Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Yesterday, reports were coming out that Yahoo! was shutting down Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site (Yahoo! also announced they were shutting down AltaVista, which was newsworthy in that apparently AltaVista hadn’t been shut down years ago). Today, TechCrunch is reporting that Yahoo! has no plans to deep-six Del.icio.us, but is instead looking to sell it.

I know a lot of teachers depend on Del.icio.us to share useful advice or resources with their colleagues, or to keep track of interesting stuff they plan to use in class, so this announcement should be a relief. However, TechCrunch also poses the question of whether Yahoo! did indeed plan to kill Del.icio.us, then changed its mind due to the PR backlash it received.

Assuming a sale goes through, there’s still no guarantee Del.icio.us will be around forever. Whoever buys it will still have to find an effective business model for it — no easy task, considering it seems like most social media companies’ business models can be summed up as, “Get bought by Yahoo! or Google.”

If you’re feeling a little antsy about your Del.icio.us bookmarks, Xmarks has recently risen from the grave. Xmarks lets you sync your bookmarks across multiple computers and web browsers, and may be a viable option just in case Yahoo! can’t find a buyer or they change their mind.

Does this announcement have any impact on your teaching? How will you be bookmarking in the wake of this new announcement?

Yahoo Trying To Unload Del.icio.us, Not Shut It Down via TechCrunch

Del.icio.us

Xmarks

BY KEVIN HODGSON

There are many things that I don’t know about the web, even though I spend a fair amount of time on it. I’ll bet you’re the same way, too. Thankfully, there are sites like 20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web is a helpful primer designed to fill in our knowledge gaps about how the web works and how it is constructed.

This site is really a sort of an ebook, put out by Google (it’s always good to see who is publishing the content), in which topics related to using the web and browsers are explored in comprehensible ways, complete with neat little illustrations by Christoph Nieman.

The topics in 20 Things range from cloud computing, to protecting your computer from malware, to the evolution of the web over time. Sure, Google has a huge stake in all of this because the more we use the web, the more we see their advertisements. But this book is user-friendly, packed with good information, and it’s free. I did not see any signs of Google overtly pushing its Chrome browser above any others (such as Firefox or Explorer). The book is set up for you to browse linearly, or for you to jump around the chapters. There are also plenty of embedded hyperlinks that allow you to go deeper into content, should you wish.

20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web

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BY CHRISTOPHER PANNA

If your classroom has a projector, TV, or interactive white board connected to a computer, you’ve no doubt used it to show websites to your class. If you use the Firefox web browser, you probably know about the many helpful add-ons available. The following must-have extensions will change the way you use the web in class.

Adblock Plus: As the name implies, this removes distracting ads from many web pages. Spaces that used to be filled with advertisements will appear blank, allowing your students to focus on what’s important. Once you install Adblock Plus, it will prompt you to choose a filter subscription –- go with “Easy List,” which will block the most common ads.

Image Zoom: For those times when you’re showing a picture on the screen and you need it to be larger or smaller, Image Zoom does the trick. It allows you to resize any picture right on the page on which it appears. This is especially handy for switching between full-screen and zoomed-in views of a picture.

Dictionary Tooltip: This add-on works like a fairy godmother of vocabulary, helping you instantly answer the question, “What does that word mean?” Double-click any word and a small window will appear with a dictionary/thesaurus entry. Question answered.

Pronounce: Sure, you can tell your students how to pronounce a word, unless they encounter a difficult word outside of class. With the Pronounce extension, simply highlight a word, right-click, and choose Pronounce. Don’t forget to turn on your speakers!

I’ve described the basic functions of these add-ons, but each one has further options for customization. Try them yourself and adjust the settings to your liking. If you like the way these work, check out the main page for Firefox add-ons and see what other gems you can find.

Back in 2003 and 2004, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had between 91% and 96% of the browser market. This number has been shrinking slowly since 2004 when Mozilla’s Firefox was introduced. According to Wikipedia, as of February 2009, Internet Explorer had 67.5% of the market share and Firefox came in at number two with almost 22%. Microsoft, with their latest iteration of their browser, hopes to turn this downward trend around.

