Simply browsing the web doesn’t cut the dice anymore. There’s so much to do and parallel lives to lead with our coterie of friends in Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the “˜websphere’. Then there’s chat time with friends who are online. If there’s any time left, it’s taken up by watching or listening to net chatter via RSS feeds or news streams.
If the browser could feel, it would surely feel overwhelmed with the bytes that are thrown at it. To manage all the information salvos, a host of applications have offered their web services.
From plug-ins that make the browser the Jack-of-all trades to homepages like iGoogle that attempt to give us a 360 degree view of what’s happening on the web.
Vysr has a similar agenda. Vysr aims to bring order to the internet chaos by making available a host of web services via its browser extension (for Firefox and IE). With its contextual integration with what we are browsing, Vysr gives back control to the user. Contextual search makes browsing for new information not only uninterrupted from one source to the other, but also makes it quicker.
With traditional browsing, we have to key in the source and then the query to get the results. With Vysr’s implementation of contextual search, we don’t have to leave the page. For instance, if I highlight “˜Android’ on a webpage, I can get all the dope on it from Vysr’s collection of third party apps like Wikipedia, YouTube, Google News etc. There were some websites where Vysr did not activate, but it was pretty much on the go with most.
Double Header from Vysr ““ OpenBar and RoamAbout Tray
The browser extension of Vysr that lets us do all the contextual browsing is called RoamAbout. It is a small and free extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Here’s how it looks after its install in the browser.
The horizontal bar at the bottom of the browser window is the OpenBar and the vertical one at right angles to it is called RoamAbout Tray.
OpenBar displays live content/updates like a ticker via apps for your favorite websites. The news sources are easily configurable. You can choose to have your Twitter and Facebook updates stream in or go with your personal RSS Feed. Or simply catch up with the current news on a favorite topic like Technology. If all this is distracting, a single click can closet the OpenBar.
Then again, shutting down the OpenBar won’t be a good idea because it also lets you receive notifications of any email that’s popping into your Gmail account. You can also get informed from Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.
I will leave that choice to you while we take a look at what’s the RoamAbout Tray all about.
Toggle it from view with a click on the blue “˜R’ icon. RoamAbout Tray is the contextual powerhouse of Vysr. Using it is as simple as highlighting text on any website and clicking on an app in RoamAbout Tray. What you get to see in a little pop-up box are results from that app related to the highlighted text. Take the instance as shown in the screenshot below.
But the RoamAbout Tray is not just the 9-10 apps you see arranged one on top of the other. Click on the green + icon and you get to select from a roll call of 46 apps arranged in all the categories you can think off. It will take you a while to go through all of them, but there are a few really cool ones. In the first run, I got myself a movie and a weather app, two little things I need quite frequently.
Vysr lets us take everything along with us while browsing
Vysr is another step towards a solution when everything can be done from within the browser. The OpenSocial framework of the applications on the sidebar, allow us to locate and share all sorts of information. Combining social sharing with browsing is becoming the rule rather than the exception. Vysr is just another handy tool that reminds us of that fact.
Do a turn of contextual browsing with Vysr and see if it’s speedier that way or”¦ would you prefer the traditional approach of opening multiple tabs and applications.
Tagged: browsing • browsing tools • firefox addons
