The web browsing experience – my favourite Google Chrome extensions

In this post I highlight my Chrome addons and why I use them.
This post is an update of Optimizing your web browsing experience

uBlock

As replacement for AdBlock Plus

Flash Control

Since I still can`t say fully goodbye to Adobe Flash

Ghostery

Still on version 5, version 6 is currently only available for Firefox.

WOT

Web of Trust

CookiesOK

Reduces the cookie acceptance popups

HTTPS Everywhere

Prefer HTTPS over HTTP

Social Fixer for Facebook

Increases the functionality on facebook

Tweetdeck Enhancer

Increases the functionality of tweetdeck

DuckDuckGo

As google alternateive

Facebook is the future

Aside

I foresee a bright future for Facebook, why? Keep on reading.

Hyves

On Hyves there is way too much advertisement on the homepage compared to FB and most of the time it has nothing to do with me. Facebooks advertisement is optimised on me and my interests and is therefore more interesting. Also it`s advertisement possibilities are much better.

The whole buzz (front page) idea is stolen from Facebook and it`s less than the original implementation. On FB its possible to eliminate spam caused by an app/plugin while on hyves you can only hide/delete users.

Hyves has less apps and barely any good games.Whereas on Facebook … You know what I mean.

More and more people I know are deleting their Hyves profile in favour of Facebook.

FourSquare

Last week I read an article about how many percent of the people are using geolocation sharing sites like foursquare. This percentage was about 4% of the online people.
With the release of HTML 5 and it`s Geolocation API it`s likely to see a change in the way geolocation sharing is used.

With the release of Facebook Places, in most countries, this percentage goes way up because everyone with a Facebook profile is able to use it without signing up. this also saves work in setting up the integration between several platforms. FourSquare tries to compensate this by using a Facebook login button on the site which makes it easier for Facebook users to use FourSquare.

The 4sq API is already integrated in much more devices and software than the FB Places API which is a major benefit.

Joomla! 1.5 Templates Cookbook review

I will be reviewing  the “Joomla! 1.5 Templates Cookbook” by Richard Carter, published by Packt Publishing. This book is about modifying Joomla! 1.5 Templates.

Packt Publishing asked me to review this book since it’s in my line of expertise.

A little about me:
I am Ramon “Ramoonus” van Belzen. A 22 year old web designer (HTML, CSS, microformats, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, PHP/MySQL) and hobby programmer (Visual Basic). I’ve been creating webpages since 1997.
I’ve been playing with Joomla! for more than three years now. I currently own no sites which run on Joomla! but I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t be using it for one of my sites.
You can find my website on http://www.ramoonus.nl

The Joomla! 1.5 Templates Cookbook is one of Packt Publishing’s cookbook series meaning it contains loads of recipes. Each recipe is a small articles/paragraphs with an idea and how to work it out. Just like a regular cookbook.

As the title reveals this book is about Joomla! 1.5 templates. A template is the design which displays the Joomla! site. Without a template no content is displayed, you will only see blank pages.
This book can also be used for the future Joomla! 1.6, which is currently in beta status.

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