Jamas

Adding on to Thunderbird

Last time I covered add-ons to Firefox. I hope you managed to find a few you liked.

This time we are going to look at add-ons to Thunderbird. The installation of add-ons onto Thunderbird is a little different from Firefox. Go to Tools->Add-ons on your Thunderbird email window. This will launch a window called Add-ons. From this window you can see a list of add-ons that are currently installed. To keep your add-ons updated try click on Find Updates button at the bottom. To add more add-ons click on the link at the bottom right Get Extensions. This will take you to the Thunderbird Add-Ons web site in your browser. Here you will find all the add-ons that exist and they are all free. I would suggest first checking out the Recommended Add-ons list. Installing requires a few extra steps compared to Firefox. When you find an add-on that you like, just right-click on the Download Now button on the add-on’s page and choose Save Link As… to download and save the file to your hard disk, remember where you put the file. Now go back to the Thunderbird Add-Ons window you opened before. Click the Install button. In the widow that pops up locate, then select the file you downloaded and click “OK”. When the installation window pops up select Install Now. After your add-on is installed you will have to restart Thunderbird to use it. For each add-on it is worth check out any options that it allows you to adjust.

Dictionaries
If you live outside the US then you might be tired of being told by the spell checker that you can’t spell colour or many other words correctly. Well no longer a problem. You can find many different dictionaries on the add-on page.

FoxClocks
Great little tool if you commonly email people in different places around the world, like a multi-site development project. With it you can add as many world clocks to the bottom bar of Thunderbird as you would like. You can have clocks change colour based on their local time, which gives you a quick visual idea of who might be still at their computer.

Image Zoom
This is one of those add-ons that works for both Thunderbird and Firefox, but find it most useful in Thunderbird. I am sure you have received emails with massive photos attached that require you to scroll right and down to see sections of the image. (A topic for a future post maybe on how to email photos correctly). This add-on will automatically resize the image to fit your window. If you want to see a bigger version then just click on the image.

Signature Switch
Great tool for quickly adding different signatures to your email. Very useful if use one email address for several purposes (friends, work and volunteer).

Lightning
Lightning adds calendars to Thunderbird. Which means you don’t have to use Outlook! This add-on is pretty big and still somewhat beta so be warned that no everything works perfectly with it. However I have been using it at work for over a year now without too many problems. It is also getting better with every release. You can track multiple calendars (work, home, etc) within it. You can also import external calendars such as national holidays or local events (if you use Google Calendars then see the next add-on).

Provider for Google Calendar
Along with Lighting this add-on gives you bidirectional access to your Google Calendars. You have to login in when you start Thunderbird. You can then add events to Google Calendar directly from Lightning. Makes a great way to organize your family schedule.

pasteCode
This one was made by my friend Steve, so yes this is a shameless plug. This will only be useful for programmers. If you have to send a chunk of code to someone then you loose all the nice formatting you get in your editor, assuming you are still not writing code in vt100 terminals. Well this add-on solves the problem. When you go to paste the code in your email right-click and select Paste Highlighted Code from the pop up menu. Your code now looks as it should!

Adding on to Firefox

So in a previous post I covered some of the cool built in features of Firefox that you should try out. I hope you have put some of those tips to good use.

This time I am going to introduce you to a few add-ons that you can get for free. These add-ons are small widgets that you can add to Firefox to extend what you can do with your browser. I will start with some basic ones and at the end list a few for the more advanced.

First off how do you find and install these add-ons. Go to Tools->Add-ons on your Firefox browser window. This will launch a window called Add-ons. From this window you can see a list of add-ons that are currently installed. To keep your add-ons updated try click on Find Updates button at the bottom. To add more add-ons click on the link at the bottom right Get Extensions. This will take you to the Firefox Add-Ons web site. Here you will find all the add-ons that exist and they are all free. I would suggest first checking out the Recommended Add-ons list. Installing is easy! When you find an add-on that you like just click on the Install Now button on the add-on’s page. After your add-on is installed you will have to restart Firefox to use it. For each add-on it is worth check out any options that it allows you to adjust.

Adblock Plus
This is a great add-on that I think everyone should use. It blocks banner ads and pop up ads on websites. I always forget that I am using this extension until I start using someone else’s computer. Some websites I don’t even recognize with all the ads that show up. Take CBC.ca for example. Without Adblock Plus running you will have three ads on your screen most of the time. One banner ad at the very top, one on the right hand side and (my least favourite of all) an ad in the middle of the article you are trying to read. Turn on Adblock Plus and presto you are left with nothing but the news that you came to read. How nice is that!

A word of warning. If you are having problems on a website with navigation or the layout is badly broken then quickly disable Adblock Plus and refresh the page. I have had a few cases in which it removed key parts of a site. You can also disable Adblock Plus on specific sites automatically.

