class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/facebook-icon.jpg?323f2c" alt="facebook-icon" />Facebook has launched a major update for its href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.facebook.katana&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5mYWNlYm9vay5rYXRhbmEiXQ..">Android app which improves on photo viewing, navigation, search and speed. The new update brings the app closer to the experience the iOS version provides – definitely good news for Android users, who have had to deal with an inferior version up till now.

The new version brings three major changes – faster and better photo viewing, access to notifications from the main screen, and a sidebar which provides access to all your friends, pages, groups, etc. You can also use it to access your Facebook apps and games on the go.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/facebook-app-1.jpg?323f2c" alt="facebook-app-1" width="535" height="431" border="0" />

According to Facebook, photos and albums are now twice as fast as they used to be. The interface has also changed completely, providing a nice black background for viewing, along with easier buttons for comments and likes, and tags on top of the photos.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2011-12-08-14h20_16.png?323f2c" alt="2011-12-08 14h20_16" width="277" height="464" border="0" />

The left sidebar resembles the one from Facebook’s href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-ipad-finally-features-news/">iPad app, and along with easier navigation also provides easier search through all your friends, statuses, pages, etc. The notification bar, which hasn’t actually changed, was simply added to the main news feed page, which makes it easier to view notifications and chat without losing your place in the news feed. According to Facebook, those of us with timeline profiles should also see their timelines integrated into the app, but I haven’t seen mine yet.

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/facebook-app-3.jpg?323f2c" alt="facebook-app-3" width="265" height="442" border="0" />

So what do you think of the update? Too little too late, or is this exactly what Android users have been waiting for?

Get Facebook 1.8 for Android 1.5+ href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.facebook.katana&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5mYWNlYm9vay5rYXRhbmEiXQ..">here.

Source: href="https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150393505147131" rel="nofollow">Facebook Blog

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefishlogo1.png" alt="create web pages fast"/>Although it has been decades since the first web designer opened up a text editor to create the very first HTML document, the tools of the trade haven’t really changed a whole lot.

Sure, websites are now powered by blog platforms like WordPress, or WYSIWYG editors like Kompozer, but the bottom line is that most hard core web designers will always find it necessary to pop open a text editor to tweak the style a little bit here, or to realign the template a bit more there.

I think that text editors are going to be around in the world of web design for a very long time, at least for those web programmers that are always neck-deep into improving and optimizing professional websites. So, it stands to reason that text editing tools would evolve that are more powerful and smarter; Tools created specifically for the needs of those hard-core web designers and web programmers.

Bluefish – The Text Editor for Programmers

For years, I was very adamant about sticking with Notepad, no matter what everyone else started using. In my opinion, WYSIWYG editors just padding way too much garbage into the code (particularly MS Word’s silly save-as-HTML feature).

I was very tempted to try Notepad++ when I first heard about it. Then, after reading Simon’s article on href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sublime-text-the-text-editor-youll-fall-in-love-with/">Sublime Text, I was tempted yet again. I’ve always been hesitant to jump on any bandwagon until a good, solid winner takes root.

This year, I have to confess that I’ve finally found a code editor that I can’t resist – it’s called href="http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html">Bluefish.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;"src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish1.png" alt="create web pages fast" width="503" height="389" />

When you first setup Bluefish, you’ll see the first reason I like it so much – it is designed to handle a huge assortment of programming languages, from straight HTML and PHP to Java, VB and even ASP. The kind of flexibility is a nice thing to have in a code editor, especially if you often have your hands into many different programming languages.

And Bluefish does programming well. But before we get to that, I wanted to just show you how cool this program looks. Up to this point I haven’t found a coder’s editor with this kind of aesthetic coolness on the front end – with the most important, easy-to-find tools and tabs right at your fingertips on the main screen, depending what code you’re focused on at the moment. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish2.png" alt="free web page editor" width="578" height="526" /> /> As you can see, file navigation is right there on the left – no need to flip back and forth between Windows Explorer and your editor. Do all of your file exploring from right within the application itself.

