Freeware World

I’ve been trying out a bunch of Facebook-related Greasemonkey scripts lately, and I’ve realized that maybe not everybody knows what a Greasemonkey script is - or even Greasemonkey, for that matter. So here’s a short tutorial on the wonderful world of Greasemonkey, and everything you can do with it.

To begin with, Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that doesn’t do anything by itself. It just allows you to use small bits of JavaScript (the so called Greasemonkeyscripts) on your browser, to customize the way a certain website looks or interacts with you. This means that, in order to use any of those scripts, first you need to install Greasemonkey on Firefox.

Once installed, Greasemonkey displays a small monkey icon in the bottom right corner of the browser interface. A left click on this icon disables the extension - and all the scripts you’ve installed so far. A right click on the icon shows the extension’s context menu, with access to installed scripts, configuration options and a script manager.

Now, the big question: where do you get scripts from? The answer is userscripts.org, an online script database with thousands of scripts to use with Greasemonkey. You’ll scripts of all sorts, to customize and enhance hundreds of popular websites, including Gmail, Facebook, Google, Twitter,YouTube and lots more.

The list can be sorted by name, rating, posts, fans or installs, and each script has a complete dedicated page with all the information you need about it.

To install a Greasemonkey script, simply click the big green Install button on any script page, and wait for the confirmation window to appear. The whole process is very similar to installing a Firefox extension.

When Greasemonkey has finished installing the script, you’ll see a message beside the little monkey icon in the bottom right corner of the browser window. From that moment on, the script is ready to use, and will be automatically enabled as soon as you load the website it was created for.

Those of you who are familiar with coding may be interested in creating your own Greasemonkey scripts. In that case, you should take a look at the GreaseSpot Wiki, where you’ll find all the documentation you need to get started: a Greasemonkey manual, a FAQ section, tutorials, coding tips and more.

Now that you know what Greasemonkey is and what it can do for you, it’s time to get to work! Download the extension and tell us your favorite scripts.

Windows: Apple’s iconic web browser, available also for Windows, has been updated. The new Safari 5 is faster than ever, with better page caching and DNS prefetching. Other new features include a special Reader tool to view online articles, improved HTML5 support, a Bing option for the browser’s search field and new Safari Developer Tools.

 iPhone: Bounce Bullet is a fun shooting game in which you must take out as many people as you can - with one bullet! It’s essentially a remake of the classic browser game, Ricochet Kills. You do this by bouncing shots off of walls and platforms to hit the standing stick men who are dotted around the screen. This latest major update includes three new types of enemy - mutants, ninjas, and ‘The Stumbler’.

Mac: Keychain on Mac does a pretty good job of managing passwords but once you’ve tried 1Password you’ll probably never look back. If you’re tired of making up passwords to access sites or worried that your passwords are not secure enough, it really is invaluable. 1Password creates strong, unique passwords for you, then remembers and restores them all within your web browser and it now works with the latest version of Safari.

Spotify is one of the best music applications on Mac but the only drawback of the free version are the ads. As the application becomes more popular, the ads have increased a lot but help is at hand from Smutefy which aims to reduce them intruding on your listening as much as possible.

Smutefy is a free small menu bar application that automatically detects and mutes Spotify ads. It doesn’t actually block the ads - it simply reduces the volume when an ad comes on so that you don’t hear it.

Firstly, you’ll need to make sure that you have both Growl and Soundflower installed for Smutefy to work. Smutefy doesn’t block Spotify Growl ad popups but it uses both Growl and Soundflower to monitor the application so that it can auto adjust the volume when an ad comes on.

All you have to do to activate Smutefy is double click on it in your Applications folder. Smutefy then places a small icon in your menu bar. When an ad is detected by the application, the icon will change color and mute the system sound until the ad finishes.

Smutefy works very effectively the only problem being that the first second of an advert isn’t muted but it kicks-in pretty quickly after that and all you hear is silence instead of adverts until the next track starts.

Smutefy is an ideal application for all those Spotify users that prefer silence over adverts.

We’ve already shown you how to follow the World Cup on your computer and on your iPhone. But there’s plenty more football fun to be had if you head onto Facebook - and I’m not just talking about posting taunts on foreign friends’ walls. Facebook is now full of applications relating to the World Cup (there are well over 100 at the moment). Obviously a lot of them are complete guff but there are a several that are very handy for following the tournament or just for a bit of soccer-related fun. Here are some of our favorites:

Fantasy Football Betting - If you fancy a flutter on the World Cup, this application is perfect because it allows you to bet for pretend money. For each match, you bet on who you think will win (or if it’ll be a draw). If you’re right, you win twice the money you put down, if you’re wrong then you lose it all.