I’ve been playing with IE8 since the final version was released last Thursday. It’s fast — lightning fast. In fact, in many of the speed tests conducted by various outlets, IE8 outperformed its browser counterparts. It’s definitely much faster than Internet Explorer 7.

There are many slick features in this latest version worth checking out. Microsoft has implemented Firefox’s idea of a “smart location bar,” which automatically searches through your browser history as you’re typing an address — great for those of us who have visited a page but can only remember a portion of the URL. They’ve also implemented the feature that restores your tabs if your browser crashes, which was sorely missed in IE7. A nice feature with IE8′s tabbed browsing is that each tab is it’s own process, similar to Google Chrome, so if a site crashes on a particular tab, the entire browser will not die on you. Simply close the bad tab and continue browsing. IE8 also does a great job of grouping tabs. When you open a new tab from a particular page, the tabs will change color and Internet Explorer 8 will automatically “group” these tabs by color. This is a handy feature for those of us that like to have many tabs open at a single time.

Microsoft beat Mozilla to the punch with “InPrivate” or anonymous browsing, which will delete any tracks of your web journey when you step back into “normal” mode. Another very interesting and neat, albeit somewhat confusing feature is Internet Explorer 8′s new “Accelerator” feature. Accelerator allows you to select any text on a page, then easily perform everyday web browsing tasks such as mapping or searches without navigating to other websites to get things done. For example, you could highlight an address on a web page, use the “Map with Live Maps” accelerator, then view a map of that address directly on the web page you’re currently viewing. Pretty neat.

Internet Explorer 8 has a ton of great features and is very, very quick, but none of this matters if it cannot display a web page correctly. Once of the very first pages I visited with IE8 was The Whirlwind, my school’s online newspaper. Although the page displays properly in every other web browser according to BrowserShots, a web utility that allows you to see screen shots of any web page in multiple browsers, the site displayed incorrectly in this newest version of Internet Explorer, yet displays just fine in Internet Explorer 7 and dozens of other web browsers. Things are supposed to get better not worse, aren’t they?

Overall, I was very impressed with the speed and additional features Internet Explorer 8 has to offer, but until they figure out a way to display web pages correctly or finally decide to comply with web standards their slowly diminishing share in the browser market will, most likely, continue to decline.

Final Word: IE8 does a good job of implementing many features that are already available in Firefox, either by default or with a plug-in. The “Accelerator” feature is worth checking out and if you have things to hide or are concerned about privacy, “InPrivate” browsing is a must have. I’m a Firefox user and have been for quite some time. Internet Explorer 8 did not impress me enough to make the switch back to IE, but if you are an Internet Explorer user, it would be worth your time to check it out. – JERRY SWIATEK

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

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At noon today, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of their web browser. Microsoft touts it as faster, easier, safer, all that stuff. It’s also got nifty features like Compatibility View, which fixes the view of sites designed for ancient browsers.

We’ll try to have a full review sometime in the future. Till then, we’d love to hear what you think about it. Is it worth the upgrade? How does it stack up to other browsers like Firefox and Chrome? Let us know in the comments. -BILL FERRIS

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

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For every positive and supportive person out there on the internet, there are about 500 people being negative and acting like they’re super-cool know-it-alls. I mean, how was I supposed to know that it wasn’t cool anymore to use Netscape to surf the ‘net? Now I’m being told that no one says “surfing the ‘net” anymore, either. That’s enough from my new character, Guy Who’s Bewildered by Computers in 1998. You get the point.

First, please open up your Firefox web browsing program. Now, click here. Elliott Kosmicki, a web developer, marketing specialist and creator of the productivity website Good Plum, offers up a bunch of useful tips for getting some productivity out of Firefox. From keyboard shortcuts to some very handy extension plugins, Kosmicki offers up eight simple tricks you can use to impress other Firefox users.

Maybe you’re at a coffee shop and you want to look cool? These tips can make you look totally rad for someone who is watching you use a computer. Now I’m being told that people stopped saying “totally rad” a long time ago, then the hipsters brought it back for ironic usage, but now its been abandoned for good. I can’t win! -NICK YINGLING

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I love Firefox. Not only has it proved more stable as a browser than IE (Internet Explorer), and has some great built-in features (like spell check), it has a bunch of great add-ons (or plug-ins, or extensions). Many can be found on the Mozilla site (publisher of Firefox).