That includes all of the usual things you can do with a file explorer, like moving or renaming folders and files. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish3.png" alt="free web page editor" width="542" height="500" /> /> When you launch a new document from the file menu, if you choose template you’ll see that Bluefish has a few pre-built program templates available. This is especially useful if you write a lot of web pages, for example, and don’t want to recreate the same generic XHTML or PHP structure. Instead, just launch Bluefish’s template and you can immediately get into creating the content. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish3a.png" alt="free web page editor" width="472" height="503" /> /> The pic below is the standard HTML template with the header, title and body tags pre-built for you. As you can see, lines are numbered, and while you’re typing the application has a feature where it will auto-complete tags for you. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish3b.png" alt="web page editor" width="475" height="438" /> /> As you can see in the menu bar, there are also pre-built code snippets available under each program language. For example, HTML has standard code for web forms, and PHP has standard code snippets for how to connect to an ODBC or MySQL database. /> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-89084" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid;" title="bluefish4" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish4.png" alt="" width="577" height="361" /> /> This can save a lot of time if you’re the kind of person (like me) that often forgets the exact syntax to do some of the most basic things. To complete the code snippet for you, the program will ask you for the details. In the case of making database connections, it’ll ask you for the data source and the login details. Then it’ll basically write the code for you. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish7.png" alt="web page editor" width="423" height="359" /> /> The same is true for a whole list of HTML tasks – making this app a web designers dream. You can code the same web page in half the time using Bluefish. Just tap the element that you want, provide the dialog box with a few details, and the code gets typed up and inserted for you. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish8.png" alt="web page editor" width="563" height="501" /> /> It isn’t WYSIWYG, but in my opinion it’s ten times better. You know what you want to do in the code, you just don’t have time to keep checking your reference book for the right syntax – so Bluefish lets you cut the headache.

More programming aids are available from the top menu as well. If you have an HTML file open, click the “Tags” menu and you’ll see dozens of quick code functions available to choose from. Create a web form with a fraction of the effort. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish9.png" alt="" width="535" height="420" /> /> As though the programming aids and tools weren’t enough, don’t forget to check out the “Tools” menu where you’ll find the ability to organize your code by joining/splitting lines, indenting, or using a filter to strip all empty lines from your code. /> class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/bluefish10.png" alt="create web pages fast" width="580" height="577" /> /> At the bottom of the main window, you’ll also find an output variable area for coding in languages like PHP or C++, useful to see whether your code is really doing what you want it to do.

I think it’s safe to say that Bluefish has won over my heart when it comes to “intelligent coding” rather than just hacking away in Notepad. So, give Bluefish a try and let us know whether it simplified your programming experience at all. what do you like about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/createweb-pages-faster-bluefish-editor/">Create Web Pages Five Times Faster Using the Bluefish Editor [Cross-Platform] is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/featured-onlive.png" alt="cloud gaming"/> href="http://onlive.com">OnLive is a cloud gaming service that presents a truly unique way to access your favorite games. No longer are you forced to constantly upgrade – instead, you run the games in the cloud, and stream them to your PC, Mac, iPad, Android or TV. It’s truly incredible technology, and well worth a download and giving it a go.

Even if you don’t decide to purchase anything, you can still play trial periods of the games, so it’s a great way to instantly demo games you’re thinking of buying. The cross-platform and mobile capabilities also have to be seen to be believed.

Cloud Gaming

Just like you can stream Netflix movies without downloading them, or stream music from your Google storage, you can also stream games with OnLive. Their servers contain an entire catalog of games, so all you need to do is choose which one to play. If you need a more technical comparison, it’s a little like renting computing time from Amazon’s cloud computing platform, and playing games on that – only OnLive gives you much better performance. It’s a virtual games machine that can be accessed from pretty much any device you own.

width="580" height="326"> name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fr2DSxmrH4Y?version=3&feature=oembed"> name="allowFullScreen" value="true"> name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fr2DSxmrH4Y?version=3&feature=oembed" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" height="326" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">

Sign Up and Download

Head on over to the href="http://www.onlive.com/go/signup/">OnLive signup form. You needn’t provide credit card details unless you’re actually going to make a purchase.

