02 January 2014

How to Play YouTube Videos In The Background, And Even With The Screen Off



youtube

It is not often a third-party developer gets to beat Google at its own game. And yet, the official YouTube video app contains some glaring annoyances that just cry out to be fixed. Despite its unfortunate name, Viral Floating YouTube Popup is a high-quality player that fixes all of those flaws, and then some. I hate popups (who likes them?) and I don’t really like viral videos either, but I’m glad that didn’t stop me from checking out what turned out to be one of the very best YouTube apps out there today. Plays Videos In The Background, Rotates Like...


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How to Style Google Custom Search on your Website



Google Custom Search makes your website searchable using the same technology that powers the main Google.com search engine. You just have to add a JavaScript snippet to your template and visitors will be able to easily find content they are looking for on your website.


Google Custom Search, by default, uses the classic Google layout – blue titles, green links and black snippets – for styling search results on your site. You do have an option to choose a different color scheme and font family for your search results* but that’s pretty much it.


Google Custom Search


Google Custom Search with Custom CSS Styles


If you have ever used the site search function on labnol.org, you may noticed that the search results are styled slightly different – there’s no URL displayed beneath the titles, the matching keywords aren’t highlighted in bold and the pagination numbers are displayed as square buttons.


You cannot add these custom styles though the Custom Search editor but you can write simple CSS rules that will bring the same effect. The idea is simple. As annotated in the above screenshot, every element in the search results page has a class associated with it. You can use set the style for a class as display:none to hide a particular element or use the regular font, color, border properties to stylize that element.


For instance, lets target the info box in search results that displays the result count (class=gsc-result-info). If you would like to hide that particular block, you can add a rule in your stylesheet that says .gsc-result-info { display:none; } and the count won’t show up anymore. Similarly, you can say .gs-snippet {display:none} to only display titles and not snippets.


The Custom Search editor won’t let you change the font size the title and results but with CSS, you can do that easily.


Here are some more CSS rules that you may use to style your Custom Search engine.



<style type='text/css'>

/* Use a different font family for search results */
.gs-title, .gs-snippet {
font-family: courier;
}

/* Add a border between individual search results */
.gs-webResult {
border: 1px solid #eee;
padding: 1em;
}

/* Do no display the count of search results */
.gsc-result-info {
display: none;
}

/* Hide the Google branding in search results */
.gcsc-branding {
display: none;
}

/* Hide the thumbnail images in search results */
.gsc-thumbnail {
display: none;
}

/* Hide the snippets in Google search results */
.gs-snippet {
display: none;
}

/* Change the font size of the title of search results */
.gs-title a {
font-size: 16px;
}

/* Change the font size of snippets inside search results */
.gs-snippet {
font-size: 14px;
}

/* Google Custom Search highlights matching words in bold, toggle that */
.gs-title b, .gs-snippet b {
font-weight: normal;
}

/* Do no display the URL of web pages in search results */
.gsc-url-top, .gsc-url-bottom {
display: none;
}

/* Highlight the pagination buttons at the bottom of search results */
.gsc-cursor-page {
font-size: 1.5em;
padding: 4px 8px;
border: 2px solid #ccc;
}

</style>

These rules will also come handy when you don’t have the permission to change the default look and feel from the Custom Search editor.


[*] If you would like to use a custom color scheme for your custom search engine, go to google.com/cse, choose your search engine and then switch to the Look and Feel tab. Here you can choose different colors for the titles, URLs and snippets, switch to a different font family (default is Arial) and also choose a different color for the background.


This story, How to Style Google Custom Search on your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/01/2014 under Google, Internet

Turn Twitter Into A Custom Reading List With Tweetbits



tweetbits

Is there a way to use Twitter like an RSS reader and stay updated on what really matters? There are several. You can use Twitter lists to create your very own reading lists, you can use Twitter’s new custom timelines on TweetDeck, or you can opt for an interesting third option: Tweetbits. For Frequent Favoriters Twitter’s timeline can get cluttered, especially if you’re interested in many things. Filtering your timeline is one way to go, but you still may not have time to read every tweet you’re really interested in. This is were the “favorite” option can come in handy....


