The easiest way of course is through add-ons as Firefox calls them or extensions as Google Chrome calls them. Chrome has a lot going for it despite the vacuum of extensions.

But Google had promised support for Google Chrome extensions and it is beginning to keep it. The official support for extensions has been announced and though it’s still not fully on in the standard version, one gets it with the developer version of Google Chrome.

A few posts back we saw how to download and install Google Chrome extensions in the developer version. Do go through that post again and come back here. In this post we will check out some of the coolest extensions to download and use with Google Chrome.

The population may be small but the seeds of popularity are being sown with these baby steps.

1. Google Chrome Backup

   If the first thing you savor is peace of mind then the Google Chrome Backup is a must install. This is a small tool to create, backup, restore and manage Google Chrome profiles that holds all your bookmarks, history, saved passwords etc. This is not an extension in the strictest sense as it does not run within the browser but as a separate install. Nevertheless, it’s an important tool to have.

   

   The 1.1MB download works with Google Chrome version 0.2.149.27 onwards and requires .NET framework.

2. AdSweep

   A simple ad blocker extension that modifies the CSS rules on a webpage to hide the advertisements. The small javascript code recognizes ads (especially banner ads) based on specific patterns and blocks them. The extension may not work on all webpages because some ads may escape the recognition patterns used by AdSweep.

   

   The 32KB AdSweep userscript works with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

 

Latest Article: Twitter: Best Practices and Tips [PDF Guide]

3. Session Saver

   Something I really like because it harks back to the Save sessions and Manage sessions feature of Opera. It’s useful if you have to switch off and need to come back to the same tabs at some point later. This extension can save  multiple sessions each with its own name. You can also save all saved sessions as bookmarks.

   

   The 107KB Session Saver extension is compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

4. TPGoogleReader

   This is a Google Reader extension for Chrome. The extension makes reading and managing feeds a one click job. It installs as two little icons on the toolstrip and shows the number of unread feeds. In the normal mode, clicking on the items counter opens the first unread item and marks it as read. In the auto-mode, one click on the checkbox opens the unread items in background tabs and marks them as read.

   

   The 9.7KB TPGoogleReader extension is compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

5. Web of Trust

   WOT is a free browser add-on that protects the user from online scams and risky websites. A pop-up opens from the bottom of the screen and indicates not only the trustworthiness of a website but also how things stand with a site’s vendor reliability, child safety and privacy. You can also contribute your own ratings and select the ratings you want to get alerts on.

   

   The WOT extension is a 523KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

6. Smoothscroll

   This extension simply adds the smooth scrolling behavior to Google Chrome. Smooth scrolling auto-scrolls the browser at a constant speed. Click the middle mouse button/scroll wheel and drag the mouse down to set the scroll speed.

   The Smoothscroll extension is a 3KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

7. Bubble Translate

This Google Chrome extension enables you to do inline translations of a webpage into any language supported by Google Translate with a single click. You can set all language choices from its settings.



The Bubble Translate extension is a 34KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

8. Cleeki

   This extension is basically a feature rich search accelerator for Google Chrome. Highlight any keyword on a webpage and a little adjoining icon gives you access to a lot of internet choices from Wikipedia to YouTube to get more information. The information opens up in a little inline window, so you don’t need to browse away. Search can also be done on multiple sites at the same time.

   

   The Cleeki extension is a 56KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

9. LastPass
   

LastPass is an online form filler and password manager which got some high marks from us in a previous post. For error free performance, switch off Chrome’s inbuilt password manager (Wrench Icon – Options – Personal Stuff) and Form Autofill under the same tab.



The LastPass extension is a 315KB download compatible with Google Chrome developer version 4+.

10. Greasemetal

Familiar with Greasemonkey userscripts for Firefox? Those little pieces of code that help you customize your Firefox browser. Greasemetal is the Chrome incarnation of those handy javascripts which let you modify its behavior. It’s a good extension to have because a lot of userscripts continue o be developed and are made available from sites like Userscripts.org.

Greasemetal comes as a 1.2MB installer download for Google Chrome.

These ten extensions represent just a few of the many that are out there and slowly burgeoning with each iteration of the Chrome browser. Hopefully, it won’t be long before Chrome would give the Firefox add-ons gallery a run for its download. For us users, this is a war where we will get all the spoils.

True, ten is a very small number. Which is your extension you would have liked to have seen on the list?

Latest Article: Twitter: Best Practices and Tips [PDF Guide]

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 7 Useful Hacks To Improve Your Google Chrome Experience (23)
• Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup (14)
• Securely Synchronize Your Browser Passwords With LastPass (42)
• How To Surf Feeds with Google Reader Productively (2)
• How to Install Extensions in Google Chrome (18)

By using simple pieces of Javascript code, or by applying Firefox Greasemonkey userscripts, users can change the appearance and workings of Facebook themselves.

Learn how to hack Facebook accounts for fun, or tweak something useful. Believe me, it really is all in your hands.

Facebook Account Javascript Hacks

In these following hacks we’ll be using basic Javascript to toy around with Facebook. Note that we’re not going to hack into Facebook accounts, or anything of the like. Most of these ‘hacks’ are temporary and will disappear once you refresh the page. They also won’t be visible to users on other computers. So why are we doing it? – Because it’s fun!

These Javascript snippets, which we’ll supply below, simply need to be pasted into the address bar. Hit enter, et voila!

Changing Profile Colour

This will change the colour of your Facebook bar to a color of choice.

Just paste the following code in your address bar and hit enter. You can replace ‘red’ with any color you want – black, white, green or even orrange. If you want to reverse the effect, press Ctrl+F5 for a hard reload of the page.

javascript:void(document.getElementById('fb_menubar').style.background='red');

View Chat History with Offline Friends

Unfortunately, you can’t normally view the chat history of online friends. If you’re trying to remember something that was said, waiting for them to come back online is one hell of a bother. Instead, you can just use this – pretty useful – Javascript hack.

First of all, we need to get your friend’s Facebook ID. When you visit his page indirectly (through your friends list or by using the search engine), you’ll be able to see it as a number in the address bar.

Another way to retrieve someone’s ID is by going to the Friends widget on their page, and right-clicking See All. Then you’ll have to copy the link location and paste it in your address bar.

Once you’ve got someone’s ID, simply paste the following code in your address bar, replacing 1122334455 with the relevant number.

javascript:buddyList.itemOnClick(1122334455);

Other Javascript hacks

The preceding two hacks are without doubt the most impressive or useful ones. Below are some of the other tricks you can pull off by using Javascript. We’re not going to deep on this because they’re all things you can do manually as well.

Change chat status to invisible:
javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(false);

Change chat status to visible:
javascript:statusControl.sendVisibility(true);

Close all chat windows with person 1122334455:
javascript:chatDisplay.tabs[1122334455].tabXOnClick();

Open application tab:
javascript:applicationDock.toggleTab();

Bring up notifications:
javascript:presence.toggleTab('chat_status_control','chat_status_control_tab');

Bring up friends list:
javascript:buddyList.toggleTab();

Facebook Greasemonkey Hacks

Greasemonkey is one of the best firefox add-ons in existence. By using ‘userscripts’, you can customize nearly every website. Read more about Greasemonkey in .

Facebook Auto-login – One of the simplest, but perhaps also one of the most useful userscripts you’ll find. This one will automatically log into Facebook, as long as Firefox remembers your password, saving you a lot of hassle.

Auto-Colorizer for Facebook – This script will recolor your Facebook page by applying the color scheme of the most dominant picture currently showing on the page. As you can imagine, this can create some exciting, and also ambient effects.

FacebookDeletes – If you want to get rid of a lot of people at once, this is your man. This script can bulk delete friends, making the masacre all the easier.

Remove All Facebook Ads – Adblock still tends to miss a lot of Facebook ads. This script, frequently updated, will remove all thinkable Facebook ads, creating a completely click-safe Facebook environment.

External Apps Blocker – One of the most irritating things on Facebook are the abundance of quizzes, quote generators, and the like. Filtering all external app ’stories’ from your homepage will be a lot easier if you use this script.

Want some more? Userscripts hosts 1112 Facebook related userscripts at the time of writing. Check it out and have a blast!

