With the status bar and Windows task bar at the bottom of the screen, you don’t have a lot of screen space left for actually viewing web pages!

In fact, on a standard 1024 x 768 screen, all these bars take up a quarter of your screen height (197 pixels works out to 25.7%).

Consolidating the chrome

Last week, Gina Trapani over at Lifehacker gave out some great tips about consolidating the chrome (the control area or interface) of your Firefox browser. You should go and read that article now if you haven’t already. I’ll wait. Read Lifehacker article >>

If you’ve implemented some of Gina’s tips, your Firefox chrome might look something like this (now with 7.7% more browsing space).

I also use the All-in-One Sidebar extension which collapses to a very thin gray bar and gives me quick access to my History, Bookmarks, and Scrapbook.

Sliding menu bar

The only menu I use on a semi-regular basis is Tools, but I still need access to the other menus once in a while, so I can’t get just rid of them (Gina at Lifehacker showed us how). But if you consider how little I use them, they’re still taking up too much space on my toolbar.

I could use the Tiny Menu extension, which I also discovered at Lifehacker. But then it would take two clicks to get to any menu, and the Menu text looks a bit strange on the toolbar.

I love my Firefox extensions, but I also love efficiency and I won’t install an extension if I can do the same thing in another way. In my search I found this really cool userChrome.css hack. The menus are replaced with a single icon …

… but they are still easily accessible by simply hovering the cursor over the icon, which temporarily unhides the menus …

The code

This is the code that does the trick – but it’s not quite complete (see below).

/* Sliding menu bar - hidden until mouse hover
from [http://userstyles.org/style/show/993] */
#menubar-items {
background-image: url("ImageData") !important;
background-repeat: no-repeat !important;
background-position: 5px center !important;
padding-left: 24px !important;
}
#menubar-items > #main-menubar {
display: none !important;
}
#menubar-items:hover > #main-menubar {
display: -moz-box !important;
}

Add the above code to your userChrome.css file (what? how?), and then replace ImageData (line 4) this way:

1. Click here (this text file is hosted elsewhere because .txt files cannot be uploaded to wordpress.com)
2. Select the whole string in the text file – you can do this by pressing CTRL+A
3. Press CTRL+C
4. Go back to your userChrome.css file
5. Select ImageData in line 4 (nothing more, nothing less)
6. Press CTRL+V

Save your changes to userChrome.css and restart Firefox. You just replaced ImageData with a base-64 data string (containing 1600 characters) that basically encodes the icon for your new menu within your userChrome.css file.

If you don’t like the Firefox icon in your new chrome, you can upload your preferred icon to The data: URI kitchen (be sure to tick base64) and then insert the generated data string into your userChrome.css file in place of the current string.

The trade-off

Unfortunately, the menus are no longer available via keyboard shortcuts (e.g.. ALT+T for the Tools menu), but that shouldn’t be a great loss if you seldom use them anyway.

from Sliding Menubar by LouCypher [userstyles.org]

In the last half-hour, I have been able to upload some images, but it is intermittent, and I have still received the error message several times.

Is anyone else having this problem?

UPDATE: I think I may have been trying to upload pictures that had spaces in the filename, so no wonder they didn’t work! This FAQ set me straight – though experiment reveals that dashes (-) and underscores (_) are OK as well, in addition to letters and numbers. Do’h!

A great new feature in IE7 is the built-in search box, unsettingly similar to the familiar box Firefox has had for some time. One of the favourites sites on my blogroll, Lifehacker, blogged about creating a custom search plugin using Google’s site search feature a few weeks ago. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because I prefer using Lifehacker’s native search rather than Google.

If you’ve added any extra search plugins to IE7, you may have noticed the feature they provide for creating your own search plugin from any site with a search feature. I experimented with Lifehacker and some other sites, and it seemed like a pretty cool feature. So I went looking for how I could do the same thing in Firefox 2. I discovered that FF2 and IE7 both support the OpenSearch description format for search plugins. Web standards are great when the two most popular browsers choose to support them!

Get the Lifehacker search plugin

There is a new repository of OpenSearch browser plugins building up at searchplugins.net.

I have added a Lifehacker search plugin to the database. Visit this page in either FF2 or IE7 and click on the I to the left of the first Lifehacker entry. To make sure it’s the right one, hover your mouse over the S link and check that there is an 862 in the link in the status bar – only this plugin will correctly install the LH icon with your plugin.

While you’re there click on the R next to the second Lifehacker entry (number 515 on S link).

