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Have you ever been on a website where you waited for something to happen? Maybe it was on the Yahoo Mail website where you have been waiting for the registration confirmation email of a service that you just registered with, or you are on eBay waiting for the auction to end. If you are impatient, you may have tapped on the F5 key every few seconds to reload the page to see if anything has changed yet.
That’s fine and doable if you are waiting for one page to reload with the information you are looking for, but what if you are monitoring two auctions on eBay?
That’s where Auto Refresh for the Firefox web browser may help you out with. The free add-on allows you to refresh individual pages or groups of pages in select intervals.
A right-click on a page opens the context menu with the new Auto Refresh entry added to it. Here you can enable the automatic reloading of the current page, or all open tabs of the browser. You can select the reload interval here as well, ranging from every 2 seconds to once per hour. The interval can be randomized to make it look more natural.
The intervals can be edited in the add-on preferences to suite individual needs. You can furthermore switch from standard refresh to hard refresh. While not explained anywhere, it is likely that the latter bypasses the browser cache to request all information from the web server the page is hosted on again.
Auto Refresh adds an icon to the status bar which links to the add-on preferences and instructions on the developer website. This icon can be disabled in the preferences.
The Firefox extension can be quite useful for users who often encounter situations where they need to reload pages until information on these pages change. It can also be handy on news aggregators like Reddit or forums like 4Chan to keep up with new links and information posted on the sites.
Linux is rife with awesome file browsers, so if you don't like the one that came with your distro, you have a lot of choices. Our favorite is the insanely feature-filled Krusader for KDE.
The file browser category is a bit different for Linux than it is for other systems. While every distro and desktop environment has a "default" file browser, using the term "alternative file browsers" is difficult. Really, you just have a lot of file browsers to choose from, and everyone can end up with a different "default". Our favorite is Krusader, which is truly "alternative" in the sense that very few distros use it as their default, but what's best for you can vary so much by what you need and what desktop environment you use, that we highly recommend looking through the Competition section below and deciding for yourself. That said, if it's raw power you want, Krusader is your man. Here's why.
Tabbed, two-pane "Commander" interface (Like Total Commander for Windows)An insane amount of customizable keyboard shortcutsAn internal file viewer and editor for quick previews and editsExtensive support for archives and mounted file systemsTransfer files with FTP and SFTPSynchronize two directories with one anotherCompare the contents of two files against one anotherPowerful batch renamingA built-in terminal emulator that opens in your current folderVery powerful search featuresLots, lots more
Krusader excels...everywhere. This file browser has more features than you can shake a stick at, with a great two-pane interface to house them all. You have everything you could want here: tabbed browsing, support for tons of different archive types, file previews and even a small file editor. When it comes to advanced features, you can compare files, synchronize folders, batch rename a ton of files, and even upload to an FTP server. Head into the settings and, like other KDE apps, you'll find settings galore, including a list of customizable keyboard shortcuts as long as my arm. If you're having trouble finding a file browser with enough features, Krusader is the most likely to make you happy.
Krusader's interface contains everything you could need...and then some. At times, it can feel really cluttered. You can customize the toolbar at the top to your needs, which helps a little, but it's just an unfortunate fact of life that with many features comes many buttons. As such, it can be pretty intimidating to beginners, not to mention annoying for those that just want something a bit simpler. Of course, if you want something simple, you have a lot of other choices (listed below)—for what it is, Krusader is pretty damn great.
In addition, Krusader's biggest downside is that it's built for the KDE desktop environment. If you use KDE, this isn't a problem—in fact, it's really awesome, since it integrates with KDE so well. If you're using something else, though, not only will it require KDE dependencies galore and take up more resources, it will have trouble with a lot of its integration features, like the built-in terminal. You could probably get most of it working with your desktop environment of choice, but it would take a little bit more work, and it'll definitely look a bit out of place.
Our second favorite is another KDE app: Dolphin, the default file browser on most KDE distros. If you're looking for slightly less feature-filled, but much more usable file browser, Dolphin is a good place to go. Like Krusader, Dolphin has a very configurable interface with lots of features, though it's a tad more "traditional" than Krusader (though you can still configure it to have the basic two-pane interface). You won't find some of its crazier features, like a built-in terminal, but it's a very solid file manager nonetheless. If Krusader is a bit overkill, Dolphin is certainly your next best choice, especially if you use KDE.
