Crossroads + Highslide
June 1st, 2007
I have been doing some work on the site and have successfully integrated Highslide JS, a beautiful javascript image library with Crossroads, an excellent Wordpress plugin. Crossroads integrates Wordpress with Flickr so that you can easily include thumbnailed versions of your Flickr sets at the bottom of a post - simply by placing the setid within an html comment. Now, when you click on a thumbnail, Highslide JS causes the thumbnail to grow and ‘zoom’ towards the screen, leaving you with the large version of the photo. Furthermore, captions are also integrated and the keyboard cursors can be used to navigate from photo to photo. If all that is not enough, Highslide JS also preloads your photos from Flickr to save on loading time - making it all a smooth experience.
Just as a taster, have a look at this flickr set below:
Google Increases Gmail Attachment Size Limit
May 25th, 2007
On the Official Google Blog they have just announced that the Gmail or Googlemail attachment size limit for outgoing mail has been increased from 10MB to 20MB. This is a great leap forward for both the user and Google.
For the User
The increase in attachment size will save people sending files (such as photos) in multiple emails to get around the limit. Likewise, users will be able to send larger files (such as PDF, PPT files) that previously they were unable to without using archiving tools such as WinRAR to split up the files into 10MB chunks. This is also great news for people who use Picasa to manage their photos - now photos should not be reduced in quality when you send them in emails.
For Google
Gmail/Googlemail has always been the leader of the webmail market ever since it set foot on the scene. However, the team has gone from strength to strength to oust its rivals (such as Yahoo and Hotmail) who have also been trying to modernise their webmail solution. Whilst Gmail’s competitors have managed to increase the storage space they make available and have given their user interface a bit of a makeover, Google have come forward with some really bold proposals, notably ‘Mail Fetcher’ which allows mails to be downloaded from other POP3 email accounts. This latest advance will yet again put them ahead in the game.
I better go and test it out right away!
Wordpress Batch Category Editor
April 5th, 2007
I recently needed to add multiple posts to a new category I had created on one of my Wordpress blogs. I really didn’t want to have to have to go through each post individually, manually adding the new category to each one. I therefore searched around and found this great plugin.
The “Batch Categories” plugin allows you to filter through your existing posts (you can apply multiple levels of filtering) by Date, Author, Status, Title, Existing Categories or by using keywords (even allowing wildcards). Once you have done this, you can select the posts you desire from the shortlisted selection and either add or remove them from a category all at once. This is exactly what I was looking for! Here are some screenshots of the plugin in action.
Greasemonkey and Greased Lightbox for Firefox and Safari
March 30th, 2007
I have recently become a fan of the brilliant Firefox Extension, Greasemonkey. The extension can be downloaded from www.greasespot.net and allows you to run user-built javscript scripts within Firefox to increase automation or make the browsing experience more enjoyable. The scripts are able to modify the original code of a webpage to insert extra functionalities. For example, you can integrate ‘Google Reader’ news items into your Gmail Inbox UI or make the blue facebook interface green! The possibilites are endless.
The scripts
I run a couple of scripts in my browser. The first one, Facebook Autologin, is for pure laziness. Those familiar with facebook know that as soon as you close your browser, you will have to log back in again next time you visit the site. The autologin script saves you this pain so you can just sit back and watch as you get logged in by the browser!
The other script I run is by far the greatest extension to Firefox yet created! It is called ‘Greased Lightbox‘ and seriously enhances image viewing experiences on the Web. Wherever thumbnails of images are displayed on the web (Google Image Search, Flickr, Facebook etc), Greased Lightbox automatically latches onto the link to the full blown version of the images. When you click on the thumbnails, instead of opening the new html page with the full image embedded (normally quite slow), the script uses the beautiful Lightbox 2 javascript library to create a dynamic effect where the original web page with the thumbnails fades out and the enlarged version of the image is overlayed on top (see screenshots!).
The result
On services such as Facebook or Flickr, this can save a lot of time and allows really quick and easy previewing of thumbnails. On Google Image Search, things go a step further. Instead of having to first visit the desired image in its real context and then clicking through to see the image in full size, Greased Lightbox skips out this stage. You are now able to view the full size image on the Google Image Search results page just by clicking the thumbnail you want.
For the Apple munchers
If you are a Mac User and prefer Safari to Firefox then don’t despair, there is a similar Extension to Greasemonkey called ‘Cream Monkey‘ which supports the script.
Check out the screenshots below to get a better idea of what this is about.