If you know any other cool Javascript tweaks, or Greasemonkey hacks, feel free to mention them in the comments section below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How to View Private Facebook Profiles (109)
• 6 Facebook Hack Codes & Tips To Show Off Your Geeky Skills (77)
• Top 5 Facebook Applications That Don’t Suck (9)
• Threadsy – Integrates Your Email and Social Networks (+Invites) (24)
• The 19+ Social Network Aggregator List (19)

However, with its extremely large user base and plenty of tools at your disposal, few may argue that YouTube is the place for your videos to be.

Some time back we showed you some YouTube URL tricks that allow you to change how the player behaves. Right now, allow us to present forth some of the most popular tools out there to go along with YouTube and the super cool stuff you can do with them.

Rip Audio

If you are only interested in the audio of a particular YouTube video and want to rip it off quickly, you can do so using ListenToYouTube. Paste in the URL of the YouTube video that you want the audio extracted, allow it to do its thing and then download the audio as a MP3 file.

Mac users may find that iExtractMP3 performs the same function.

Create Ringtones

If ListenToYouTube allows you to grab the audio, MadRingtones allows you to play with audio. It enables you to make ringtones from YouTube videos or MP3 files from your computer. Creating ringtones is quick and easy: simply navigate to the site, enter the URL of the video or MP3 file and click ‘Load’. Listen through, and it lets you specify the tone’s start/end points and then download it to your computer as MP3, AMR, OGG or M4R file.

Splice and Chop!

There are times when you only like a certain part of a video. You could use the “#t” URL trick to skip to the interesting part. However, if it is more than just viewing the interesting part of the video that you are trying to accomplish, you should check out TubeChop or Splicd. Both these sites allow you to specify a YouTube video URL, the part you want to keep and cut the rest off. You can then embed the “chopped” video on your blog/website or share it with your friends.

Remix or Dub videos

Want to add an MJ track to your dancing kid video? YtDub is a cool video dubbing app which lets you easily dub any YouTube video with audio from another video. Works easy, simply enter YouTube IDs of the video you want to dub and the video you want to use as the background track, hit ‘Dubbo’ and you will get a link to your newly dubbed masterpiece. Play it, share it or do whatever you like.

Dump the default interface

Searching and then clicking to view a video is all fine and dandy, but there is always room for a little change. Bored of the Youtube interface? Then check out:

• YouFlow – which adds a coverflow-like interface and allows you to play multiple videos in a single browser tab.
• YouCube – which lets you map YouTube videos on to the faces of a cube and then share it with others. You can spin the cube to switch between the videos.

• Darao and InfiniTube – let you enter a keyword and returns a playlist of the search result. Hit Play and you have got yourself a non-stop video viewer

Use the cutting edge features

TestTube is like Labs for YouTube. It is a place where you can test drive the latest from YouTube developers. At the time of writing, TestTube includes – CaptionTube – to add captions, Video Annotations, Active Sharing – to show other people what you are watching, Streams – to chat with others who are watching the same video, Warp – a tool to visually browse videos and a demo of the HTML5 Video Tag. There are new ideas added (and taken down) from time to time.

Find sites that have embedded your videos

YouTube provides you excellent tools to track statistics pertaining to your videos. Here, we explained how you can use the tools to track which sites are embedding your videos.

Set a video alarm

A simple online alarm clock that wakes you up with a YouTube video of your choice. Set the alarm time in simple English (tomorrow at 7am, in 45 minutes) and pick any YouTube video you want. No-registration required.

Add Subtitles to YouTube Videos

Ever wanted to add subtitles to Youtube videos and share them with friends? Subyo is a web service that can help you with that. Before anything else, you’ll need to register and get yourself a Subyo account. Next, copy and paste a YouTube video URL into the provided field and click on “Add Subtitles”. Then video will load in the Subyo editor where you can start adding subtitles.

Watch flagged videos without logging in

There are lots of videos on YouTube marked as inappropriate by users. Due to this, YouTube restricts viewing of these videos to registered users only. If you do not have an account (or you don’t want to add a video to your history) and want to view a flagged YouTube video, check out NSFWYouTube. BE WARNED: Due to its niche (if I may call it so) the site has explicit NSFW content, discretion adviced!

Turn Youtube links to videos

Use the Videoembed Greasemonkey script that reads links to video sites on any website and embeds the corresponding video right next to the link so you don’t have click it or visit Youtube to watch the video. It works for a number of other video sites as well.

Get rid of distractions

QuieTube is a cool browser bookmarklet which allows you to view any YouTube video all by itself on a page, removing the surrounding bells and whistles (somewhat like the “Turn down lights” in Youtube). Just drag & drop the provided bookmarklet to your browser toolbar/bookmark bar and click it when viewing a YouTube Video.

Add text, graphics and links to videos

KickLight is a tool that lets you add text, graphics and links to your YouTube video without obscuring it any way. The application inserts a space just below a video and then lets you add your content (text, images and links) there. It also allows you to customize how and when added content should be shown.

Download Videos

There are scores of tools, tricks out there that let you download videos from Youtube. From Firefox extensions, to greasemonkey scripts to complete applications to specific sites — when it comes to downloading, there are probably more than what is required. We covered the best, have a look.

Come Again?

Did I hear you murmur a name we missed? Well go on, use the comments to flame us! Tell us about it. If you have used any of the tools we’ve listed, do share your experiences.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• FLV Converter – A Freeware to Convert FLV Videos to AVI (11)
• An Introduction To Codecs, Converters and Rippers (19)
• 4 YouTube Tools you Probably Don’t Know About (48)
• 4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net (121)
• vTap – Download videos on your mobile for FREE (10)

MakeUseOf has published a lot of articles on Greasemonkey scripts. Among the more popular articles are 20 must-see Greasemonkey Addons, 6 Cool GreaseMonkey Scripts To Rock Your Friendfeed and Some Of The Best Greasemonkey Scripts For BitTorrent Users, be sure to check them out to see what you’re missing.

Now, let’s get a move on, shall we? Here are 5 Greasemonkey scripts that have made my browsing experience much easier. I hope they do the same for you.

TinyURL Decoder

If you use Twitter, like nearly every other MakeUseOf reader, then I am sure you will find a use for TinyURL Decoder. As is mildly obvious from the name, TinyURL Decoder automatically decodes shortened URLs from sites like TinyURL, is.gd, cli.gs, etc. This can be especially helpful in differing URLs that could possibly contain links to sites that are known to be scams, spammy, or just not worth your time. Definitely quite helpful.

Install Anyways

Nearly all of you reading this article are likely using a fair amount of Firefox add-ons (I should hope!), and have experienced the trouble that comes with being unable to install your favorite and absolutely necessary Firefox extension due to a new update, nightly build(s), etc. Well, here is your solution! Enter Install Anyways. Install Anyways a simple script that runs on the Mozilla Add-Ons page that will allow you to install any Firefox add-on, putting aside any – and all – compatibility issues.

Automate Reddit

Reddit has become an extremely fast growing media monster in the tech world, and rightfully so. It’s more, in my opinion, user-friendly interface and generally good selection of stories that aren’t covered by the media, have led Reddit to what it is today. Unfortunately, as all large websites eventually circum to, annoying junk often gets added to such sites frequently, and because there is only so much time in the day, Automate Reddit comes to the rescue.

Automate Reddit automatically searches the page when you load http://reddit.com for things it would consider nonsense, e.g. political articles, misplaced foreign language articles, repetitive topics, etc; and automatically reduces their votes. Not only is this helpful for personal viewing, but in my experience, Automate Reddit makes your Reddit reading experience that much more enjoyable by eliminating weird and irrelevant topics.

Digg Mirrors

Digg has also become an extremely valuable and widely used social bookmarking platform, allowing users the ability to decide what it is they want to see, instead of what the mainstream media says. One of the problems with this immensely popular resource is that, well, it is immensely popular. Any site that is Dugg enough times to get to the front page is nearly certain to have its web server go down (also known as the Digg effect).

Fortunately, Greasemonkey has us covered. Digg Mirrors is a very simple Greasemonkey script that adds small favicon-like links under each story on Digg to let you view a cached version of the site, even if the original site is down! This one is certainly a necessary install for any user of Digg.

Facebook Purity

Many people these days have Facebook accounts – around 200 million in fact – and seriously annoying quizzes with the day. Staying true to its title, Facebook Purity removes all of those annoying quizzes, application notifications, etc. and really does make Facebook pure again. I highly recommend trying it out.

What absolutely awesome Greasemonkey scripts do you use? Tell us in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
• Top 6 Firefox Add-ons For The Movie Freak (12)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)
• SmarterFox Makes You More Productive in FireFox (5)

What’s that all about?

