Moving on, Trying to Leave a Clean House

Well, today is the six month anniversary of Greasy PC. While I'm slightly surprised that this blog has lasted this long, the real achievement to me has been to average slightly more than one post per day for the entire duration. At almost 200 posts, that might even be the most number of blog posts made of any of my friends IRL, and some of them have maintained blogs/livejournals for years and years.

In truth, in addition to wanting to document all the various tweaks and customizations I've put into my computer over the past year, I also did this blog to prove to myself that I can commit to a project wholeheartedly and consistently over a long period of time. I hadn't worked on any of my own long term projects in God knows how long, but of what I've done on this blog I truly am proud.

In the interest of full disclosure, one of the reasons now's a better time than any for me to cash out, is because a week ago, I got myself an iMac. I know.

This was a purchase I'd been gunning for for months now. As an animator working in films, I'd always made great use of my PC. However, when it became more and more necessary for me to have access to Final Cut Pro and its codecs, my need for a new machine pointed me in the iMac's direction. It was the best option for the price (I might blog about that in the future still).

Don't worry though, I still love my PC. I've got Bootcamp successfully running Windows XP on the iMac (it runs Team Fortress 2 far better than my old PC did), and I've got Synergy allowing me to control both my mac and PC with the same keyboard and mouse over the network. I even recently successfully transferred my Firefox profile from the PC to the Mac.

So where does that leave us? Well, I'm making no promises, but I may turn out a few more posts here and there about making the smooth transition from using a PC to a Mac. Also, I'm going to try my best to organize this blog to stand the test of time: making sure all posts are tagged properly, creating some static "favorite" pages, and otherwise making it even easier for stublers-on to find what they're looking for.

So don't worry, Greasy PC will be greasing it up indefinitely. In the meantime though, hope to see you around on my other endeavors; you can always check my official site, which I'm hoping to update now that I've got a little more free time. Otherwise, good luck to everyone, and see you around!

Copy and Import Firefox Profiles, Settings, Extensions, Bookmarks, the Manual Way

A few days ago I featured MozBackup, as a simple way to backup, copy, import, and export Mozilla application profiles (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc). Unfortunately, I also lamented the fact that MozBackup was its own application that needed to be installed in all the PC's you want to import from/export to. It also unfortunately wasn't compatible with OSX, when cross-platform compatibility was one of the most important features of Mozilla's apps.

Well, today I'll show you how to transfer your Firefox profiles from one computer to another manually, without much hassle. Doing this works without having to install any external programs, and also works on OSX.

First of all, locate your Firefox profile folder. On Windows XP machines, it can be found here:

C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla

On Vista machines, the address is:

C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox

In that folder, you'll see another folder called Profiles, as well as a file called profiles.ini. 

To copy your profile to another computer running Firefox, copy that profile folder as well as the profiles.ini file to the same location in the new computer. If you're transferring to a Mac, the location is

\Library>Application Support>Firefox

And with that, just copy the old Profiles folder and the profiles.ini file, delete the other Profiles folder, and you're done!

Better Youtube Firefox Extension Now Firefox 3 Compatible

I never got around to talking about the Better Youtube Extension when I first got it, but it's one of the extensions I've kept installed through these past few months, offering minor but useful tweaks to the Youtube web interface that makes the experience just a little bit more tolerable (for ways to make Facebooking equally so, check out our recent feature series).

Anyway, the Better Youtube extension was one of the extensions that didn't quite immediately make it to Firefox 3's safe zone, and when for some reason Firefox 3 stopped letting me keep old extensions on regardless of whether it thought they were compatible or not, Better Youtube was one of the only ones that couldn't come back on.

Well, today the fine folks behind this extension have updated it to be Firefox 3 compatible. And with that, I'm happy to say that all of my extensions are now up to code! How are yours?

