Firefox users can now improve their browser based on the abovementioned fact by using a great Firefox add-on titled Compact Toolbar Buttons. This little add-on decreases the in-between spaces of your toolbar buttons. Here by toolbar buttons, we mean the back, forward, stop, refresh, and home buttons.

Here is how the buttons on our Firefox looked prior to using the add-on:

Now have a look at the effect Compact Toolbar Buttons had:

The difference is quite noticeable.

If you want the buttons to occupy even lesser space, you can right click on the main toolbar, and enter customize:

In the upcoming window, check the ‘Use Small Icons’ checkbox as shown in the image below:

As a consequence of the buttons taking up lesser space, the in-between spaces of the shortcuts on your bookmarks toolbar also is also reduced. Compact Toolbar Buttons may not be an add-on making a huge difference, but the effect it has is still noticeable and significant. Try the add-on now and feel the free space yourself.

The steps involved in the process are basic and simple:

1. Select banner size or create custom size banner
2. Select background color, style or upload you own image
3. Add text and style
4. Add banner effect upload logo
5. Save or Download your custom banner

Before one proceeds to make a banner, a free signup is required.

After you set up a free account and login using that account, the first step towards banner making is to choose the banner size:

As can be seen above, the user can either set a custom size or choose from a list of predefined sizes. The second step requires adding a background to the banner:

Of course without adding any special effects to your banner, the result would not stand out from the crowd; hence the fourths step lets the user add certain effects to the banner being created:

The fifth and final step is where the user gets to download/save his/her banner.

With its easy to understand interface, Live Banner Maker is one of the most user-friendly ways to create your own banners. Visit the homepage here and take Live Banner Maker out for a test drive.

To play HD Content on your PS3, you’ll be needed

• PS3 (PlayStation 3)
• PC
• Java SE Runtime Environment (Download version x64 if you are on 64bit, install this before PS3MS)
• PS3 Media Server (works on Linux/Windows/Mac)

Setting Up PS3 Media Server

The first screen you will see is the status screen.

If working correctly PS3 Media Server will detect your PS3. For this to happen both your PC and PS3 must be turned on, and connected to your router or modem.

If there is a problem you will see this screen. The most common cause for this is a firewall on your PC blocking either the PS3 Media Server application or JAVA. Both have to be whitelisted within your firewall application.

The traces tab will act as your debug log, it is helpful to read it if you are experiencing the second image above, as it may give clues as to why your PS3 and PC aren’t talking to each other.

The first useful thing to notice here is you can install PS3 MS as a Windows Service. This will enable your media sharing every time you turn your PS3 on. You could always just add a shortcut to the PS3MS exe under your startup folder though.

Ignore the network settings unless you’re having issues getting your PC to talk to your PS3, you can force an IP for the server here if you need to manually open a port on your router.

Enable the HTTPV2 engine, and prevent OS from sleeping while streaming so your power saving features don’t kick in and put your PC in standby whilst you’re watching a movie.

Turn on thumbnails generation, use mplayer for video thumbnails and also DVD ISOs thumbnails. The Thumbnail seeking position can be set to whatever time you want. This creates a thumbnail from the actual video.

Audio thumbails can be gathered from various sources, the drop down box lists the likes of Amazon.

Protip – PS3 Media Server supports custom thumbnails from your hard drive if you’d rather use something else other than a snapshot from the video. If you save an image as ‘folder.png’ in the same folder as your video file it will use that. An example:

On PC

On PS3

The PSD file with the template for the cover art I use can be downloaded here. Credits to Neowin member Boz for creating the template.

Navigation/Parsing settings contains various visual tweaks you can accustom yourself to. The #Video Settings# and #Transcode# folder hold very useful settings depending on your streaming needs, browse these folders on your PS3 to see. For example:

#Transcode Folder#

When enabled this folder will let you customize your file playback. If you have dual audio options or subtitles to choose from, you can go into this folder and select what you want.

If however for example all your movies are in english/don’t need subtitles you can hide the #Transcode Folder# to clean up your menus.

The Shared folders section is where your movies are located.

Protip – With HD movies taking up 10’s of GB of space at times, many of us may have our movies spanned across multiple drives. When it comes to browsing your files this can be a pain, as they aren’t all shown in the one location under PS3 MS and you may forget what drive has what movies. There is a very easy and efficient solution, Linkshell Extension.

Install Linkshell Extension for your operating system. Afterwards you will notice new entries on your context menu called ‘Pick Link Source’

This is used to specify what file or folder you want to create a virtual link to. Look at this scenario below:

Here we have two movies, but both these movies are on separate drives. In order to play them both back through PS3 Media Server, we’d have to add both locations to our Shared Folders section and browse them on our PS3 separately.