Just so we’re all on the same page, GReader is a web-based RSS feed reader from Google. If you need to know what any of that means, click the links above. You want to be familiar with RSS and GReader before you try this.

Imagine taking the functionality of GReader, and then rebuilding the visual part of the site. Paring it down, and just leaving what is necessary. It actually takes some getting used to, but once you get there the result is very nice.

Helvetireader is essentially a stack of CSS, packaged in a number of different ways.

Getting your copy

The most likely way you’ll get hold of Helvetireader is by downloading the Greasemonkey script and installing it in Firefox, with Greasemonkey already installed.

You probably don’t need much help with that, but just in case, follow these easy steps:

Take a ride to the Helvetireader site in Firefox (for other browsers, see below), and click on the Install as a userscript option.

Wait for a moment then click the Install button.

Making it work

Refresh your GReader page, and take a look at the differences. That’s it.

Menus

Before

After

Individual feeds

Before

After

Using the result is easy too. Mostly, things are just the same, but you’ll find it’s better to make use of the keyboard shortcuts than the mouse.

Icons for options are sometimes a little less obvious, but the red highlighting in the menus is wonderful.

In the end, it’s more about visual design than functionality for me, but I like it. I’d just like to perhaps see a dark version as well. Photos are my thing, and they generally look better against something other than white.

Other options

If you’re a little more adventurous you can also make use of Helvetireader in other browsers such as Opera, Chrome, Safari and Omniweb. Details at the site again.

Outside my area of expertise, you can also make use of Fluid [Instructions] and Mozilla Prism [Instructions] to turn GReader into a desktop application.

For you low level types, you can also just grab the CSS. The beauty of that is the ability to customise things to get them just the way you want them.

So do you use Google Reader? Is it customised? Are you big on keyboard usage? What add-ons do you use? Let me know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Surf Feeds with Google Reader Productively (2)
• 19 Tools and Tips to improve Google Reader (32)
• Two Online Services To Clean Up Your RSS Feeds (10)
• The most Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Reader (9)
• Read Your RSS Feeds in a Whole New Light with Feedly (11)

The Meebo Firefox Extension

The Meebo Firefox extension adds some nifty features to Meebo. Improvements include “toaster” style notifications, a sidebar to access your buddy list, and auto-login. Unfortunately, this extension requires the Meebo tab to still be present, meaning that your conversations don’t carry on in the sidebar, but the actual Meebo tab.

The main addition of the extension is the sidebar, which allows you to see your buddy list in that sidebar – with no need to switch tabs. However, when you want to IM someone, clicking their name in the sidebar will automatically switch your Firefox tab back to Meebo – where you can chat there. This means that you can’t browse and chat at the same time, which is often inconvenient.

The second main addition of the extension are the toaster-style notifications, which tells you about certain events (can be chosen in the options panel) without having to be focused on the Firefox window.

Meebo’s Mobile Interface As A Sidebar

The mobile interface – while sub par to the actual interface, is a convenient way of accessing Meebo from the Firefox sidebar.  It allows you to carry on conversations in the sidebar without switching tabs. However, the Firefox extension doesn’t work in tandem with this method – so you’re stuck between the Firefox addon that depends on the Meebo website interface, or the less than stellar meebo sidebar.

It displays recent messages from contacts (listed in order of recent messages), which you can click on to chat with, and also click back to the buddy list through an icon next to the input area. An apparent bug is the status picker, which makes it impossible to see the options without highlighting over them. Sound is absent.

To use this interface, create a Firefox bookmark for http://www.meebo.com/mobile/ and set it to load in the sidebar.

Greasemonkey Scripts

Change the Background Image

Meebo offers a selection of background images you can use (if you like product placements) through the preferences – appearance menu, but to use other images, you’ll need the customize meebo backgrounds Greasemonkey script. It allows you to choose a URL to grab a wallpaper from (sorry, no local options) and makes it the background for Meebo. Make sure you choose dark wallpaper (as link text appears in white for all themes) and the gray theme tends to look best with all images. (Note: I had to add http://www*.meebo.com/#* to the includes of the script to make it work).

Meebo Control Panel Script

This Greasemonkey script has a number of options that change Meebo features including hiding various elements of the page and adding the ability to sign on while invisible.

Unfortunately, it sticks an ugly blue link on top of the Meebo logo to access the “control panel” (presumably because it hasn’t been updated to keep up with Meebo’s design; the author states you can change line 91 of the script to reposition the link).

Do you use Meebo for IM? Maybe some other online instant messenger? If so, do you have any tips, tweaks, Greasemonkey scripts or any other hacks that you would like to share with the readers? Please share them in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Secure & Encrypt Your Instant Messaging Chats (19)
• Why I’m Digging Digsby (31)
• Turn Your IM Program Into A Productivity Tool Using Imified (23)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)

Below I am listing 17 Greasemonkey scripts to diversify your social media experience (for Digg, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious).

Greasemonkey is a Firefox addon, which allows to edit the way web looks and works with the help of wide variety of already available scripts. To use the scripts you find here, install the Greasemonkey extension first.

Digg

(Use Digg scripts with caution as some of them can get you banned from the site)

• Digg Larger Images on Mouseover – enlarges images on Digg home page (including the users’ avatars) when hovered over;
• Digg AdBlocker (as the name suggests) removes adverts from Digg (or this one moves the ad spot down the page);
• DiggRatingExtender shows extended Digg submission and comment history: up and down diggs as well as the total rating. This might be really interesting to see how many people like / disliked the comment:

• Digg User Topics Cloud adds a tag cloud to each user’s profile based on his recent submissions (useful for evaluating if the person is worth a follow):

Twitter

• Twitter Friends Bio at a Glance – shows bio text, following count and a web link for all friends and followers on the Twitter friends list.

• Retweet This – adds a retweet button to the end of each twitter entry. The button opens in a new tab with the full retweeted message (including @member);
• Twitter friend name helper: suggests the friend name after you type @

StumbleUpon

• Stumbleupon Avatar Bubbles – adds some fun to StumbleUpon by allowing you to see larger versions of your friends’ avatars when hovering over;

• Preview StumbleUpon Posts – enables Preview functionality in StumbleUpon forums and contact pages and also warns you if you try to navigate away from a post without submitting it.
• SU Visual Editor Plus enhances the built-in SU editor by matching the background color, adjusting the its width and displaying images correctly;
• SU2Bookmarks (found under “You can also” section in the sidebar) scans your favorites and generates a bookmarks.html file. You may import this file into any web browser as a list of bookmarks. Favorites will be sorted in folders by their SU topic.

Reddit

• Reddit Zebra-izer adds color to Reddit rows for better usability:

• Reddit – Undeletion: recovers deleted comments and users on reddit.
• Reddit Filter Plus filters or highlights submissions by user, domain or keyword. Tired of some submission topics?  Or of some specific user’s submissions?  Or of some domain? Now you can filter those out! Alternatively, you can use any color to highlight submissions by any user, using any keywords or belonging to any domain. The script is easily managed right from your Reddit “Preferences” page.

Delicious.com

• Sort Visible Links (as you might have guessed) sorts your bookmarks by title, URL or popularity.
• Show Delicious Images: looks at each delicious image link and shows the image on the page.
• Fav.icio.us3 adds a favicon to each Delicious listing:

What Greasemonkey scripts do you use for your social media sites? Tell us the links to them in the comments so everyone can benefit!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Get Incredible Web & Image Suggestions With inSuggest (4)
• Delicious Toolbox : Organize Your Web with Delicious (22)
• 3 Ways to See Most Favorited Google Search Result (6)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)
• Dump Delicious And Dig(g) Deeper With Twine (1)

For the uninitiated, Greasemonkey scripts provides a way for customizing the look and/or functionality of sites according to your needs. Firefox users would require this addon to add and manage Greasemonkey scripts. While it is possible to run user scripts in other browsers, it is a completely different topic. So may I suggest that GIYF (Google is Your Friend) here.

IMDB – Pirated Version

IMDB is the mother of all sites when it comes to information on movies, documentaries, video games and similar content. How cool it would be if you could watch trailers of the movies you are searching for, search for torrents and other download links, right from the IMDB page for the particular title? All with a cool ajax interface that doesn’t get in your way of browsing IMDB. This script allows you to do just that. You can get torrent link, VCDQuality reports, Rapidshare links and trailers right from the IMDB entry for a particular title.

