Friday, November 12, 2010
RockMelt,BlackSheep,Firesheep
What is RockMelt? Do We Need a Facebook Web Browser?
Yes, there’s a new web browser designed around the idea that you can share more, and share more quickly on Facebook and Twitter. That alone may turn some people away, depending on how much they value their privacy. However, after trying it for a short time, I can see how this browser could easily turn normal Facebook users into hyped up Uber-Facebook users.
RockMelt was founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, and is backed by Netscape developer Marc Andreessen. It was released yesterday, mostly by invitation only. You can get a copy of this browser by visiting RockMelt.com and signing up via your Facebook ID.
After signing up late last night I received my invite and downloaded it. The install went fairly quick and here’s the first thing I saw … a Facebook login.
Yes, that’s right, it seems to be required. However, that makes sense.
It took me quite awhile to figure out most of the actions I could perform. If you open the “RockMelt” menu at the top right corner of the browser, and click the “Help” item, you’ll find help for a few basic tasks. Here’s the first thing you see there.
As some of you have already noticed, RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, which is the basis for Google’s Chrome web browser. Those using Chrome now won’t have a hard time getting around in the browser.
Rather than go into too many details, I’ll show you the RockMelt video preview. It’s very well done.
RockMelt video
Techie Buzz Verdict:
I tried it, I like it, and haven’t found any major bugs yet. If you are already using Google Chrome, and you’re in Facebook often, there’s no reason not to give RockMelt a try. You don’t have to make it your default browser, and it won’t do anything to your current web browsers. Farmville works very well in Chrome and RockMelt.
Download: http://www.rockmelt.com/
BlackSheep Thwarts Firesheep Intruders
Firesheep, a Firefox add-on for snooping on Twitter and Facebook logins on open Wi-Fi connections caused quite a storm when it was released. It went on to show how insecure your computer could be.
The exploit could snoop on unprotected Wi-Fi connections and retrieve login cookies for Twitter and Facebook, which could then be used to login to a users account and access their data. If you are using an open Wi-Fi connection, the first thing to do is to to secure your Wi-Fi connection. If you need help with it, read our earlier guides Wi-Fi Demystified I and Wi-Fi Demystified II.
BlackSheep is another Firefox add-on which is designed to combat Firesheep. BlackSheep drops fake session ID information on the wire and then monitors traffic to see if it has been hijacked. If BlackSheep finds that someone is snooping on you, it will display an alert as seen in the image above.
If you have a secure Wi-Fi connection, you have nothing to worry about, but if you don’t, the threat of Wi-Fi snooping by Firesheep is pretty high. You can circumnavigate the threat by using https instead of http while accessing the websites, but to be on the safer side, install the BlackSheep add-on too, which can be downloadedfrom here.
Top Extensions for Opera 11
Opera has always been a browser with a small (as compared to Firefox or Google Chrome) but devoted following that keeps increasing with each iteration of their browser. While their simple mobile version of the browser (Opera Mini) is vastly popular – they never saw a similar growth in the desktop market. The folks at Opera Inc. thought it was probably due to the unavailability of Extensions for their browser, and so they added the extensibility of extensions in Opera 11.
So without further ado, here’s a look at the top extensions for Opera 11.

NoAds: NoAds is a NoScript + AdBlock extension. In the words of its creator NoAds = (NoScript + AdBlock)/2. It blocks 99% of scripts on a site that originate from a different domain, blocks text ads and you can even import subscriptions from AdBlock as well as EHH! No more ads.
FastestTube: This simple and sweet extension just adds a drop-down menu on any YouTube video page where you can download the video that is playing in many formats. There are some minor problems with the integration with Redirect to HTTPS videos, but that should be fixed shortly.

Reddited: Are you an avid Redditor? Do you scramble up to submit a page to Reddit only to find that it’s already been linked to? Do you hang your head in defeat and rage at the trolls that are laughing at you? Then this is the extension for you. All it does is tell you if the page you’re looking at has been reddited or not. If it has been submitted, it shows you the comment count on the link as well.

Translate: If you’re one of those anime fans without a drop of Japanese within you, or if you’re the newshound who has to go to various foreign-language sites for news then this extension will do you a world of good. Translate auto-magically detects the language of the page you’re currently working on and will offer to translate the entire page for you. Built on top of Google Translate framework, the translation, although slightly grammatically off, works and works well.