I’m going to focus today on the variety of search tools you can add to your browser. What’s really slick, is that this will give you one search box, with a pull-down menu listing all the possible sites to search. You can see some “top” choices for search engines by adding the search box, then clicking on the pull-down menu, and select “Manage Search Engines.” Here are my top five for educators:

1. CC is a Creative Commons search tool that is one of the “defaults” available when you click on “Manage Search Engines”
2. Google and Yahoo! are great, but you can also add Ask.
3. Need some reference sources? Let’s start with Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.
4. Wikipedia anyone?
5. Search Flickr tags for that perfect photo.

I’m adding one more for elementary, that Yahooligans! (now Yahoo!Kids).

Happy Searching! -ALICE MERCER

Firefox Add-ons

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I remember in 1996 when someone told me that I didn’t just have to use AOL’s web browser to surf “the ‘Net” (that’s what everyone called it back then). Apparently, you could also use Internet Explorer to check out web pages! Surely, such mind-exploding information probably gave me an instant nose bleed.

Jump to early 2004 when someone tells me that there exists a way to put an end to all the rampant pop-ups and regular browser crashes I was experiencing with Internet Explorer. The answer: Mozilla Firefox. A love affair with Firefox blossomed, IE was banished from my computer and I turned into a total snob towards IE users.

Now Google is getting poised to toss their hat into the web browser ring with Google Chrome. Right now its only being released as Google Chrome Beta so they can gather user feedback, but you can see what direction they’re heading in and some of it definitely looks good. You can find out more about Google Chrome by just, well, Googling it, I suppose. But how about I give you a quick rundown while I’ve got your attention?

Pros:

1. Google Chrome is very clean and sleek — that’s probably why they named it Chrome. If the T-1000 from Terminator 2 turned into a web browser, this is how it would look. One thing I initially resisted, but now enjoy is that the status bar at the bottom of the browser is no longer there all the time. Chrome looks a bit like other browsers would in good old Full Screen, F11 viewing mode. At first I felt a little un-anchored on the web page, as though I was about to fall into the screen. Eventually, I started liking it more and more. Even though it’s just a very small part of the window of other browsers, what’s the point in just taking up space at the bottom of the screen and declaring “Done” the whole time? Chrome’s subdued status bar appears in the bottom left only when needed. Seems like I wrote a lot about one small thing, but hey, it’s the little things, right?
2. Stand alone tabs – No longer will a crash on one tab bring down your entire browser.
3. Speed – Chrome definitely seems fast, but without a few weeks’ worth of browser history and add-on browser applications bogging it down, I can’t say I’ve really put it through the paces yet.

Rather than list the following as “cons,” I’ll give Google the benefit of the doubt since this is a beta version.

Wait and see:

1. Safe browsing – I didn’t really buy anything online because this is still a beta version, and payday is next weekend, anyways. Also, I avoided visiting dubious websites because I’m at work and I wouldn’t want to shatter your illusions about me.
2. Web apps aren’t ready – If you’d like to set up Twitbin in Google Chrome so you can follow LEARN NC on Twitter, you’re just going to have to wait until the browser is able to support web applications. -NICK YINGLING

Google Chrome

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The Internet can be an overwhelming place for children, and can prove especially frustrating for those with autism. But these children can benefit just as much, if not more, from educational computer games and activities, as long as these resources are presented with their special needs in mind.

The ZAC (Zone for Autistic Children) browser is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism and autism-related spectrum disorders like Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. It’s a free, downloadable program that basically takes over your computer, removing other distractions and controls, and simplifies the web, so children can focus and you can feel safe about the content they can access. The browser lets children interact with a diverse, hand-picked selection of games and activities from public Web sites that cater specifically to kids who display the characteristics of autism (impairments in social interaction and communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior).

ZAC also offers a community forum for parents, caretakers, and teachers to share experiences and resources, as well as informative newsletters that you can subscribe to. The Internet can be a great resource for autistic children, and ZAC ensures that they can get the most out of it! — LAUREN FROHNE

ZAC Browser

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