Forecast Fox
Forecast Fox saves you from having to keep checking the current weather conditions or tomorrows forecast by going back to your favourite weather page. Instead it adds a nice little weather centre at the bottom of your browser window. You can setup profiles for several locations and switch quickly between them. You can also choose how many days and what information you want in the forecast. This can be bad for your productivity during sailing season as you watch the wind building all day.

IE Tab
I don’t like Internet Explorer much but there are some sites that only work well with it. With this add-on you don’t have to open IE just for those few sites that don’t work well in Firefox. It allows you to run IE browser engine inside a Firefox tab. To switch all you do is click on the icon on the bottom of your browser. You can even configure it to automatically launch specific web sites with the IE engine.

Image Zoom
I think the name explains everything.

PDF Download
This add-on gives you more control when you click on a PDF document on a site.

Stumble Upon
Stumble Upon is like channel surfing for the web. After installing you create an account in which you tell it what things you are interested in. You can also join topic groups. The add-on adds a button to your browser that when clicked on takes you to a recommended web site. You get to give the site a thumbs up or down, which helps the whole Stumble Upon community find great sites. You can also link with other friends who are using Stumble Upon, this makes it easy to send sites that you have discovered to them. If you are getting bored with web try give this add-on a try and make sure to add me to your list of friends.

More Advanced
If you are looking for some more advanced add-ons then here are some of my favourite.

  • Firebug – Used to debug web pages, great if you are a developer.
  • FireFTP – FTP client that runs in Firefox.
  • Tab Mix Plus – Gives you great control of Firefox tab browsing.

Free money!

You might think the title is just to get your attention but it is actually true. In Canada if a bank account is declared inactive then the money is transfered to the Bank of Canada for safe keeping. All the information for the bank account is recorded (name, location, branch and date) and the information can be searched online via the Bank of Canada site. I found this site years ago and a recent article in MoneySense Magazine reminded me of it. I suggest you give it a try. My name turned up nothing but I found a few accounts listed under relatives. I hope they consider my email about it there Christmas gift.

A Foxy Bird – Firefox and Thunderbird

I though I would cover in a few posts some ways to get more out of your Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client.

First if you don’t have these two programs on your machine then I suggest you give them a try. They are both great open source programs that have a great collection of add-ons that will make your daily internet experience better.

First I want to start of with a few cool things that are the main programs and don’t require add-ons.

Firefox Live Bookmarks

This has to be the one single feature that I make the most use of. I assume that you are familiar with bookmarking your favourite websites in Firefox. This is great because it allows you to get back to a site you like quickly. Well live bookmarks takes that one step further by making use of websites that provide an RSS feed. An RSS feed provides a list of the most recently updated parts of a website. For example a news website, like CBC, will have an RSS feed that lists the most recent headlines that have been posted on the site. A user can then subscribe to this feed using a program called a news reader which will allow them to see the latest updates on the site. Firefox allows you to see these RSS feeds within your browser and without having a separate program. To do this it uses the live bookmarks feature.

To enable a live bookmark you first need to find a feed. Lucky for you there is one from this site. On the right hand side of the page you should see a section titled “Available Feeds”. In this case this site has two: one for entries and one for comments. We will use the entries feed in this example. So click on that says Entries RSS. This will load a page that has a list of recent posts made on this site, with all the site formatting removed. At the top of this page will be a box that says Subscribe to this feed using and then a pull down box that has Live Bookmarks selected by default. Click on the Subscribe Now button. You should now have a box in front of you that looks the same as the regular box for adding bookmarks. Now decide where you want the live bookmark to appear. If this is something you are going to use daily, which it will be for this site, then add it to the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder. You should now have a new bookmark added to your toolbar, but this one will be a lot more useful.

Click on the new bookmark. Instead of being taken to that site you are instead presented with a list of items. These items are the updates from the website you just bookmarked, in this example all the most recent posts and pages titles on Jamas.Net. The number of entries is controlled by the RSS feed. Pick an item on the list that you would like to read and click on it. You are then taken to the web page with that item on it. Pretty cool!

Give this a try by going to some of your favourite news sites or blogs. Some of these sites may have more then one feed. For example CBC has about 20 feeds that you can choose from: CBC RSS Feeds. Most sites will advertise that a feed is available, looks for something saying RSS feed. However, Firefox will also let you know that one is available. In the address bar, where http://www.jamas.net/ appears you will see an orange icon. Click on the icon and it will bring you to the feed subscription page that we used above. If a page has more then one feed then you will get one of them but not all, which one seems to be a bit random, so in most cases it is better to find the actual feed link on the site.

Before long your entire bookmark toolbar will contain nothing but live bookmarks.

