Copying text from links can be quite annoying, as we have to first carefully put the cursor at the beginning or end of the link, and slowly highlight it. As we do this, we also have to make sure we don’t accidentally click the link. ToggleLink: Select Text From Link, a Chrome extension, makes things easier and lets you convert links on webpages to text, so that you can easily copy, select or highlight them. The extension basically toggles the link and helps you select the text. Once you’ve installed the extension, all you have to do is press Shift and hover your mouse over the link. The URL will instantly be converted to text, and you will easily be able to copy all or some of the text. You may want to quickly copy the text, as it changes back to its original form after five seconds.

Once you’ve installed the extension, a ToggleLink option is added to the right-click context menu. You can either select this option or hover your mouse over the link and press the Shift key once to convert the link to text. You can then copy, highlight, and double-click some or all of the link text. Users should note that, after five seconds, the text will be converted back to the original link.

ToggleLink is a user-friendly extension that lets you quickly copy text from links on any webpage. The extension saves up time and has no options or settings, whatsoever. Install the extension from the link below, try it out, and let us know what you think.

Install ToggleLink: Select Text From Link For Google Chrome

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Chrome Speak: Select Text From Any Webpage To Read Out Loud [Chrome]
• Select To Highlight Text On Web Pages & Share via URL [Chrome]
• simpLoupe: Zoom Webpage Content To Read Smaller Text [Chrome]

There are plenty of screen capturing tools available to Android users. Apps such as Screenshot (by Kastor Soft), ShootMe and ScreenCaster & Recorder are just a few renowned names that instantly pop up to mind. That said, all apps belonging to the aforementioned genre are effective if you wish to capture still images of just the currently displayed screen. What if you were to capture an entire webpage on your Android without going through the hassle of grabbing and stitching/combining multiple snapshots to achieve said purpose? This is where SnowDeer Web Scrapper steps in. Sporting a simple web-browser style interface, the app lets you instantly capture snapshots of an entire webpage that you’re currently browsing. Not only can you specify a destination directory of choice for scrapped images, but also set a user-defined filename for each. In addition, the app lets you save each image in high quality JPEG or PNG format, and supports a native image gallery that contains all the captured images. Details, screenshots and download links to follow.

In all, the app’s interface is comprised of an address bar (to cater to the user-defined URLs), a quick-jump explorer bar/tab to access the app’s image gallery, a browser area that displays the currently opened webpage, and most importantly, the SCRAP button that you can tap at any instance to save a snapshot of the required webpage.

Using the app is as simple as it sounds. Just feed in the required URL in the address bar, and once it loads completely, hit the SCRAP button, and TADA! The snapshot of that particular page is now saved as a still image. By default, the app uses the SnowScrapper directory on your SD card to store images.

However, you have the choice of creating/selecting a different subdirectory to store images pertaining to a specific project. For this, all you need to do is hit the file explorer bar (just below the address bar), and select a folder of your liking. Tapping the plus (+) icon on this screen lets you create a new folder. To set a different folder as the default destination directory for captured images, just hit its icon, and press the Scrap to here button at the bottom. Apart from listing all the user-created folders, the explorer screen also displays thumbnails of saved images. Tapping a thumbnails reveals the image in full screen, with option to zoom in/out as required.

From the app’s preferences screen (tap Menu > Settings), you can hit the Set file extension option to specify the default image format for captured photos, enable/disable High quality mode, and select whether you wish to rename each captured image manually or automatically. The best thing about this app, in particular, is that it supports integration with other web browsers (such as Dolphin HD & Firefox etc.), and can be initiated through the page sharing option from within a browser of choice. The end result; the webpage in question gets opened directly through SnowDeer Web Scrapper, and can be ‘scrapped’ as an image file with just a simple tap.

During a brief test run of the app, we managed to grab high quality full-screen images of quite a few webpages of interest. We must admit that the effectiveness of the app, along with the quality of output images, was quite commendable. However, it must be mentioned that the app currently supports capturing images in portrait orientation only (even if you tilt the device according to the landscape orientation), which means that for extensively larger web pages (effectively, their snapshots), you might have to zoom in a bit further to get the image’s content read clearer.

Apart from that, SnowDeer Web Scrapper is a handy tool for all those who’re frequently required to grab snapshots of an entire webpage for various projects and assignments.

SnowDeer Web Scrapper is free in the Android Market, and requires Android OS v2.2 or higher to run. The app can be downloaded via the Market link or QR code provided below.