Football World Champ - With this app you can try to win the World Cup for your country. After choosing you country, you then pass the ball to a friend on Facebook. If they have the same team it’ll count as a pass, if they have a different team it’s a goal. The country with the most goals overall wins the cup.

Galacticos World Cup - This is game in the style of Football Manager. Your task is to assemble a team from the World’s top players and take on other players on Facebook to achieve international glory. It’s a bit unrealistic being able to select a player from any nation for your country, but it’s still fun.

World Cup Planner - It’s important to get your viewing schedule mapped out before the tournament starts, and World Cup Planner lets you do this very easily. The app offers locations and kick off times, and you can search by team, group, date, etc. It even shows which UK TV channel will show each game.

International Badges - Want everyone to know exactly who you’re rooting for at the World Cup? Then install the International Badges application, which places the team crest of your favorite country onto your Facebook profile. All 32 countries’ badges are available to choose from.

Puzzle Soccer - If you like Puzzle Bobble-style games then give Puzzle Bobble a try. It puts a football spin on the classic puzzle game, challenging you to burst the balls by making combinations of matching colors. You pick a country and must do battle against other nations.

Visa Match Planner - Another handy tracker, this app lets you chart the progress of the tournament as it unfolds. Sections include Schedule, Events and Results. It’s also worth checking out the Goooal! area, where you could win a trip to the next World Cup.

My List of 23 + 1 - This official Eurosport Facebook application challenges you to pick your best squad and your dream starting line-up from one of six countries. You can pick a coach and select a formation, before dragging and dropping the players onto the pitch.

EA’s PGA Tour Golf might soon be the last Tiger Woods branded product out there, and with his current form, who knows if we’ll see another. Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online is a massive surprise - a (mostly) free online multiplayer golf game, that’s actually really good.

Once you’ve got an account, there’ll be two courses to choose from (they change on a rota basis) and you can dive straight in. EA have stuck in some MMO features, so you also get loads of stats and earn in-game money to upgrade your player. The in-game chat window, lets you talk to other players on the course, giving it a nice community feel - a great addition to a round of Golf.

Watch out with Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online, you can get sucked in really easily. It may not be as funny as the Tiger Woods game feature in South Park recently, but it’s incredible that there’s this almost fully featured Golf game out there you can play for free.

You’ll need the Unity browser plugin, which you can download here.

If you’ve ever tried to explain how to do something on the computer to someone on the phone or via IM, you know how difficult it can be – especially if that person is not very tech-savvy. In those cases, the best option is probably creating a video that explains the whole thing step by step. The only problem is that recording a screencast takes a long time and can be quite difficult … unless you use Capture Fox.

Capture Fox is a handy Firefox add-on that lets you record any activity on the screen to video in a couple of clicks. Despite being a browser add-on, you can use it to create all sorts of screencasts, even beyond the borders of the Firefox interface. It’s definitely one of the easiest ways to capture screen activity, and if you don’t need a high-quality output, a really handy and quick way to create video tutorials.

To create a screencast with Capture Fox, open Firefox and go to Tools > Capture Fox > Settings. This will open up a window where you can configure different options for your video recording: area to record, video quality, frames per second, audio and video codec, etc. You can also choose to record your own voice with a mic, and set the Firefox window to minimize automatically when the recording starts.

When you finish recording the video (by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner), Capture Fox will display a new message window from which you can choose to play the video right away, save it to a selected folder or delete it and start all over again.

As you can see, creating a screencast with Capture Fox hardly takes any time and doesn’t require any extensive video editing skills. The add-on definitely lacks some features – like the ability to zoom in and out, and support for keyboard shortcuts – but it makes computer tips and tricks much easier to explain.

Firefox is notorious for memory leaks - the problem whereby it suddenly starts consuming all of your computer’s resources and either freezes or crashes. Usually, this is not down to Firefox itself, but the many hundreds of extensions that can be installed on it. The problem has improved vastly from the early days of Firefox but this week, things got so bad for me that I almost ditched it for good and switched to Safari instead.

The only thing that stopped me was that it took me twice as long to do any work because I was so used to the layout of my bookmarks in Firefox, the extensions I had installed, the way it handles RSS feeds and the way it works with certain sites compared to Safari proving just how worryingly dependent on Firefox I’ve become!

Firefox literally became unusable for me. I was having flashbacks to the bad old days of using Internet Explorer because it would randomly freeze, consuming 100% of my CPU resulting in the spinning wheel of death and ultimately leaving me with no choice but to Force Quit. Sometimes, this would even happen as soon as Firefox opened. I wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was because I recently performed a thorough clean of my Mac using the excellent MacKeeper and the problems seemed to start afterwards. However, even before then, I was getting tired of Firefox constantly whirring my Mac’s temperature fans into action because it was consuming so many resources.

