It accomplishes this by darkening all but the “main” media on the page.  Simply click a little icon, and all the distractions become harder to see.  Here’s how to install it, and how it works.

First, head over to the extension’s home page.

Once there, click the green button to begin the installation process.

You’ll first see this, informing you that the extension is being downloaded.

Once the extension has downloaded and been installed, you’ll get this confirmation.

To start using Light Switch, click the Restart Now button above, or dismiss the notice entirely to return to your current web page.  Light Switch will be ready for you the next time you restart Firefox.

From now on, whenever you visit a page with video or multimedia games, hover over it to reveal the Light Switch icon.

Now, the video will be displayed as normal, but the rest of the page will be darkened, making any additional “stuff” harder to see, and therefore less distracting.

To turn off Light Switch, simply click anywhere else in the page, and it will return to normal.

You don’t have many configuration options; however, what is available can be found in the Add-ons Manager, which can be accessed by hitting Ctrl-Shift-A (or under Add-Ons in the Tools menu).

As you can see, options are limited, but you can change how dark the background is (the Opacity setting), as well as what corner of the media the Light Switch icon can be found.

All in all, Light Switch is a handy extension to use.  It doesn’t mess with the page in any way aside from darkening what you don’t want to see anyway, so unlike can occasionally happen with ad blocking software, all the important “stuff” is still there… just less noticeable.

Thanks for reading, check out Help Desk Geek - Help Desk Tips For IT Pros for more WordPress news!

Thanks to a browser extension called Lazarus (version 2.3 is available for Firefox, while version 3.0 is available for Safari and Chrome, although not yet feature complete), that’s all in the past.  Once Lazarus is up and running, nearly all the forms you fill in (including “WYSIWYG editors, Rich text boxes and AJAXified forms”), are saved automatically, so you can always access that information, even if your browser, or even your computer, crashes.  Here’s how it works.

You’ll first want to head over to the Lazarus home page.

Once there, click the Download tab near the top of the screen.

You can now Install Lazarus by clicking the green button.

Further down the page, you can also download the 3.0 release.

Note: we’re testing the stable 2.3 release for this article, as the 3.0 release is not yet feature complete compared to the 2.3 option.

Once installed, a new Lazarus icon will appear in your status bar.  To access its menu, right-click it.  As Lazarus is monitoring forms you fill in, and saves them whenever you hit the “submit” button on the form, you can now access all your form data by choosing the “Search Lazarus” option.

This brings up the following window, which shows you the URL for each form you’ve filled in, the text you typed, and when the form was filled in.

To use the data from one of those forms, click the blue and green icon located to the far right of each entry.  This is the Recover button, and will bring up the Text Recovery window.

From here, you can view the text in either HTML or Source view, and copy the text to your clipboard with the Copy and Close button.

All you need to do now is paste the text into whatever form you want, and be on your way.

If you do install Lazarus 3.0, it will work slightly differently from 2.3 does.  Instead of an icon in the status bar, you’ll now see a small Lazarus icon inside each text field you fill in.  You can access previous form data from this menu in far fewer clicks than the 2.3 series, although – as mentioned – some forms (like Gmail) aren’t yet fully supported.

Lazarus is a fantastic tool.  It’s something everyone will – at one time or another – find a use for, and when that time comes, when you’ve just typed in a lengthy form only to have all your data go missing because of some error, you’ll be thankful you thought ahead and installed it.  As mentioned, the 2.3 series is only for Firefox, while the 3.0 series is also available for Safari and Google Chrome.

Thanks for reading, check out Help Desk Geek - Help Desk Tips For IT Pros for more WordPress news!

Highlight To Search, an official extension by Google, for the Google Chrome web browser, is that type of extension.  It operates under the belief that it’s easier to search for something you just read about from the page you’re reading, as opposed to copying the text, going to Google, and pasting in the item you want to search for.  And Google is right.

Now, Google Chrome actually does half of this already, without the need for Highlight To Search.  In Google Chrome, if you highlight text from an article and right-click it, one of the options is to search Google for that text.  And Highlight To Search does that.  But it also does a little more.  Here’s how it works.

The first thing you’ll need, before installing Highlight To Search, is Google Chrome.  Once you’ve installed that, head to the Chrome Web Store and perform a search for Highlight To Search.

Note: Highlight To Search will appear in the Extension section of the results, so you’ll need to scroll down in order to see it.

Or simply navigate to this page.

Just click the Install button (shown above), and in seconds, Highlight To Search will be installed and ready to use.

Once Highlight To Search is installed, highlight a word or phrase, and immediately a little blue magnifying glass icon appears, just below and to the right of the text you highlighted.

Click that icon, or the text itself, and a little text entry field appears, with your phrase already entered.

Below your text are some Google suggestions, which you can scroll through (or click on), to find exactly what you’re looking for.  You can also type further modifiers in the search box itself, just as if you were on Google.

When you’re finished, simply click the magnifying glass icon or hit Enter, and a new tab will open, showing a Google search results page for your query.

As mentioned earlier, Google Chrome can already perform a search for the exact text you have highlighted, but the option to refine your search query makes a lot of difference.  There are a lot of instances where you might read something that triggers something else, so having the ability to tweak the search term before even getting to Google… it’s not only something that saves a step, but it’s faster.