Hit login. From the PC or Mac, it’ll auto detect that you haven’t installed the app yet and will prompt you to do so. If it is installed, you’ll see a play button which will launch the client.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/from-website.jpg" alt="cloud gaming" width="580" height="438" />

Now what?

Here’s what you’ll see in the main interface.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/dashboard.jpg" alt="cloud gaming services" width="580" height="327" />

The arena is a spectator area and such great fun, as you can watch all the various games being played right now, live. It’s a fantastic way to discover new games that you might otherwise have missed. Find one you like, and jump right in. You can even engage in voice chat if  parties playing the game want to.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/arena.jpg" alt="cloud gaming services" width="580" height="326" />

Move the mouse around to bring up the menu, and if you like the look of the game, you can even jump right into a session yourself using the Play Now button. How amazing is that?

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/jump-into-trial.jpg" alt="cloud gaming services" width="580" height="230" />

A free trial is 30 minutes of full playing time, which is rather on the generous side if you ask me. If you choose to save, you can then resume once you’ve purchased the full game!

Hit ALT-O while playing to bring up the OnLive dashboard/hub, which will also tell you the amount of trial time you have left.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/alt-o-controlscreen.jpg" alt="cloud gaming review" width="450" height="518" />

Frame Rates and Lag

I’ve tried a few games now of various genres. Darksiders, a FPS type Demon – vs – Angels affair felt as if the frame rate was a little choppy, but certainly not to the point of being unplayable; Dirt 3 played really well with no noticeable lag in graphics or controls (at least to me, but I’m not a huge racing game player anyway); Tropico ran great; another Hack-n-Slash game (something quest?) felt like it had a very small delay on the mouse control. Overall though, it was fantastic. My upload speed is pretty poor too, but I’d say as long as you have at least 10mb down and 1mb up, you should be fine. If you’re worried, then the best way to test would be to download and jump into a trial session.

Note: Not all games have a trial available – like Homefront multiplayer. This is understandable given that a trial would either mean you get to play a full round of a 30 minute game, or would be booted out half way through and thereby ruining the game for other players. You can still watch current games in the Arena though.

Your First Full Game for £1 (UK only)

To celebrate the launch of the OnLive service in the UK, they’re offering a full playpass on your first game for only £1. Just sign up, download the client, add payment details and choose your game. This applies to any game in the current catalog – so if there’s something you have been meaning to play but couldn’t afford to, then you simply have no excuse now.

Don’t forget, there’s still the limited time demo on every game too, so you can be sure to buy something awesome.

Also, if you do purchase a game, it will then be available to you across all your devices – there’s no fancy DRM like “you can only play on PC”.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/marketplace-1pound.jpg" alt="cloud gaming review" width="580" height="326" />

The Console:

Uniquely, OnLive also offers a very low cost physical device, like a console, for around £70. This hooks into your internet, comes with a controller, and let’s you play all the latest games at amazing frame rates without shelling out for costly hardware. It’s a full OnLive client, in hardware form, and therefore doesn’t need a PC or Mac to play – it connects directly to the TV.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/onlive-hardware.jpg" alt="cloud gaming" width="580" height="336" />

Playpack Bundle

For unlimited play from a selection of games (not the full catalog), you can pay £6.99 a month. There’s a good number of games in the selection, but you also get 30% off the retail price of newer games that aren’t yet available in the unlimited package, as well as 30% off the physical device if you’d prefer to play on the TV.

Truly, OnLive is a revolution in gaming. Even ignoring the incredible technology that means you can play on a remote server, without needing expensive hardware locally – just the arena browser with the ability to watch and voice chat with others as they play, and the ability to immediately jump into a trial of the game yourself – is mind blowing. The pricing seems spot on to me – the newest games are similarly priced to retail, as you’d expect, and the unlimited play bundle seems like much better value to me than my current href="http://lovefilm.co.uk">LoveFilm DVD+Games subscription, which I basically just use for Xbox games.