Backup, Restore, Import/Export Firefox and Thunderbird Profiles with MozBackup (Review)

Mozbackup is a very simple freeware app to backup up your Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, and restoring them or exporting them to another computer.

(photo courtesy of official site)

It imports everything from your saved passwords, bookmarks, browsing history, and even extensions, AND, in the case of Thunderbird, also your emails and contacts.

To use, install Mozbackup and run. It will take you step by step towards backup up the profiles you want. Make sure that both Firefox and Thunderbird are closed when you do this, by the way (it'll warn you if it's open). In the end, it saves a .pcv file, which is really just a zip file with a different extension.

To restore a backup, just run Mozbackup again and select Restore a profile instead of Backup a profile. Again, step by step. To import a backup into another PC, install MozBackup into that computer and restore.

My only gripes about MozBackup are that it only works for PC; no linux or OSX support, which is one of the reasons Mozilla's apps are so useful and recently ubiquitous. Likewise, I'm not fond of the fact that MozBackup requires its own program to be installed. I guess it's too reflexive to have it create a backup of the very profile in which it's located, but if it were an extension for Firefox and Thunderbird it would be so much simpler to use. I'm not crazy about installing programs that I use less than once every few weeks.

Overall, though, there is no simpler way of moving and backup up profiles from one PC to another than MozBackup.

Firefox Download Day a Complete Success, Otherwise

 Yeah, I still remember how Firefox 3's Download Day got off on a shaky start when its servers promptly collapsed at its designated start time due to massive server overload. I remember how it needed its clock restarted an hour and a half later. But I also remember successfully downloading the new browser before the day was done, and just recently, I got this in my email:

Download Day 2008

We did it!



We set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. With your help we reached 8,002,530 downloads.



You are now part of a World Record and the proud owner of the best version of Firefox yet!



Don't forget to download your very own certificate for helping set a Guinness World Record.

This was known already almost as soon as Download Day ended, but I guess it wasn't officially recognized by Guinness until recently. Regardless, I got my certificate (can't print it out as I don't have any ink). I'm kinda disappointed that the certificate was a fill-in-the-blank as opposed to an official custom image, maybe with some part that said when exactly that day I downloaded it (I dunno how they'd've tracked that), but otherwise, I know I'm not cheating myself on this one.



Did you get your certificate?

Facebook Greasemonkey Part 4 of 4: View Photos

For the last installment on our feature on Greasemonkey scripts to enhance your Facebook browsing experience, I've brought on the big kahuna: a script that allows you to view the photos of a lot of users whose profiles are otherwise inaccessible to you. That's right, this is about as good as you can get in Facebook stalking technology without doing some actual hacking of the system.

Facebook - View All Photos, written by userscripts user Dan Cooper, isn't actually the simplest script to explain. So I'm gonna go and copy what it says on the main page outright so I don't misrepresent anything:

• Lets you search for pictures of someone who has a private profile or has set their privacy settings so that you cannot view their pictures. (Check below for specific details)
• Removes the two sections of photos users on facebook have ('Tagged by User' and 'Tagged by Others') and combines them in to one.
• Redirects photos link on profile page to the user's all photos section
• Links each tagged user's photos link in picture view and album view to the all photos section
• Adds a link to the top of photos to allow you to see every picture they are tagged in
• Lots of stupid people have a plethora of applications on their page and as greasemonkey scripts are only executed when the page has been fully downloaded, you might click the photos link before it's had a chance to change. You'll notice when it has as it says 'View All Photos of' instead of 'View Photos of'.

