www.devco.net by r.i.pienaar

24Oct/050

Customize Google

After fiddling a bit with Flock I really liked the bookmarks integration but hated the rest of it so I figured I'll try find some plugins for Firefox that does something similar, it has to be said these is a major gap here for plugins in that area, sigh.
So while doing that I came across Customize Google, it's a fantastic little plugin that fixes up Google search results, some of its features:

  • Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you're typing) on all searches
  • Add links to competitors that lets you search on other search engines for the same term
  • Rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images
  • Removes image copying restrictions in Google Print
  • Secure Gmail, switch to https
  • Remove ads, including gmail
  • Anonymize your Google userid
  • Filter spammy websites from search results
  • Add links to WayBack Machine (webpage history)
  • Remove click tracking

These are all fantastic features though I think the spammy link filter deserves special attention. I previously wrote a frontend to Google using the Google API to filter out those annoying user review sites, this does the same just right there in the actual google interface. Supports regex and all that, fantastic.
Check it out. There is an animated gif demo on their front page, that should get you hooked immediately.

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10Oct/050

DHTML Menus

It is time for a site redesign and I've been investigating DHTML menus. Till now I've used Visual Menu, it is nice but has this windows wizard type tool for building the menu otherwise you need to use a pretty complex but flexible config file format. Currently I'm on a mac so its just annoying, so I figured it's time for something new.
A bit of browsing found TwinHelix a site with a couple of DHTML based menu's and other gizmos, some really nice there, its donation ware but you can use it for free if you provide a link back to the author.
I'll launch my new design once the new Movable Type is out with its tags and other new stuff since incorporating those will require a bit of template hacking, will get it all done in one go.

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9Oct/050

Practical guide to BSD rc.d scripting

I don't often write RC scripts these days, most things are in ports and works out of the box, but now and then I need to write something and don't feel like pouring over the tons of man pages for something I do once or twice a year.
Today a few sites mentioned an excellent article titled 'Practical guide to BSD rc.d scripting' which seems exactly like the thing I need, shows detail examples with explanations of each knob in the typical file, great read.