I Fell from the Moon

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Posts tagged with "web"

Social bookmarks in Opera, finally!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 8:26:52 PM

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I've been looking for ways to share and access my bookmarks on the web ever since I tried Delicious and Spurl respectively. I was stoked when Opera Link came out, which actually made me stop using both the other two services entirely. Ever since that I haven't been sharing my bookmark collection on the web. Sure, I've been using social news site Digg and social web page discovery site StumbleUpon, but they're sites I only visit once, and not sites I keep around for when I need them later.

Sure. There's been alternatives around forever. Firefox and Internet Explorer has had sync and sharing extensions for years. I've put my heart and soul into trying to switch to these and other browsers. But using another browser feels awkward and cumbersome, while Opera feels efficient and snappy. Web services integrated into the browser are not worth ditching Opera, which says a lot about this underdog among browsers.

So I'm glad to see another piece of the puzzle has finally fallen into place. I can share my bookmark collection with my friends directly and instantly as it changes. Thanks to Opera Unite and the Bookmarks application I'm about to come full circle in my odyssey of bookmarks in Opera.
pssst The only thing I'm missing now is a way to make some bookmarks private.

Related links:
Are you a social bookmarking addict? - I fell from the Moon
Bookmarks Application - Opera Unite Applications
Bookmarks on my netbook - Opera Unite on my netbook

19 comments

We just went through a paradigm shift

Thursday, February 18, 2010 11:09:36 AM

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Did you notice it? We just went through a paradigm shift. I'm not talking about the huge one, the singularity, but a smaller one. You can now post your location and status instantly and automatically for your friends to see. Social networking is now almost omnipresent.

I'm talking about Google Buzz. Yeah. That social inbox in Gmail. It might look like another Twitter clone at first glance. But don't be fooled. It's a highly sophisticated social networking platform. You can use it while reading your web sites every morning; you can use it while sharing your photos; you can use it to see what's happening near you; but not least, you can post updates to the web with your location and photos from anywhere.

Google Buzz is now integrated in many of Google's Services, but most importantly, Google Maps for mobile. The Buzz layer in Maps allows you to see updates nearby. You can post your own, whith a photo and geotag, and share it with your friends. Social networking just became more human, and almost omnipresent. But of course, this omnipresence raise a few questions. Is the convenience of Google Buzz worth putting your information in the hands of a huge multinational company? If you're using Facebook or Windows Live you're already guilty of this though.

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Opera Unite

Friday, June 26, 2009 7:48:50 PM

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Opera Unite is Opera's way of giving you back control over the web. Instead of saving your files on websites owned by corporations, you can keep your files on your computer and share them with anyone you want. When you keep Opera Unite running on your computer, your computer becomes a website other people can browse. And this website can contain things like a music player, photo album, file explorer or a chat room. You can even create new kinds of services if you're a web developer.

Anyone can browse your Unite site if they have access to a web browser. You only need to keep Opera Unite running. Your friends on My Opera can see if you're running Opera Unite, and you can see which of your friends are running Opera Unite. You can also password protect all your Opera Unite pages, except the fridge. But since after the rush at the launch of Opera Unite, the service has been rather quiet, which brings me to my question.

I somehow haven't seen many of my friends online in Opera Unite this week. Have you gone back to Opera 9.6? Did you disable all your services? Perhaps you never enabled it. Or are you running services, but aren't getting any visitors? Please vote for your answer in the sidebar poll --> . And make a comment about your answer below. Either way, I'd really like to see more of you keeping your Unite services running when you're online.

Unite really deserves a chance, because it really is revolutionary. It gives you back the control over your content, and allows anyone to run a website. If you value freedom from the strings corporations put on the content you share, please install Opera Unite and enable some of your services. It's really easy. Just run Opera, open the Unite panel, and double click the service you want to share.

5 comments

Stylish button tutorial for Paint.NET

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:12:46 PM

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StumbleUpon.com Tools

for your web browser

I recently revamped the My Opera StumbleUpon Team website with some new graphics. A new banner and eye-catching install buttons for the download page. The graphics style is Photoshop-like. But everything was made in Paint.NET without any use of layer styles. So how do you achieve these effects in this freeware graphics editor?

Tutorial

I'm using special formatting on text to make understanding it easier. I'm using italic text for actions like clicking a button or selecting a menu item. I'm using bold text to decribe where you're doing things. Values you're supposed to "write" or "change" are enclosed in double quotes.