For non-KDE users, you still have quite a few choices—just not many that are quite as feature-packed. Nautilus is the default file manager in many GNOME distributions, and while it gets a lot of flak, we've always found it to be a more then adequate file manager. Its interface is simple, but it isn't feature starved: you can choose from a few different views, open folders in new tabs, attach notes and emblems to your files and folders, connect to FTP, WebDAV, and SSH servers, and lots more. It also integrates very nicely with the GNOME desktop and its apps, like Dropbox. If you don't love Nautilus, you might try the simpler Nautilus Elementary.
Thunar and PCManFM are the defaults for XFCE and LXDE, respectively, and thus are very simple and fast. Thunar is a tad more configurable than PCManFM, but PCManFM is a bit more beginner-friendly, especially out of the box. Both are great choices if you're looking for something lightweight, simple, and easy to use, without all the extra bloat and clutter.
GNOME users looking for a Krusader-like interface can try GNOME Commander, though it's possibly even uglier than running a KDE app in GNOME. Midnight Commander is another popular, but unorthodox choice, putting that two-pane file browser inside a terminal. It's graphical, but you navigate it completely with keyboard shortcuts. And, lastly, if you want something that has a great balance between advanced, feature-filled file browsing and speed, the descriptively-named 4Pane is a good four pane file browser for just any desktop environment.
And that's all just scratching the surface. If you have a favorite we didn't mention, or just want to share which one is your favorite and why, head to the comments below.
Stop me if you've heard this one: Once upon a time, you visited a web site that you're not exactly proud of. Let's say the content of said web site rhymes with "corn". And oops! You forgot to go incongnito beforehand. You've frantically deleted the site from your history once you realized your mistake, but from this point forward, every time you type in "po", Chrome helpfully autocompletes the entire URL. THANKS CHROME!
If you have heard this story before (from a friend, right?), you may want to familiarize yourself with the handy Shift+Delete shortcut.
The short version: In both Chrome and Firefox, highlighting an autocomplete entry and pressing Shift+Delete removes said autocomplete entry from the address and search bars so you can avoid pesky or embarrassing autocompletes. And yes, this tip is handy even if you aren't de-porning your browser.
A G-rated example:
My test search on Google is "dog"—i.e., any time I need to do a quick search to make sure my connection is working, I type "dog" into a Google search. Some people type "test", I type "dog". Then, a couple of weeks ago, I checked out a web site called Dog Vacay, which is sort of like AirBnB for your pets. No problems so far, except—damn, now every time I try typing "dog" into Chrome, it autocompletes to dogvacay.com. Chrome! *shakes fist*
Sure, I could change my test search, but that's years of muscle memory, and I like my routines and pictures of dogs at the top of results.
Instead, I just type my normal "dog" into the address bar, get slightly angry when "dogvacay.com" shows up, then, making sure that entry is highlighted in the autocomplete drop-down (which, of course, it already is, having been autocompleted), I press Shift+Delete (or, on a Mac keyboard, Shift+Function+Delete). The autocomplete entry is removed, and I'm back to searching in peace. for dogs a few times a week.
With each update, Facebook has gotten incrementally more cluttered, perplexing, and ornery—and I'm not even talking about all your annoying acquaintances flooding it with inane status updates. Yet, at the same time, it's become a tool few of us can live without. If Facebook has you on your last nerve, here's how to fix some of its biggest annoyances in a matter of minutes—and with only one new addition to your browser.
We've talked about Social Fixer before, back when it was called Better Facebook—heck, it was even our readers' favorite Facebook customizer. If you've ever installed it though, you probably got overwhelmed pretty quickly, and dropped it for something else (or just continued to deal with Facebook's ever-inflating annoyances). After sifting through all of its options though, we discovered it's actually very simple for Social Fixer to make Facebook a ton better, without turning it into a more confusing beast. Whether you want to make the font more readable, get rid of that pesky ticker, see who's unfriended you, and much more, here's how to make Facebook infinitely better with just one browser extension..
To get started, head over to Social Fixer's homepage and install it for your browser. It's available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, or as a Greasemonkey userscript. Once it's installed, open up Facebook, and you should notice a few different things right off the bat.
