Webmonkey » extensions

Xmarks Lives: LastPass Buys Downtrodden Bookmark Syncing Service

Michael Calore — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:48:38 +0000

Just when we all thought we’d never see it again, the cross-browser bookmark syncing service Xmarks has received a life-saving injection.

The company has been acquired by LastPass, maker of a cross-browser password manager and form filler add-on. The deal was announced Thursday, and terms were not disclosed.

Xmarks will live on as a freemium service. The initial cross-browser syncing tool you’re already familiar with will be free, but users will be encouraged to upgrade to a paid subscription to unlock more advanced features. It’s the same model employed by LastPass for its own Premium version of its (otherwise free) password-syncing service.

Xmarks Premium will be offered for $1 per month ($12 per year) and it comes with some new features like apps for the iPhone and Android phones, and technical support. You will also be able to bundle the premium offerings from LastPass and Xmarks together for $20 per year.

There’s already an iPhone app for Xmarks, and the company just recently released an Android app, too. Xmarks says anyone currently using the iPhone app can continue to use it without upgrading to the premium service, but they will have to buy in to the $12 per year plan to get future upgrades.

It looked like curtains for Xmarks in September, when the company announced it would shut down its service in early 2011.

Apparently, there’s no money in a free bookmark syncing service, and the company was facing new competition from the cloud-based syncing systems being built into Firefox and Chrome. Even though Xmarks one-ups those built-in single-browser services by syncing bookmarks across all your browsers, it couldn’t stay afloat.

The service has some 4.5 million users, and there was an outcry when Xmarks announced the shutdown. Later, the company asked its fans if they would be willing to pay a subscription fee to keep Xmarks alive. Over 30,000 of them pledged to do so, and that was enough to attract the attention of LastPass.

The two companies will continue to operate under independent brands, though they may merge everything later.

So, it turns out this dark story of cloud computing had a silver lining after all.

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Apple Updates Safari, Turns on Extensions

Michael Calore — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:12:05 +0000

The new Safari browser with the Twitter toolbar extension installed

Apple released an update to its Safari web browser Wednesday.

Safari 5.0.1 is available from Apple as a free download for Windows and for Mac OS X (Leopard or better). Mac users can also find it in Software Update.

This is an incremental upgrade, but it comes with one big new feature: Safari now has a real platform for third-party extensions, a feature that Firefox and Chrome have had for some time.

Safari 5 arrived in early June, and in addition to dozens of other enhancements (including the much-discussed Reader feature) it included a new architecture for creating lightweight browser extensions that enhance and personalize web pages and web services. Wednesday’s update now lets you install and run those extensions. Apple has also launched a new Extensions Gallery where you can browse the available extensions and download them.

All the major browsers — Safari included — have had a variety of plug-ins, add-ons and toolbars available for years. But Safari’s new extension architecture is much closer to the format recently adopted by Google Chrome and Firefox. This new breed of extensions can be written using HTML, JavaScript, CSS and other web standards. It makes for a much gentler learning curve for potential developers, and for an experienced web programmer, the effort required to create and distribute a standards-based extension is almost trivial. For users, these extensions are easier to maintain and less likely to slow down the browser.

Mozilla calls its lightweight extension project Jetpack, and it’s being incorporated into the newest Firefox releases. The next version of Google’s browser will let users sync their extensions across multiple installations of the browser.

Go to extensions.apple.com to see the gallery of extensions being promoted by Apple. Also, keep in mind that anyone can create and distribute a Safari extension, so distribution isn’t controlled like the App Store. For safety’s sake, Safari extensions are sandboxed inside the browser and signed with a digital certificate so you know you’re getting updates from the same person who created the original.

Apple is promoting a few big-name creations in the gallery. There’s an official Twitter extension, which integrates a simple toolbar Twitter client into your browser, one from MLB that displays scores and headlines, and an eBay manager sidebar for keeping a close eye on your auctions. There’s one on the way from Instapaper.

Of course, the irreverent extensions are more interesting. There’s Defacer, which hides “Like” buttons and other Facebook cruft you find around the web. Shut Up hides comments by default on blogs. A Cleaner YouTube removes visual distractions from video pages, promising to turn YouTube into “a clean and tranquil place” as if that’s even remotely possible.

There are around 100 extensions to choose from right now, and since the new extensions framework in Safari is so simple to develop for, we expect the list to keep growing quickly.

There is one other notable safety enhancement to Safari 5.0.1 — the form auto-fill vulnerability has been patched. This fixes a vulnerability that hackers could exploit to grab personal information from a user by forcing the browser to auto-fill a hidden web form with locally stored data. So, even if you may not care for extensions, you should upgrade Safari for this reason alone.

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Wikis Rally Around Universal Edit Button

Scott Loganbill — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:57:29 +0000

It’s one small step for wiki-kind: A large swath of online Wikis have organized a Universal Edit Button — a way to alert you through a browser when the page is editable. The first stage of the project provides a Firefox extension that displays an icon, similar to how the RSS icon appears, whenever it detects an editable page.

The feature is available now by installing the firefox extension. Once installed, the site will look for code on the page that tells the extension the page can be edited. The enlarged icon appears here at the top of the post.

Wiki’s, named after the Hawaiian word for “Quick,” encourage content contributions and collaboration by online communities. The barrier to entry among many possible contributors is the expectation of a historically read-only web.

According to wikiHow founder Jack Herrick, “Tim Berners Lee intended the web to be a read-write medium. But somewhere along the path, most web users were demoted to just ‘web surfers’ on a largely read-only web.”

“Few people enjoy the privilege of web editing,” said Herrick. “Yet web editing has some real benefits: The success of Wikipedia, and the increasing utility of wikis like wikiHow, AboutUs, wikiTravel and Wikia demonstrates that open editing creates high quality information resources.”