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Can My PC Run Windows 8.1? Test It Using Windows 8.1 Upgrade Assistant



CLICK HERE TO SEE FULL POST



It’s been about two and half months since Microsoft released the final (RTM) version of Windows 8.1 to the public. Windows 8.1 update is absolutely free for existing Windows 8 users but users who’re running Windows 7 and previous versions need to buy Windows 8.1. Users who are currently running Windows 8 or previous versions […]

Create Direct Links to your Files on Google Drive



You can upload files of virtually all types to your Google Drive – from documents to movies to zip archives – and people with whom you have shared the file can easily view them in the browser itself. The Google Docs web viewer is pretty capable and can render all the popular formats including Photoshop files and AutoCAD drawings.


That’s a useful feature but sometimes you may want to bypass the built-in Google Docs viewer and force the browser to download the file instead of opening it. Thus if a user has Photoshop on their computer, the PSD file that you have shared through Google Drive will open in Photoshop and not in their web browser.


Google Drive will mostly render shared links in the browser but you can change that.

Google Drive will mostly render shared links in the browser but you can change that.



Create Direct Links and Skip the Web Viewer


Google Drive doesn’t offer a simple option for creating these “direct download” link but you can easily create them by slightly modifying the generated URLs. Here’s the trick.


A file hosted on Google Drive has a shared link that looks like this:



https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

When you access this link, it will render the file in the browser but if you can rewrite this URL slightly, the link, when clicked, will download the corresponding file in the user’s browser instead of opening it in the browser. The modified URL would be:



https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=FILE_ID

All you have to do is make note of the FILE_ID in the original URL and use it in the modified URL. For example, here’s an image file hosted on Google Drive that will open in the browser and here’s the modified URL that forces the browser to download the file.


Direct Download Links for Google Documents


The trick works for native Google Documents too though the URL format is a little different.


Google Docs: When you share a Google document, the URL would be:



https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

Replace /edit with /export and add the file format that the document should be saved as and your download link is ready.



https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf

The above links will now download the same Google document in Word (.docx) and PDF formats. You can also use “txt”, “html” and “odt” for the download format.


Google Presentations: Google Docs offer an even simpler URL scheme for creating direct links to Google Presentations. The original shared links are of the following format:



https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

The direct links for downloading the same presentation deck in PowerPoint (.pptx) and PDF formats are below:



https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pptx https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/FILE_ID/export/pdf

Google Spreadsheets: Open your Google Spreadsheet in the browser, make the sheet Public (or Anyone with a link) and make a note of the shared URL. It should be something like this:



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing

The direct download links use a similar format as Google Documents and will read like:



https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=xlsx https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/export?format=pdf

Bonus Trick – Make a Copy


Google Spreadsheets offers an additional feature that is not available in Documents and Presentations (at least yet). You can create links to Google Sheets that will automatically create a copy of your Google Sheet in the Google Drive of the person with whom you have shared the sheet.



Before: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/FILE_ID/edit?usp=sharing After: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=FILE_ID&newcopy=true

The newcopy=true parameter did the trick.




This story, Create Direct Links to your Files on Google Drive, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/01/2014 under Google Drive, Internet

12 Productivity Habits To Finally Hack Your Life In The New Year



A common resolution for most working people is to be more productive. In this article, we'll explore twelve bad habits that you can change -- one per month -- to drastically improve your workload productivity.

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This Is How Microsoft Has Been Trying To Change The Game In 2013



microsoft store

Microsoft has been behind. As Apple released the iPad and the tablet market grew, Microsoft seemed to sit around and twiddle their thumbs for a few years. The great sleeping giant has now been fully awakened and Microsoft is frantically trying not just to catch up, but to get ahead of everyone else. The PC market continues to decline, with 2013 seeing the steepest decline of the PC market ever. Even Apple took a hit on their own PCs, as the iPad and other tablets cannibalized their sales. This is the world Microsoft awoke to find itself in. Windows 8.1...


Read the full article: This Is How Microsoft Has Been Trying To Change The Game In 2013