Tag Archives | text

Strip Everything but the Content with TidyRead

May/19 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

1240802550

Want to remove all the clutter from your favorite site to read, and get right to the text?  TidyRead, an extension for Firefox, removes all the extra stuff from a web page or article that can make reading on the Web difficult at times.

This browser add-on does a simple, yet effective, job of stripping away the extra content from news or blog article pages, leaving you with nicely formatted text to enjoy.  Since the new version is overlaid on top of the old version, switch between the two is very easy.  You also have the options to customize it to suit your own reading style too (white on black, black on white, white on green, ect).

Well worth trying out, if you find some of the content on the Web a little hard on your eyes.  You can pick up TidyRead on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Easier Bookmark Copying

Nov/12 in Bookmark Help, Usability

copy-bookmarks Here is a tip I randomly ran across via Smart Productivity.  Want to quickly copy and paste a text-based list of your bookmarks?  All you need to do is right-click a folder icon in your bookmarks and select Copy.  After doing so, you can right-click and select Paste to paste the list anywhere you need it.  It will be saved to your clipboard, organized by folder names.

Here is one more tip from the Smart Productivity blog:

One other great use of this tip is that if you right-click any of the items at the top of the Bookmarks folder, such as Organize Bookmarks and select Copy, your complete library of bookmark URLs will be placed on the clipboard as well as the folder names.

Very neat discovery, I must say.  Check out more Smart Productivity here:

http://www.smartproductivity.com/firefox-tip-easily-copy-your-bookmarks

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

8 Ways to Open Text as a Link

Oct/17 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox

Turn Text to Links in Firefox One of those pesky things that bug me is when somebody writes a link in that I want to click, but there is no HTML code included to make it into a click-able link.  Thankfully several add-ons for Firefox have figured out how to turn URLs and e-mail addresses not marked up as a link into things I can click on.

There are eight add-ons for Firefox that do this job very well.  The only problem is that there is not that much difference between them.

Know of a number nine I might have missed?  I wouldn’t be surprised.  This seems like a very popular idea to do for a Firefox extension for some reason.  Since today is my birthday, just consider these eight gems your present from me.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Quick Paste – Quickly Share Blocks of Text

Jul/24 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

A few weeks back, I posted about a new service named TinyPaste over on Mitchelaneous, which made it easy to copy blocks of text, paste them into a box and then get a short URL so you could share that text with your friends.

What makes this service even cooler, is they have a Firefox extension to help you speed up the link generating process.   Using the Quick Paste add-on, you can highlight text then grab your URL.  Not much rocket science behind it.

Quickly Share Blocks of Text!

Here is a little more about the Firefox extension from the developer:

Have you ever wanted to send a article or long conversation over IM or post to twitter, only to have it be over the limit on size? What about a cool way to share data without the fuss? Thats what TinyPaste is! Its like TinyURL but for text!

You can pick up the extension on Firefox’s Add-ons web site and learn more about the service behind the handy tool at TinyPaste.com.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Really Simple Notepad for Firefox

Jul/13 in Usability

Need to jot something down real quick before you forget, and don’t want to be bothered launching another web site or program to do it?  The Really Simple Notepad bookmarklet is just what the forgetful web user needs.

Just drag and drop this link to your bookmarks toolbar:

notes Really Simple Notepad

Now when you need it, hit the bookmarklet link and up will come a popup window where you can type. The fun doesn’t stop there though. If you want to save what you have put in, just hit Ctrl+S to bring up the “Save As” menu. Make sure you set it to save as a text file and you have a simple backup of what you just wrote.

Thanks goes out to 7 is 7 for providing this hidden browser treasure.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Dummy Text Addon for Firefox

Feb/18 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

lipsumgen Many designers, when they are in need of some dummy text to fill in a layout won’t do what I do.  Personally, I like just to write random sentences such as, “The duck likes to party with the midget at Wrestlemania.” over and over.

The dummy text they use has a name though – it is called Lorem Ipsum.  While it does resemble classical Latin, it (much like my sentence before) has no real meaning.

Dummy Lipsum, a Firefox extension, does the hard work for you and will auto generate this text for you.  After installing you can setup how it starts, you can show HTML tags and you can also set how much text it generates and how it is formatted.

When your done, you just hit the generate button, and then copy it to your clipboard.  From there, you can paste it any place you might need it.  As a bonus tip, I’ll also share this little tidbit of information.  You can do the same without an extension by just visiting the lipsum.com web site.  The Firefox addon though does make this auto generation a little more handy to have when your in a hurry to generate some text that really means nothing at all.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Problem Solver: Opening Plain Text Links

Dec/26 in Usability

Your problem? Making none clickable links clickable again!

The solution? The Plain Text Links extension for Firefox solves a problem that many of us run into. With any text that can be treated as a URL, while using this extension you can right click on the text and select “Open this URL”.

This one simple tool will make Firefox smart enough to know what to do with that link when you want to click on it. Now if it doesn’t do what you need it to do – I have an alternative.

Another Fix! Plain Text to Link is a totally different extension, no matter how similar you think the name is. This handy helper is able to select plain text in a page and save it in a text file. It can also open links written in plain text.

Here are a few more suggestions that do pretty much the same job:

Hey Mitch, what about a non-extension fix? For that, give Linkrr a whirl.

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Accessibar – Make the Web Usable

Aug/02 in Add-ons Reviews, Usability

AccessibarAt no fault of the user, the designer doesn’t always think of usability when designing a web site. Sometimes fonts can be to small, web pages can be the wrong color – and text can be seven different shades of wonky. The Accessibar extension for Firefox looks to change all of that for you.

This toolbar provides the following features:

+ Web page fonts, links and background colors can be changed from a selection of 70 colors on current session

+ Icons with configurable shortcut keys to increase and decrease Font size

+ Line spacing can be increased or decreased to five different spacing settings incrementally

+ All images (including Flash) displayed on a web page can be selected as being hidden or shown

As you can see for such a tiny footprint in your Firefox’s browsing space, Accessibar does a lot of work. Does this toolbar do the job for you?

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Stupid Photo to Text Trick

May/14 in Entertainment

Photo 2 TextJust call this stupid browser tricks Monday! Ever felt that need to turn your favorite photo you have on the Web into some ascii art?

With this Firefox extension from Photo2Text.com now you can. Now I am not going to pretend that anybody has a good reason to do this. There isn’t one darn good reason you can think of either – go ahead and try. Time to geek out, relax and transform your photos into a load of interesting characters.

+ Download and Install the Photo to Text Firefox Extension!

Read full story · Comments { 0 }

Copy a Link’s Name

Jan/22 in Usability

I know I run into this issue from time to time and have yet to find a good solution.

It is hard to select the text of a link and not click on the link by accident. The Copy Link Name extension gets rid of that issue and gives you right-click access to copy the text you need. It copies the name (source anchor) of a link. Just a small extension that adds a context menu item to copy a link’s source anchor. Sure it could do more – but it does not have to.

+ Download and Install the Copy Link Name Extension for Firefox!

Read full story · Comments { 0 }