VCDQuality Tor v1.03

This script works on VCDQuality.com and adds links to torrent searches on Mininova and Torrentz. On clicking the icons you are taken to the search results page on the appropriate site. There was a minor glitch when I tried this script and I had to add http://*vcdq.com/* to the included pages section. Hence forth the script performed as advertised.

Rotten Tomatoes Popular Torrent Search Linker

The script adds search links to popular torrent sites on all RottenTomatoes movies pages. You get a bar just above the tomatometer. Click on the icon for the torrent site of your choice and bam, you are already staring down the available torrents for the title.

Pirates of the Amazon

Pirates of the Amazon is a Firefox Add on and created much hype recently with Amazon having to step in with legal issues. The site was down for some time and when it came up it was not hosting the addon anymore. The internet however is a wild wild place and the addon is already available on ‘n’ number of torrent sites and some ftp directories. Just Google Around.

The addon searches for torrents of anything that you search on Amazon.com and provides you direct links for the torrent file if found. Of course it works with things that can be converted to digital formats. You can’t get teddy bears on The Pirate Bay. Ahem.. or can you?

The Pirate Bay Enhancer

Very useful for users of The Pirate Bay. It adds – seeder/peer ratio which, if you don’t already know about it, is the ratio of the number of seeders to the number of peers. Higher the ratio better are the chances of getting good download speeds. So it’s wise to consider the ratio as the basis for choosing torrents over the number of seeders.

The script also has a command to remove dead torrents from listing. It has some bugs in that the headings remain the same as without the script and some text overflows into obscurity. However you get used to what is what, and it’s easy to hack as well!

Don’t use The Pirate Bay? Search for a similar script for your favorite tracker on User Scripts.

What user scripts do you all use? Are there any specific scripts for torrent users that are really cool and were not covered here? Share them with us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Wyzo Beta – The Web Browser for Downloaders (12)
• Who Needs The Amazon Kindle When You Have A Netbook? (26)
• Top Torrent Search Engines for All Torrent Downloaders (23)
• Top 6 Torrent Alternatives To The Pirate Bay (30)
• Top 4 Sites To Download Free, Legal Concert Recordings (6)

10. Flickr PM – Adds useful links next to a users buddy icon

9. Flickr2Facebook – Makes it easy to upload Flickr images to Facebook

8. Flickr Cross-Recommendations – What people who faved this image also faved

7. Flickr Auto Page – Loads all photostream or pool images on one page

6. Flickr Move Comment Form Up – Moves comment form to just below image.  Useful on heavily commented-on images

5. Flickr Add Referrer into Comment – Lets photographer know in which group you found their image

4. Flickr Exif Decorator – Adds translucent, unobtrusive box with some EXIF info

3. Flickr On Black – Links to view any image on a black background

2. Flickr Comment Tools – Adds a few word processor type buttons to comment box

1. Flickr Multi Group Sender – Makes sending an image to multiple groups easy

If you’ve got some better ones, please let me know in the comments.

(BTW: Greasemonkey is for more than just Flickr.  Search for your favourites over at UserScripts.org)

[display_podcast]

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Make Use Of Podcast #35: Doing Fun Things With Your Pictures (0)
• Backup And Download Flickr Photos in Bulk (Windows) (11)
• 5 Ways To Get Your Images Noticed In Flickr (7)
• 3 Steps To Find Similar-Minded People On Flickr (9)
• Top 5 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Photographs (37)

1. Create and Backup Multiple profiles

When you type in the omnibox, Google Chrome is capable of digging up your history and show a list of suggestions that is closest to your search. Now, if you are those who like to frequent ‘naughty’ sites, what would happen if someone (hopefully not your wife) types in a search term and all your ‘mischief’ acts are instantly displayed in a well-organized list? I am sure that is the last thing that you want to happen.

Rather than switching to incognito mode all the time, an easy way out is to create multiple profiles for everyone that uses the browser. In such cases, you can keep all your stuff (and maybe privacy) personal and avoid those embarrassing moments.

Google Chrome Backup is a small application that allows you to easily create multiple profiles with a few mouse clicks.

Creating a new profile is as easy as clicking on the ‘New Profile’ button, enter the profile name and specify the location to save the new profile.

To backup your profile, simply right-click on the profile and select “Backup Profile”. In the event that your system crashes, you can also restore it back to your original setting.

2. Install Greasemonkey

Firefox users will know how useful Greasemonkey is. The good thing is, with a simple tweak, you can also get Greasemonkey to work in Google Chrome.

In your Google Chrome, press Ctrl + B to show your bookmark bar (if it’s hidden). Drag this Monkey bookmarklet to the bookmark bar.

Now, go to Userscripts.org and select the scripts that you want to install. On the installation page (the page with the button “Install the script”), click on the Monkey bookmarklet. This will convert the script to Chrome compatible script. Now drag the “Install the script” button to your Chrome bookmark bar. That’s it! (This trick will only on certain scripts. Scripts that contain specific functions like pre-fill comments, reload page etc will not work.)

Another way to get Greasemonkey to work in Chrome is to install Greasemetal, a userscript runtime for Chrome. To get the Greasemonkey scripts to work, you will need to download and save the scripts to the “userjs” folder in “My Documents” and run Chrome with Greasemetal.

Somehow, I find that the Monkey bookmarklet method is more user-friendly than the Greasemetal way. You can try out both and let me know which one you prefer.

3. Increase the Number of Omnibox Suggestions

By default, Chrome shows 5 URL suggestions when you type in the omnibox. If you want it to show more/less suggestions, you can change it via the “omnibox-popup-count=” command line switch.

In Windows, right click on the Chrome shortcut icon and select Properties. In the Target field, add the command line switch “-omnibox-popup-count=10″ (without the quote) to the end of the command. Change the number to your preferred number of suggestions that you want Chrome to show.

4. Change the Theme

So you wanted to dress up your Chrome but can’t find the button to change the theme? Google Chrome does not allow you to change the theme by default, but a simple tweak should get this done easily.

Download a Chrome theme of your liking.

Extract the “default.dll” file.

Navigate to your Chrome installation directory (for Vista: C:\Users\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data, for XP: C:\Documents and Settings\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data and go to /Application/Chrome version/Themes folder. The “Chrome version” folder will be in the form of 0.2.149.29 (The number will vary according to the version of Chrome that you installed). Replace the “default.dll” file in the folder with the “default.dll” file that you have just downloaded.

Restart your Chrome. You should see it dressed up in the new theme now.

(If you find the above steps too complicated, or you need an application to manage your themes, you can download the application XChrome and change the theme from a nicely designed GUI.)

5. Stumbleupon without the Toolbar

In Firefox, I used Stumbleupon to get new article ideas and to keep myself informed of interesting stuff. With this simple tweak, you can get Stumbleupon to work in Chrome as well.

Right click on the bookmark bar and select “Add page”.

Name the new bookmark Stumble! and place the following code in the URL field: javascript:window.location.href = 'http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url';

Now, everytime you want to stumble a site, just click the Stumble! bookmarklet and the Stumbleupon toolbar will appear.

To submit a review to Stumbleupon, create another bookmark and name it “Review for Stumble“. In the URL field, copy and paste the following code: javascript:window.location.href = 'http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=' + document.location;

Whenever you come across a page and wanted to submit a review to Stumbleupon, simply click on the “Review for Stumble” bookmark and it will bring you to the SU review page.

6. Preview RSS feed in Google Chrome

One feature sorely missed by many in Google Chrome is the ability to preview and subscribe to a RSS feed. To tackle this issue, RAMisp.org has written a script that allows you to preview and subscribe to a site’s RSS feed in Google Chrome.

• In your Chrome, go to http://feeds.ramisp.org
• Drag the “Auto-Detect RSS” link to your bookmark bar.

Now, whenever you want to preview a site RSS feed, simply click on the “Auto detect RSS” bookmark and you will see the preview of the feed on the RAMisp site. You can also subscribe to the feed via Google, Yahoo, or Netibes.

7. Customize your Own Shortcut Keys

Google Chrome comes with a set of useful shortcut keys, but if you want more of it, you can make use of Autohotkey to create your own shortcut keys.

Download Autohotkey from http://www.autohotkey.com/download/

Install it in your Windows.

Check out HowTo Tuts for some ready-made shortcut key scripts for Chrome.

Save the “.ahk” scripts to your system. Double click the “.ahk” scripts to activate the shortcut keys.

