Open up Firefox search box results in new tab

Just a quick walkthrough of how to set up the Firefox search (top right) to open up in a new tab.

1) Type about:config in the URL bar
2) Click the "I'll be careful" button
3) Find browser.search.openintab
4) Right click and set it to true

Enjoy!

Firefox Awesome Keywords

Awesome Keyword feature

I'm sure you've been into this situation before:

The IS asks you, "define: heaven"

You KNOW where to look for this. Your process is most likely to load up definr.com or another dictionary. Then you would probably type or paste the word "heaven" into their search box.

That's a lot of work.

With Awesome keywords, you can instead type "[keyword] heaven" into the URL box of your Firefox window.

... and that's it. You're already at the definition page.

This feature is useful if you KNOW where you're going to look. Recipes, definitions, synonyms, etc.

Try this:
Bookmark this page: http://definr.com/%s
Add a keyword to it: I set mine to def

After you're done, go to your url bar. Type in your keyword and your search term:
"def heaven"

Click send. :) Voila!


The "%s" in the url field is replaced by the string of your search. In the above example, the url was http://definr/%s

If you typed "def happy", it would instead bring you to page http://definr/happy.

Add these bookmarks (you will need to add your own keywords). Just drag and drop to your Bookmarks Toolbar / Folder
Definr
Urban Dictionary
Google Maps
imdb
Daily Plate (nutrition facts)

You may also ask, what if the website asks for more than one input? White pages asks for the "first name," "last name," "city," and "state." How can you accomplish something like that?
Instructions on how to set up multi-parameter search

And you may wonder if you can search multiple searches at the same time
Instructions on how to search more than one page


That should be all!
Enjoy!

Greet or Delete Week 1: Define Word

Greet or Delete Extension Review: Define Word

This extension can potentially be a great add-on for a ChaCha guide. Highlight a word, right click, and select which website you want to look up the word. It'll do the rest for you. Simple? Yeah, I agree.

However, I feel that Define Words too LIMITED. Out of the whole drop down, which ones do we use? Maybe 3 or 4? If this were made specifically for ChaCha guides that includes MORE RELEVANT links, then MAYBE.

Out of the couple days I had this add-on installed, I found it VERY HARD to get myself to use it. Its just NOT MY STYLE to highlight and search with a drop down menu.

This extension also CROWDS UP my right click menu (which led me to find the Menu Editor addon that can remove items)

I personally prefer using Firefox Awesome Keywords. Its definitely more customizable, and will suit anybody who types faster than 20 wpm.

Final Verdict: DELETE
Score: 4 / 10

Next Week: Fire Gestures

Earnings Exporter v1_02d Released

Yup.

Fixed so that it works correctly for the Category Pay changes made earlier today.

Earnings Exporter v1_02d

Enjoy!

Greet or Delete - Firefox Extensions put to the Test

This column will be a weekly review of a random (or suggested) Firefox extension and how it can help or hurt ChaCha SMS guides. I will post my thoughts by the end of each week (by Friday) pros, cons, and my final decision of whether you should GREET the extension into your extension library, or DELETE.

~
Past reviews:

Fire Gestures - Score 7/10
Define Word - Score: 4/10
Ubiquity - Score: 3/10
ImgLikeOpera - Score: 2/10

~

Let me post here a list of my current extensions, and my thoughts about them, as I will not be reviewing these.

Codewolf's Statsclicker v1.6 - This addon adds a non-intrusive earnings summary in the bottom of your Firefox screen. It can be set to automatically refresh your earnings and question count every so often.

Review: This is one of those must-have, but luxurious, addons. Yes, we can live without it, but why? It keeps me motivated to work as I get to see my earnings for the current month shoot up.

Clippings - This extension allows us to assign hotkeys to the text we commonly type. Instead of spending 5 seconds to type "It appears that you tried to send a keyword to ChaCha. Please check it and try again. Avoid extra spaces, words & signatures," or "Thanks for using ChaCha. Ask again soon!" it only takes me 1 second.

Review: Since ChaCha added PAQ ability for expeditors (they now can provide the IS with answers from previous questions), I have to admit that many of my Clippings have started collecting dust. Nevertheless, I still use a few very often: ones for signatures, history problems, etc. This is a MUST for any SMS Guide.

Copy Plain Text - This nifty little addon simplifies copy and pasting, a lot! Often times I find myself pasting from a website that is very poorly formatted-extra spaces, lines, etc-and this addon just gets rid of all those for me so I don't have to do it myself. For example,

" This sentence has a space before it,  two


spaces after each comma,  and
one space after it "

would be pasted as

"This sentence has a space before it, two
spaces after each comma, and
one space after it"

True, it may only save a couple of seconds... but seconds add up!

Analysis: Very easy to install and configure. Very easy to use. "What? Did I just save 2 seconds per question without even noticing?" "Yes, you just did."

Tab Mix Plus - I use this addon mainly to keep my Guide Console Dashboard opened. No accidental closing, opening up new links, etc. I've written up instructions and a short analysis on this extension before, and you can read about it here.

Other non-ChaCha specific extensions installed:
Adblock Plus - Block ads
Fire.fm - Music toolbar from last.fm
Foxmarks Bookmark Syncronizer - Syncronize bookmarks with your other computers
Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize webpages with javascript
NoScript - Allow javascript to run on only websites you trust
StumbleUpon - Discover new websites
Tweak Network - Firefox performance booster

All that said, next week's featured addon will be:
Define Word

I just installed it and will have a review by next Friday.
Enjoy!

Subscribe! (I've added a subscribe to email link on the right side of this page)

ChaCha Query Wait Time

Remember when ChaCha sent out this email?



Well, while working on the Earnings Exporter today... I was thinking, "I have all this data... Lets see if I can test to see if its true"

So I went ahead and took all my data from the last month or so (Jan 5 to Feb 11, approximately 1130 data points), and looked how the hour of the day correlated with the time you had to wait to receive a query.

You may ask, how did I manage to have the wait time data? Well of course, this is an estimate. I took the time of a question and subtracted it with the time of the last question + the question answer length.

So for example, if I answered the following two questions:

2/11/2009		16:21		Generalist	When is the next prelicensing course ...	2:08
2/11/2009		16:17		Generalist	Is it possible to get a girl pregnant...	1:19

the time of wait for the first question would be approximately 2 minutes and 41 seconds.

Of course, this is only an estimate as ChaCha times in the 2nd column do not include the time to the number of seconds. I had to also make sure the dates were the same, and that extremes were taken out (if you were to take a 1 hour break answering questions).

Charting the data gave me interesting results. (ChaCha WAS telling the truth. The busiest time is around 7-9PM EST)



You may notice that my general sleeping hours are from 3AM - 9AM EST (I'm in the West Coast), and that somehow I didn't do any questions from 8:00 PM - 8:59 PM EST in a month.

Hope you enjoyed that! Comment! Check out the Earnings Exporter.

Earnings Exporter v1_01

You can download version v1_01 here.

• Fixed Transcriber Abort, Clarify Analysis. Was duplicated from Expeditor
• Removed Top Guide Analysis on To Do list
• Added Average Time Per Question
• Added Average Earnings Per Search Time
• Added Comments

View previous versions' documentation here.

If you experience a RunTime Error 1004, please contact me immediately. Thank you.