What we can do now is create one centralised folder, say C:\Movies. We would right click on one of our two movie folders above and hit ‘Pick Link Source’. We would then navigate to our C:\Movies folder and right click, go to ‘Drop As’, then ‘Symbolic Link Clone’.

Do this for both folders and you’ll have this scenario

We have now created two virtual shortcuts to our actual movies within C:\Movies. Since they are shortcuts as you can see they occupy ‘0kb’. This can be done with folders or files.

If you’re now wondering why we didn’t just create an ‘everyday’ windows right click, paste shortcut, it’s because such shortcuts won’t work in PS3MS.

On your PS3 you will have your ‘Movies’ folder browsable as normal:

And inside:

Both movies in the one place, even although they are physically stored on two different drives.

The ‘Transcoding Settings’ tab is where we get into the real meat of things, and it’s crucial to set things up correctly here.

First of all, under common transcode settings:

Leave the transcode buffer size at 400 (it’s in relation to your ram). Only change this to a lower amount if you have a low amount of ram, say 1GB, or even 512mb.

Number of cores relates to your CPU, PS3MS should automatically detect this, but in case it doesn’t manually enter how many cores you are running on.

Chapters support will add a feature under the #Transcode# folder that allows you to see virtual chapters created for the interval minute setting you supply.

Number of audio channels relates to the sound setup hooked up to your PS3, self explanatory. Leave the bitrate at 640.

Keep DTS audio in stream is a selling point of PS3 MS. If you have a 5.1 sound system and have encoded a movie with the DTS soundtrack intact, check this box to play DTS through your PS3. Your PS3 must have the volume normalized though, and tracks set to 1+2. If not you’ll just hear static…

These settings can be accessed from pressing ‘Triangle’ during video playback.

Also do note, under video info, ‘Select’ during playback, the audio will report itself as PCM 2.0, 1.5Mpbs

This is just part of the trick to getting DTS working through streamed media, ignore it and instead pay attention to your receiver, you will notice your ‘DTS’ light is lit up and you are hearing audio through all 5 speakers.

Next setting to pay attention to is ‘Remux when audio track is AC3′. This should be ticked if you have a 5.1 sound system as any movies/tv shows you have that include a 5.1 AC3 soundtrack will have the audio passed through untouched. If you don’t have a 5.1 sound system don’t check this, unless your AC3 is 2.0, as you’ll need to let PS3 MS downmix any 5.1 audio tracks to 2.0 for your TV.

Under video quality settings we look at the bandwidth for transcoding. By default these settings are fine if you’re using a wired network. If you’re on wireless, select one of the lower settings from the drop down menu.

Next under video files engines, mencoder:

Turn on ‘Enhanced multicore support for H264 HD content’ if you have a processor with two or more cores.

Turn on ‘Switch to tsMuxer when H264 video is PS3 compatible and there’s no configured subs’. This will enable HD content to be remuxed if it doesn’t need transcoded, it’s crucial to turn this on.

The rest of the settings can be left on default for now.

There is a readme and FAQ/Help section within PS3MS with lots of more useful info, this guide is a quick run through the main features. There are other advanced capabilities such as plugins, two exist right now, an IMDB plugin, and a LastFM plugin.

They are pretty self explanatory to use but I shall include some more detail in the guide later.

If everything is setup correctly you should now be enjoying your movies.

Note:  I’d like to state that there is no copyright breach, since it was much useful (specially for PS3 lovers), I’ve asked Audioboxer if I can share this here so it can reach more and more people.

“As of May 2009 the site consists of over 10 million members, over 81 million submissions, and receives around 105,000 submissions per day.The domain deviantart.com attracted at least 36 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.”

Which means, it can be a good fit for your business if you can create a portfolio there. Now you can! Deviant Art now has a feature where you can configure your very own Portfolio in minutes, design and submit your work there and give it a chance for a potential person to review it easily.

They are offering two choices, Basic or Free Portfolio or A premium one.

Basic Offers:

• Free hosting for up to 100 images.
• yourname.daportfolio.com domain name.
• Compatible with all major browsing platforms and most advanced mobile devices, no need for plugins!
• No advertising.
• An easy-to-use interface with no HTML or coding skills necessary

Premium Offers:

• Unlimited portfolios and image hosting
• Additional domain choices including
• artworkfolio.com, and designbinder.com
• Use your own personal domain (yourname.com)
• No deviantART branding on your portfolio
• Password Protected access option

So basically it depends on how you want it. Check it out here.

This journey was very exciting for me, while I was doing other stuff, I got busy and had to leave this blog for a while but I’m done with everything, all the projects are complete and you’ll be confronting regular posts from now on =) .

So If you’re new and missed something, here’s a small compilation of what’s been read and admired @ Smashing Downloads.