Pretty cool so far, right? But there ARE some caveats to viewing pictures in private profiles. Again, lifted straight off his website:

Ok, this could get confusing so stick with me. Start by searching for someone's name in the search panel. Profiles that you have access to will not be changed, however profiles that you do not have access to will now be coloured red and will link to a photos page. The only photos you see, will be ones that the person is tagged in which:

• is in your PRIMARY network
• there are photos availble to you to view (public albums etc)

So basically these are not photos you wouldn't have been otherwise able to access, it just saves you having to go through album after album looking for photos of them.
As this url manipulation only searches for the name of the person and not the id, if any two people should have identical names then pictures with either of them will be shown in the results. (There's nothing I can do about that without painstakingly manipulating the results page)

 

But basically, go ahead and install the script and explore around for yourself. Remember, private photos are only viewable if you're looking for someone in your primary network. You can, though, change your primary network to see someone else, but Facebook only allows you to do that every few weeks, to prevent people from hopping around checking out peoples'  profiles on other networks. Note that you can't do this on college networks either.

Finally, recent changes to the way Facebook's code is written, have caused this script to almost always not load the first time a page loads (similar to the Facebook Beautifier script). If you find the appropriate links not showing up, just reload the page, and it should work out.

Well, that's it for our four part series. Be sure to check out the other three parts, and let me know if you've gone and used these scripts, and what your experiences have been like. Cheers!

Facebook Greasemonkey Part 3 of 4: See Tagged Photo in its Album

Welcome back for part 3 of our feature on Greasemonkey scripts that enhance your Facebook experience. This one's a pretty big one, especially if you're one of the, shall we say, inherently curious types.





Facebook View Photos in Album, written by userscripts user znerp, works like this. Say you check out a photo tagged to a friend of yours. Now, if that photo was taken by someone not your friend, and/or belonging to another network, you wouldn't normally be able to view the entire album in which the photo was originally included.

Facebook View Photos in Album lets you view that album, provided that album was tagged as public anyway (most albums are, since it's set to public by default). When you view a photo, you then get a link above it that says "See this photo in its album." It then throws you inside the album, from which you can view all the other photos.



Great for seeing photos of old friends of friends! Remember, to install this script, make sure you have the Greasemonkey extension installed for Firefox, and once you do, just click on "Install this Script" in the script's webpage.

Clean Up Facebook Ads and Sponsored Entries with Facebook Cleaner!

For my second of four (originally three, but I'd miscounted ;)) installments featuring Greasemonkey scripts that enhance your wasted time on Facebook (allowing you to waste more braincells in less time!), it's time to get rid of those annoying Facebook ads and more importantly, those entries in the Feed that aren't real news stories, but are just sponsored placements.

Facebook Cleaner, written by userscripts.org user jakeybob, installs just like every other Greasemonkey script: once you have the Greasemonkey extension installed, simply click on "Install this script" and you'll be good to go.

Like the previous Facebook script sometime this tweak doesn't kick in properly, but a good ol' fashioned reload of the page should leave you with the (non)essentials. And of course, this only removes the offenders out of your view, it does not commit the network sabotage you're hoping for. Thumbs up!

Remove Annoying Facebook Applications From Users' Profiles With Greasemonkey Script

Today is my first of a three part series of Greasemonkey scripts designed to enhance your favorite waste of time... Facebook. In this first installment I'll introduce you to a script that should instantly lift your Facebooking mood, by making all the useless Facebook apps you've no doubt now spent hours collapsing, DISAPPEAR, not only from your profile, but from everyone else's.

Facebook Beautifier, written by Matthew Leverton, installs just like any other Greasemonkey script... once you have the Greasemonkey extension installed, you can click on the "Install this Script" button on the page, and soon you'll be good to go.

Sometimes I've found that the applications don't actually go away the first time you enter a profile, but if you refresh the page, suddenly you'll see all the applications that you don't own yourself, just up and vanish, leaving you with only the information you want (I don't know what to do about you if you don't own that Zombie application yourself but want to see others' zombie status).

Of course, like with all Greasemonkey scripts, only apply to your viewing experience on the specific computer you've installed the script. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually go and delete other users' applications outright. If only...

Look Up Acronym Meanings with Acronym Finder!

This is the kind of site I'd been passively hoping for for years, but never really found until makeuseof.com recently featured AcronymFinder, who claims to be celebrating 10 years online (!) How I never found them, I'll never know.