Social Fixer looks pretty cluttered at first glance, adding tabs to your news feed, extra columns to the side of the page, and more. These features can be pretty cool, but it's a lot to deal with at first, and a lot of these features aren't things you need, so to start out, we're going to disable everything and start with a clean slate. Then we'll walk through fixing Facebook's biggest annoyances, enabling one feature at a time as we need it. I do recommend browsing these extra features later on, but for now, we're going to keep it simple.
If you're greeted with the setup wizard after installing the extension, choose the Minimalist Installation. If you don't see the setup wizard (I personally could never get it to display), click on the new Wrench icon in Facebook's blue bar, go to Social Fixer Options, and start unchecking boxes. It's better to start off with a clean slate than with the default options, so I recommend unchecking everything and saving before continuing.
Now that you've got a minimal installation of Social Fixer, it's time to fix some of those Facebook annoyances you've come to know and hate. Again, I recommend looking through all of the options Social Fixer has to offer at some point, but to kickstart your efforts, here's a rundown of our favorite tweaks that improve Facebook's interface and functionality. We'll go through the settings in order of the tab they appear under in Social Fixer's options, so just navigate through using the tabs on the left hand side to follow along.
Disable Lightbox: This disable's Facebook's new photo viewer that overlays itself over the page you were viewing. We actually think this is a pretty great feature, but if you'd rather have the old school image viewer that displayed each image on a new page, you can check this option to get it back.
Change Font Size: Facebook made its font size smaller awhile back, and if it's still barely readable to you, this option can help. You can change the font size of posts and comments separately, to help distinguish between them. Facebook's default font size for each is 11. Note also that you can increase the readability of any page by using your browser's zoom feature (Ctrl+Plus Sign and Ctrl+Minus Sign), though this gives you a bit more control.
Force the News Feed to switch to "Recent Stories First": By default, Facebook only shows you the top stories rather than every post made by your friends. If you prefer seeing all your friends' posts, this option will make your News Feed default to Recent instead of Top Stories.
Hide the Ticker: If that new ticker annoys the crap out of you, you can turn it off with this option. You can technically hide it already with Facebook, but that will still leave the bar at the top of the page. This will remove that entire section of your home page altogether and just make it a bit cleaner.
Auto-Expand Left Panel Sections: This will automatically show the sub-sections of your Messages, Events, Photos, Apps, and more. I highly recommend auto-expanding the Messages section to avoid the whole second inbox problem—that way, no messages will ever go unnoticed.
Friend Tracker: This adds a handy little box in the right hand sidebar that lets you know who has unfriended you on Facebook. It won't show you who's unfriended you in the past, only who's unfriended you since you installed Social Fixer, but still—it's pretty handy to have there just in case.
Fix the Missing Cursor Problem and Fix the Line Wrap Problem: These are just a few tiny bugs in Facebook's interface when you make posts. If you've noticed them before, check these boxes, otherwise there's no harm in leaving them blank.
Disable Facebook's Auto-Loading of Posts: As you scroll down, Facebook automatically loads more posts for you. Some find this useful, others find it annoying. I have no problem with clicking "Show Posts" to see more, so I've checked this box to avoid unnecessary page loading.
When Clicking a Link in an Application Post, Open in a New Browser Tab/Window: Does exactly what it sounds like. This makes sure links don't lead you away from Facebook; instead, they open up in a new tab or window, whatever you have your browser set to do.
Auto-Expand "See More" Links in Posts: When people write particularly long posts, Facebook will condense it to the first few lines of text and add a "See More" box so you can expand it. It also does this with long strings of comments. This option automatically expands long posts, which I like since it doesn't make my News Feed that much longer. You can click the auto-expand collapsed comment threads on posts by pages above, but I don't recommend this, since it'll make your News Feed very, very long.
There isn't a ton here that I like to tweak, though it's worth looking through. If you have a problem with that "Please update your email address" box, you can hide it with an option here, as well as avoid that somewhat annoying popup box that shows up when you hover over a person's username.
If you can't stand Facebook's new Timeline interface, this tab provides a few options that clean it up. We've talked about this once before, so I won't go into too much detail here, but the options do exactly what they sound like they do. They wont' get rid of timeline altogether, and it won't change how other people see your profile, but it'll at least give the timeline a nicer, one-column view for you when you view it from your Social Fixer-enabled browser.
