All along i’ve been a huge fan of Uservoice’s “Feedback” button that sits fixed on the edge of the browser screen. I’ve become a Twitter fan since 1 month ago. Now, there is something like that button for Twitter and it is super-easy to put it on your website, thanks to Go2Web20. Just go to their page, and enter some details to customize your widget and you are good to go.
Yes, you read it right. I’m disappointed with Firefox 3.0.11. I’m not saying this based on one or two crashes. I’m judging this on my past 2-3 months of usage. I am a die-hard FF-user. I recently switched back to FF after trying Chrome for sometime. But Firefox has been posing serious problems since then, mainly 2 problems.
Since installing this version of Firefox, the Mozilla Crash Reporter has become my best friend. Its been coming up almost daily to meet me. I know that i’ve installed Beta plugins like Ubiquity and this kind of behaviour is expected. So, this is not my main complaint. But still this kind of crash-on-a-daily-basis is too much for a browser like Firefox. I don’t know why i enter my email address there every time. Though i send a crash report every 24 hours, i do not get any kind of response. Firefox is free software and i know that shouldn’t be complaining about lack of support.
My 2GB RAM Windows 7 system becomes god-damn slow with just Firefox, foobar2000 and Twhirl running. Guess who’s the culprit, it is the people’s (include me) favourite browser Firefox. And i’ve not been crash-testing it with 100 tabs open, 150 addons installed etc. I have about 10-20 tabs open at a time. I have 13 addons installed out of which 5 are disabled, to see if they are the culprit. Others are just very popular ones like Google toolbar, SU toolbar etc. which i’ve been using since Firefox 0.1 (not really).
So how much memory does my firefox use ? The answer is God only knows. It changes every time though i have the same tabs open. When i open Firefox with 10 tabs, the memory usage remains at ~120MB. If i just leave my system idle and go out, i’ll return after few hours to find that Firefox is using ~500MB. Two more hours and it would be ~800MB.
I’ve been resisting myself from writing such a post about Firefox. I did some search and research on the top to see if something specific is causing this or Firefox itself. When i did a google search on the topic i seem to get relevant results for a memory leak as high as 1GB (300MB, 400MB, 500MB, 600MB, 700MB, 800MB, 900MB). But most of them are complaint posts like this or unreplied forum topics. The point is that there is no specific solution. Most commonly suggested troubleshooting step is to check out the list of Problematic Extension. I went through the list in and out and concluded that the none of the memory-leaking extension is on my list.
There are other possible steps like trying to run Firefox in safe mode, reinstalling Firefox etc. But, as a customer i wouldn’t want to go through all this hassle to find out what’s wrong. I’m deeply in love with Firefox, so i’m still clinging onto it. But an average FF user will make the switch to the supposed-to-be-faster Chrome or the faster-in-reality Opera.
Last year when i made a post about a copyright breach, i received immediate response from a Mozilla Staff Member. I hope they’ll pay little attention to this post as well.
PS : If you’re a fan of Firefox, i might have hurt you. I am sorry. Don’t take me wrong. I’m a fan of FF too. In this condition, i wouldn’t be recommending FF to anyone. So, i really hope i find a solution to this.
You might’ve seen many such posts around the web which list out the top bookmarklets for Google Chrome. But, one thing that I found to be common between them were that most of these had not-frequently-used bookmarklets, duplicate ones (in the sense, two or more that serve the same purpose). The reason for so many bookmarklets is to increase the size of these lists. Here in this post, I’ve compiled a list of bookmarklets that I use daily and will be useful for almost everyone of you out there.
Now, on to the list. All the links (except Twitlet) are actual bookmarklets. You can drag them to your bookmarks bar.
Now, these are the ones that I use on my Chrome, which recently became my primary browser. What about you ? Which ones do you use often ? Have I missed out anything here ?
For past few weeks I’ve been telling people that I am working on an Open Source Script and finally version 1 of the script is here. Some of you might’ve heard about the hosted ad rotation site Rotatee.com. That is what I have revamped into an Open source ad rotation script, so that people can install it on their own servers.
The main reason is that there is ad rotation script out there which is good both at the front end and the back end. (Atleast upto my knowledge). People may argue that there is OpenX (formerly called OpenAds (formerly called phpAdsNew)). But, the thing is that its back end is damn confusing for a lot of people out there (I am included, of course).
Rotatee just simplifies the process. It uses familiar terms like "campaigns", "banners" etc.. And doesn’t include anything more than what people want. With this simplicity, I’ve not compromised for its features.
Don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at the examples to see what Rotatee can do for you. Also, you can check out a live demo of the back end. If you like the script, do let me know. Also the other way, if you have any suggestions, let me know so that I can improve it. Report the bugs in the Bug tracker.
Of course, as a developer, I use it here on GotChance. Check out the "popular posts" on the header. The links there are rotated using Rotatee. Also, I’ll be using Rotatee for 125 x 125 ads on the sidebar and also for the "Blogs I Read" list on the footer.
Its true that majority of people still don’t know what are desktop blog editors. Just like how you use Outlook to send mails from desktop, just like how you post to Twitter from desktop, you can also post to your blogs right from your desktop. From a poll conducted by Lifehacker 2 years back, over 60% of the bloggers just use an online editor.
But, that was the situation 2 years ago. Now, with the availability of Windows Live Writer (WLW), many bloggers have switched to it. Still, I’m convinced that atleast 50% of the crowd still use online editors.
When we look at the reasons why people still don’t use Desktop editors, the first reason is that they don’t have the knowledge about the availability of one. When I started blogging 2 years ago, I just used Wordpress’s inbuilt online editor, adjusting myself to the features available. But, after I came to know about WLW, I hop over to Wordpress Dashboard only for things like comment moderation, plugin installation etc..