The Post I started this blog with,

5 Free Smashing CD/DVD Burning Softwares

28 Free File Storage Hosting Websites – Something you need to Bookmark!

15 Linux Music Players – Download your Favorite

20 Best P2P File Sharing Applications

10 Tools and Applications to Enhance your Facebook Experience

33 Tutorials to Unleash the Photoshop Beast in You

46 Stunning HDR Pictures That Will Make You Look Twice

13 Awesome Collections Of Free Wordpress Themes

27 Brilliant Examples Of LandScape Photography

12 Useful FireFox Plugins For Safe Browsing

and the latest

16 Exciting Adobe Photoshop Tutorials To Boost Your Creativity

I hope that you like these and the upcoming posts. Also, do subscribe to our RSS feeds for more updates.

1- Request Policy

RequestPolicy is an extension for Mozilla browsers that improves the privacy and security of your browsing by giving you control over when cross-site requests are allowed by webpages you visit. It is the first comprehensive client-side protection against CSRF attacks and the first tool to enable the use of modern browsers without cross-site information leakage.

It is compatible with Firefox 3+, SeaMonkey 2.0, Flock 2.0, Songbird 1.0, and Fennec 1.0. It works wherever these browsers do (Linux, BSD, Mac, Windows, etc.).
2- Quick Proxy

Quickproxy creates a statusbar button to turn the proxy on and off with a single click. This switches Firefox between the different proxy states that you have selected, which are configured through the Firefox preferences, and the type of proxy that is turned on/off is configured through the QuickProxy preferences window. This extension will not provide a proxy server for you.

3- Secure Login

Secure Login is a login extension for Mozilla Firefox integrated password manager.  Its main feature is similar to Opera’s (the browser) Wand login. Features Include:

• Works out of the box without any configuration needed.
• Login with one click or a keyboard shortcut (automatically submitting the login forms).
• Easy and convenient selection for multiple logins (multiple users)
• Provides direct login to any site from the bookmarks (using the “Secure Login Bookmarks”).
• Integrates with Mozilla Firefox password manager.
• Provides easy access to the saved passwords.
• Prevents malicious JavaScript code to automatically steal your login data.
• Provides an option to protect your login data from all JavaScript code during login.
• Websites requiring JavaScript for the login process can be added to an exception list.
• Can prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks to steal your passwords without having to deactivate JavaScript.
• Helps to protect you from phishing.
• Shows the login URL(s) and the number of available logins in a tooltip of the toolbar button and the statusbar icon.
• Can be set to automatically search for login data and highlight form fields.
• Can be used with a toolbar button, a statusbar icon, a keyboard shortcut or via the context menu.
• Completely customizable interface (buttons, icons and menus can be enabled/disabled).
• Provides a customizable keyboard shortcut
• By default only active on login so it doesn’t consume any system resources while surfing.
• Can fill out additional form fields using the Autofill Forms add-on.
• Possibility to play a sound when logins are found or when logging in.

4- Better Privacy

Better Privacy serves to protect against not deletable longterm cookies, a new generation of ‘Super-Cookie’, which silently conquered the internet. This new cookie generation offers unlimited user tracking to industry and market research. Concerning privacy Flash- and DOM Storage objects are most critical.  This addon was made to make users aware of those hidden, never expiring objects and to offer an easy way to get rid of them – since browsers are unable to do that for you.

5- Tor Button

Torbutton provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser’s use of Tor. It is currently the only addon that will safely manage your Tor browsing to prevent IP address leakage, cookie leakage, and general privacy attacks.

6- Lazarus: Form Recovery

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, “recover form”, and breath a sigh of relief.

7- Malware Search

Mainly for use with HijackThis logs, this plugin will search various malware related databases for selected (highlighted) text. Usage: Highlight some text (filename, dll, etc), right click and select “Malware Search” from the popup menu, find the database you wish to search, and then left click on that menu entry. A new tab will appear with the results. You can use the options menu to select which databases appear on the menu.

8- Remove Cookie(s) for Site

A very simple extension to remove all the cookies of currently opened site. It adds an option to the Right Click menu of the page, and a toolbar button to perform this operation. It displays the status of operation in the status bar.

iMacros was designed to automate the most repetitious tasks on the web. If there’s an activity you have to do repeatedly, just record it in iMacros. The next time you need to do it, the entire macro will run at the click of a button! With iMacros, you can quickly and easily fill out web forms, remember passwords, create a webmail notifier, download information from other sites, scrape the Web (get data from multiple sites), and more.

You can keep the macros on your computer for your own use, or share them with others by embedding them on your homepage, blog, company Intranet or any social bookmarking service. The uses are limited only by your imagination!