With the ubiquitousness of the internet forging the way for new forms of slang and colloquialisms, oftentimes it's hard to keep up, especialy when it comes to acronyms. For example today used the site to look up IRL, which apparently means "in real life," aka, not online. Recent acronyms I'd also looked up elsewhere online, mainly using urban dictionary, were FTW(for the win) and RTFM (read the f****** manual).

AcronymFinder sorts possible definitions by relevancy as well as category. They take definitions from user submissions, and they have strict guidelines to ensure accuracy as well as relevancy. Regardless of this, they seem to have an extensive database that really help you navigate your way not only online, but in other jargon-heavy environments as well. Highly recommended to add to your keyword searches on Firefox.

Rotten Tomatoes and To-Do-List iGoogle Gadget Dumped

As I'd promised much before, Greasy PC isn't just about telling you what new toys and tweaks to add to your PC experience, it's also about what the dump and shed to reduce bloat. Sometimes that even pertains to stuff I'd recommended in the past. Today I'm sadly recommending two iGoogle gadgets I'd wholeheartedly recommended before be put in the back burner.

The Rotten Tomatoes gadget was great for giving you a quick glimpse of reviews for upcoming movies, except in the past few weeks it seems to have stopped working altogether. It just stays on a "Loading" screen and never actually loads. Until someone can tell me otherwise that their gadget is working fine and can tell me what's wrong with mine that I can fix, I'm gonna have to let the Rotten Tomatoes Gadget go.

The other gadget is one I'm not really recommending be dumped, but I am recommending collapsing it out of view unless you're using a different computer.  The To-Do-List gadget was a great way to keep track of the day's tasks, and I even documented how to get it working if it's stopped being functional for you. However, I've come to use Thunderbird's excellent calendar extension Lightning, which has its own To-Do-List. Since I keep Thunderbird open in the 2nd monitor, I can keep the tasks up at all times, reminding me to finish them.

Again, I'd still use To-Do-List when I'm using a different computer, where I'm not using Thunderbird, but otherwise, I'm keeping it on the bottom of my iGoogle page, minimized out of view until I need it.

GDirections Updated For Firefox 3

Yesterday I lamented some occurence that would no longer allow me to force extension compatibility for the non-Firefox 3 compatible extensions I'm using, the main extension being GDirections by Jeffrey Palm.

Well, I still haven't figured out what's wrong with my browser not letting me force compatibility, but on the upside turns out a new version of GDirections, version 3.1.0, is now fully Firefox 3 compatible. It's not up on the mozilla add-on page, but it is available at the official developer site here. Go get it!

Firefox 3 Force Extension Compatibility Not Working?

I recently noticed that the last few extensions I'm using that aren't officially compatible with Firefox 3, but I was able to force enable, have suddenly stopped working again. First, I noticed that the extensions.checkUpdateSecurity about:config entry had disappeared somehow (I don't now why). I went and recreated it, and once again the Add-Ons window reminded me that doing so could cause security risks.

However, whereas doing so before had allowed me to enable the incompatible extensions, now I can't do it again. I have yet to figure out the answer to this question. Luckily the only extensions left that aren't compatible aren't dealbreakers (though I do still really love GDirections).

Anyone have a clue what's happening here?

Circuit City Web Order Follow Up

Remember my glowing review of online buying through Circuit City, back when I bought my Nyko Frontman Wii guitar? Well, for some reason or another, I don't know if it's standard practice for them, but those good folks felt like sending me a follow-up gift - a card worth for 10% off on my next purchase of $50 dollars or more. Maybe they wanted to woo me further upon seeing my original blog entry.