Anyway, I’m off to play Tropico 4 which I just bought for the handsome price of £1. Finally, I can live out out my evil dictator tendencies… (Boss, I’m kidding, seriously I’m working very hard!)

If you’re a current full playpack subscriber or you’ve had experiences with OnLive please let us know how it’s going for you in the comments. Do you experience any lag? Are you against the idea of cloud gaming completely, or are you convinced this is the future of gaming?

href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/onlive-cloud-gaming-revolution-arrives/">The OnLive Cloud Gaming Revolution – A Faster, Easier Way To Game is a post from: href="http://www.makeuseof.com">MakeUseOf

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/belly-2354_640.jpg" alt="weight loss community"/>The fact is, losing weight is never going to be easy. No matter what method you try to use there is just this simple formula: eat less, burn more. There are a million ways to carry out eating less and burning more, the key is finding something that works for you. I weighed 225 pounds about 7 months ago, and now I’m coming in a lean and mean 175 pounds (that’s 50 pounds lost for my non-math major friends).

One key reason that allowed me to lose weight was motivation from others. I had friends who were either dieting at the same time as me, or had recently dieted to help me through it. I also had a wealth of people on the Internet who were happy to offer some motivational words, or a friendly tip. The key is knowing where to find such helpful people.

href="http://www.mynetdiary.com/">MyNetDiary

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mynetforums.png" alt="weight loss community" width="575" height="601" /> /> This is the website/app I used during my dieting process. I found the user interface of their iPhone app to be the best, and most importantly, they integrated their community features into the mobile app. Obviously, cheating is most likely to happen at a restaurant, and chances are slim that you will have your laptop sitting in front of you. If you need a quick tip on how to avoid temptation you can pull out your phone and jump on the forums to plead for help.

They have a full-time dietitian on staff who is always in the forum answering questions, as well as thousands of helpful dieters who will be ready to help. Outside of the community, they also offer a calorie counter and exercise tracker.

href="http://www.myfitnesspal.com/">MyFitnessPal

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/myfitnessforum.png" alt="weight loss community free" width="579" height="554" />

The features of MyFitnessPal have been detailed in a full article class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/myfitnesspal-crossplatform-calorie-counter-diet-tracker/">here, but it’s worth repeating. They obviously have a calorie counter and exercise tracker and the basic features that any app or website of this sort has. Where they really shine is in their social networking and community part. When you meet goals, it posts them to your followers and lets them know.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/social.png" alt="weight loss community free" width="502" height="159" />

They also have an incredibly active forum filled with success stories, before and after pictures and people giving and receiving helpful tips and advice. You can also look on the forum for user-created healthy recipes; for those times when you get bored with eating the same diet food over and over.

style="text-align: left;"> class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;"> class="vt-p" href="http://www.reddit.com/r/loseit">Reddit’s Lose It Subreddit

 

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/reddit1.png" alt="weight loss community free" width="567" height="340" />

It is impossible, in my opinion, to have any post about a community without looking to Reddit. We have already shown you many ways class="vt-p" href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-reddit/">Reddit can help people in need, but they are also great at helping you stay motivated to lose weight. They have over 23000 readers on their Lose It subreddit, and they are all quick to offer a helping hand. Users also post before and after pictures, along with detailed descriptions of how they lost weight.

They are also big on Non Scale Victories (or NSV) on Reddit. They love hearing about things like pants not fitting, people giving complements, borrowing a younger sibling clothes that didn’t fit before and things of that nature. A lot of times people forget about these little victories while losing weight and they concentrate too much on the number on the scale. It is important to remember these NSV’s and Reddit will not let you forget. Also href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness">Reddit.com/r/fitness is a great community to learn more about exercising and burning those calories.

href="http://www.traineo.com/">Traineo

Traineo’s whole site is based on community. Every piece of content on their site is posted by one of their over 200,000 members. It is filled with tons  of tips, stories, workout plans, recipes, diet plans and pretty much everything you could want. There are thousands of photos of members to help motivate you. There is even an entire section of the site dedicated to just motivational tips for members, by members.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tranmoto.png" alt="weight loss communities" width="341" height="427" />

They also have a really cool groups feature, which allows you to link up other people losing weight who share similar interests with you. For example, there are groups of college students, Wii users, runners, and a slew of other kinds of people.