Create a new document by clicking New... on the toolbar. "300" by "200" might be a good resolution to work with for this project. Click OK when you've decided. Click the Add new layer button in the Layers toolbox. In order to keep track of our layers, we're going to give them names after their functions. Double-click the new layer to open the Layer Properties dialog and change the name to "Button". Click OK.

Now we're going to create the shape of our button. We're going to use a basic colored shape without an outline. I used the Rounded Rectangle tool.

Using the Draw Shape button on the toolbar, set it to Draw Filled Shape. And click the color you want for your button in the Colors toolbox. Drag out a shape similar to one in the image below.

Use Duplicate Layer in the Layers toolbox. Double-click the lower layer and rename it to "Shadow". Use Adjustments -> Brightness / Contrast... to adjust the contrast to "max" and brightness to "minimum" for the Shadow layer, like in the image below.

Add Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian Blur... effect to the Shadow layer. I'd recommend using a value of "5" and set the layer opacity to "50%" in the Layer Properties. You might be tempted to go all out with your effects, but keep things subtle, and your design will look better when you're done.

Duplicate the Button layer. Rename the top-most of your duplicates to "Highlight" using the Layer Properties. Use the tool Rectangle Select to select the bottom half of the Highlight layer. Remove the bottom part of the layer by pressing the delete key on your keyboard. If you're more experimental you could use a curved line to create a specific shape for your highlight. This is especially useful for odd-shaped buttons.

Adjust brightness and contrast to "max" for the Highlight layer using Adjustments -> Brightness / Contrast...

Set the layer opacity for the Highlight layer to "50%" or less in the Layer Properties.

Duplicate your Button layer. Move it to the top using the arrows in the Layers toolbox. Name the layer "Gradient overlay". Select Overlay as the layer blending mode. Tip: Install and use the Alpha Mask plugin to avoid rough edges.

Select the Magic Wand tool. Set the tolerance to "0%" from the toolbar. Use it to select the area around the shape in the Gradient overlay layer. Click Edit -> Invert Selection. Select Black and White in the Colors toolbox. Now hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and drag a gradient from the bottom edge of the selection to the top edge of the selection.

Duplicate your Button layer and move it to the top. Name the layer "Stroke". And set its blend mode to multiply. We're going to use it as a outline around the button.

Apply Effects -> Artistic -> Pencil Sketch. Keep things subtle. Use "2" as your Pencil tip value and "-6" as the "Range" value.

There might be some rough edges around the button now. This is because we used the selection tool on the Gradient overlay layer. You'll have to erase these edges manually. Hide the Background layer by unticking the checkbox for the layer. Select the Eraser tool. Set the Brush width to approximately "10px" from the toolbar. Select the Gradient overlay layer. Zoom in on the rough edges and start erasing gently by moving the eraser near the rough edges and clicking once, then move your eraser and repeat.

If you want to change the appearance of your button, you can edit the layer opacity for different layers. You can change the blend mode. If you want to change the color, use Adjustments -> Hue / Saturation... and adjust the levers. Or use Adjustments -> Curves and adjust the curves for the RGB values.

The button is ready. Save your project as a Paint.NET file. If you want to use the button on your site, you have a number of choices. The most compatible one is to Fill the Background layer with your site color and save your button as a JPEG file. This also ensures your button loads faster in your visitors browser. The most flexible one is to hide the background layer and save your file as a PNG with transparency. Make sure you set bit depth to 32-bit. You could also hide the Shadow layer as well and save your file as a GIF with transparency. The last method works in Internet Explorer 6 and lower as well.

In order to save the image you're using on your website in the correct size, select the shadow layer. Enable the Magic Wand and set tolerance to "0%". Click in the area outside the shadow. Click Edit -> Select Inverse. And click Image -> Crop to Selection.

Use your button

This is the finished button. You can add text directly to the image file. Or you can use it as a background for a text link.