That seemed nice of them, although when I looked at the fine (very fine) print in the back of the card, it had a hefty list of products exempt from the discount:

Not valid on previous purchases. Offer expludes Bose, select Polk, Element Kicker, Nikon DSLR, Sony DSLR cameras, Sony camera accessories. Olevia, Viszio Toshiba televisions, Apple, game hardware, movies, music, laptops, desktops, software, Otlet, Red Dot clearance, PreOrder/Backorder products, firedog survices and Circuit City Gift Card purchases. This coupon also excludes the following television models: SON KDL40S4100, SON KDL465410, etc.

Where does that leave at? I think the only stuff left I can buy are car stereos (no thanks), cell phones (got one, thanks), and their various accessories. I'd consider maybe just buying 50 dollars worth of blank DVD's, except I haven't gone through my months old spindle yet.



The card expires July 12th, and I'm not buying a huge ticket item just to get 10% off. What do you think I should use it on?

Remove Winamp's Right Click Context Menu Options

Yesterday I showed you how to get rid of the annoying, cluttering right click menu options for Windows Media Player. Today I'll show you how to do the same for Winamp, removing the options "Add to Winamp's Bookmark List," "Enqueue in Winamp," and "Play in Winamp" whenever you right click on a file in Windows Explorer.



First, open Winamp. Then, hit CTRL+P to open the Preferences menu.







Then click on File Types on the left pane. Uncheck "Show Winamp in folder context menus in Windows Explorer." This removes the menu options when you right click on a folder.



Then, click on Jump to File on the left page. Then click on the "Shell Options" tab on the right. Then, on the "Windows Explorer Menu Control" section on the bottom right, unhighlight all the options you don't want showing (as you can see, I took everything out.)







And there you go! Hopefully now right clicking on files in Windows Explorer isn't a painful process.

Remove Windows Media Player Right Click Context Menu Options

Today's tip is an oldie but a goodie. Not to mention super easy. Windows Media Player adds several menu items when you right click a file in Windows Explorer:

Add to Burn List
Add to Windows Media Player List
Play with Media Player

If you're like me and hardly ever use Windows Media Player, these options not only clutter up your right click context menu, they slow your navigation down as well. Luckily, to remove it, all you need to do is go to Start>Run> and enter:

egsvr32 /u wmpshell.dll

That's it! And if you ever change your mind and want it back, just run the command:

egsvr32 wmpshell.dll

And all will be just as before. I found the answer to this tip through the blog Tech Recipes, Your cookbook of Tech Tutorials. Thanks for cooking this one up guys!

If you want to take more control of your right click context menu, here's how to edit the "Send to" menu entries.

Select and Open Many Links into Tabs with Tree Style Tabs

I've written up Tree Style Tabs before as my preferred way of getting vertical tabs, and from the looks of it the latest version, compatible with FF3, added even more features (I believe so; perhaps these features were always there, but I never noticed it). The most awesome of which, for me at least, lets you select text and photo links and open all the links in their own tabs!



First of all, if you haven't downloaded the latest version of Tree Style Tabs yet, go here. Then, in the Tree Style Tabs option window, and make sure the option "Open Selection Links in Tabs" is turned on:







Now, let's say you wanted to access a list of links all in their own tab, like a directory listing showing a bunch of images. Instead of middle clicking each one of them one at a time, just select all of that text...





And right click and select "Open Selection Links in Tabs." Voila! All of those links now open at once in their own tabs. And with Tree Style Tabs, you don't have to worry about having too many tabs open to juggle, because they'll all be stacked up nicely on your vertical tab bar! This feature works on any link that isn't in Flash, meaning you can even do these to, say, the Facebook photo galleries!

Maximize iGoogle Screen Estate with Super iGoogle Greasemonkey Script!

Hope you're still enjoying Firefox 3, I know I am. So much so that for the past few days I've gone on a browser tweaking RAMPAGE. This latest release really just reignited my passion for making the most of my regular browsing experience.*



First and foremost, I've finally began understanding what the big deal is with Greasemonkey, the Firefox extension that allows you to modify and customize the appearance and function of specific websites. I'd showcased only one Greasemonkey script before, for Google Analytics, but never really paid too much attention past that.