Open your Chrome, you should now be able to use your custom shortcut keys in the Chrome.

Some of the ready-made shortcut key scripts found in “HowTo Tuts” include:

• Win+a or F1 Switch to previous tab
• Win+s or F2 Switch to next tab
• Win+z Go back
• Win+x Go forward
• Win+c or F4 Close current tab
• Win+v Paste and go
• Win+Alt+v Paste and go in a new tab
• ctrl+z or F12 Undo last tab
• CAPS Switch to Chrome and create a new tab (If Chrome isn’t already running, it opens Chrome first)
• Scroll mouse wheel on the tab bar switches to previous and next tabs
• Ctrl+Shift+T to post to Twitter (automatically tinyurls the current page)
• Ctrl+Shift+D or Ctrl+Shift+B to bookmark to Delicious

Which one is your favorite hack? Do you know of any other Google Chrome hacks? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 10 Cool Extensions for Google Chrome (57)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)
• Quick Tip: Backup Firefox Preferences (18)
• How to Start Google Chrome in Incognito Mode by Default (23)
• How to Save and Monitor Bandwidth when using Firefox (11)

When you surf around the web long enough, it will happen. It’s just a matter of time. Sooner or later you’ll arrive on this God awful website that’ll make you scream out in terror and hide beneath your desk. For some reason or another, some people just can’t grasp the concept of design.

User, meet Stylish. Stylish is a Firefox add-on. It’ll enhance your browser experience. Stylish uses simple, user-submitted CSS scripts (similar to Greasemonkey) to tweak the looks of certain websites.

Today we’re going to take a look at the four best Stylish scripts around.

1. Gmail Redesigned v2.0

If a webpage looks bad, we can make it look good. If it looks good, we can make it look better. Globex Designs released Gmail Redesigned, which will give your Gmail a slick dark look. It also visually tweaks all popular Google services. The Google Redesigned add-on was released a few weeks ago. Upon writing this article, Gmail and Google calendar got the treatment.

2. Grey/Olive v2 Last.fm

Going to Last.fm, I feel like I’m walking into McDonalds; only without the burgers. I don’t like the bright red. It gives a ‘do what you’ve got to do and get out of here’ message.

Grey/OIive v2 Last.fm gives Last.fm a nice and calm grey-green look.

3. Google Web Search – dark blue redesign (vC)

This one gives your Google Web Search a slick blue look. Everyone will ask why Google looks so cool; perhaps you can try the NASA story.

This style is also available in Dark Grey for both Google Web Search and Google Image Search.

4. MySpace – Updated Home Rearranged

I’m not a fan of MySpace. But because we can’t keep some of you away from it anyway, we can at least try to contain the damage. This style fixes a lot of things. It rids the complete site of ads and rearranges the items on your MySpace homepage, making it a lot more compact and usable.

Installing scripts

Installing these scripts is very simple. You just install Stylish, find a script online (or make one yourself) and install it by right-clicking on the Stylish icon at the bottom of your browser.

Are you good with CSS? Why don’t you try making a style for Make Use Of? Be the first! Let us know your favorite Stylish scripts in the comments.

(By) Simon is a student from Belgium who wastes his time relaxing, watching anime and surfing the net. He would tell you to check out his blog, only he doesn’t have one yet!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 19 Tools and Tips to improve Google Reader (32)
• What’s new in Gmail: Imports, Images, Previews, Translations and more (11)
• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
• Stumbleupon Tools To Stumble Around The Web (14)
• Some Of The Best Greasemonkey Scripts For BitTorrent Users (15)

Now, with the help of Better FriendFeed, there’s no longer a limit to the kind of tabs you can add to FriendFeed. In addition to being able to add any tab that you want, Better FriendFeed also helps to make FriendFeed “cleaner”.

So, what is meant by making FriendFeed “cleaner”? Well, as you can see from the “Before Better FriendFeed” screenshot above, the large FriendFeed graphic takes up a lot of space, forcing your tabs to all be pushed over a great deal to the right. This only leaves you so much room to add custom tabs on the right side. Also, there are no separators between posted items, which can sometimes make it a pain to keep up with the long page of content.

Now, in the “After Better FriendFeed” screenshot, the large FriendFeed graphic is replaced by the FriendFeed favicon (which as you can see is tiny). Your default tabs are now pulled closer to the left, leaving you a lot of room on the right to add more custom tabs. There are also separators between posted items, which helps make FriendFeed easier to read. Lastly the tabs no longer have rounded edges, they are now squared.

So as you can see, using Better FriendFeed gives you a lot of added space which enables you to be able to have even more tabs.

The “Cleaner FF” feature is off by default but can be enabled in the Better FriendFeed options.

Now that you have more room for tabs, it’s very easy to add a tab for any site you want to be able to access in FriendFeed.

When adding tabs you’ll need three things, one of which is optional. You will need to enter a name for the tab, a url for the website that you’d like to access, and a url for a favicon (which is optional). It’s best to enter a url for a favicon though, since that is what will show on the actual tab.

Initially Google Reader, Gmail, and Identi.ca are already included with this script and are on by default but you can take them off if you’d like.

So as you can see from the screenshot above, I have 4 tabs that I’m using which are Google Reader, Socialthing, Facebook, and Kwippy; all of my social hangouts in one spot. You can also see the 3 text boxes that allow you to add more tabs.

If you’re wondering how to access the Better FriendFeed options, you simply right click the Greasemonkey icon in your status bar, scroll up to “User Script Commands” and then scroll over to “Better FriendFeed”. From there, a box like above will open up. So as you can see, Better FriendFeed is very easy to use and customize.

With the ability to add any tabs that you want and a good amount of them, why not turn FriendFeed into your one stop social headquarters? This can save you a lot of time since you will only need to go to one site to access your social hangouts.

Also, if you’re like me, you probably keep a lot of tabs open in your browser which can slow down your browsing quite a bit. So now you can also speed up your browsing by using Better FriendFeed. Lastly, there’s no need to add all those different Greasemonkey scripts for each tab – just use this one script to add all the tabs you want and uninstall all the rest.

Have you turned FriendFeed into your social headquarters yet? If not, do you plan to? What do you think of the Better FriendFeed Greasemonkey script? Do you have any other Greasemonkey scripts that you would prefer over this? Please let us know in the comments.

(By) Charnita is a social media addict & internet junkie. She blogs about web apps, internet tools, social networking, web 2.0 & internet marketing on her Social Web Tools blog.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 6 Cool GreaseMonkey Scripts To Rock Your Friendfeed (8)
• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
• Powersurf Through Friendfeed With StumbleRead (5)
• How to Turn Greasemonkey Scripts into Firefox Extensions (11)
• How To Surf Feeds with Google Reader Productively (2)

Friendfeed is a cool service no doubt and if you use certain Greasemonkey scripts (which I am about to mention), Friendfeed can turn into a really awesome tool. So if you haven’t been bitten by the Friendfeed frenzy yet, sign up for a free account and install these user scripts and start rocking with it!

1. Google Reader in Friendfeed

There are two ways to use Google Reader in Friendfeed. One is a bookmarklet which is suggested by Louis Gray and if you have signed in to your Friendfeed and clicked on the bookmarklet, it will immediately open the Friend’s shared items tab of your Google Reader.

Another way is to install this Greasemonkey script. Once installed, you will get a tab on the right which when clicked takes you to your Google Reader homepage (see the 2 screenshots below). There are many other similar scripts for different sites. However I particularly like this one.

If you’ve added Google Reader to your list of services, then while browsing through your feeds you could share the ones which you like and then start a discussion on them with your friends as they feeds appear in your Friendfeed.

2. Read Later

Read Later is a cool script for Friendfeed which allows you to store a particular Friendfeed item for reading later. Once you install this script you’ll see a small link named ‘Later‘ under each item.

Once you click on it, it is saved in your account and can be easily accessed through a separate Read Later Tab.

3. Better FriendFeed “subscribed to me”

The Better FriendFeed “subscribed to me” Greasemonkey script adds a ’subscribe’ button under each of the friends who are subscribed to you but you aren’t subscribed to them. Hence it makes the process of subscribing back to those who subscribe to your Friendfeed easier.

4. Twitter For Friendfeed

This is my favorite. The twitter for friendfeed script allows you to access Twitter right inside Friendfeed and therefore allows you to use both the tools simultaneously inside one browser tab. When you install it, you get a separate tab for Twitter inside Friendfeed (as you can see below ).