Download SnowDeer Web Scrapper

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Web Scroll Capture For iPhone: Take Full-Length Webpage Screenshots
• How To Capture High Quality Thumbnails Of Any Webpage
• Xtreme Shot: Capture Entire Screen, Selected Region & App UI Elements

iReader, a Firefox add-on, allows you to view news stories and articles in a clean and clutter-free interface. It strips out all the extra content, such as ads and sidebars, and displays the article in a neat layout with a toolbar that comes with multiple options, such as zoom in and out, print, emailing, sharing and more. In addition to that, it supports multi-page news articles as well. iReader works automatically, and as soon as you land on a webpage that displays an article, iReader icon appears right in the URL bar. Simply click this or use the hotkey to open the article in iReader. The add-on can be useful for people who want to read articles without any distractions.

When browsing the web, you will notice the iReader icon in the URL bar. Simply click it to start reading the article in a simple and clean layout. When you hover your mouse over the article, the iReader toolbar appears at the bottom of the page with multiple options. Using this toolbar, you can zoom in and out of the page, print the article out, or email it. The zooming option can be great for people who want to read articles in larger fonts. Furthermore, the Twitter and Facebook buttons allow you to share the article with others, and clicking the image icon lets you to hide/unhide images in articles. The settings button lets you access iReader options.

iReader Options come with two categories, Reader and Article Style. The Reader category lets users control the level of Background Opacity, set a Hotkey to enable iReader, enable Mail Articles from Gmail, Smooth Scroll and Enable Animation options. The Article Style category consists of Font Family, Article width and Article Margin Options. You can change these settings by selecting an option from the drop-down menus. Also, enable or disable Justify Text, depending on your preferences. Once done, click Ok, and you’re good to go.

iReader is an unobtrusive add-on that gives you great design and functionality for a better online reading experience. It can be quite useful for regular users of Firefox who read loads of articles online and want a clean, clutter-free reader.

Install iReader Add-On For Firefox

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Legally Bypass Paywall On WSJ And Read Articles For Free In Chrome
• ‘I Need To Read This’ Lets You Add Articles To Your To-Read List
• Grab Articles Or Books From The Web And Convert To ePub In Firefox

Firefox’s word search function can search one word after another, without keeping a history of the previously entered words. This means when you’re searching multiple webpages or websites, you have to enter the same search words over and over again. Not only can this be tiring, but also a time consuming process. FindList, a Firefox add-on, turns the find box to a drop-down history list, and saves the last 50 searches on a web page. So, while browsing the web, you can simply access and select words from this drop-down list. In addition to that, the number of entries can easily be changed from the FindList Preferences.

To find a particular word on a webpage, you either have to press F3 or use the Ctrl+F combination. Without the add-on, the search results are not saved, which means you have to enter the same words repeatedly to search for them on different websites. FindList lets you access previously entered search words from a drop-down menu, saving time and effort. Select text from the drop-down menu, and click the Next/Previous buttons to navigate the webpage.

The FindList Preferences allow you to Keep entries and change the Number of entries. A maximum of 50 entries can be saved in the drop-down menu, and the field width can also be easily changed. Once done with the settings, hit OK, and you’re good to go.

This is a small but quite helpful add-on, which can be used to quickly find words on webpages. Unfortunately, the add-on does not have a delete button for removing individual search results. Install the add-on from the link below, try it out, and let us know what you think.

Install FindList Add-On For Firefox

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Access Backward And Forward History From Dropdown Menu In Firefox 4
• History Export Saves History As HTML, JSON, XML Or Text File [Firefox]
• Switch Tab Groups From Dropdown Menu In Firefox With Tab Group Switcher

iZoom Chrome extension allows users to view entire webpages, even when the window size is decreased, and, increases the content size as the window’s size is increased. It automatically changes zoom level to fit window width. The extension comes with three different zooming modes, Shrink, Grow and Shrink & Grow. For Shrink, the zoom is always 100%, unless window width is decreased and contents will shrink to fit. Grow, on the other hand, causes the webpage content to grow with the width of the window. Content will shrink and grow to fit window width, when the Shrink & Grow option is enabled. When you switch between modes, the current pages must be reloaded in order for the changes to take effect. In addition to the zooming modes, users can also exclude images, videos, flash elements and java applets from zooming effects. Exempted items can be added from the options, or simply add current page and host to exceptions from the right-click context menu.

Select the Grow option from the toolbar or the right-click context menu, refresh your webpage, and you will be able to grow web content as the window’s size is increased.

Similarly, select the Shrink option, refresh your page, and contents will shrink to fit the width of the window. Entire webpages can be viewed, no matter how small the window size is (although you might have to make use of a microscope).

