The Technopath » Browser Addons Archive – The Technopath

User Agent Switcher turns your Firefox into an iPhone

Uzair Sajid — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Or at least its browser, Mobile Safari. User Agent Switcher is a neat Firefox extension that switches your User Agent on the fly with the help of a drop down menu, making it easier to test web applications for desktop and mobile deployments from within Firefox.

You can change your browser’s agent on the fly and disguise it as any browser or web crawler you want. The default options include Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 along with iPhone OS 3.0. You can also choose to be a search engine crawler like GoogleBot, the MSNBot or the Yahoo Slurp.

You can also add your own agents like for the Android or the Pre Browser as well as Google Chrome or Opera (if you really want to).

One thing you should keep in mind though is that the underlying rendering engine would still be the same, i.e. Gekco 1.9.1. Interestingly, YouTube videos are rendered using the Flash Player 10 even when I set my user agent to iPhone OS 3.0.

Anyways its a good extension if you are a developer and don’t have mobile devices to test your web application or theme.

Download and Install User Agent Switcher

Firefox Universal Uploader: An FTP Tool for Social Networking

Uzair Sajid — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:15:28 +0000

Social Networking has proved to be the core component in the success of Web 2.0, so its not a surprise that a new service or tool pops up everyday. Earlier, we reviewed Cooliris, another great plug-in which hangs our photos and videos from most social networking sites to a 3D wall and lets you browse through them. Today, I present Firefox Universal Uploader, an file transfer extension for social networking sites.

Firefox Universal Uploader (or FireUploader) for short acts like any other normal upload utility that most social networking sites offer to upload content. The advantage here is that you get a universal client that provides the same interface for every service. Currently, it supports 13 services including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Box.net, Adobe Share, Omnidrive, Google Docs and some others.

Another interesting feature is that it lets you create an account on any of the supported services from within the extension if you don’t already have one. I find the transfer rate better using this extension than the regular uploaders, specially in the case of YouTube and Facebook. It supports drag and drop and simple windows explorer like navigation. The only thing missing here is the ability to download stuff too, or transfer it from one service to another.

But even without that, this is a pretty solid extension and a must have for every cloud-savvy user. You can find the download link in the box below.

View your favorite photos and videos in 3D using Cooliris

Uzair Sajid — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:28:52 +0000

Social networking was one of the main focuses of Web 2.0 and thus has resulted in numerous services and applications that have become a part of our daily lives. Not a long time ago (back in 2001) there were no such things as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Flickr or any other social networking service you can imagine. Nor were there any powerful web technologies like ASP.NET (it was in beta actually), AJAX, or even Firefox.

The web has changed a lot since then, but its still the same old 2D web pages that end up in our browser windows. Sure there are interactive technologies like Flash and SIlverlight, but their scope is limited. With advancement in technology, there should be a better way to view the web. Meet Cooliris (formerly PicLens)!

Cooliris is a new way to view your photos and videos on various social networking sites. It maps your images and videos on a 3D Wall all lets you zip through hundreds of images in seconds. It supports a lot of social networking and photo sharing sites including Facebook, Picassa, Flickr, Photobucket, Google Image Search, YouTube etc. and you can even implement the functionality on your own site.

It has been around for a while now, under the name PicLens, until version 3.0 renamed it to Cooliris. It is a free download for both Windows and Mac OS X, and runs on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. You can search from within Cooliris, and even shop and discover new stuff. For photo bloggers, this addon is a must have.

You can find the download link in the box below.