Finally, for as simple and easy to use as Highlight To Search is, it does have a few options available that will help you use it exactly the way you want.

You have three options available.  The first allows you to modify the “search results in a new tab” behavior mentioned earlier.  If you want, unchecking the first checkbox will open the search results in the current tab.  You can also enable Highlight To Search to work on secure connections (HTTPS), and finally, you can turn off the magnifying glass altogether.  In this case, you trigger the extension’s search box by highlighting the text, then clicking it.

Highlight To Search is an all-around great extesion.  It takes something that Google does well (search the Web), and adds it to Google Chrome, so that you can search faster and more efficiently, not to mention with more precision.  Extensions that are this effortless to use and are so ready-to-go right after trying them out for the first time are pretty rare, but Highlight To Search definitely fits the bill.

Thanks for reading, check out Help Desk Geek - Help Desk Tips For IT Pros for more WordPress news!

Listhings takes the concept of the sticky note and puts it in your web browser.  To use it, first browse over to its web page, located here.

Once you’ve checked it out, click the blue Install button.

Next, confirm that you wish to install it.

When the installation is complete, you’ll find Listhings in your Apps section of the Google Chrome start page.

Here’s what Listhings looks like the first time you open it.

To add more notes, click the Add note button in the upper right corner of the page.

This will bring up a new note.  You can move it around (there is a section near the top of the note you can “grab” in order to accomplish this), and if you want, change the note’s background color.

Although new notes are all the same size, they will change once you start typing.

Although the Listhings window appears to be static, it is actually unlimited in size.  If you begin to drag a sticky note off the edge, a scrollbar appears, and you can drag it as far away from where it started as you want.  The next time you start Listhings, it will be where you placed it.

Listhings can be used in two different modes, with or without a Listhings account.  Without the account, all your notes are saved locally, and without any user interaction.  With an account, however, your notes will be saved to the Listhings servers, so you can install and use Listhings on multiple computers, with all your notes remaining synchronized.  This is a handy feature, and is one that would benefit other, similar extensions.  The Listhings account options are found in the lower left portion of the window.

All in all, Listhings is a pretty nice sticky note extension, and even though it is currently in open beta, seems solid and nicely thought out.  The configuration options could be wider, though.

Although you can change the background color of the note, the text color and font can’t be changed, and there is currently no Options area, even though one is listed in the screenshot above.  However, as Listhings is still in beta, a little patience is probably in order.  In spite of the few drawbacks, Listhings – as it sits right now – is a nice option for a little sticky notes program, all housed within Google Chrome.

Thanks for reading, check out Help Desk Geek - Help Desk Tips For IT Pros for more WordPress news!

Write Space, a Google Chrome extension, attempts to make sure a distraction-free writing space is always easy to find.  It launches a simple, no-frills writing environment in your web browser, so you can write.  Not only are you free of outside distractions, you’re also free of all the formatting options modern web browsers offer, so you can concentrate on content.

To use Write Space, first browse over to its website.

Once there, read its description and view the screenshots, and when you’re ready, click the blue Install button.

You’ll need to confirm your desire to install the extension (don’t worry, Write Space doesn’t actually use the web, so doesn’t need any access to your personal data).

When the installation is finished, you’ll find the Write Space icon located in the Apps section of your start page.

When Write Space opens, you’ll see a basic black background, upon which you’ll type in basic white typewriter text.  It is simple, no-frills writing, and it leaves you with very little to look at, other than your work.

It’s not complete bare bones, however.  At the bottom of the screen is a standard word/line/character counter that keeps live statistics of what you’re doing.  So if you have a paper or project due that needs to be a certain word length, Write Space can help.

If you want a complete distraction-free environment, simply place Google Chrome into fullscreen mode, and all you’ll see is the Write Space interface.  And, if you don’t like the basic white-on-black look of Write Space, simply return to the Google Chrome start page, hover your mouse over the Write Space icon and click the little wrench that appears.  You can also right click on the main Write Space icon.  A contextual menu will appear; near the bottom is the option to access the options area.

You can change how much of the screen the editor takes, the background and font color, as well as whether the font is monospace (the default), sans-serif or serif.  You can also adjust the font size, line spacing and more.  You also have the ability to open Write Space in its own new window or tab, as well as to use the fullscreen mode as the default.

Another thing nice about Write Space is that you can import an already existing text document into it.  And when you’re finished typing, simply close the window or tab; Write Space will automatically save your work.  When you return, everything is as you left it.

At the moment, there are only a couple drawbacks.  It has no sync option, so if you use Google Chrome (and Write Space) on multiple computers, your documents will not be updated.  Another issue is the lack of a document manager.  Because of this, if you’ve been working on “document 1″ and decide to work on “document 2″ you’ll need to import “document 1″ again when you’ve finished with “document 2″.  Finally, it currently has no output functions, so you’ll need to copy and paste your work into something else to save it.

Still, Write Space is a simple-to-use option for those of us wanting a text editor that’s always at hand, easy to use, and able to keep away the distractions of everyday computing life.

Thanks for reading, check out Help Desk Geek - Help Desk Tips For IT Pros for more WordPress news!