I tried the obvious - reinstalling Firefox plus my extensions but to no avail - the problem persisted. I noticed that it usually seemed to happen when I tried to access any of the bookmarks in my Bookmarks Toolbar. I therefore decided to disable the Google Toolbar and hey presto, I haven’t had any problems since! In fact, Firefox has never worked so well, so quietly and with such a small footprint as it does now.

After doing some research, I learned that I’m not alone either. Many users have reported similar problems, especially in the more recent releases of Firefox. I’m not sure if it affects both Mac and Windows users but I’m suspecting that it may be more of a problem on Mac.

It’s not often that I find a Google product actually makes life harder rather than easier but Google’s Toolbar will be remaining permanently disabled on my Mac until Mozilla and Google have addressed this issue.

Windows: With the All-in-One Sidebar extension you can access a bunch of tools and features in Firefox in a much easier, more comfortable way. This add-on displays your bookmarks, downloads, history, add-on updates and more on a handy, customizable sidebar. All the information you’re interested in, just a glance away!

iPhone: Tumblr is a great micro blogging service, where you can share all sorts of media, from text to quotes and audio and video. Now you can blog from your iPhone with this great Tumblr app. Pretty much everything you can do on the website you can do with this app, including adding text, video, photos and audio.

Mac: If you’re both a Firefox user and a soccer fan, then this plug-in combines the best of both worlds into a great little plug-in. Footiefox allows you to keep up with the latest results and scorelines without changing a page or even leaving your desktop. Once installed, the plug-in sits discreetly at the bottom of Firefox in the status bar. You can configure it to follow the games of your choice so you’ll always know the score.

Chrome users have been rejoicing this week as Google officially opened the door to extensions on its web browser. Just as you can with Firefox, you can now power up Chrome by installing add-ons that improve the functionality of the app and boost your productivity. There are already more than 500 extensions available to download for free from the Google Chrome Extensions site.

In order to install extensions in Chrome, a little prep work is involved first.

• Start by getting the latest developer build of Google Chrome from here.
• Right-click on the Chrome icon on your desktop and click ‘Properties’
• Add the text “--enable-extensions” to the end of the ‘Target’ field. Click ‘Apply’

Now you’re ready to start installing extensions. Here are my favorites so far, along with a link to the download.

Wikipedia - Perform searches on the internet’s Oracle from within the Chrome browser

Feedly - Latest content from your Reader feeds in the form of a magazine-style start page

Google Calendar Popout - Check you schedule on the fly with this simple, yet essential add-on

Chromed Bird - Instant tweeting with the best Twitter extension for Google Chrome

Google Translate - Entire web pages translated with just the single click of an icon

Google Mail Checker - Access your mail from anywhere with this pop-out Gmail add-on

Chromepad -Handy pop-up textpad that’s ideal for jotting down notes as you browse

Chrome FM - Listen to Last.fm from inside the Chrome browser

AccuWeather Forecast - Check the weather forecast where you live with one click

Google Similar Pages - Find sites that are pertinent to the one you are currently looking at

It’s great when developers respond to the genuine needs of users and produce something simple that makes a big difference to your working day. The development of Letterbox is one such application after a request by a user on an Ars Technica forum to create a plugin that allows Mail to take advantage of widescreen displays.

Letterbox makes using Mail a much easier experience. It’s ideal for those using Powerbooks, MacBook Pros and those with cinema displays although it’s appropriate for anyone with a widescreen monitor. Being able to manage your mailbox and organize it in widescreen can also increase your productivity by making everything clearer rather than squeezing it all into a small space.

Note that installation of Letterbox might be a bit tricky for the first time user as you have to do it manually. Firstly, you need to create the folder “~/Library/Mail/Bundles” if you’ve never installed a Mail plugin before. Secondly, you need to open Terminal and type “defaults write com.apple.mail EnableBundles 1″. Finally, copy the “Letterbox.mailbundle” into “~/Library/Mail/Bundles”. You have to quit and restart mail for these settings to take effect.

From here you can use a GUI to customize everything. You can customize Letterbox’s settings in the preference pane by select the menu item “Mail:Preferences”. You can also change the preview pane position which is useful if you regularly switch between a laptop monitor and an external monitor. Just go to “View:Preview Pane menu”.

Letterbox works by rearranging Mail into 3 separate columns. It removes the vertical nature of Mail and eliminates things such as placing the preview screen under the message list making it far more suitable for widescreen monitors. However, it would still be nice to be able to change order of the columns. For instance, it would be nice to see the message in the middle column because that’s where you naturally focus on your inbox.

Overall, Letterbox is a must have Mail plugin for anyone working on a widescreen monitor and will probably become a standard feature of Mail in future releases.