If you want to know how I created the plugin, and how you can create a plugin for any search engine you like, then keep reading …

Creating your own search plugin

If you want to share your plugin with the world, you can use the generator at searchplugins.net. Follow the instructions provided. The Icon field behaves unpredictably – you’re more likely to have success if you follow my instructions below and upload the icon yourself. Click install when its done and you’ll have your plugin.

NOTE: This section is for those who want to delve into XML and learn how to create a search plugin for themselves. Skip to next section.

The Firefox developers have provided documentation for creating search plugins, but all that information can be a bit overwhelming. So I’ll show you how I created my search plugin for Lifehacker that works in Firefox 2 (for IE7 just follow this two-step guide).

Open up a text editor (Notepad will do the job) and copy and paste the following code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
	<ShortName>Lifehacker</ShortName>
	<Description>Search Lifehacker</Description>
	<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
	<Image width="16" height="16">imageData</Image>
	<Url type="text/html" method="GET"
template="http://www.lifehacker.com/search/{searchTerms}"/>
	<moz:SearchForm>http://www.lifehacker.com/</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Save the file with a descriptive name and a .xml extension (e.g. lifehacker.xml) in your searchplugins folder.

If you want everyone who uses your computer to have the new plugin, save it in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\ (or wherever you have Firefox installed). If you only want the plugin installed in your profile, save it in C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\%yourprofile%\searchplugins\

What does all that code mean?

Read on for the line by line break down:

<ShortName>Lifehacker</ShortName>
Replace Lifehacker with the name of your search engine, this is what you’ll see in the search box in your browser.

<Description>Search Lifehacker</Description>
Replace Search Lifehacker with a similar description.

<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
Leave this as UTF-8. If you later find that the plugin doesn’t work, you can find the official list of character encodings here.

<Image width="16" height="16">imageData</Image>
We’ll come back to this in a moment …

="http://www.lifehacker.com/search/{searchTerms}"
Go to your search engine, and search for TEST. Copy the resulting URL. Paste it here in replacement of the template URL. Then replace TEST with {searchTerms}.

<moz:SearchForm>http://www.lifehacker.com/</moz:SearchForm>
Replace the URL here with the URL of your search engine.

Adding an icon

The line we skipped above with the <Image></Image> tag contained the cryptic looking imageData. This is where we can specify the icon for our search plugin. The best idea would be to just link directly to the website favicon (the icon you see in your browser address bar) wouldn’t it? Well it seems that Firefox doesn’t like that idea very much. But the first step is to get hold of that favicon.

Favicons are often stored in the root folder of a website, so first I tried typing http://www.lifehacker.com/favicon.ico into my browser. But that didn’t work. EDIT: I have since found that it does work now, so I must have had a connection problem with the server before. Next option is to look at the page source (press CTRL+U in FF) to find out where the icon’s coming from. Search (CTRL+F) the page source for favicon. That should turn up a link near the top of the page, in the header section of the HTML. In this case, I found
http://cache.lifehacker.com/assets/www.lifehacker.com/img/favicon.ico. Copy and paste the link into the browser, and a beautiful Lifehacker icon appears, just like this:

Now, that icon is in the ICO format, and it takes up a whopping 10 KB. Right-click on the icon and choose Copy Image. Fire up Microsoft Paint and press CTRL+V. Go to the Image>Attributes menu and check that the dimensions are 16×16 pixels. If not, change it.

Then save the image as a PNG file on your desktop. Now its less than 1 KB, only a fraction of the size of the ICO file and looks just as good.

NOTE: If you’re using the generator at searchplugins.net, stop here and upload the file .PNG file from your desktop. Jump back.

Firefox likes a base-64 encoded 16×16 icon. That means we’re going to encode the icon inside our XML file. This site will do that nicely: The data: URI kitchen. Tick the base64 check box near the top of the page. Then click on Browse to upload the PNG file from your desktop. Click Generate, and then click on the link you’re provided with on an otherwise empty page (ignore any errors). If all goes well, your icon will appear in the browser window. Copy the URL (F6, CTRL+C) – it’s very long – from the address bar, and paste it into the XML file in place of imageData.

That’s it! Save and close your XML file, and then restart Firefox. Voilà! You have a new, custom search plugin.

Using your search plugin

• You can reorder your list of search engines by clicking on Manage Search Engines in the drop-down list.
• Keyboard shortcuts. Press CTRL+K to focus (place the cursor in) the search box, and then use CTRL with the UP and DOWN keys to change search engine (the icons will change).