You can change the mode settings from the iZoom Options, toggle the extension’s functionality, and select a Zoom mode from the list of options.

This Maximum Zoom Allowed percentage is used by Grow Only and Shrink & Grow modes to calculate the maximum size to which the contents may be enlarged. The Error Margin percentage value is subtracted to actual zoom level to avoid errors. By default, Exceptions list blocks Gmail from being zoomed. The Exempted Elements that you select will not be affected by Grow changes. Note that, excluding these elements may lead to a slower performance and layout arrangement.

This extension can particularly be helpful for people who browse the web on netbooks and small screens. They can view entire web pages, without having to use horizontal scrollbars, when the windows are resized.

Install iZoom For Google Chrome

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• simpLoupe: Zoom Webpage Content To Read Smaller Text [Chrome]
• Make Windows 7 Remember Window Explorer Position & Size
• Chrome Speak: Select Text From Any Webpage To Read Out Loud [Chrome]

If you read loads of articles or other content online, and find it difficult to focus on reading because of the layout or font size, then EasyReader, a Chrome extension, can be of great help, as it allows you to customize and improve the readability of a whole or part of an article. Simply click the EasyReader button in the toolbar, mouse over the content and click on it to read articles in a clearer interface. You may customize the color, size, font and text alignment. It simply works by displaying your content in a simple, clutter free text box by stripping extra items from a webpage. Another useful feature is the ability to change the font size, which can particularly come in handy for people who have a problem with writing size on some websites. Also, change the width of the content by dragging the right edge of the box, and add images to the background by simply entering an image URL in the options.

When on a webpage, click the button in the toolbar and hover your mouse over the desired content to highlight it, and then click your selection for EasyReader to kick in.

This can be applied to the entire page, or parts of a webpage. The website becomes blurred and the content pops out with a white background. Background color can be modified, and even images can be used should you wish so. Drag the right edge of the text box to change the width according to your preference.

EasyReader comes with extensive options, allowing you to change CSS attributes, such as font size, color, alignment of the text and more. Also, you can change the color for the background and links.

Reading can become a difficult task when websites are cluttered and fonts are too small. EasyReader is a handy extension that allows you to focus by providing you with a clutter-free interface for entire or parts of websites. This extension is similar to TidyRead that we recently covered. You can visit the link below and try EasyReader out.

Install EasyReader For Google Chrome

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Improve Text Readability On Any Site With Change Colors For Chrome
• Duplicate Content Allows You To Detect Duplicate Content Online [Web]
• Kuunga Chrome Web App Lets You Customize Chrome’s New Tab Page

Research is an integral part of writing. No matter what the topic is, a writer has to spend a lot of time doing research before they can actually start to pen down anything. These days, most of the research work is done on the internet, where writers browse through hundreds of webpages, reading and looking up new information from multiple sources at a time. Shelfster is an application that simplifies the process of research and writing, by allowing you to quickly capture text and image clippings from webpages or documents. The content can be organized, viewed and edited using titles, tags, annotations and project categories, and is stored directly in an online account, enabling you to access your data wherever there is an internet connection and a capable device.

The application sits in the system tray after installation. Right-click its icon to access Account Settings, toggle Show Clip/Crop tools, open New Idea and New Image window, and select Clip Selection & Crop Selection tools (also available in Shelfster Tools).

The copying process just involves a few simple steps. To copy text, first select the text that you want to copy, then click Clip in Shelfster Tool. To take a screenshot of your screen, select Crop from Shelfster Tool, define the boundaries of your screenshot and double click inside the selected area.

Once an item is copied, you will be automatically taken to the New Item window. Edit Title, choose Tags, enter Notes and select Category before saving. The application automatically extracts the Source of the content, and saves it along with the item.

To send the copied content to an online account, you will need to sign up for the service on the product home page. Enter a valid Email Address, Username, Password and click Sign Up to activate your account.

Once your account is created, you will be able to access the copied content and use Shelfster’s web-app to perform basic document editing functions, and Save, Export, Delete and Print a document.

Right-click the system tray icon and select Account Settings to configure settings related to automatic uploading of Content, Keyboard Shortcuts and Tags.