Thunderbird Filters

If you use email for work or are a heavy home user then you need to start using filters to help you manage your growing inbox. Message filters allow you to create rules that will carry out a task on an email message that matches the rule. For example I get a lot of bills via email. Now often the bill we be sent but the payment does not need to be made for a few weeks. So like most people I will ignore it. After a week goes by my inbox has filled up a little more and the bill is no longer at the top of my list of emails, in most cases it is no longer of the first page of emails. What I need is some way to highlight those emails so that I won’t forget about them. This is were filters come in very handy.

As an example lets take take those bill emails and tag them as a bill. First I create a new tag called Bills. Go to Tools->Options in the Thunderbird menu bar. On the window that pops up select Display and then Tags. Click Add. Enter in a tag name “Bills” and then select a colour, in this case something that will standout like red. Click OK. We now have a tag called Bills created.

Now the filter. First find an email for one of your bills that you receive. Now go to Tools->Message Filters in the Thunderbird menu bar. This bring up a new window called “Message Filters”. If you have more then one email account then pick the one that you are getting your bills sent to. Next click New. This will bring up another window that allows us to create a filter. First give the filter a name “Tag as Bill”. Next we need to decide what in an email identifies it as a bill. So take a look at the email you found earlier, is there something in the subject line that is unique or maybe it is the email address that the email is sent from. For example the bill from the gas company, Enbridge. In this case I don’t get any email from Enbridge other then emails about my bill. So I am going to add a rule based on that. In the middle of the filter rules window click on the first box. There is a drop down list of fields to match on, the default is Subject. From this list I am going to pick From. The box next to this is the condition, default is Contains. The default is fine in this case. Next I enter what to match on, “enbridge”. Now at the bottom of the window I tell it what to do with a matching message. In the first box you select an action, default being Move Message To. In this example I want it to tag the message, so I select Tag Message. In the next box I pick which tag I want, if you did the previous bill tag setup then you will have a tag called Bill in the list. Your done so click OK.

We now have a filter created, so lets test it. In the Message Filters window we should have something in the list called “Tag as Bill”. First make sure that it is enable in the check box. Now at the bottom of the window you have the option to run the message filter on your inbox. Thunderbird will automatically run the filter on any new messages but it does not do this for messages you already have in your inbox. Click on Run Now. This will run all your messages through the filter. If it was successful then the bill email you found earlier will now be tagged as a bill.

So give some other examples a try. You can the filters to do different actions. For example I could instead put all my bills into a specific folder. You probably also receive bills from more then one company. You can go back to the filter we just setup and add other criteria, like the email address of another company. In this case make sure that you tell it to match any of the criteria and not all.

Well that is it for now. In some future posts I will show you how to do more things by using add-ons for both Firefox and Thunderbird. If you have a question then send it my way.

Photoshop “Miniature” Tutorial

This is a pretty cool technique for take images of real environments and making them appear to be a miniature of the real thing. This is done using Photoshop CS.

First picking a good photo will make the technique turn out better, here is a list of things I have found that work.

  • Images taken looking down onto the scene.
  • No horizon or a sky that is very uniform.
  • Not having much in the foreground.
  • Lighting that casts shadows to make it look like one source.

Miniature Example Start

  1. Load your photo into Photoshop.
  2. Press “Q” to go into “Quick Mask” mode. This will allow you to quickly mask off an area of your photo to remain sharp.
  3. Press “D” which sets the colour palette to default (black foreground and white background).
  4. Select the Gradient tool from the main tool bar (may be hidden under the paint bucket).
  5. Set the Gradient tool to Reflected Gradient.
  6. Next, choose which area you want to be in focus (in this case it was the top of the pyramid). Click and drag the gradient tool from the point to the top of the image and let go. This is the part that requires a little trial and error to get right: try different points in the image, drag the tool different distances and even a different angles. In the example I did it slight off vertical.
  7. You should now have an area of the photo that is red. This will be the area that will left untouched.
  8. Press “Q” to leave quick mask mode. You should now have two areas to the photo selected (marching ants), below the point you selected and above.
  9. Go up to the “Filters” menu, scroll down to the “Blur” category – then select “Lens Blur”.
  10. In window that pops up you need to play with the following settings until you get a look you are happy with. Iris:Radius – controls the amount of blur, try something around 30. Specular Highlights:Brightness – controls how bright the blurred white points will be, try something around 20. Specular Highlights: Threshold – A what point a bright blurred area gets made white, try around 245. Again this is the part that take several attempts to get just right. When you are done click OK.
  11. Now deselect the two areas, should see the “marching ants disappear. (Under menu Select or pick the Marque tool and click on your photo)
  12. Bring up the “Hue / Saturation” Adjuster (Under Image->Adjustment or Ctrl-U or Apple-U). Increase the Saturation so it makes the colors in the image more vivid and bright, try something around 20. The idea it to give it a plastic look so play with it.

Miniature Example Final

That is it. You can check out some examples in the miniature gallery.