Defraggler Rocks!

May 28, 2008 By

John is a Salvation Army Corps Officer who likes computers, Radiohead and F1. He lives and works with his wife Marta in Gainsborough UK, and blogs at johnager.co.uk and johnager.org

From those wonderful people who brought you CCleaner and Recuva comes Defraggler!

Everyone knows that the defragmenting utility that comes bundled with Windows is next to useless (cue smug comments from Mac users no doubt! ha ha!), so you’ll wonder how you ever managed without Defraggler! I have now given up with Norton Utilities 2002 (where I used Speed Disk) and find Defraggler far superior. It’s very fast and has the option to defrag selected files or folders, as well as many other options. It’s currently in Beta, but do yourself a favour and get it!

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Firefox Add-ons 2

May 23, 2008 By

John is a Salvation Army Corps Officer who likes computers, Radiohead and F1. He lives and works with his wife Marta in Gainsborough UK, and blogs at johnager.co.uk and johnager.org

The add-ons for Firefox make the whole experience of browsing the web so much easier. Here are three of my essential add-ons – which all work with Firefox 3:

CoLT makes it easy to copy either a hyperlink’s text or both the link and the link’s text (in a format you specify). Two handy context-menu items make this possible, and don’t add clutter; the items are only visible when right-clicking a link! It’s great for lifting links off other pages to insert in blogs!

IE Tab enables you to easily see any web page displayed in IE with just one click, with just one click to switch back to Firefox. It’s also useful for using Firefox on sites that require IE – I use it particularly for Hotmail and my Salvation Army workspace and web based email. It’s also useful if full-screen mode won’t work in BBC iPlayer or YouTube.

Session Manager and IE Tab

Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows – either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs.

More to follow in later posts…

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Creative Commons

April 27, 2008 By

John is a Salvation Army Corps Officer who likes computers, Radiohead and F1. He lives and works with his wife Marta in Gainsborough UK, and blogs at johnager.co.uk and johnager.org

I’ve recently licensed my blogs (find links here: www.jvager.f9.co.uk) with a Creative Commons licence. It’s a way of defining how your work can used by others, enabling you to retain the required control. Full details can be found on their website, or on Wikipedia.

You can find my Creative Commons licence here.

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Firefox Add-ons 1

April 13, 2008 By

John is a Salvation Army Corps Officer who likes computers, Radiohead and F1. He lives and works with his wife Marta in Gainsborough UK, and blogs at johnager.co.uk and johnager.org

I mentioned in my first post for this blog that I would detail more features that make Firefox my browser of choice, and especially the add-ons that enhance the whole web experience. Well, here is the first one about add-ons – although just one in particular!

I use a desktop PC at home and one in the office, I also have a work laptop PC. Firefox is installed on all three, but here’s the geeky bit, they are all synchronised! This is achieved with the Google Browser Sync add-on – here are a couple of screenshots of the options settings.

The add-on requires a Google account, so that the user’s cookies, saved passwords, bookmarks, browsing history, tabs, and open windows can be stored. The data is optionally encrypted using an alphanumerical PIN, and passwords and cookies are always encrypted.

Unfortunately it has not been updated for a while and does not work with Firefox 3 – but I won’t be changing over just yet, although I’m hoping to try out the portable version of Firefox 3 soon. You can download and install Google Browser Sync by clicking here!

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Firefox Internet Browser

April 5, 2008 By

John is a Salvation Army Corps Officer who likes computers, Radiohead and F1. He lives and works with his wife Marta in Gainsborough UK, and blogs at johnager.co.uk and johnager.org

Believe it or not, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is not the only web browser! You don’t have to put up with the browser that comes bundled with Windows when there are better alternatives! In fact, I very rarely use Internet Explorer these days – especially as there are ways to avoid using it even if websites insist on it.

Firefox is actually the next most popular browser after Internet Explorer. It’s open-source software and free to use. You can find out more about it here, and download it here! Please note that other web browsers are available!

In future posts I will detail more features that make Firefox my browser of choice, and especially the add-ons that enhance the whole web experience.

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