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/groups.png" alt="weight loss community" width="574" height="476" />

If you are looking for a pure community filled with hundreds of thousands of people who are all in the same struggle as you, this is the site you must check out.

Conclusion

If you are trying to lose weight and you feel like giving up, know that you don’t have to go it alone. There are people on the internet who are struggling with the same challenges as you, and they are happy to offer tips to help keep you motivated. Keep these communities in mind when you feel like slipping off the diet. Dieting is hard, but having a good support system will help immensely! Just keep at it, and don’t be afraid to lean on others for help.

Have you lost weight? How did you do it? Did communities such as these help you along? Let us know in comments!

Image Credit:  href="http://pixabay.com/" rel="nofollow">Pixabay

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreviewslogo2.png" alt="website preview" />Surfing the web comes down to performing search engine queries and then clicking on links to check if the site has the answers that you want. As far back as 2007, MUO has been covering the model of search “preview” panes, such as the short list of href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/page-preview-time-saving-browser-add-onsfirefox-ie-flock-safari/">Firefox search preview plugins that Kaly covered. This field really took off when Google launched “ href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/google-launches-instant-preview-searching-easier-news/">Instant Preview” which Nancy covered. Ann also reviewed a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/load-google-search-results-preview-panel-page/">few creative ways to open up a “preview panel” in Firefox to website preview links without having to click on them.

I’ve used the Google preview option before, but never really found the time to really dig into how much time the right website preview solution could save. Basically, I was too busy to discover how much time I could save – as ironic as that sounds. That is, until I discovered href="http://www.coolpreviews.com/">CoolPreview.

Using The CoolPreviews Firefox Plugin

Once you install the CoolPreviews plugin, the link preview feature is ready to go. Also, unlike Google Instant Preview, the CoolPreviews plugin will give you a link preview window everywhere you go on the Internet, regardless of what website you’re on. All you have to do is hover your mouse over any link at all, and you’ll see the CoolPreviews icon show up.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73094" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview1.png" alt="website preview" width="556" height="337" />

Hover your mouse over that icon, and the preview “window” pops up and shows you the webpage in a scrollable format. It’s actually like having an embedded browser window inside the existing browser window. You can explore the page, click on links and check out the site without ever leaving the current page that you’re on. If you like what you see, just click the button at the top of the window to open the site in a new tab. Don’t like it? Just close the window.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73095" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview2.png" alt="site previewer" width="576" height="416" />

If you don’t want to bother with opening and closing the preview window every time you want to see a link, just click on the pin icon at the upper right corner of the screen and the preview window will stay available.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73096" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview3.png" alt="site previewer" width="549" height="415" />

Just slide the preview window down to the corner of your browser window, and it’ll show you a quick preview of every link you hover your mouse over – a fast and easy way to browse the web from one browser window. Gone are the days of opening tab after tab just to check links.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73098" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview4.png" alt="site previewer" width="570" height="429" />

As you browse through the Internet in one tab, you just glide your mouse over each link, glance at the site in the website preview pane, move on the the next link, and keep on rolling until you see the page that has the information you want. Then you can click to open it in a new tab (or just navigate the page from the preview window itself!)

