Webware

FriendFeed's new look, which was launched as an optional feature for brave beta testers, is now the default for all. The company flipped the switch on it this afternoon, and like previous redesigns there's no way to revert back to the old version. Going to beta.friendfeed.com simply brings users to the normal site.

Along with the new look, the company has updated its post-by-e-mail tools. Previously users had a special e-mail address they could send items to that went directly to their home feed. Users can still use that one, but there's now a central address that anyone can send to (share@friendfeed.com) which figures out your account by the address you're sending it from, then sends it to the right feed. It also lets users send direct messages to one another with a username@friendfeed.com e-mail address.

For users who miss the old design, there's a GreaseMonkey script called Cleaner FriendFeed that nixes the new gray background and makes some slight font and size tweaks to make it look as similar as possible.

The updated e-mail sharing system forgoes special e-mail addresses for a universal address anyone can send to--including direct messages to other users

(Credit: FriendFeed)

Correction: Contributing editor Lowell Heddings compiled the scripts for Lifehacker, not Better Gmail for Firefox compiler Gina Trapani.

If you're the antsy type, you can grab the "Chromed" version of the popular Firefox extension Better Gmail right here, right now. However, you'll need a little patience to install it: this is a collection of the raw Greasemonkey scripts, and it will require some fiddling before you can get them to work in Chrome.

Two of Better Gmail's scripts, message highlighting and attachment icons, work in Chrome.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

First off, you'll need at least the most recent beta release of Google's browser, which supports scripts. If you don't know which you've got, go to Tools and About Google Chrome. If you've got a version 1.x, you'll need to upgrade, and we're going to take a detour to explain a quick way to do it.

This part's actually fairly easy. Grab the Google Chrome Channel Changer. When you double-click on it, change from the stable build to either the beta or the developer's build. The beta is the more stable of the two, if this is entirely new territory for you.

Close the Channel Changer and run Google Chrome, opening the About window again. It should prompt you almost instantaneously to upgrade to a newer version. Once you've installed it, grab Better Gmail for Chrome and shut down the browser.

Next, point your Windows Explorer to your Chrome User Data folder. For Windows XP users, the path should look something like this:

%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 users should look for this path:

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default.

Inside the Default folder, create a new folder called User Scripts, and then extract the contents of the Better Gmail for Chrome Zip file into it.

Last step: in your shortcut for Google Chrome, add -enable-user-scripts to the end of the Target field. There should be a space in between "...chrome.exe" and the scripts command. Open up Google Chrome, log in to Gmail, and you should begin to see the effects of the scripts on your Gmail's behavior.

Utilizing scripts in Chrome is nothing more than a way-station on the road to full extension support, but there are some usability problems that an extension and its interface wouldn't have. For starters, removing a script from the folder is the only way to deactivate it. Likewise, to discover what each script can do, you must either look at their names in the User Scripts folder or check out their descriptions online. As simple an interface as the Firefox version has, it not only lets you quickly turn the extension's features on and off, it also tells you how to use them. Without those details at your fingertips, you'll have to hit the original announcement from script-wrangler Lowell Heddings.

The whole process is a definite drawback that is not meant to appeal to average users, and its utility is questionable at best to all but those who are writing scripts and extensions for Chrome. Not all of the scripts are even expected to work.

Complaints aside, it's also an interesting look at how Chrome functions when burdened with third-party features and potentially gives us a small taste of the browser's future.

(h/t Lifehacker)

If you had previously been using Videosurf's Greasemonkey script to preview videos from search engine results, the company has released a new Firefox add-on that does a bit more--and without the need for Greasemonkey.

Once installed in your browser, the add-on still lets you see previews of videos from search results on Google and Yahoo. However it now throws in video previews on FriendFeed pages, and adds a neat timeline view in YouTube that lets you skip to later parts of a video just like DVD chapter markers.

I had the Greasemonkey script installed on my machine last November, but recently turned it off. It directs links that would normally go to where the video is hosted to a special page on Videosurf where it has been re-embedded. This can be useful for some videos, but if you like reading comments and leaving ratings on the original video page it's adding an extra step to get there. Worth noting is that the Firefox iteration of this tool no longer does that.

With the extension installed you can skip to various parts of a video--as long as it's been indexed.

(Credit: Videosurf)

Showing signs that it's working to meet requests for new developments to its Chrome browser, Google on Friday said it hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year, and it released a new version Wednesday that paves the way for the most requested feature: extensions.

Google has high hopes for Chrome--in particular, the Internet giant wants better performance, so browsing the Web is faster and Web-based applications are more powerful. Now Google is filling in some missing pieces Chrome needs in order to attain wider usage.

Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, said the company wants to release Chrome for Mac and Linux before the first half of 2009 is up.

"That's what we've been hoping for," he said in an interview Friday. "Those two efforts proceeding in parallel. They're at the same level of progress."

The Mac and Linux versions are up to the level of a basic "test shell" that can show Web pages. But a test shell is pretty raw.

"That team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it's very basic," Rakowski said of the Mac version. "We have not spent any time building out features. We're still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right."

In an unscientific CNET News survey from November, a Mac version was the second most common barrier to getting people to switch to Chrome, trailing only faster performance. Eager beavers can monitor Google's Chrome for Mac progress and install the Mac test shell.

Extensions en route
Another major missing piece of Chrome is a framework to handle extensions, optional features that can be downloaded and plugged in to customize the browser. Extensions were one of the early advantages that helped Firefox blossom, it's the top-requested feature for Chrome, and it ranked third in the CNET survey of Chrome barriers.