Once you click on the tab, you can access your Twitter account right inside your Friendfeed account!

5. Friendfeed Filters: Friends & Groups

The Friendfeed filter Greasemonkey script could turn out to be a very important Friendfeed addon in the long run. It lets you filter the noise and access the Friendfeed items which you care for. After installing it, you’ll find a drop-down menu on the right in your Friendfeed account.

Now from this drop down menu you can create different groups of friends and then access their Friendfeed items through a separate tab. It then allows you to further customize your Friendfeed. For example as you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve created a group and named it ‘ Tech Bloggers ‘ and accessing the group feeds through a separate tab.

6. Friendfeed Tweak Refresh Rate

Yes, probably the simplest of the Friendfeed scripts but certainly a useful one. The Friendfeed tweak refresh rate script lets you specify a time interval (in minutes) after which you’d like your Friendfeed to be auto-refreshed.

If you like Friendfeed then I’m sure you’ll like these scripts too. If you know about some other cool Friendfeed scripts then let us know in the comments. And most importantly, make sure to join MakeUseOf room on FriendFeed.

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Stay Socially Connected Online With Yoono (18)
• 9 Steps To A Great Start In Friendfeed (12)
• Threadsy – Integrates Your Email and Social Networks (+Invites) (24)
• How to Turn Greasemonkey Scripts into Firefox Extensions (11)
• How To turn FriendFeed into your One-Stop Social Headquarters (6)

So if you are a YouTube fan and would love to download some of the videos to your computer so that you may watch them again, without the need to visit the site again, then here are 4 quick ways to do that.

1. Add a ‘ Kiss ‘

Yes, you heard me right You just need to add the word ‘kiss’ to the YouTube video URL and then it directs you to a website where you can download it as a .flv video or convert it other formats as well.

Let’s take the most viewed video of all time – ‘ Evolution Of Dance ‘.

Its URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Now in order to download it, just replace it with this – http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg . Then when you press enter, you’re directed to the website where you can download it. (see the screenshot)

2. YouTubeLoader Firefox Plugin

The youtubeloader firefox plugin is a Greasemonkey script, which adds a Download MP4 link below the YouTube video (as seen in Firefox 3)

Now, after you click on that Download MP4 link, it takes you to a separate page where it gives you more download options. From there, you can finally download it in the desired format.

3. YouTube Catcher

YouTube Catcher allows you to copy paste the YouTube video link and then download it. It also offers an FLV player to watch the videos on the PC.

4. Tube Leecher

Tube Leecher is a very simple, no-frills YouTube videos download site, which allows you to download the videos in flv format through the YouTube video link. It’s probably the simplest of all the tools mentioned.

I’m sure there are many more such tools available. If you know about any other tool which you think is better than the above, then mention them in the comments!

Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 4 YouTube Tools you Probably Don’t Know About (48)
• xVideoServiceThief – Ultimate Download Manager for Online Videos (25)
• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (16)
• vTap – Download videos on your mobile for FREE (10)
• Use GrabTube To Convert YouTube Videos Online (13)

iDesktop.tv – iDesktop.tv is basically a Youtube but with a way more interactive interface plus an option to download and save any video to your PC. It also allows user to choose and download video in desired format, including AVI (Windows), 3GP (Mobile), MP4 (iPod), and MOV (Quicktime).

OrbitDownloader (Windows) – Powerful all-in-one media downloader for your desktop. OrbitDownloader removes the download barriers from almost all popular social media websites, i.e. Youtube, Dailymotion, Pandora, Rapidshare and many others. Once installed, you’ll be able to speedy download from almost any video or music streaming website.

Highlights include:

• Download from social music and video websites.
• Download acceleration. Outperforms most of the traditional Youtube downloaders.
• Option to pasue and resume download at any time.
• Check out full feature list here.

Videoembed (Greasemonkey script) – This one is really cool. Youtube videos are linked from everywhere these days. And this addon lets you watch the video right on the page it’s linked from. It automatically adds embedded video after each link to pages like Metacafe, Youtube, Myspace… and many others so you can view the video without going to the website. Check it out in action on the Digg’s video section.

Before:

After:

VideoFocus – Want to watch online videos without any distractions like ads, chats, comments, etc? This Greasemonkey script strips everything (ads, comments, related video…) but video and a plain background. Works with 30+ video sharing sites.

That’s about it… For more alternative ways to download and convert Youtube videos see our previously posted 18 Free Ways To Download Any Video off the Internet.

(By) Contributed by Sumesh and edited by Aibek. Sumesh is a blogger and freelance writer. You can check out his blog at Techzilo.com.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (16)
• 4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net (121)
• vTap – Download videos on your mobile for FREE (10)
• Easily Rip The Audio From Online Video With VidToMp3 (8)
• Downloading Difficult Multimedia Files Using The Safari Browser (8)

While browsing online the other day, I came across a conversion tool which allows you to take a Greasemonkey script and turn it into a “xpi” Firefox extension.

It’s entitled “User Script Compiler” and it is very easy to use. Turning Greasemonkey scripts into proper Firefox extensions is all the rage at the moment. Gina Trapani over at Lifehacker has taken all the best Greasemonkey scripts (with permission of course) for Google products such as Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar and YouTube, and merged them all into Firefox extensions. Now you can do the same – even if you don’t have any programming knowledge.

First, you need to get the actual Greasemonkey script. Go to your Firefox profile in your Windows Explorer and find the “gm_scripts” sub-folder. This folder contains all the Greasemonkey scripts that you have installed on your Firefox browser and should all be in javascript file format (.js). Alternatively, you can download some scripts from Userscripts.org. Or check out previously posted ‘20 must-see Greasemonkey Addons‘

Now right-click on the desired script, choose “rename” and turn the file from javascript to a text file (.txt). Open the text file and you have your code. Then go to the User Script Compiler and enter the required information in the fields provided.

I just copied and pasted the entire contents of the text file into the User Script field. If you want to add the developer’s name and so on, you can normally find it at the beginning of the text file. Then when all fields are filled, press the “compile” button. An XPI file should now be generated for you onto your computer. That’s your new Firefox extension.

To install it onto your Firefox, you have to click on it with your mouse and drag it from your Windows Explorer onto the Firefox browser page. The regular installation box will then open and you should then install it as normal, like any other extension. Close and restart Firefox and your extension should now be there. Try it out to see if it works. I tried it on three different Greasemonkey scripts and they work flawlessly.

Oh and don’t forget to delete the original Greasemonkey script which is now not needed! If you’re feeling nice, why not email the script developer and send them a copy of the new Firefox extension file?

You’re probably asking by now what the advantage is of doing all this. Isn’t a Greasemonkey script and a Firefox extension essentially doing the same thing? Well yes but if you’re say a programmer / developer or just someone who wants to pass on a good script to someone else, converting those Greasemonkey scripts into full Firefox extensions is beneficial if you want to get them out to a wider use base. I mean, everyone “gets” Firefox and extensions but try explaining the finer points of Greasemonkey to someone who can barely grasp the concept of programming. It’s much easier to point them to an extension and say “click on that”. If they have to install the Greasemonkey extension and then the script, they would probably not bother.

Are there any other Firefox compiler tools out there that we should know about?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
• How To Surf Feeds with Google Reader Productively (2)
• How to Save and Monitor Bandwidth when using Firefox (11)
• How To Rename Firefox Search Plug-ins (10)
• How to Monitor Websites that don’t have RSS Feeds (49)

But you don’t have to be a blogger or webmaster in order to appreciate and enjoy Stumbleupon. Anyone can use the site to enrich their internet using experience. With lots of different categories, groups and tools, StumbleUpon can change the way you look at the net – even someone as jaded as me who sees countless new pages every day in this job and finds it hard to be impressed with the Next New Thing.

Here are some useful StumbleUpon tools and pages :

The Stumbleupon Community – a list of the most active users on Stumbleupon, constantly updated. If you are new to Stumbleupon, maybe linking to these users, chatting to them and seeing what they are looking at will give you an idea of what to do yourself.

Link to your Stumbled Videos – as well as webpages, you can also stumble videoclips, and this small snippet of HTML can put a link to your stumbled videos on your website / blog.

Put Stumble Buttons on your webpage – you can use these buttons to link to your Stumble profile and also advertise the fact you are a prolific stumbler!

Back up your Stumbleupon page to your hard-drive – using this script, you can now back up your Stumble blog to your own computer as a HTML file. Useful if you have thousands of pages bookmarked and one day Stumbleupon goes down!