It’s also really easy to customize the behavior and appearance of the preview window by clicking on the settings button. Change when the preview window appears, where it shows up on the browser window, and even the theme of the preview window.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73099" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview5.png" alt="site preview" width="490" height="548" />

Additional Features

Another really useful feature of CoolPreviews is the Google Images feature. When you search Google Images and hover your mouse over an image, a preview of the picture in its actual size will show up in the CoolPreviews window. If you want to see all of the images from the Google Image results in a clean and convenient slideshow gallery, just click on the Play button.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73100" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview6.png" alt="site preview" width="580" height="402" />

A large slideshow window will open with the selected image in the center pane, and a navigation slider at the bottom. Just click the arrow to browse through all of the Google Image results.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73101" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview7.png" alt="site preview" width="579" height="431" />

Another really cool feature of CoolPreviews is the Temporary Bookmark Stack. If you find a cool site that you want to bookmark for future reading, just tap the “Stack” button, and the add-on will toss the URL into a virtual stack of webpages.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73102" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview8.png" alt="" width="544" height="456" />

You’ll see a small tab attached to the right side of the browser window which you can tap on to explore your stack of bookmarks whenever you like.

style="text-align: center;"> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-73103" style="border: 1px solid black;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/coolpreview9.png" alt="website preview" width="277" height="401" />

What’s the point of “temporary” bookmarks? Well, have you ever been researching a particular subject, and you wanted to just fly through search results and save the URL’s for deeper reading later? Basicaly, CoolPreviews lets you do three steps in one. You do a Google Search, hover over the links to see a page preview, and when you see something useful, you can bookmark it to read later. You can do all three steps with a single click.

CoolPreviews converted me to the world of “link previews” – and I’ve already started cutting down a lot of time off my research efforts. I’m confident it’ll do the same for you. Give it a try and let us know how you liked it in the comments section below! />
/> Follow href="http://twitter.com/MakeUseOf" target="_blank" >MakeUseOf on Twitter. Includes cool extras.

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Shutterstock-Stopwatch.jpg" alt="website speed test"/>Not every website can be a Google. No; not in terms of scale but in terms of the speed with which it loads up in our browsers. Minimalism is great, but it does not go with the need to put more content and animated ads on the webpage. It is sometimes a trade-off which every web designer has to make.

Creating faster webpages is one of the commandments of great web design. A slow loading speed not only indicates poor design but is also a huge turn-off for visitors. Slow loading webpages could also be symptoms of bugs or any other bottleneck.

The first step you can take to optimize your website is to put it through a speed test. These ten tools are few of the many which can help test loading speeds and give cues to create faster webpages.

href="http://webwait.com/">WebWait

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load01.jpg" alt="website speed test" width="580" height="344" />

The timer gives you the average loading time of your website. Enter the URL of your site, set the number of runs, and get the results in terms of Average, Median, and Standard Deviation after the runs are through. You can set the number of test runs. While running the website speed test, the app factors in all images, stylesheets, and Javascript. It runs in all popular browsers. (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/webwait-measure-website-loading-time/">Directory mention)

href="http://whichloadsfaster.com/">Which Loads Faster?

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load02.jpg" alt="free website speed checker" width="580" height="286" />

Pit one site against the other and see which one comes out on top. You can benchmark the faster website and use it optimize the speed of your own website. The choice of two modes allows you to control the loading simultaneously in case one site interferes with the other. It could be quite a fun tool too as the ‘epic test’ between Apple and Adobe shows that Apple has bit of an edge. (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/whatloadsfaster-compare-website-loading-speed/">Directory mention)

href="http://www.webpagetest.org/">Web Page Test

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load03.jpg" alt="free website speed checker" width="580" height="336" />

WebPagetest.org was developed by AOL and then Open Sourced. This web app gives you a long list of server locations to try out the tests on. Another dropdown enables you to set a specific browser (IE9 too). Advanced Settings are for further fine-tuning the test by setting parameters like the number of test runs, connection type, including scripts etc. You can also use a visual tool to compare multiple URLs together.  (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/webpagetest-test-load-speed-of-website/">Directory mention)

href="http://loads.in/">Load.in

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load04.jpg" alt="free website speed checker" width="580" height="310" />

This website speed tool is definitely one of the coolest around in terms of visual appeal. Loads.in gives you more than 50 server locations around the world to try out loading speeds on. The first run retrieves the loading speed for a random location. The next ones can be set by country and browser type. As the test completes, you also get snapshots of the webpage at various points on a timeline. The loading time also displays the individual loading times of each site element in a waterfall chart. The data can also be downloaded as a HAR file. (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/loadsin-test-how-fast-a-website-loads/">Directory mention)

href="http://www.slowcop.com/">Slowcop

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load05.jpg" alt="website for checking download speed" width="580" height="275" />

