makes getting anything done impossible.

Firefox-baby? Ma hakesher, as we say in Hebrew (what is the connection)? Well, today my darling baby was banging away as usual, and suddenly I realized that if I press the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. on my keyboard it takes me to open tab #1, then tab #2, etc.! I peeled my baby off the keyboard (waaah waaahh!) and tried to reenact whatever it was that she had done, and finally figured it out:

If you press ctrl+a number, it takes you to that number tab!

So, if you want to jump to tab #4, press ctrl+4!

Maybe this is something Firefox users already knew, but nobody ever told me about it so maybe there are others out there who could use this info too! Hurray for my baby! Baby, you can eat my mouse any time.

Posted in Tips | Tags: firefox | 16 Comments »

Akisment Auntie Spam picks up where Akismet leaves off

Akismet brilliantly catches most comment spam and saves it in the Akismet section of our WordPress blogs. But if we don’t check Akismet regularly, we can find ourselves hundreds, if not thousands, of comment spam waiting for review. Since Akismet sometimes mistakenly identifies legitimate comments as spam, we need to pick through the spam garbage to see if any poor sincere commenters have gotten lost in there.

This is a virtually impossible task, since the comments are listed over pages and pages. Often, I just delete all and hope for the best.

Well no more! When I realized that Akismet Auntie Spam is not a WordPress plugin but a Firefox Greasemonkey extension, I was ready to give it a try. (I don’t have anything against plugins - I love them - but I’m worried that too many will slow down my blog.)

Once installed in your Firefox browser, Akismet Auntie Spam detects when you are on the Akismet page in your blog, and organizes all your comments onto one page with only one line of the comment displayed. The comments are ordered according to the number of comments submitted by a computer. So, for example, all comments submitted only once by one computer appear at the top of the screen and are highlighted in yellow. Comments submitted three times and up are highlighted in red, and each comment only appears once.

By using Akismet Auntie Spam, I managed to review and delete almost 500 comments within minutes!

How to install Akisment Auntie Spam:

1. Make sure you have Firefox.
2. Install the Firefox Greasemonkey script: go to the Greasemonkey Firefox add-on page and click Install now. Once the script is installed, restart Firefox.
3. Go to Akismet Auntie Spam, and download the script. Install, and restart Firefox.
4. Login to your blog, and go to the Akismet page. Watch Auntie Spam get to work reorganizing your spam.
5. Peruse and delete at will.
6. More instructions can be found on the Akismet Auntie Spam page.

This extension makes comment spam manageable. Not enjoyable, but manageable.

Managing Spam Maintenance with Akismet Auntie Spam Version 2»

Posted in Plugins | Tags: comments, firefox | 3 Comments »

FireFox keeps crashing while working in WordPress

Does anyone else have this problem? Lately Firefox has been crashing very often when I am working on posts in the WYSIWYG editor. It tends to happen when I try to enter a link. This is obviously very frustrating. Anyone have any advice?

Posted in News & Views | Tags: firefox | 10 Comments »

Copy Link Text Firefox Extension

I recently started using Copy Link Text and it has saved me a lot of time while blogging. When you right click on a link on any page, you can choose to copy the link text, i.e. the text that appears to readers for the link, the link location, or both as HTML or plain text. So for example, if I want to link to the page for this plugin, I go to the top of the page to the title, right click on the title and choose “Copy Link Text and Location as HTML.” Then I go into Code view, and paste where I want the link to appear.

Copy Link Text (CoLT)>>

Posted in Good Blogging Practice, Tips | Tags: firefox | No Comments »