Shelfster works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Shelfster

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Collect And Organize Fragmented Web Content Into Research Booklet With Trails
• Memonic: Capture And Bookmark Web Content To Organize Data
• Cloud Drive: Quickly Upload Files To Google Docs [Desktop Gadget]

We have previously covered a lot of screenshot taking tools, including Shotty and GreenShot that let you capture selected region and full window screenshots with ease. EasyScreenshot is yet another screenshot taking utility that allows you to take screenshots with multiple techniques such as FullScreen, Selected Area and WebPage Shot. What makes this application different from the lot is its ability to directly upload screenshots to your twitter account and tweet it, so you can easily share screenshots with others. Moreover, since the app has watermarking capabilities, your tweeted screenshots will automatically be branded with your specified text, ensuring that you remain the true owner. Hence, if you are a power Twitter user, EasyScreenshot is definitely worth your time.

The application has a simple, minimalist interface with Full Shot (to take screenshot of the whole screen), Selected Area (to take screen of the selected area), WebPage (to take scrollable screenshot of a complete webpage), and Settings (to access the Settings window) button available.

The WebPage option allows you to take complete scrollable screenshots of webpages by entering the Website URL.

The Settings menu includes settings related to Using the image like Save To EasyScreenshot Folder and Prompt Where to Save, Watermarking options, TwitPic Uploading options and Other Settings such as Enable Shutter Sounds and Run on PC Startup.

The watermark is added to the top left corner of the screen, and images are automatically saved in the EasyScreenshot folder. When Upload to EasyScreenshot option is enabled, images will be automatically uploaded and you will be given an option to copy the URL address to clipboard for sharing with others. EasyScreenshot works on all versions of Windows.

Download EasyScreenshot

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• DesktopTweet – Quickly Snap Screenshot And Upload It To Twitter
• Take Screenshot And Upload It Online With ZScreen
• Take & Upload Screenshot To Flickr With Social Screen Capture

Need to read one more article, but already feeling too exhausted? Announcify, a Google Chrome extension, can help you read and relax at the same time. It works by converting written text (on any website) to speech. Unlike other text-to-speech extensions, you don’t need to select any text, as this extension will read out the whole web page for you.You can hear your lengthy articles read out loud when you don’t feel like exercising your eyes. The extension allows you to change the speed, pitch and volume of the read-aloud voice.

Once you’ve installed Announcify, its icon is added right next to the URL bar. In order to listen to an article, just click the button and your article will be opened in a new tab, ready to be read. A great feature of Announcify is that it blurs the text that isn’t being read at present, therefore letting you focus on the current text and follow what parts are being read.

Using the options menu, you can change the Volume, Speed and Pitch of the voice according to your preferences. You can also reset it to defaults.

This is a handy extension that will let you rest your tired eyes and at the same time, let you learn new stuff. This extension is similar to Chrome Speak that we previously covered, but is much easier to use, as it automatically reads out the entire page without requiring you to select text, so sit back and relax and listen to all those lengthy articles with Announcify.

Install Announcify Extension For Google Chrome

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Announcify Gives You Audio Alerts For Unread Items in Gmail [Chrome]
• Legally Bypass Paywall On WSJ And Read Articles For Free In Chrome
• Make Scrolling Easier When Reading Long Articles In Chrome

Tab Position Customizer, a Google Chrome extension, lets you personalize the behaviour of tabs so you can work more efficiently. By default, Chrome opens new tabs to the right of the current tab, while staying on the current webpage. This extension changes this default setting by offering you with different tab opening and activating options, such as first, last, right and left of the current tab.

Tab Position Customizer also allows you to activate the first, last, right and left tabs after closing the current one. Furthermore, you can select to open a new tab that is either activated or inactivated, depending upon your preference. The Miscellaneous option lets you open a pop-up window in a new tab.

This extension is quite useful for those who sift through multiple tabs and want to customize how they operate. It provided faster access and management, and can be grabbed at the link provided below.

Install Tab Position Customizer For Chrome

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Announcify For Chrome Lets You Listen To Articles On Any Website
• Tabulate! Lets You Send Multiple Open Tabs To Others At Once [Chrome]
• Open Tabs In Firefox To A Desired Position With TabMyPosition

Are you tired of scrolling down or clicking the next button over and over again to view images? It can be really frustrating specially if the album contains several images. Slideshow for Facebook, Flickr And Google Images is a Google Chrome extension that makes things easier for you by creating slideshows for albums on Facebook, Flickr and Google Images. A slideshow icon will appear in your URL bar as soon as you open a webpage with images supported websites. Previously we reviewed a similar extension, Auto Play In Facebook Theater Mode, but that worked only on Facebook. Slideshow for Facebook, Flickr And Google Images has added two more photo sharing websites.

The extension has a number of options right on top of the page, allowing you to share images on Facebook , Twitter or Google Buzz. Slideshow also shows the link of the website where the image is being pulled from, clicking which will launch the website. It has a cross button, which, when clicked, ends the slideshow. A small thumbnail bar at the bottom of the page scrolls all images upon mouse-over.