Create an archives to your Stumbleupon pages – this script will create an archives to your stumble pages which people can click on to see what you stumbled last year or two years ago.

StumbleUpon add-ons – a page with lots of useful add-ons for Stumbleupon including Firefox extensions, bookmarklets and userscripts.

Stumble-Mod – this site will allow you to create a bookmarklet that will automatically insert your personalised layout into any StumbleUpon text box.

Opera Stumbler – an unofficial toolbar for stumbling on the Opera browser.

Greasemonkey scripts (which of course requires the Firefox browser and Greasemonkey)

Sticky Helper – places a sticky note on your stumble page.

Tag Toplist – adds a little button to each StumbleUpon profile which allows you to see some advanced statistics about the tags (sort alphabetically or by tag count).

WYSIWYG editor – this Greasemonkey script adds an WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to StumbleUpon, so you can easily format your review’s and comments.

Preview Stumbleupon posts – allows you to preview your Stumbleupon posts before submitting them.

StumbleVideo Embed Code Displayer – displays the “embed” HTML code when stumbling videos on Stumbleupon Video.

What Stumbleupon tools have I forgotten? Drop those links in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Is Socialbrowse The New Stumbleupon? (7)
• StumbleUpon-Discover Websites that People Like (3)
• 7 Useful Hacks To Improve Your Google Chrome Experience (23)
• 17 Greasemonkey Scripts to Diversify Social Media Experience (7)
• YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing Site (23)

Plus since Google has today finally taken the beta label off Reader, I figured now was a good time to write about this great RSS reader. So first let’s look at three of the more useful settings available on Reader that you may or may not know about (which doesn’t include previously mentioned Google Gears as I think it is very unstable):

View Settings

When you are in “All Items”, you can sort the RSS entries by newest first, oldest first or “sort by auto”. Sorting them by “newest first” gives you the ones you have yet to read. Sorting them by “oldest first” allows you to read posts in chronological order (if you are say following a news story).

I am not sure of the benefits of “sort by auto” – the Google Reader blog says that this feature “mixes feeds together according to posting frequency, so items from rarely-updated feeds show up higher than items from frequently-updated feeds“. OK….how is that good?

The Keyboard Shortcuts

At over 200 RSS feeds a day, I wouldn’t get through them all without keyboard shortcuts. When going through the new feeds, my two favourite keys are J and K to go up and down the list, opening each one as I go. Pressing R refreshes the whole page, pressing S stars the item you’re on and Shift-S shares the item. There are many more shortcuts but these are the ones I most use on a daily basis.

View your reading trends

If you click on “trends”, you will see how many posts have been published by each blog you have subscribed to and how many of those posts you have read / clicked on in the past 30 days.
This is helpful for deciding whether or not to subscribe from a blog or not. If the blog hasn’t published anything in months or if you don’t generally read the blog’s posts, maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from that feed.

SCRIPTS AND TOOLS

A nice little developer community seems to have sprung up around Google Reader with many scripts and tools being developed. Here are some of my favourites :

Smart Subscribe Button

Smart Subscribe Button: made by Mihai Parparita who works at Google and writes an excellent blog. The smart subscribe button puts a RSS symbol in the top right hand of your screen and if you are subscribed to a feed, the RSS box will have a tick in it. Good to see if you are subscribed or not to a particular feed and it also provides a fast way to subscribe to new feeds.

Google Reader Notifier: provides a pop-up window notification for new feeds. Fairly self-explanatory.

Integrate Reader into Gmail: Lifehacker’s Better Gmail gives you the option to integrate Reader into Gmail. The advantage of this is that everything is concentrated on the one page.

Auto-add feed to Reader: this script bypasses the intensely annoying page where you have to choose whether to add the feed to your personalised Google page or to Reader. This automatically adds the feed to Reader without asking.

I will now write a second post on MakeUseOf.com recommending some RSS feeds you should be looking at in your Reader……coming up next….

(By) Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, proofreader and blogger. Visit his blog at www.betterthantherapy.net

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 19 Tools and Tips to improve Google Reader (32)
• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
• Read your Gmail in a web-based RSS reader with FreeMyFeed (10)
• How to Turn Greasemonkey Scripts into Firefox Extensions (11)
• How To Remove Clutter From Google Reader with Helvetireader (3)

Firefox EXTENSIONS

Gmail Manager – manage multiple Gmail accounts, receive new mail notifications, view unread messages right from your browser statusbar. “…The Gmail Manager Firefox add-on obviates the need to keep your Gmail open in a tab all the time by displaying your email info in a statusbar pop-up…” [via LifeHacker]

GmailThis – excellent browser bookmarklet that lets you quickly forward highlighted text on any webpage via Gmail.

Better Gmail – integrates features of 10 Greasemonkey scripts into one firefox addon. These include: Google Reader integration, Mac-like skin, GCal integration, Fixed font and more.

GmailSkinz – powerful firefox addon with lots of cool features: change Inbox color , Add Google IG modules, insert images from Picasa albums, insert smileys, make navigation menu horizontal, hide unnecessary page elements, and more. (Note: some users reported having problems with this addon).

CustomizeGoogle – removes ads, switches you from http to https, hides the spam counter, quick contacts box, invite box and forces fixed font

Gspace – multi-platform firefox addon that turns your Gmail account into powerful online storage tool.

Gmail Search – search your Gmail account directly from the firefox search bar.

GcalQuickTab – toggle between Gmail and Google Calendar with keyboard shortcuts.

GTDInbox – turns your account into flexible and feature-loaded ToDo-management service (GTD = Getting Things Done)

DragDropUpload – this handy extension lets you quickly attach one or more files to your emails by dragging them over the “Attach a file” link.

Google Toolbar – official Google toolbar featuring one-click Gmail messages search.

FireGPG – integrates contextual menu with some useful functions: encrypt, decrypt, sign, etc. Read more on how to use it here.
—-

GreaseMonkey SCRIPTS (What is Greaseamonkey?)

(click to enlarge)

Gmail Super Clean – clean and distraction-free Gmail. Looks great, check it out here

Gmail Spam-count Hide – hides spam count link.

Google Reader Folders – adds a little box that lists the folders on Google Reader along with the number of unread items in each one.

Google Reader Integration – complete integration of GReader into Gmail. Excellent! (view). Jump to Google Reader Tools and Tips.

Google Calendar Integration – integrates GCal agenda into Gmail (view). Jump to Google Calendar Tools and Tips.

Conversation Preview – lets you quickly preview message contents right from the main inbox window (view).

Saved Searches – create ’saved searches’ (aka smart folders) and display them in the separate box in the navigation menu. Clicking on a search executes the saved query (view).

Folders4Gmail – allows you to create nested labels (i.e. labels and sub-labels) [via LifeHacker].

Gmail Date Search – adds a ‘Search by Date’ button to Gmail’s search form.

Label Colors – color menu labels to make them stand out better (view).

GMail Attachment Icons – adds attachment icons to emails, letting you see what kind of attachment an email has (HTML ,JPG, PDF….). Note: ‘Attachment icons’ isn’t a standard Greasemonkey script, it’s an addon for a similar Firefox extension known as Stylish. However it should work with Geasemonkey as well.

GmailTo – forces all ‘mailto’ links to open in GMail.

Fixed Font Toggle – adds a font toggle button so that messages can be viewed in a fixed-width font. Read more …

Gmail Macros – adds extra keyboard shortcuts to Gmail (i.e. “t” for move to trash, “r” for mark as read, “p” for mark as read and add to archive…etc). Read more…

Gmail Encrypt – encrypts your messages to prevent unwanted people from reading it. Just in case someone intercepts it while it’s on the way.

SSLGoogle – forces Gmail, Google Docs and GCale pages and their intra-links to open via secure connection (HTTPS).

Signature Float – moves your email signature to the top of the message rather than the bottom.

Attachment reminder – reminds you to attach a file to your Gmail, based on whether you have the word attach (ed, ment, etc) in the body.

—-

Desktop Programs and Web Apps

GmailDrive (Win) – adds a new virtual drive (’Gmail Drive’) to ‘My Computer‘ folder. Drag’n drop files on top it to store them in your Gmail account.

gDisk (Mac) – Mac alternative for the above mentioned GmailDrive.

Gmail ToDo – handy desktop application that allows you to quickly add and save todo’s in a ‘ToDo’ label in your Gmail account.

