Performancing For Firefox : Review and How to install

PS: Since IIIT Network does not seem to be coming back to normal, contrary to what is claimed here, so you can help me by trying out this.

Hey, right now I am blogging straight away from my browser using Performancing For Firefox or PFF in short.

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browser and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Get the PFF extension from here. Blogger beta users should install the latest version(1.3.5 Beta 3) from here or you will have troubles. Learn to set it up from here. Remember that Blogger beta users should give their google username(e.g. bla@gmail.com) and password when asked.

Now lets have a look at the features. This is the list of features that I got from performancing's home page.

Features

• Full WYSIWYG and source editing
• Save as Notes
• Add all your various blog accounts
• Technorati Support
• Delicious integration
• Trackback support
• Draft support
• Ping support
• Image upload and FTP
• Metrics stats

In order to copy the above features I just used another cool feature thats not mentioned in the above list. Just selected the feature list and did drag-n-drop. And it got placed here with all the formatting! Now lets see whether its also possible to drag-n-drop images.



O.. Yes. It works. Now I got to see whether it will get posted to blogger nicely or not. That I could only see after I post. So wait.[EDIT: Seems like it does not get uploaded. This is the only thing of blogger that PFF is unable to support.]

Now lets label it using the categories tab on right hand side and see whether its converted to blogger beta labels(after I post).[EDIT: Yes]
Also provides technorati tagging. No need of any bookmarklet now.

The bookmarks tab aka del.icio.us integration seems useless. It just provides link to all your bookmarks, which you can directly see in browser also. Ya... One use is that you can automatically bookmark all your post. Check the checkbox on option on right hand side for that.

Lets also try the trackback support. Lets put a link to my shaastra seo contest blog to check it. It is great boon to blogger users as blogger does not sends trackback pings.(EDIT: Does not seem to work, may be I missed something :( )

The pinging(not the trackback one) support is also cool. Blogger pings only weblogs.com. PFF allows you to ping more than 20 services using Ping-O-Matic, PingoAt.

One of the most important thing is that it provides more space to the editor window than what is provided by blogger. Also writing offline is much faster than editing in blogger's editor. May be thats why I could write such a long post :) [EDIT: One thing that I missed is editing of a posted blog. They claim somewhere that you can do that. But I couldn't.]

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, blogspot, firefox, Performancing, Review, technical

My new home page

So now my new home page is up and running at http://students.iiit.ac.in/~sandeep_kr . Its just a copied template copied from Gaurav Garg of stanford. I came across this template when skp came across Gaurav Garg's template and copied it :P I like it as its very simple yet looks good.... and professional.
Right from my second sem, I always wanted to change the stupid home page that I made in first year as a part of ITWS1 assignment. But could never find time for it or I should rather say could never devote time to it even when I had plenty. Now finally its complete and I think looks good enough and should not any require any major change for atleast this year. BTW I am talking as if I did a great job. I just copied :D and to add to that its nowhere near to sites of good website-makers of our college. To know what I am talking abt just have a look at Tarun Nayak's home page. or look at himashu arora's websites(his home page not working, visit this) or those of Devansh Mittal. (sorry if i missed someone). For more astounding works of Tarun Nayak see this page. He is too good!

PS: See my bookmarks. They are exactly same as the bookmarks stored by firefox in my PC. I use winscp's scripting power to scp my firefox's bookmarks.html file to my 200 account 8 times a day.
PS1: Yes, I still work on windows for most of the time. So, I had to use winscp.
PS2: Is their some better method to make my bookmarks public?

Technorati: life, personal, template, bookmarks, firefox

Technorati Tags Bookmarklet adapted for blogspot and blogger

Inspired by Rakesh's Bookmarklet (originally Lorelle's), I came up with a technorati bookmarklet for blogspot and blogger.com users.
Technorati tags bookmarklet is a Firefox bookmarklet to tag ur blog posts. First created by Lorelle and later modified by freehogg and then again modified by Rakesh. Veterans can see the modified code below and newbies first read "How to create bookmarklet" and "How to use it" further down.
-----
javascript: ( function() { /* Technorati Tag Book Marklet 0.3 Created First By: Lorrell <http://lorelle.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Last Modified By: Rakesh <http://rakeshkumar.wordpress.com > for wordpress. Adapted for Blogspot By : Turbo <http://sandy007smarty.blogspot.com > */ var a=''; var t=prompt('Enter Tags separated by commas',''); if(!t) return; var tr=t.split(','); a+='<p><img id="technorati_img" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6946/1885/1600/technorati.gif" alt="Technorati" /><strong>Technorati: </strong>'; for(var i=0;i<tr.length;i++) { tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/^\s+/,""); tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+$/,""); var tag_text=tr[i]; tr[i]=tr[i].replace(/\s+/g,"+"); if(i > 0){ a+=', '; } a+='<a href='+unescape('%22')+'http://www.technorati.com/tag/'+tr[i]+unescape('%22')+' rel='+unescape('%22')+'tag'+unescape('%22')+'>'+tag_text+'</a>'; } a+='</p>'; prompt('Copy this html code, Press OK, Then Paste into your blog entry:',a); } )()
-----
Its character by character same as Rakesh's version, except for the image url. I changed the url to a blogspot url to make it a blogspot bookmarklet in true sense. That is, blogspot won't have to go to wordPress for that image. Although I have not tried, Rakesh's original version should also work without any problems, unless blogspot specifically blocks wordpress urls (which it does not do now atleast).
Following FAQs have been shamelessly copied from Rakesh's post :-
FAQs
Q1. How to create bookmarklet?
Ans: Copy the above script and paste it to Firefox’s address bar. Drag and drop it to bookmarks toolbar. Right click on it, go to properties and verify the location.
The location should contain the above script. Change the name to something related like “Technorati Bookmarklet”.