You can either use the forward/backward arrow keys to view images, or left-click the thumbnails at the bottom to open an image.

The extension is quite handy to view a large number of photos on in a more convenient way.

Install Slideshow for Facebook, Flickr And Google Images

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Quickly View & Download Original Flickr Images With Flickr Original [Firefox]
• Select Any Text To View Google Images Search Result In Chrome [Extension]
• Facebook Photo Slideshow

Back in June I wrote two ways to Print Any Part Or Section Of Web Page Without Ads, but if you are using Internet Explorer then there is a much easier way. We at AddictiveTips are huge fans of Firefox browser, but we also use Internet Explorer when necessary.

Note: This post is for those users who use Internet Explorer as their web browser.

Printee is an extension for Internet Explorer that lets user print the webpage the way he/she want. You must have noticed that the default Internet Explorer print feature is useless since it prints just about everything, thus wasting time, ink, and money. If you only want to print the content of the article only without printing the ads and other useless content, then it would be almost impossible to do so with the default Print feature.

With Printee you can customize the webpage by removing the background, aligning the content to the desired position, removing ads, and much more. In the below screenshots you will see how the webpage looked like before and after stripping down most of the useless content using this add-on.

Before

After

Above screenshots are taken from developer’s website.

When you load up Printee, you will see all the options listed in the new toolbar as shown in the above screenshots. Overall, it is quite a useful and easy-to-use tool that would definitely come handy to all IE users.

Download Printee Extension for Internet Explorer

Enjoy!

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Password Protect Internet Usage With Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer Compatibility In Chrome With IE Tab Classic
• IE View: Load Websites In Internet Explorer Compatibility [Firefox]

I use Abduction add-on for Firefox to take screenshot of websites. It does the job pretty well. If I were to create a thumbnail, first I will take the screenshot of the web page and then resize it using IrfanView. It is a pretty straightforward process, but the problem arises in the image quality. When you are resizing the 900px screenshot into 150px or 100px thumbnail, won’t it effect the overall quality? Obviously, it will.

Web Page Thumbnail is a free tool for Windows that let’s you take high quality thumbnails of any web page. Just enter the website URL using the build-in browser and it will load up the site instantly, you can then browse to any page who’s thumbnail you want to create.

Once you are on the desired page, click Capture button. All captured images can be found in Captured Images tab. Now select the thumbnail from this tab and click Save, select the destination where you want to save the thumbnail. That’s it.

All thumbnails are saved in JPG format have size less than 10kb, in most cases. It works on Windows XP and Vista. I recommend checking out SiteShoter too, it takes screenshots of any website at fixed time intervals. Enjoy!

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• PowerPoint 2010: Always Print Presentation Slides In High Quality
• Create High Quality Interactive Charts, Timeline, And Maps Online
• Record Skype Calls In High Quality With MP3 Skype Recorder

Did you come across an awesome website and wondered which combination of colors they are using? I Like Your Colors is a free online tool by Owen Winkler that extracts the colors of any website or blog. It actually reads the website’s stylesheet(style.css file) to find the colors and the end results are surprisingly accurate.

Just enter your URL of any website or blog at the bottom and click Get colors. When I tried to  get colors of facebook, the results were stunning. It can read multiple stylesheets within seconds.

This tool can be used by developers to check the colors of different websites which can aid them in selecting the colors for their own site. Enjoy!

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• Get Your Blog Or Website Indexed With Website Indexer
• How To Check The Hosting Company Of A Website Or Blog
• ColorUtility: Extract Colors From An Image & Combine Multiple Colors Into One

Have you ever tried refreshing you webpage in Firefox and you experienced it displayed the cached version instead of downloading the page from the server? Mozilla Firefox is the most loved browser in the world and its not just the hatred towards Microsoft rather its the support of thousands of little add-ons and tweaks that make it the most customizable and secure browser. To further customize the way your browser behaves you can tweak Firefox to refresh the web page without clearing cache.

You may have experience this often that when you try to reload your webpage, Firefox sometimes shows the cached version instead of directly downloading the new content updated from the server. You can refresh instead of closing all the browser window by Pressing CTRL + F5, this way Firefox will directly request the data stream from the server instead of showing the cached version.

I hope this quick tips would make Firefox experience more seamless. Enjoy !

More On AddictiveTips Right Now

• GCache – Google Cache Page Firefox Extension
• Cool Cleaner For Android Makes Clearing History And App Cache Easier
• Save Files From Browser’s Cache In Firefox