FlipMail – free service for forwarding some/all of your emails to your mobile (US Only).

Gmail Loader – cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) tool to help you load all your old message archives from other email accounts into Gmail. [via LifeHacker].

Icon Generator – minimize spam exposure by getting an image for your email address and safely publish it wherever needed.

Blogsigs – lets you auto-include the title of your latest blog post in your email signature. Works with Gmail.

GMail Mobile – access Gmail from your mobile.

Google Talk – Google’s IM service which is fully integrable with GMail.

You’ve Got Gmail – Gmail plugin for Trillian (IM client)

Unbl0ck – web-based proxy for accessing Gmail from places where it’s blocked (work, school,…)

iPhoto2Gmail (Mac) – allows you to instantly email images from within iPhoto. Send either original or optimized (resized) image versions.

MailPlane – “…A full fledged mail client for Google Mail and Mac OS X “. Mail client combining best of Gmail with Mac’s simplicity anduser interface. It’s still in beta though, but you can request invite from here.

GmailFS – mountable Linux filesystem which uses Gmail as its storage medium

—-

GMail Notifiers

- for Windows: GMail Notifier (official), GTray, Notifier2
- for Mac: GMail Notifier (official), GCount, Gmail+Growl 2.0
- for Linux: KCheckGmail
- for Firefox: E-Mail Notifier Toolbar, Gmail Notifier

—-

GMail HowTo’s (over 20 all purpose HowTo guides)

HowTo: Build advanced Gmail filters and persistent searches.
HowTo: Import your archived emails into Gmail.
HowTo: Access Gmail account of someone who dies.
HowTo: Force Gmail notifier to use SSL (instead of HTTP).
HowTo: Import contacts from Hotmail to Gmail.
HowTo: Redownload Gmail messages into outlook.
HowTo: Backup your Gmail messages using Google Groups.
HowTo: Create Google Calendar events from Gmai.
HowTo: Set Gmail as default mail client in Ubuntu (without any additional software).
HowTo: Sync. Google Calendar and Gmail contacts to your desktop.
HowTo: Use rich HTML email signatures straight from Gmail (req. Better Gmail extension).
HowTo: Manage all your email account with Gmail. (Excellent guide for folks with several emails.)
HowTo: Back up Gmail with Fetchmail (Windows).
HowTo: Configure and access Gmail on Mozilla Thunderbird.
HowTo: Use Gmail over IMAP and tag your mail, too.
HowTo: Sync. Micr. Outlook, GCal, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone.
HowTo: Encrypt and sign Gmail messages using FireGPG extension (see above).
HowTo: Work with Gmail Attachments like a PRO.
HowTo: Attach and send blocked file types, i.e. ‘*.exe’.
HowTo: Find that ’someone’ who gives away your email address to spammers.
HowTo: Gmail on Home Linux Box using Postfix and Fetchmail.

—-

Gmail Shortcuts

- Secret keyboard shortcut for deleting messages [labnol.blogspot.com]
- Shortcuts for Special Gmail Labels [googlesystem.blogspot.com] – for ultra quick navigation
- Gmail Shortcut List: handy, printable list of keyboard shortcuts for the Gmail [comp.nus.edu.sg]

—-

Tips

- Three solid Gmail productivity tips [mattcutts.com]
- What to do if your Gmail is nearly full [bnura.blogspot.com]
- Jim’sTips: huge collection of basic gmail tips [g04.com]

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 19 Tools and Tips to improve Google Reader (32)
• Gmail Craze: 40 + Tools and Hacks for Gmail (214)
• Essential Shortcuts to Browse through Gmail Faster (16)
• Read your Gmail in a web-based RSS reader with FreeMyFeed (10)
• Notify – An Elegant Gmail New Email Notifier [Mac] (22)

The best part of Google Reader, like in the case of other Google Goodies, i.e. Gmail and Google Calendar, there are many third-party tools making it even better. These include new item notifiers, addons for offline access, Greasemonkey (?) scripts, one-click shortcuts and more.

(1) Google Gears – recently released open source browser extension that lets you run web applications (incl. Google Reader) offline. Once installed, login to your GReader account and you’ll see a small green circle next to the right top menu. This button lets you download your feeds to your PC and afterwards access GReader offline. Everything you have done while being offline will be synced with your Greader account during the next time you go online.

(2) Desktop Notifiers

• for Mac: Reader Notifier, GROSX
• for Win: GReader Notifier
• for Firefox: Google Reader Notifier
• for Internet Explorer: Google Reader Button (Requires Google Toolbar ver. 4)

(3) Widgets

• Yahoo Widgets (Win, Mac): Google Reader Notify, more on Yahoo Widgets …
• Mac DashBoard Widget
• for Google Desktop Sidebar (or iGoogle): Gadget for iGoogle
• Vista Sidebar Gadget: while there is no specific Vista gadget there is a handy tool known as Amnesty Generator that lets you convert any web widget (i.e. GReader gadget for iGoogle) to a Vista sidebar gadget.

(4) Browser Bookmarklets – to make things easier Google Reader provides three handy browser bookmarklets (access via ‘Settings’ -> ‘Goodies’). These include: one-click feed subscribe and two handy browsing shortcuts (to the next unread item and next unread item from a specific tag).

*** Firefox Addons ***

(5) Better GReader – worth checking 3-in-1 firefox extension that adds a bunch of useful options which can be enabled within Google Reader. These include: optimized interface, some navigational shortcuts and smart subscribe button. Each of these can be also installed separately as a Greasemonkey script, see below.

*** GreaseMonkey Scripts (What is GreaseMonkey?) ***

Interface Enhacements

(6) Custom Search – adds a custom Google-powered search box to Google Reader. (see it in action below)

(7) Google Reader + Del.icio.us – bookmark items to Del.icio.us without leaving your Reader page. (see it in action below)

(8) Original Item Preview – very cool script that replaces Google’s item summary with the actual blog item. For instance, you’ll be able to Digg and to comment on Digg articles directly from your Reader account. (see it in action below)

(9) Read by Mouse – yet another handy addon that lets you navigate items using mouse gestures. Once turned on, left and right mouse buttons will function as shortcuts to next and previous feed items, respectively. Middle button can be configured to initiate ’star’, ’share’, or ‘open in a new tab’ functionalities. (see it in action below)

Screenshot: (for scripts 6-9 + Google Gears). Click here, to enlarge and launch it in a new window.

Subscription Aids

(10) Auto Add – lets you bypass the page that asks you whether you want to add the feed to ‘Personalized Homepage’ (iGoogle) or Google Reader when you click on a feed. Directly takes you to Google Reader, so that you can subscribe.

(11) Smart Subscribe – shows if the webpage you are on has already been listed among your subscriptions.

Gmail Integration

(12) Google Reader Integration – integrates Google Reader box into Gmail sidebar. Highly Recommended (demo). More GMail Tools

(13) Google Reader Folders on Gmail – adds a little box to your Gmail page that lists GReader folders along with the number of unread items in each.

Visual (Note: ‘Optimized’, ‘Mac OS X Theme’ scripts and Better ‘GReader’ extension may conflict with scripts from ‘Interface Enhancements’ section)

(14) Optimized – removes rarely used items to maximize the reading area. On occasions when you need to go through hundreds of items at once, this stripped-down interface may be preferable.

(15) Mac OS X Theme – basically this script makes GReader look like any other Mac-style app. If interested, here is a good guide how to implement this on other browsers (Camino, Omniweb, Opera).

(click to view enlarged version)

(16) Colourful List View – colorizes the item headers in your Google Reader. Each feed gets a specific color.

(17) *** Excellent Keyboard Shortcuts ***

• r: Refresh
• u: Hide/Unhide sidebar menu
• s: toogle Star
• t: Tag an item
• m: mark feed item as Read/Unread
• j/k: feed item Down/Up
• o: Open/Close item
• Shift+a: mark all as Read
• g+s: go to Starred items
• g+t: launches a small quick-navigation tag menu showing all of your tags
• more shortcuts …

*** Mobile Tools ***

(18) GReader Mobile – mobile version of Google Reader.

(19) HowTo: – some lazy folks may also want to check out this fun writeup on how to use your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone as remote control for Google Reader.

• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips (80)
• 10 Essential Cheat Sheets To Download (173)
• The most Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Reader (9)
• How To Surf Feeds with Google Reader Productively (2)
• How To Remove Clutter From Google Reader with Helvetireader (3)