Opera Mini Simulator: This one is for the web developers. The add-on loads your focused tab as how it would look under the Opera Mini environment. Though a little slow when simulating, the add-on is quite useful for mobile developers.
![GMail [iOS mode]](https://addons.labs.opera.com/media/extensions/93/493/1.0-rev1/images/GMail%20iOS%20Mode.png)
Gmail [iOS Mode]: Don’t want to wait for the Gmail page to open when all you need is to know if you have unread mail or not? Enter the Gmail [iOS Mode] extension that changes the UserAgent of Opera to an iOS device’s. So you can use the slick and lean Gmail interface on your desktop browser itself!
Do you have any favorite Opera Extensions? Do feel free to share them with me through your comments.
Addons/Extensions Must Have for Firefox
ColorfulTabs – Having too many tabs open can lead to a lot of confusion, but this extension will assign your tabs different colors so you can tell them apart easier.
Adblock Plus
– The popular, yet controversial extension has been updated to work with the latest version of the browser, and it’s still doing what it does best: blocking ads.
ChatZilla – Add an IRC client to your browser so you can chat in it directly without having to open any other applications.
ColorZilla – An extremely handy tool for Web developers to let them see the RGB and Hex values of any color on a Web page.
Del.icio.us Toolbar – Quickly add bookmarks to your Del.icio.us account, edit tags and access your account.
Digg
– Lets you know if the page you are viewing has been dugg, how many it has received, recent comments and more.
DownThemAll – A popular extension that assists you in downloading multiple files from a page with just a few clicks.
Facebook Toolbar – Gives you notifications of new mail and pokes on your Facebook
account.
Firebug – A mainstay of the developer community, Firebug strips down Web pages quickly and lets you work on JAVA, HTML, CSS and more, directly inside the browser.
FireGestures – Use five different mouse gestures to control various functions of Firefox
.
Flagfox – See a flag in the status bar that tells you what country the server is in for the website you are on. You can then look up more detailed information on the server, giving you some extra security in case the site is a fake.
FlashBlock – Annoyed with Flash animations that play on sites when you launch them? FlashBlock will stop them from playing.
Foxmarks – Have more than one computer? Then you have to have Foxmarks. It synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers and gives you access to them via their website.
FoxyTunes
– Gives you control over multiple media players directly from your browsers to save you the effort of changing windows.
Forecastfox – Weather forecasts brought to you by the people at AccuWeather.com.
Google Toolbar – Gives you the ability to search Google
from a toolbar, access to your mail, auto fill forms and several other features.
Greasemonkey – Greasemonkey is the necessary extension to run the ceaseless stream of Greasmonkey scripts that allow you to customize sites from Facebook to Gmail
.
GSpace – Gmail gives you nearly 7 GB of free storage. With Gspace, you can turn some or all of that into free online storage of files that you can access from anywhere.
IETab – Sometimes you just have to look at some things in Internet Explorer
due to coding issues. Well, using a tab inside of Firefox is a far sight better than having to open up IE itself.
MeasureIt – An extension perfect for designers that allows you to measure the dimensions of any section of a page to figure out how much real-estate it is occupying.
Meebo – Gives you a sidebar with all of your buddies from the various instant messenger services that Meebo supports such as AIM
and MSN.
NoScript – An important extension in your security arsenal as it prevents scripts from running in the background of a website without your express permission.
QuickRestart – One of the most annoying things about adding a new extenstion to Firefox is the down time while it restarts the browser to work properly. This extension speeds up the process.
Reload Every – Allows you to set your tabs to reload every few seconds or minutes, handy for sites likeTwitter
.
Sage-Too – A lightweight RSS reader you can integrate into your browser.
StumbleUpon Toolbar – Allows you to stumble pages from a convenient toolbar, add comments, view what has been said and more.
Update Notifier – You’ve been adding all these extensions, but it’s easy to forget to check to see when they’ve been updated. This puts the notifications out front where it’s easy to keep track of them.
Video DownloadHelper – Assists you in finding and downloading videos from over 500 websites all over the world.
WebMail Notifier – Get notifications of new email in your status bar for services such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and more.
Each Top 10 entrant is linked to the page where Firefox users can install them from. See if you can't find something new for your browsing routine below.
10. AutoCopy
9. Google Gears
8. Personal Menu
7. Better Gmail 2
6. DownThemAll!
5. Tab Mix Plus
4. Automatic Save Folder
3. Adblock Plus
2. Greasemonkey
1. Foxmarks/Xmarks
10 Addons Must Have Of Firefox for Web Designers Among all web browser firefox is the very popular and user friendly browser.Because it is flexible and much and more quality compare to another browser.Among web designers, the Firefox browser is popular because of user-friendly interface and its various features. Add-ons make Firefox especially valuable to web designers. Here is a list of the top 10 must-have add-ons you’ll want to use if you’re a web designer.Thats why it is so much popular. 1. Firebug -This addon will allow you to watch the script of the webpage and also to modify it as u want at the client side. 2. Pixel Perfect – Pixel Perfect is a Firefox/Firebug extension that allows web developers and designers to easily overlay a web composition over top of the developed HTML. 3.Web Developer – With the help of this addon you can add various tools menus toolbars to the various pages and you can also customize each and everything.So this addon will also the web developers for easy and fast web designing. 4. IE Tab – This addons is for them who uses INTERNET EXPLORER.The persons who are using internet explorer this addons is very helpful to them.this addon will show the web content of the page displayed by the IE.You can also make changes and adjustments as you want. 5. FireShot – This addon will take a snapshot of the web page.Here you can add graphical annotations to each and every part of the web content where you want to add that for the reminder.so that if anyonw will see this snapshot can be easily understood by him/her. (Image Taken From Official Mozilla Website) 6. Palette Grabber – This addon will help those persons who use Photoshop,paint.net and other image editing tools.This ad-don will create the custom color patterns and many more functionality. 7. Firecookie – This is typically the firebug extension.It will manage all the cookies and also let you allow to manage and modify the cookie. 8. GridFox – This addon will help web developers to ovelay or to make or to put the grid on the website.web developers also extract and create grids. 9. YSlow – Based on yahoo performance rules or the policy if any website have some faults or the website is down or the slow.then you can report it here by this ad-don.It will see the survey and contact to the official that website for this problem's solution. 10. Aardvark – Usually web developer clean the pages by removing.For that persons this tool will help them. |