When you insist people to switch to Desktop Editors, you need to give them reasons, don’t you ? There are a lot of reasons to make the switch :
Manage more than just 1 blog. Almost every desktop editor gives you the ability to add many blogs. You can post to these different blogs from 1 place.
You can write offline. When you get a new idea for a post, but unfortunately, you’ve been disconnected from the internet. During such situations, you can still open your desktop editor, write down your post and save for publishing later.
You get more formatting options. Most online editors have limited formatting options. But, there are richer in desktop editors. Especially, I love the “Web layout” feature in WLW, which gives the look of frontend of your blog whilst you still write the post.
Enhanced Image Support. WLW lets you apply a number of effects to your photos like Drop Shadow, Sepia tone, Black and White, Watermark, Emboss etc…
Tagging Support… Most desktop editors come with either inbuilt tagging support or with the help of external plugins, for technorati, delicious and the like.
These are not the only features available in desktop editors. Its not just about listing down the advantages. Its the entire feel that you get when you use a desktop editor. The simplicity, the ease.. You don’t find these in online editors.
Now, if you are in look out for a desktop editor, I strongly recommend Windows Live Writer. But, if you want to look out for alternatives, I suggest that you take a look at this post.
Wordpress is, without a doubt, the most popular open source blogging software. But, its much more than just a blogging platform. With its 3233 plugins (as of this instant), its the most flexible platform for developing almost anything. In this post, we’ll see what all you can do with Wordpress.
Wordpress was primarily developed to be a blogging platform and that is what it is being used for, widely. Almost every other blog that you come across today is powered by Wordpress (includes my own blog). Also, Wordpress.com hosts about 4,562,469 blogs (when I started writing this post) 4,562,720 blogs (when I finished writing this post) that are powered by Wordpress.
If you are not going to blog and you simple wish to have a static website, Wordpress can still help you with it. Also, you can just have the static website or have a blog attached with it. You can do it without any external plugin. This feature comes packed with Wordpress. You can check out this post and this for more knowledge.
Are you a print magazine publisher ? Or, do you want to write a magazine online ? You can create your own E-Zine with wordpress. There’s a huge pile of magazine themes available for Wordpress. In my previous post, I dealt with using magazine themes. There are some very popular e-zines out there, powered by Wordpress.
All of you would have probably heard of Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. They are what we call today as “Social Networks”. The cool thing is that you can create your own Social Network with Wordpress. Either you can do it manually by editing WP’s code. Or, you can simple install BuddyPress over an installation of Wordpress MU. Also, check out this live social network which uses Wordpress.
Most of the Newsletter Managing softwares out there are very expensive. But, luckily FeedBurner offers Emails Subscriptions for RSS Feeds for free. Combining that with a Wordpress installation, you can create your own email newsletter manager for free. NetTuts has an extensive tutorial on how to create this software called “WordBurner” ;)
“A Picture says more than a Thousand Words”.
Wordpress has inbuilt Gallery support using the shortcode. But, there are numerous plugins available to convert Wordpress into a cool gallery. You can check out the whole list, but NextGEN gallery is my favorite.
Though softwares like vBulletin, phpBB and SMF rule the world of online forums, Wordpress has its own solution called bbPress. bbPress is plain and simple forum software, plain and simple. It’s easy to use, easy to administrate, fast and clean. It is also highly customizable just like how Wordpress is.
Simply put, A Feed Aggregator is one which gets the content from various sources and puts them all at one place. A very powerful plugin called WP-o-Matic is available to serve this purpose. The plugin converts your Wordpress into a personalized feed aggregator. But, such plugins are also being used to STEAL content from other blogs.
Does that word seem unfamiliar to you ? But, I bet you’d have heard about Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr etc.. They are nothing but the so-called MicroBlogging platforms. Using Wordpress, you can create your own MicroBlogging site, with the help of the Prologue theme. And, the good news is that, it comes right from the Wordpress team themselves. You can also check out the demo.
Do you want to create a moderated membership directory that showcases your member’s information? Do you want it to be flexible, be very little work after initial setup, and use a world-class open source platform that you are already familiar with?
Check out this detailed tutorial on how to create your own Membership directory using Wordpress.
Do you use Wordpress for any other purpose ? Or, do you know anyone that does it ? Have any new idea on how else Wordpress can be used ? Share your views in the comments…
There are lots of ways to run Web Apps on the Desktop. But, the one that came with Google Chrome became my favorite. Mainly because of its simplicity and inbuilt Gears support. I started creating such “application shortcuts” and as I usually do, I put up these shortcuts in the taskbar.
I prefer Web Apps for various reasons. Like, they don’t occupy any space in your hard drive. They are much more simpler to use than desktop apps and you can access your data from all over the world.
Recently, I began to use Twitter a lot and so I was searching for a desktop client. But, most of the popular ones were Adobe Air apps and I didn’t wanna install Air. So, I decided to use a web app. Since, I needed simplicity, I went around looking for “twitter for iphone” and found this website. I simple opened it in Chrome and created an application shortcut. Now, it sits there on my desktop as a simple Twitter client. Similarly, I have created the shortcuts for Gmail, Google Reader and Remember the Milk, all with Gears support. Also, I have LiteSum for quick Wikipedia look up. With the upcoming Greasemonkey support for Chrome, this Application shortcut feature will become much more useful.
Similarly, I’m looking for more simple apps to add, preferably iPhone version of sites, because they have simpler interface. Do you know any ? Do you have any such Web Apps on your Desktop ?
Check out a screenshot of my desktop running these web apps. (Click to enlarge) :