Well, today I'm showcasing Super iGoogle, a Greasemonkey script written by stinkinrich88, showcased on Greasemonkey script repository userscripts.org. What does it do? Well, take a look for yourself. The left is the old iGoogle, second is Super iGoogle:







Wow! I've always HATED how a full quarter of the top screen real estate of iGoogle is taken up by the Google search header. As a person who's obsessive about maximizing screen real estate, and someone who uses search keywords in his address bar, that search bar and header's just about the most wasteful thing out there.



Super iGoogle features, as ripped off directly from the userscripts site:

Summary:

• Header removed


• "Toggle Header" button added to top-right link-bar


• Footer removed


• Mini search form added to right-hand side of tab bar


• "Add stuff" link moved to top-right link-bar


• "@googlemail.com" removed from your e-mail address


• Your e-mail address is made a hyperlink to compose a new e-mail


• All tab corners are rounded


• You'll get all the girls

You hear that? GIRLS!



If you don't have Greasemonkey yet, you can get it from here, and once it's installed, you can click on the "Install This Script" button at the Userscripts site, and it'll be pretty straightforward from there. Note that if your iGoogle page requires using a secure protocol (https:// as opposed to http://), change the sites affected by the Greasemonkey script accordingly.



*and that really is the point of tweaking stuff out, making the most of the experiences that you go through daily (or even more frequently), like checking email, reading news, and just browsing in general. It isn't as practical to obsessively tweak out programs and tasks you don't use very often.

Firefox 3 Feature Showcase: Full Zoom!

Here's a quick spotlight on one of the lesser but still awesome features that Firefox 3 comes with out of the box (click here for a spotlight on another such feature): Full Zoom!

Previously on Firefox 2, you could increase and decrease the size of the font by holding CTRL and scrolling up or down (or CTRL and the + and - keys).

Now, using the same controls in Firefox 3, it zooms the entire page, including GRAPHICS!

Check out this screenshot (click to see it unscaled). Isn't that awesome?


One last tip: To return to default zoom (i.e. 100% view), just hit CTRL-0 (zero).

What's your favorite new Firefox feature so far?

Get Full Extension Compatibility With Firefox 3

Well, from the looks of it, it's gonna be Firefox 3 week at Greasy PC, and I couldn't be happier. I'm still getting to know this new browser, but from the looks of it we're gonna be as good of friends as the last one, if not better.

First thing's first: are all of your extensions enabled for use in FF3? When you install FF3 over FF2 it'll notify you of which extensions are incompatible with FF3, and which aren't. If possible, it'll search for updated versions of the software (as was the case with uber-extension FireFTP). In my case I'd say half of my extensions were deemed incompatible and were immediately disabled.

First, check the add-on's official page whether or not there are actually FF3 compatible versions. Popular Firefox extension Tab Mix Plus hasn't officially released a FF3 compatible version, but you can find the latest builds here, where I got the latest, compatible version. Greasemonkey has the same issue, and you can find their latest builds here.

When you've done all you can to get every extension you can compatibility-ized (that's a word), and you still have a bunch of extensions that aren't cutting it, it's time to make Firefox 3 stop being so picky. The following tweak suppresses Firefox's warnings and disablings (that's a word, I swear!) of not-fully-compatible extensions (thanks to Lifehacker).

First, type about:config in your location bar. Firefox'll politely remind you that this might cause problems with your browser, so you better be real careful, or you'll have some 'splaining to do to that penguin.

Next, right click anywhere, and create a new Boolean string. Call it extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set it to False.

When you restart your browser, you should be able to re-enable the rest of your extensions. I suggest you do this one at a time in case one of those extensions actually does cause problems (I didn't have any problems, myself).

Regardless, here's hoping those extensions get themselves up to speed soon!