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Tag: add-on

  • List.it: Notes In Browser Sidebar

    List.it: Notes In Browser Sidebar

    list-it

    List.it is a no frills notes keeper that resides inside Firefox’s sidebar. It is simple and open source and provides an option to synchronize notes but they are kept locally if the user does not use or ignores the sync option.

    Install the add-on and access the sidebar interface via Ctrl+Shift+F. Enter any text and save, access the settings by clicking the gear icon. By default the top line of a note is shown, click the arrow icon to expand all. Click x if a note needs to be deleted and use the garbage can icon to view the dustbin where deleted notes can be restored or permanently deleted. It is possible to edit notes by clicking on them, and search or print them too.

    Right click anywhere on a page to bookmark the page in list.it or highlight, right click and copy text to list.it. In the latter list-it will also append the url of the page the text was copied from (see first note in screenshot)

    If using the synchronize option click the yellow triangle icon and sign up for their service and install list.it where you need the notes. For security quoting the About and FAQ pages:

    List.it is a research project from the Haystack Group at MIT CSAIL by a small team of students led by Prof. David Karger. List.it’s chief designers are electronic Max and Greg Vargas.
    List.it is released as free and open source software under the MIT License. The source code is available on our Google Code Project.

    With respect to data handling policies, we use strong-grade SSL (AES-256) to encrypt all client server communications (HTTP traffic) and have signed our server with a certificate.

    List-it should work on Firefox 3.0 and later.

  • Hyperwords Adds Even More Usability To Firefox

    Hyperwords Adds Even More Usability To Firefox

    Hyperwords is a firefox add-on that adds useful features and shortcuts to some common and may be not so common tasks. The default install available on the author’s website and via the Mozilla add-ons site presents a menu any time a word is highlighted or selected. Via the menu one can search google, Microsoft’s bing, the web page the word resides on, and others for the selected word. The search options do not stop there as share prices can be checked if the selected word is a stock symbol, the word can be searched for on wikipedia, wiktionary, urban dictionary and other places. A shop shortcut checks amazon, eBay and others. One can share the text via email, twitter, facebook, and other supported blogging platforms as well. In some cases even more useful is the option to copy the text as plain text or as link and send it to notepad for example. The translate option presents many languages to choose from and replaces the chosen words with the translated version, however it is not immediately obvious how the original text can be reset to its original language. The view option scans the page for occurrences of the same word, paragraphs with the same word and more.
    Hyperwords
    The settings of Hyperwords include some additional possibilities and advanced features and give a good amount of control over the appearance and behaviour of this add-on. The first and perhaps most important in terms of making Hyperwords less intrusive is the ability to make its menu not appear any time a text is selected but to use it via Firefox’s own right click context menu or to require the user to click enter after highlighting a text. The aforementioned options for this are not the only ones available as others can be chosen as the list of settings is rather extensive. The included currency converter, available when a number is highlighted, can be tweaked for example and shortcuts for its use edited. The shop services such as Amazon can be localized to search local shops. One can set how search results are presented as well with the default being a new tab in the foreground.
    Hyperwords is rather useful and the developers have provided its users ways to make it less intrusive and perhaps more interesting. Downloading it requires the acceptance of privacy policy that insists that no IP addresses or identifiable information are recorded but that stats are collected only to improve the add-on. A Windows application for use with software other than firefox is said to be in the works as well.