The blogs mentioned above, and many others, are all participants in the Universal Edit Button project. In case we failed to mention it before (ahem) Wired’s How-To blog and Webmonkey are both wikis, and we are already in the process of embedding the code ourselves.

We think it’s a great idea. Supporters of the Universal Edit Button, like us, hope the Firefox extension and perhaps future built-in adoption by popular browsers will continue Berners-Lee’s vision.

[Thanks ReadWriteWeb]

Del.icio.us IE Toolbar Released

Scott Loganbill — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:07:33 +0000

Yahoo launched the Internet Explorer version of its Del.icio.us toolbar out of beta Thursday.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site allowing you to save your bookmarks online and share them with the online community. The site tracks social memes using the popularity of the bookmarks contributed.

The Del.icio.us toolbar makes bookmarking that much easier by allowing you to bookmark, tag and search straight from the browser.

A feature run-down from Del.icio.us’ website:

Near instantaneous searching with very large accounts (over 10K bookmarks)

Full del.icio.us sidebar and toolbar implementation with bookmark sync and typedown search

Toolbar indicators for new network activity and links for you

Works on IE6, IE7, and IE8 beta on both XP and Vista

The Internet Explorer version joins the Firefox version already available.

Firebug Command-Line API: Not Just Your Weekend Debugger

Scott Loganbill — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:23:44 +0000

You may know that Firebug has one of the best interfaces for debugging . What you may not know is it also features a command line and API for heavy-duty debugging.

Firebug is a Firefox extension used by web developers for debugging HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the browser’s DOM.

The command line allows you to enter and execute JavaScript commands straight from the Firebug sidebar. The functions available in the API allows you to maneuver, monitor and investigate web page code in more detail.

Sample API commands include:

Generate lists of elements or properties from specified objects
Pull XML sources for inspection
Execute and monitor a singular JavaScript function

The command line tool is available by hitting Ctrl-Shift-L (or Command-Shift-L on Mac OS). Firebug’s sidebar window opens up with a view of the console window. The console window displays feedback from the commands you enter using the command line at the bottom of the screen.

Webmonkey Picks: Top Firefox 3 Extensions

Scott Loganbill — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:33:23 +0000

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 arrives Tuesday, giving you a chance to download the latest browser and dress up its totally clean slate with your choice of extensions, toolbars and themes.

One of Firefox’s most unique and powerful assets is its ability to install third-party add-ons. When Mozilla vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer visited us in May, he addressed the critical balance between a fast and light browser and a slow but feature-rich one by claiming Firefox 3′s extension system enabled his team to take a hands-off approach. In other words, the company invites users to decide how to enhance the browser themselves, and by how much.

DIY functionality proves to be a boon for internet development, and it has caused many to race to keep up with the latest version of the popular browser before launch. Some trendsetting browser features have originated from Mozilla’s development community. Chances are, features available in other browsers, and many more that aren’t, are available by download.

But how many features do you add? Which ones are ready? Here are our picks, chosen by “coolness,” popularity and readiness for Firefox 3.

User Interface

AdBlock Plus

Firefox was the first browser to restrict those annoying advertising pop-ups. AdBlock Plus took the feature a step further by removing all ads from any web page. It effectively cleans up the web page, displaying only its bare content. You’ll be surprised at how pleasant surfing the internet can be without being bombarded by ads.

DownThemAll

DownThemAll saves you from trying to painstakingly download all files from a page of links or images. It will download all links or images in a single click. Better yet, it claims to speed up downloads by up to 400 percent.

Toolbars

Del.icio.us Toolbar

Del.icio.us’ toolbar adds buttons enabling you to search, browse, tag and add to your online bookmarks. Import your Firefox bookmarks to the site and access them anywhere through the Del.icio.us website.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon adapts quickly to the latest widgets, add-ons and toolbars. Its Firefox 3-enabled toolbar is no exception. The toolbar lets you randomly surf entertaining videos and web pages and rate them.

Google and Yahoo Toolbars

If you use Google products as much as we do, Google’s toolbar could prove pretty handy. The search bar is less useful for its search box (Google search is Awesome Bar’s default search engine) than for the ability to set file defaults to automatically open in Gmail and Google Docs. It also has some online bookmark functionality similar to, but not as “killer” as, Del.icio.us. Privacy pundits might wag a finger — if you don’t opt out of “usage statistics,” Google anonymously tracks your traffic and not so anonymously tracks your search behavior if you don’t opt out online. Yahoo! Toolbar is an obvious alternative if Yahoo is your favorite search engine and e-mail provider.

Themes

The Mozilla crew heard users saying that Firefox 2 didn’t look and feel like it was an application native to their operating systems. The team digested that feedback and made separate skins to match the distinct styles of Linux, Mac OS, Windows XP and Vista operating systems. The skins appear as the default user interfaces in their respective versions. If your OS style doesn’t fit your personality, there are a couple alternative themes for Firefox 3:

Aero Fox 3.0.1 A popular jet-black theme with glossy buttons and menus
NASA Night Launch is a black and silver theme set against the backdrop of space shuttle photos

Hackity-Hack

Chickenfoot and Greasemonkey

Chickenfoot and Greasemonkey are extremely easy tools for devastating site code with your own hacks. They’re both pretty useful, even if you don’t know how to code. Prewritten scripts can be downloaded and run for convenience. Lifehacker’s Better Gmail 2 and Better GReader are both good collections of popular Greasemonkey scripts.

Firebug

Firebug is a life saver for web developers. It allows you under-the-hood access to the browser’s DOM, XHTML, JavaScript and CSS using debugging tools straight from the browser’s sidebar.

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