Why don't you use the new button to promote the new StumbleUpon.com Tools? Here's a code for a button you can add to your blog posts:

<a style="text-decoration: none; float: right;" title="StumbleUpon for Opera, Safari and Chrome" href="http://my.opera.com/suopera/blog/stumbleupon-com-tools"><div style="background: transparent url(http://files.myopera.com/drlaunch/themes/suopera/button.png); color: white; width: 250px; height: 100px;"><div style="padding-left: 24px;"><h4 style="padding-top:24px; font-size: 16px;">StumbleUpon.com Tools</h4><p style="padding-top:14px; font-size: 13px;">for <em>your</em> web browser</p></div></div></a>

Edit the values to match the values required by your image and you're ready to go.

4 comments

Are you a social bookmarking addict?

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 10:48:00 PM

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Or maybe you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about. Social bookmarking is the action of sharing links to websites to others through a web service. Examples include Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us.

So am I a social bookmarking addict? Maybe. It might say something about me that I use more than one service. As my main service, I use spurl.net. Spurl.net is the most complete online bookmarking service I've seen. It completely replaces any locally running bookmarking system. With instant bookmark search, categories and tags. But there's a catch. Importing your bookmarks might not work. And it's currently in a limited feature set. It seems like it's abandoned by the creators. Because of that I'm using Simpy as a backup bookmarking system if Spurl ever dies.

While Spurl definitely does have some social bookmarking features for sharing, I find friend based systems to be more enjoyable when sharing links. Therefore I'm using Digg and StumbleUpon. Digg.com is a site for sharing links to technology news, and related things that geeks like me enjoy, such as videos. But since Digg.com is mostly technology related, I'm using more mainstream social bookmarking services such as StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon was originally a social bookmarking community based around a Firefox extension. But later they added a Internet Explorer add-on and several people are working on various tools for other browsers such as Opera. There are already bookmarklets available, widgets (including one from a team I've been working with). There are even some Opera add-ons that I don't trust.

Facebook is another alternative if you want to share links with your friends. Facebook is a very popular online community where you can find your friends and socialize with them. Facebook allows you to share links to videos and sites with your friends.

Well. With all these services, it might be hard to keep track of all the ways you can bookmark sites. But people have been trying to do something with the problem. One of these sites are AddThis.com. Sadly, they've done overkill by using extensions instead of more simple browser modifications. But fear not. I bring you the AddThis social bookmarking button for Opera. Just drag it to your toolbar of choice to start sharing links with your friends.

Add This!

For those of you that are using another browser, you can't add this button to any of your toolbars. But that doesn't mean you can't use AddThis. Their JavaScript based site buttons aren't only useful on sites. They work as bookmarklets too. Simply visit AddThis.com and drag The button that says Bookmark to your bookmarks toolbar.

Good luck and have fun playing with social bookmarking!

17 comments

My blog is back! But no links section sad

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:15:59 PM

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Those server monkeys have been up to no good for several days. Due to a bug in the feed reader in the links section, my blog has been down. It's finally back thanks to something simple I didn't think about. party

In place of my blog and different sections, people saw a 500 server error. This is due to the fact that I added two feeds from spurl.net. Spurl is a bookmarking service. But development has been abandoned and importing of bookmarks doesn't work. So if you have a large bookmark selection, don't bother signing up.

I added the feeds so I could let people could see which sites I visit the most, which sites I bookmark and my recently visited sites. You can still see those sites in my published bookmarks.

So how did I fix it? I figured out that the error occured because the links module is loaded on almost all my site sections. But I didn't think there was something I could do with it. Well. I solved the problem by doing something as simple as deactivating my links in my account sidebar section.

So the links module is only loaded in my links section which leads to a 500 server error. But I would still like to see the bug fixed, so I can share my favorite sites with my faithful readers. lol

Expect some new blog posts about my recent discoveries on the web soon. Oh and it was me that spanked that monkey monkey for misbehaving. bigsmile

Credits


Picture of monkey found here.

4 comments

5 things I'd like to see in Opera tag

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 8:48:51 PM

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zomg tagged me. And the game is 5 things I'd like to see in Opera. It started here. Read that blog post for more information about the game. Here's my list in no particular order:

  1. Menus on toolbars expand automatically just like in the menu bar.
  2. Scrolling bookmarks menu instead of an expanding menu with more items.
  3. Option to add a new toolbar to the browser yourself.
  4. Installing UserJS as easily as installing Widgets in Opera.
  5. Dynamic installable menus that can fetch information from the web.


The next victims are... devil

Thủy Hiền, Patrick McFarland, Giania, anzah and Furie.