From the main Facebook interface, you can hide certain sections by clicking the "x" that appears in the upper right hand corner of the box. There doesn't seem to be a lot of sections that allow for this anymore, but you can hide Facebook's ads, which is nice if you aren't using an ad blocker already. This section of Social Fixer's options will show you which sections you've hidden, and let you un-hide them.
Whether you use Facebook Chat religiously or sparingly, this section is a good one to visit. You can:
Turn off the chat bar: This gets rid of that unsightly chat bar that shows up when the page is maximized, and brings back the chat popup at the bottom of the window.
Show all online friends in chat list: If you want to see all of your online friends, and not just the one Facebook has deemed chat-worthy, check this box.
Group friends by status: This puts available people together at the top of the list, and idle people together at the bottom, just to keep it all better organized.
Use compact chat list: This is nice if you're showing all your online friends and don't want the chat box to get unweildy.
Hide the chat dock entirely: This won't log you out of chat, but it's great if you use Facebook chat in an external IM program and don't want the chat dock cluttering up your Facebook.
This seems to be deprecated, as it doesn't load for me—but that's okay, because this tab was essentially for turning Facebook into MySpace with themes.
This is where things get really interesting. One of Facebook's biggest annoyances isn't, sadly, Facebook itself—it's all the annoying things people say. Even your closest friends occasionally stand on a soapbox that can get on your nerves. Whether your friends are too annoyingly political, overly emo, or just a little too in love with their cats, Social Fixer's filters can help you filter those posts out. Of course you could always hide those people from your news feed (or unfriend them, if you're really fed up), but sometimes you still want to hear from your friends—you just don't want to hear them rant about [insert political figure here] again.
To create a new filter, go through the 5 columns and choose the filter's characteristics. Let's start with a very simple example. I'm pretty nervous about hearing Mass Effect 3 spoilers, since I play video games pretty slowly, so I want to hide any posts containing the words "Mass Effect" or "Mass Effect 3"—no matter who they're from or what type of post they are. All you'd need to do to create this filter is head to the "Other" column, add the words "Mass Effect" (without quotes) to the text box, and then check "Hide" under the Action column. This will automatically hide any post in which someone mentions Mass Effect. For extra security, you can use regular expressions to search for multiple strings of text—for example, adding /Mass Effect|ME3/ to that box will hide posts containing either "Mass Effect" or "ME3". If you don't know regular expressions, though, you can always just create multiple filters instead. When you're done, click the "Add New Filter at the Top" buttton above the filter columns to add the filter.
Now let's try something a bit more complicated. Say you have one or two friends who get a little too political on Facebook from time to time, and like to rant about presidental candidate Abe Froman. You don't want to block all posts about Abe Froman, just ones from your uber conservative/liberal/whatever friends that like to rag on him. Select those friends from the "Author" column, using the Ctrl key to select multiple people. Leave the Type field blank to include all post types in the filter, then add "Abe Froman" (without quotes) to the Other column (alternatively, use /Abe Froman|Froman/ to include posts which mention just his last name), and check the Hide box under Action. Then, click the Add New Filter button again to finalize everything.
You can do a lot more with filters, like hide specific post types, posts from applications, or apply advanced CSS to highlight certain posts, but we won't go too deeply into that here. Check out Social Fixer's Filter Documentation for more on how to use the Filter feature. And be sure to check the regular Facebook interface before you run to Social Fixer—it can already do a lot to hide specific post types and applications all on its own. Just click the arrow that shows up when you hover over a post in the news feed.
This section mostly provides preferences for Social Fixer itself. From here, you can turn off many of Social Fixer's popups, warnings, and help messages, plus change how often it checks for updates, and more. There isn't anything here that I'd recommend turning off immediately, but if you find that Social Fixer is affecting your page in a negative way, this is the first place I'd head to troubleshoot it.
That's actually all it takes. A few checkboxes here, a few there, and you've got yourself a much better Facebook. If you use Social Fixer on multiple computers, you can head to the User Prefereces section of its options and export your options for importing on another machine, which is nice. Other than that, just keep Social Fixer installed and keep on using Facebook. The developer is pretty good about updating it when Facebook's layout changes, so you shouldn't have too many compatibility issues down the road—and he's sure to fix any new annoyances that are introduced.
If you've been a longtime user of Social Fixer and you have a favorite preference we didn't mention, share it with us in the comments.