Q2. How to use it?
Ans: Just click on the bookmark. A dialogue box will open. Enter your tags in it, seperated by commas. (spaces are allowed within tags). It generates
the html code for tags. Copy and paste it in your blog post.

Q3. Why Technorati Tags?
Ans: A simpler explantion is that it adds meaning to the information that you are providing (i.e. your post). Tags work both ways, it helps sites like Technorati
to organize the contents properly and on the other hands it increases your reach to a broader audience.

Q4. But blogspot already has labels?
Ans: Yes, a recent feature. Those who still use old templates don't have the labels feature. Also its simply good to have technorati tags. Isn't it?

Technorati: firefox, technorati, tags, bookmarklet, blogger, blogspot, hacks, technical

Foxmarks, TCCC and random stuff...

Thank God! Blogger is back. I could not post for such a long time, though I could read blogspot blogs using pkblog and several other proxies. But I didn't get how ppl posted blogs during the time blogspot was blocked.
Foxmarks
Foxmarks = Firefox + Bookmarks
You guessed it right. Its yet another firefox extension but is extremely useful for dual OS people like me.

If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you'll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. As a bonus, log in to my.foxcloud.com from any computer anywhere to access your bookmarks.

What it does is that It synchronizes the bookmarks that you add on different PCs/OSs. That is, if you add a bookmark in your lab PC you can get it added on your room PC as well. It creates an account for you on sync.foxcloud.com and your bookmarks automatically get uploaded to this site every 1 minute. It uses the same account on the other PC and downloads the updated bookmarks. This happens both ways. That is both upload(every 1 min) and both download(every 1 hour).
It helps me because half of time I am in windows and half in linux. So I created an account for myself and use it in both OSs.
Now before further delay, download it here : https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2410/

There is another way around (only for dual OS ppl like me and not dual PC ppl) that struck me just now. You will require a fat32 partition.
Create a file called bookmarks.html in your fat partition.
First lets handle windows. Create a shortcut to this bookmarks.html file in the folder where your bookmarks are stored in windows. The directory is :- C:\Documents and Settings\Turbo\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\n074fqtc.default
You have to make some changes in above path for your PC.
For linux create a softlink to the bookmarks.html file with the same name in the directory where your linux bookmarks are stored. I don't remember the exact the path (as I am in windows now) .
I haven't tried it yet. Should work without much trouble.
For more info about extensions that I use read my previous post Cool Firefox Extensions.

2006 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge

Yes! yet another Topcoder contest. This is diffrent from Topcoder open. This one is open only to college students. Still its very tough. I don't hope to get any further than the Qualification Round :P The guys from Poland, Sweden are extremely good in programming. You won't believe there are highschool students in these countries who are red at TopCoder. One of the finest examples is Zuza. The registration begins from August 28 and the qualification round is somewhere in september. Hope I don't get disqualified this time as I was in Google Code jam.(Read this for more details).

Random Stuff
No time for random stuff now. Got to go to give bumps to Akash Deep.

Technorati: hacks, technical, bookmarks, firefox, linux, windows, TopCoder

Cool Firefox Extensions

These are the extensions that I use:-
StumbleUpon : I bet a lot of IIItians are using this. Its the best tool for passing your time :) For those who don't know - there is a site called http://www.stumbleupon.com/ which provides a service that lets you to random pages on the web that match your preferences. This extension provides a toolbar in your firefox that makes stumbling easier. When you install it you will be asked to register and your preferences(what topics you like). Then start stumbling!! As u visit pages you can click on "I like it" button to recommend that page to like minded ppl. Also you can press "I don't like" if you don't like. Using these two buttons enhances your prefernces and makes stumbling better customized to your taste.
VideoDownloader : This one lets you download videos from youtube, google video and many more. I know there are hacks that let you do those stuff. But this extension makes it so simple. Just one click!!
DownThemAll : A download accelerator and manager. Its good, supports multi-part downloads.
FlashGot : Lets you integrate your favourite download manager with firefox. I use it only on windows as FlashGet is my favourite download mananger on windows. They should make flashget for linux also. In linux I use DownThemAll(see above).
Tab Mix Plus : A brilliant tool for enhancing your tab functionality. I like its "restore last session" option and the "undo close tab" option. Restore last session opens all tabs and windows that were open last time. Undo close tab is obvious... but very useful.
FasterFox : Its supposed to increase the loading speed of your pages by tweaking certain network parameters. But I don't know whether it really works. I didn't find any noticable change in speed.
Delicious : It helps you integrate your delicious account with your browser. Bookmarking and tagging is so easy now. For those who don't know abt delicious - http://del.icio.us/ is a site that helps you organize your bookmarks.
Some themes:-
I am not the one who is too careful about how the desktop, browser,etc looks. The only reason I started using themes is to increasing the browsing space. LittleFox and Microfirefox are two(very similar) themes that reduces the size of your toolbars and buttons to make more space for the actual page. But then there is a price you have to pay. Looks are not so good. The designs are old and outdated. Seems it was made some years back.
PS: Went to Anti-reservation rally today. It was fun. Rally was very peaceful.
PS1: Have to seriously start our summer project. Till now we only wasted time.

Technorati: firefox, firefox extensions, technical