One of the hot new ways for viewing photos is using a JavaScript technique called LightBox. I'm sure you've seen it before on sites where you click on a thumbnail, and a fullsize version of the image is superimposed on the page that your viewing. It then grays out the background so that it's easy for the viewer to focus on the image.
A few days ago Lifehacker posted a sweet Firefox configuration option that would enable inline auto-completion of URL's as you type them into the Address Bar. Changing that setting took away the necessity to use the arrows all of the time for selecting the first entry listed.
The right-click menu (a.k.a. context menu) is one area in Windows that Microsoft refuses to let users customize out-of-the-box. There should be some sort of utility that lets people choose what's included, and the order that the items are placed in. I don't think I even use half of the options that are often located in the menu!
I think this week should be declared application launcher week on CyberNet. :) Exactly one week ago we wrote an article on the best application launchers, then one of our readers pointed out a cool app that we missed called Executor, and finally yesterday we wrote about Launchy 2.0 Alpha.
JAlbum is a free cross-platform program that I've been using for years, and before I got my Flickr account it was my only way to share digital photos with my family. I had a computer at my house being used to serve up the photos to anyone that requested them, but Flickr was too great of a deal to pass up.
Stardock just launched WindowBlinds 6, and there is no doubt that this is what the next generation of skinning is all about! It completely supports the blurring of window borders and menus...for both Vista and XP. I guess you could say that it helps blur the line between the two operating systems.
We've got a treat for you if you're a Windows user and you've been lusting over a sweet 3D Desktop. Shock 4Way is a free application that gives you four virtual desktops to work with. I wouldn't say it is quite as good as the DeskSpace app, but it also doesn't cost $20 to buy.
Google gets both praise and criticism for having such a plain and simple search page. While I like the simple page with nothing other than a white background and a search box, others are looking for something more. If you prefer to use Google as your primary search engine but you want to personalize the page, checkout Groovle.
I’m astonished at how many tweaking utilities have been released for Vista thus far. We’ve got TweakVista, VistaTweaker, TweakUAC, Vista Sidebar Styler, and Vispa. Now we’ve got one more that we can append to that list: XdN Tweaker. This one is a little more unique than the others, and the reason for that lies in its cross-compatibility.
I’ve been addicted to sidebars ever since I bought my first widescreen monitor. Sidebars have the ability to provide a lot of information inside a very small space, and it wasn’t until recently that I fully started to utilize them.
A month after Vista was released marked the beginning of an amazing application called Start++. It adds features that make the usefulness of Vista’s Start Menu more than double what it is out-of-the-box. The primary focus of the application is on the "startlets" which helps the Start Menu’s search box perform similarly to keyword searches in Firefox and Opera.
Stardock’s TweakVista 1.0 was just released the other day, and freeware advocates will be happy to see that there is a no-cost alternative available. This is a well-designed app that many Vista users will surely love, and the last time I used it I put together a video of the version that costs $19.95 to purchase.
Like many of you, I use bookmarklets on a daily basis to complete tasks a bit faster. Many of them offer features that normally require Firefox extensions to do, and I am one of those people that try to minimize the number of extensions I use.
Finally! Google now lets you embed Google Maps into your own site, and even customize various aspects of them! The way they implemented it isn’t extremely technical...they just use an embeddable frame for you to put on your site. So you’re essentially serving up another website inside your own site.
Transferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.
Opera is a free web browser that is available for the Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems. One of the things that Opera is best known for is being highly customizable out-of-the-box, but I think that some people overlook how customizable the toolbars are.
Could you imagine using a computer without having shortcuts? Probably not, and that’s why shortcuts play an important part in how we use our computers. Now what if there was a way to manage your shortcuts in a way that gives you the fastest access possible to all of the apps you use the most? 8Start is exactly that and more...
Launchy is becoming a well-known application among PC power users. When the latest version launched back in April it included a plugin called Runny which added a whole new aspect to the application. I love that plugin because you can create customized commands for Launchy, such as one for composing an email.
We talked quite a bit yesterday about how pie menus work, and even gave a short video demonstration of them in action. Today I thought that I would walk you through the most productive and usable pie menu system that I have come across. It is in the form of an extension for Firefox, and it’s received many upgrades from the last time that I mentioned it.
We’ve covered several utilities in the past that can be used to tweak Vista: TweakVista, TweakUAC, and Vispa. All of those provide some nice functionalities when it comes to tweaking Vista, and there is a new one that was just released called VistaTweaker (Download Mirror).