The picture isn’t necessarily permanent – it was just a nice Australian scenery I found flicking through our photos. I experimented with fading the picture, but thought it looked best as is (bright blue sky).

Colour? It was a dark yellow, but the tagline wasn’t very readable on the right. Is white better?

Let the comments begin!

Online readers

• These readers allow you to keep track of, and read, your feeds online in a web browser. This is great if you want to be able to access your feeds away from your main computer – it works just like webmail
• Bloglines – this is what I use, see Outlook+Blogbot below I now use Google Reader exculsively, see below
• Google Reader – always being improved
• You can also add feeds directly to your personalized homepage
  • Google
  • Yahoo!
  • Windows Live
• NewsGator Online is a good commercial online option

Desktop readers

• BlogBridge 3.0 is available on all platforms (Win, Mac, Linux)
• FeedReader 3.0 is Windows only
• FeedDemon 2.0 is a commercial Windows-only offering and is the best in its class
• NetNewsWire 2.1 is FeedDemon’s cousin for the Mac

Email clients

• If you use Mozilla Thunderbird to read your email, then you can use it to read your feeds too
• The upcoming Outlook 2007 will also feature built-in support for reading your feeds. You can get the latest beta version free from Microsoft
• There are various third-party plugins for Outlook 2003 that provide the same functionality
  • Blogbot also integrates with your online Bloglines account
  • NewsGator Inbox is a similar commercial offering

Web browser clients

• You can also organise your feed from within your web browser, often displaying them in a side-bar format
• Sage is a great extension for Firefox
• The upcoming Internet Explorer 7 has built-in support for reading and organising feeds

How do I choose?

• Work out how you want to read your feeds. Do you want them alongside your emails, organised in the same way and archived for future reference, or do you want a separate application so you can set aside a time each day to catch up on your feeds?
• If you regularly click-through from your feeds to the original post/site, a web browser client, which sits right alongside those websites, may be best. And if you spend a lot of time on different computers, you should consider an online reader, so you can take your feeds with you.
• I use Bloglines to subscribe to all my feeds, but then view them in Outlook 2003 with Blogbot. That way I can still keep track when I am away from home, and so get the best of both worlds. Since Google Reader was updated, it has become my sole feed reader. Find out why.
• Experiment!

Today I received one such email, along with the 40 email addresses the last person had sent it to. But this one made me sit up. It had come, via a friend, from my sister! Well, I was not happy. She soon found herself being lectured about all the reasons why it was so terrible to forward chain mail.

“But it’s for a poor little girl who’s going to die” – That doesn’t matter, it’s a waste of people’s time.

“But it sounded so genuine” – It’s not, the American Cancer Society has no way of knowing how many people this email is sent to, so the idea of them donating 3 cents per recipient is a complete hoax.

End of story, right? Not quite. In the evening I went along to our Young Adult’s bible study, where we’re studying Ecclesiastes, and as we’re talking about the meaning of life, the leader mentions this poem that he received from my sister today! He had printed it and so he read it to us, and it seemed that several others in the group had also received the email and read it. The poem, Slow Dance, in this email is actually quite poignant – when I listened, it really did make me think about slowing down and making time for the important things in life. So perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing for my sister to forward that email after all?

The moral of the story

Sometimes these chain mails can have useful, sensible ideas in them (even though 99% don’t). So if you find something in that other 1% that you think is profound and earth-shattering, you could pass it on to those you think will appreciate it – just follow a few simple rules:

1. Get rid of all the junk in the email:
   • All those >> symbols down the side
   • The stuff about forwarding to at least x number of people
   • SENTENCES WRITTEN IN CAPITALS
   • All the email addresses built up over time
   • Tidy up the subject line (no CAPS, remove the FW)
2. Add a sensible covering note about why you found it helpful – people want a reason to continue reading
3. Don’t ask them to forward it on to others – they will anyway if they think it warrants more people’s time
4. Only send it to people you know will appreciate it
   • If those people all know each other put yourself in the To: field and all the others in the Cc: field
   • If they don’t all know each other well, put them in the Bcc: field – that way all the others’ email addresses will be hidden from each recipient

All this is just good email etiquette. If that’s too much work, then the email probably isn’t worth sending.

Which would you rather receive:

That poem

As I said, I think it’s a rather profound piece. Sorry sis
Here it is (without the bloat):

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask “How are you?”
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say, “Hi”?
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift….
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.