This page loading speed tester gives you an instant speed report that also scores your site from 0 to 100. The report displays data like the total number of elements, page size, download time, and the score. With this as a denominator, you can instantly compare it against a competitor site and see the performance. (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/slowcop-website-speed-report/">Directory mention)

href="http://www.pingbrigade.com/">Ping Brigade

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load06.jpg" alt="website for checking download speed" width="580" height="360" />

Test your website on three scales – ping, page load, and web server latency. The test is quite fast and a colored map gives you clickable server locations in America and the world to test with different servers. (See href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/pingbrigade-how-fast-does-your-site-load/">Directory mention)

href="http://tools.pingdom.com/">Pingdom

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load07.jpg" alt="website for checking download speed" width="580" height="338" />

Test your page load speeds The Full Page Test gives you a detailed visual report on the load time of each element (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). Objects included in javascript are ignored. You can sort through the results with the tools available on the menu bar and diagnose any bottlenecks if any.

href="http://browsermob.com/free-website-performance-test">BrowserMob

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load08.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="276" />

The free website performance test gives a neat visual display of loading times with reference to a few locations around the world. The number of objects on the page are also broken down in a nice colorful pie-chart. Use the waterfall chart to analyze each individual element in more detail.

href="http://www.webslug.info/">WebSlug

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load09.jpg" alt="" width="580" height="350" />

WebSlug’s site timer gives you a comparative estimate of two websites. With just the URL you can benchmark one site against another. The simple site is pretty limited in scope but can be used as a ‘battle tool’ between two websites.

href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/">PageSpeed

class="aligncenter" style="border: 0pt none;" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Page-Load10.jpg" alt="website speed test" width="580" height="255" />

Page Speed is an open-source project from Google that’s available as an online app and also as a Chrome extension. Page Speed Online analyzes the content of a web page, and then generates suggestions to make that page faster. The suggestions are graded as low, medium, and high priority. Using this valuable tool you can see the suggestions on each object on the webpage. In an improvement, PageSpeed also tweaks the suggestions for faster mobile browsing.

Webmasters need a bevy of href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/webmaster-tools/">tools to work on optimization of their websites. Along with the online apps, there are quite a few extensions and offline tools as well. Tina’s post shows you – href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/run-speed-test-website/">How To Run A Speed Test On Your Website with FireBug and YSlow. If you are looking for a portable app, take a look at href="http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=24963.0">Speed Monitor. Which tools would you recommend to speedup websites and blogs?

Image Credit: rel="nofollow" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?id=73907131">Shutterstock

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class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/chrome.jpg" alt="" />The latest version of the Google Chrome web browser has been updated to version 10, with improved security and rendering times amongst the changes. The update includes a new version of V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine, which promises to speed up complex JavaScript web pages and apps.

Google’s own benchmarks recorded a 66% increase in speed over the old version of V8. Other speed enhancements come in the form of hardware GPU acceleration for web videos, putting many of the dedicated graphics cards in today’s modern PCs to use (and taking a load off the CPU).

id="more-67336"> /> class="vt-p" href="https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/design-documents/gpu-accelerated-compositing-in-chrome">According to Google: “Attention has turned on finding ways to make more effective utilization of the underlying hardware to achieve better performance and power savings.  There’s clear indication that getting the GPU directly involved with compositing the contents of a web page can result in very significant speedups.”

Currently the GPU acceleration technology can be seen in action over at class="vt-p" href="http://www.youtube.com/html5">YouTube’s HTML5 site.

Chrome 10 also includes the hotly tipped Adobe Flash sandbox feature, providing users with a safety net whilst viewing Flash content. Currently the sandbox is only available on the Windows version, though this version undoubtedly needs it the most. On top of this the familiar Options window has now been integrated into a web page, along with a search feature for quick-access to your preferences.