Two of these are from outside My Opera. But I think they both can provide valuable information about Opera. One is not an Opera user, but a knowledgeable person that knows what he wants. He might have seen something that Opera users have overlooked. The other one is an Opera user more active in other communities. She also has been very helpful in the promotion of Opera.

15 comments

StumbleUpon for Opera

Thursday, June 28, 2007 7:10:51 PM

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StumbleUpon for Opera banner

Hi. I'd just like to tell you that I'm helping out with StumbleUpon for Opera. StumbleUpon for Opera was originally created by Melo Bichuetti. It's a menu that allows website ranking and discovery of new sites. It has a GPL licence which means anyone can edit the menu.

I'm a manager for the group. That means I post some in the blog, moderate the forums and make other changes to the group. I haven't done more for the menu than testing it and suggesting features yet.

Coxy created that sweet logo and banner.

10 comments

Google Reader, improved!

Friday, October 20, 2006 7:16:52 PM

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The broken page
When the Google Reader team released the new version of Google Reader, I was sad to see that it was another service in the endless row of Google services that are broken in Opera on release. While I could see the interface was improved straight away, I could also see that it was broken. But the Google reader team really listens to feedback and now it's even better and more compatible with Opera! But it's still not perfect in Opera yet.

The improved reader!
So now I've finally gotten the chance to try the interface in Opera and I must say I'm impressed! The interface looks more like Gmail. And I love the design in Gmail. Simple but pretty! It also works pretty well on lower screen resolutions.

Reading your feeds now feels more natural with a sidebar that gives you access to the different parts of the reader and your subscriptions.
When you click "All items", you immediately get that warm fuzzy Gmail feeling. But unlike, Gmail, you don't have to wait for the different items to load. Just click it and it expands so you can read the item. Very sexy. And this behavior should feel familiar to those who use widgets from Opera Widgetize.
I'd like to test the Google Reader feed in Opera Widgetize myself, but it says the feed is malformed. Too bad.

Keyboard shortcuts
Google reader can be controlled by pressing keys on your keyboard. And you'll get a list to the right in the Home part of the reader.
I myself use the keys like this:
Space/Shift+Space To navigate between items.
N/P To scan through the list of items.
Return To expand/retract items.
You can also hide/show the sidebar with U. This frees up more screen space with less parts of the design taking your attention away from the news. Too bad there's no way to use this function with the mouse. Taking a similar approach as the one taken in Opera with the sidebar switch or with an easily accessible button would be nice.
These keyboard shortcuts gives it a more desktop-like feel. This is another sign that most computer usage will be moved to the web browser.

Elsewhere at Google
In other news, Google have put the former writely and spreadsheets in one package, Google Docs and Spreadsheets. And with the merging, one very nice feature from Writely is added to the package. The possibility to add &browserok=true to the end of the URL to get in anyway. Just go to Google Docs and add &browserok=true to the end of the URL in the address field. Click Return and click the Google logo. Now you can try those services more easily in Opera.

Links
Google Reader
We made it (a little bit) better - The Google Reader blog's introduction to the new features.

2 comments

Hotmail are forcing their users to stay. Gmail invites are sent to the spam folder.

Sunday, September 10, 2006 6:07:30 PM

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I was using hotmail before. Then I found out about the revolutionary Gmail service from Google. This service was and is still a beta service.

After finding out how good Gmail is I figured out I wanted to take my other hotmail friends with me. I've been sending out invites every now and then. Some people have responded and some have not. They're all free to use which service they want and some might think hotmail is good enough.
However, lately I used up the last invites I had on some people in my former MSN contact lists. I didn't get any response at all! I was a bit puzzled and sad that I couldn't invite these people again since the invites were used up. However, I tried logging on to an older Gmail account I had and send my old hotmail an invite. To my shock, this email was put in the spam folder. No wonder no people responded to my invites.

So what could this mean? Gmail invites certainly aren't spam. They're sent manually by real people that want others to try Gmail. But what happens when hotmail sends it to the spam folder? Then the user have 5 days to mark it as not being spam.
By automatically sending Gmail invites to the spam folder of hotmail they have successfully avoided that a lot of their users switch to Gmail.
So was this the intention of the Hotmail team or even Microsoft?
Are MSN evil?


Have you sent Gmail invites to Hotmail users without getting any response?

Feel free to leave a comment to this article.

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