10-  FoxyProxy

FoxyProxy is a Firefox extension which automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns. Put simply, FoxyProxy automates the manual process of editing Firefox’s Connection Settings dialog. Proxy server switching occurs based on the loading URL and the switching rules you define.

Animated icons show you when a proxy is in use. Advanced logging shows you which proxies were used and when. QuickAdd makes it a snap to create new URL patterns on-the-fly. FoxyProxy is fully compatible with Portable Firefox, has better support for PAC files than Firefox itself, and is translated into more than 25 languages.

11- McAfee SiteAdvisor

McAfee SiteAdvisor helps protect you from all kinds of Web-based security threats including spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, phishing, online fraud and identity theft. Our automated testers continually patrol the Web to browse sites, download files, and sign-up for things with e-mail addresses. As you search, browse, download or register online, SiteAdvisor’s safety ratings help you stay safe and in control.

12- AdBlock Plus

Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu — the banner won’t be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well. Or choose a filter subscription, then even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter subscription will block most advertisements fully automatically.

Users Choice:

Actually, I was going to put NoScript in but then I thought stating the obvious might not be a nifty idea :) – my apologies. For people who don’t know or have used this plugin, it’s a must recommended download.

NoScript

Winner of the “2006 PC World World Class Award”, this tool provides extra protection to your Firefox.

It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site, guarding your “trust boundaries” against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS) and Clickjacking attempts, thanks to its unique ClearClick technology.

Such a preemptive approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!) with no loss of functionality…

Experts do agree: Firefox is really safer with NoScript ;-)

Either you’re a great photoshop guru or not, everyone does need a bit of inspiration, an idea that can make your line of work much more fun. I have here compiled a list of 30 of the best photoshop tutorials that can turn your work upside down. Let’s get started,

1- Create Super-Malleable Effects with Colorful Lines {Tutorial}

2- Good and Evil {Tutorial}

3- Creating a Movie Poster {Tutorial}

4- Electrifying Energy Beams {Tutorial}

5- Create a Citrus Fruit Design From Scratch {Tutorial}

6- Creating a Grungy Floating Island {Tutorial}

7- Creating a Cartoon Grunge Web site Layout {Tutorial}

8- Stunning Dragon Attacks {Tutorial}

9- Multiply Yourself in one Picture {Tutorial}

10- Design a realistic Chalk Board {Tutorial}

11- Creating A Vector Style MacBook From Scratch {Tutorial}

12- Create an awesome background using patterns {Tutorial}

13- The ‘Creativity’ Wallpaper {Tutorial}

14- Alien Invasion {Tutorial}

15- Energy Spheres {Tutorial}

16- From Parrot to Dragon {Tutorial}

17- Transform a person into an alien {Tutorial}

18- Creating a Stunning Digital Smoke Effect {Tutorial}

19- Design an Epic Fantasy Scene with Photoshop {Tutorial}

20- Create a Surreal Environment Using a Photo {Tutorial}

21- Creating a Touching Story Scene in Photoshop {Tutorial}

22- The White Tree {Tutorial}

23- Add a Fresh Splash to your Design {Tutorial}

24- Eery-Eye Photo Manipulation {Tutorial}

25- Create a Grunge digital portfolio website {Tutorial}

26- Windows Vista Aurora Effect {Tutorial}

27- Super Fast – Speed Lighting Effect {Tutorial}

28- Nice ‘n’ Simple Subscribe Badges {Tutorial}

29- Create Creative and Stylish Fire Lines {Tutorial}

30- Turn your photo into movie-like effect {Tutorial}

31- Watercolor Painting Effect {Tutorial}

32- Bourne Ultimatum Movie Poster Effect {Tutorial}

33- Add A Realistic Water Reflection {Tutorial}

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post as much as I did writing it. Do support us by subscribing to our RSS Feed.

1 - Uninstall msn beta 9 through control panel.

It’s the basic procedure for the uknown. Go to your control panel by clicking start > Control panel. You’ll see Programs and feature button, click it and it will show you all installed applications including msn 9. Choose it and click uninstall on top and it might do the job for you.

2 – If the above procedure doesn’t work, don’t worry, there are some nifty softwares that can help you uninstall msn 9 or any other application.

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from “Windows Add or Remove Programs” control panel applet.

Ccleaner

Ccleaner might be help you, download / install, goto Tools and look for Msn 9. Right click > Uninstall and it will remove msn 9 from your computer. Also to make sure it’s gone properly, scan registry with it and if it’ll find any issues, just fix them using Ccleaner.

If those softwares doesn’t work, you can always try Zap Messenger or a program created by microsoft to remove WLM 9.0 beta3 which basically is a Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.

I hope this helps you in uninstalling msn beta 9 versions and if it does, do let me know by posting a comment which will be helpful to other users as well.