The Code Dreamer : Nitin Hayaran » Hack

Make Your Firefox Even Better by tweaking its looks

nitin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:09:28 +0000

Firefox is my favorite browser. The biggest reason for this is its repository of useful plugins. The only problem which I see in its default installation is the screen usage. With this I mean, Firefox wastes a lot of screen real estate in unnecessary menus, buttons. The good news is that it also provides flexibility to customize its overall look and feel.

I have to tried to optimize my Firefox, and I am pretty happy with the new look. It gives more space for webpage. More emphasis on stuff that is important.

Previous Look

New Look

Changes

In new look there are following changes:

Hide Menu Bar : As I have seen from my usage I don't really access menus. I simply use its keyboard shortcuts. So it is actually not needed for me.
Show Small Icons : Fairly decent visibility for buttons even when they are smal.
Place Firebug and Web Developer buttons before search bar : Being a web developer these two plugins are my best friends. So, I have kept their button on the top bar.
Hide Status bar : After placing Firebug in top bar I realized there is no need for a status bar. I only use it to access Firebug.
Hide Web-Developer Toolbar : After placing Web Developer Icon in top bar I realized there is no need for a separate menu bar. I can always simple show/hide it on clicking this button.

Analysis

I have reclaimed 75px from Firefox for my Web Pages. Initially webpage client area was 581px now it is 656px.

I really liked these changes in my browser. Hope you'll also like them.

Beautiful Nag Screen using Mootools & CSS3

Show IMDB Ratings on Torrentz.com using GreaseMonkey Script

nitin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:04:16 +0000

Torrentz.com is a great site. It is a basically a one stop destination for any torrent search. I personally find it very useful as it automatically syndicate all the torrents from various sites like piratebay, mininova, demonoid etc.

Before downloading any movie from torrent I usually check its rating, synopsis & star cast on IMDB. I find this process very cumbersome and boring to search each movie on IMDB. To ease out this process I searched for a GM Script(GreaseMonkey Script). I found one, but it wasn't perfect so I have modified it. You can find its updated version at IMDB Rating in Torrentz

How to install this

Install greasemonkey extension for firefox if you have not already done so.
Go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/59570 and click on the “Install this Script” link on the right side

More Information

Don't know what GreaseMonkey is : Read Here

Don't Know how to install GreaseMonkey Addon : Read Here

Don't Know How to install Script in Greasemonkey

Hacker News Hacked : news.ycombinator.com hacked ?

nitin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:19:05 +0000

Hacker News is the brainchild of Paul Graham, so it partially reflects his interests in Y Combinator and entrepreneurial stuff like startups. Paul is serious about moderation on the site, so in addition to the typical Digg-style voting, there's a secret cabal (I like to think of it as The Octagon, "no one will admit they still exist!") of hand-picked editors who remove flagged posts. More importantly, the conversation on the site about the articles is quite rational, with very little noise and trolling.

If you're looking for good programming blogs to sharpen your saw, HackerNews is the first site which comes to your mind. It contains excellent programming specific links.

HackerNews is Hacked

There is a Post in news.yc with very high POINTS and been posted from PG(paul graham)'s account.

The link in the post leads to a application on appjet. The screenshot of the application is below:

This application changes the "About:" section on profile of PG on news.yc.