But a new cutting-edge version of Chrome, 2.0.156.1, gets support for some "Greasemonkey" scripts to customize the browser, a move that lays the groundwork for extensions, Rakowski said.

"We have user script support. That's a baby step," he said. As Chrome develops, Google will "expose more capabilities, then expose containers where can you have your own toolbar-like thing. You'll see it evolve over time."

Google promised an extensions framework when Chrome launched, and more recently, Google outlined its Chrome extensions vision.

Counting Chrome
Google released Chrome 1.0 in December, just three months after the software publicly debuted, and the company is working hard to maintain a fast development pace. Wednesday's version, though not for the general public, is the first to sport the version 2 number.

Also updated with the new version is Google's Chrome release structure.

Before, Google let people subscribe to two Chrome update channels: beta and developer. The first was for relatively well-tested versions; the second for programmers, Web developers, and people with more curiosity and a higher bug threshold.

Now there are three Chrome channels: stable, beta, and developer preview.

Most folks will just use the stable version, which Google expects to update roughly once a quarter, Rakowski said. "The beta channel is now what the developer channel used to be," he added, with newer features but still a reasonable amount of testing. Newest is the developer preview channel, where code will be frequently updated and much more raw, and where Google expects some features to fail and be withdrawn.

Google expects to issue new developer preview versions roughly every couple weeks and new beta releases roughly monthly, Rakowski said.

Major new features
Version 2.0.156.1 includes many new features besides Greasemonkey support. Among them:

• Autocomplete, so Chrome can remember what you've typed into Web forms and enter them again. "A lot of people asked for that. It turns out it's more complicated than it seems on the surface," Rakowski said.

• Full-page zoom, so that using Ctrl+ and Ctrl- to increase or decrease elements on a Web page works better. Before, only text grew or shrank, but now other elements do, too.

• Browser profiles, so you can set up a browser configuration with particular settings such as bookmarks and cookies.

• The ability to import bookmarks from the Google Bookmarks site.

• Autoscroll, so clicking a mouse's middle button, then moving the mouse, lets you slide around larger pages. This is handy for panning around large images without constantly zooming in and out.

• Faster Safe Browsing, a feature to issue warnings about sites that may conduct phishing attacks or other malicious behavior.

• Under the hood, the update gets a new version of the open-source WebKit engine for converting a Web page's descriptive HTML and CSS code into the page displayed on a computer. Chrome's current stable release uses the same WebKit version as is used in Apple's Safari 3.1, but the new Chrome developer preview uses WebKit 528.8, which is faster and supports features such as CSS canvas drawing for 2D shapes such as lines on maps or custom-generated charts.

• An update of Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine from version 0.3.9.3 to 0.4.6.0. JavaScript is used for more elaborate Web pages, and the new version is faster, Rakowski said.

Missing from the new version is support for automatic discovery of Web site subscriptions through RSS and Atom "feed" technology. Google has mapped out feed support; the company plans to add it in the version 2 time frame, Rakowski said.

Video search and identification tool VideoSurf has a new script for Greasemonkey users that lets you see VideoSurf-enhanced results on Google, Yahoo, and YouTube. If a result has been indexed by VideoSurf you'll see its timeline, along with links to each segment which skip you straight to that part of the video.

VideoSurf is advertising this as a way to see video results before you click on them, similar to some scripts and extensions that show you site thumbnails straight from search results or on-site links (like Snap). I found it to work particularly well on mainstream content, although videos that have not yet been processed by VideoSurf won't show up.

If you're a Greasemonkey user I'd say this is definitely worth a go. The same goes for any users who frequently click on videos in search results, only to be disappointed by what they end up being. VideoSurf's scene-by-scene analysis puts an end to any surprises.

Previously: VideoSurf demo nearly lives up to pre-show hype

VideoSurf's Greasemonkey extension puts scene-by-scene analysis in your search results--that is, as long as it's a mainstream piece of content.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Greasemonkey, a Firefox customization tool popular among high-powered Web surfers, is coming to Google Chrome browser.

Aaron Boodman, a Greasemonkey author and a Google programmer who's active in the Gears project, contributed Greasemonkey support to Chrome, and the Google Operating System blog picked up on the change.

At this stage, enabling Greasemonkey requires people to use a cutting-edge developer version of the open-source browser and to launch it with a "--enable-greasemonkey" option set.

Greasemonkey lets people run scripts that modify Web page appearance. For example, back when Google's Gmail service lacked a "delete" button, people could add one by installing the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox then downloading a particular customization script.

Google wants to improve the Greasemonkey support, for example by confining particular Greasemonkey scripts to particular Web pages and letting the browser update its scripts as it's running.

Higher resolutions or not, YouTube still tweaks the quality of its videos for users depending on what kind of connection they've got. So how about a workaround to make sure you're getting the best of the best? Bayme of the VideoHelp.com forums seems to have found a way to tweak the URL of some videos to force YouTube to serve you the version with the highest resolution. The good news? It's easy as pie. The bad news? It's not going to work on all your videos, and it's not noticeably better

To give it a spin, just drop &fmt=6 at the end of the URL of any video you're watching. If YouTube has a higher quality version available on its servers, it'll start playing right away. Otherwise, you'll simply be staring at a loading symbol. Greasemonkey users can also download a simple script that adjusts all YouTube URLs automatically.

There's a long discussion over on the VideoHelp boards about which file types are retaining the most quality after automatic conversion. YouTube appears to be experimenting with a few variants of Flash and H.264, the latter of which became a major part of YouTube with the introduction of the iPhone and AppleTV--both of which access videos from the service without using Adobe's Flash player.

Related: YouTube sucks: 4 sites that do it better

[via Cybernet News]