websitesgrabber.com

People often take screenshots of web pages for miscellaneous reasons - when designing a page, debugging a web application, or even for graphical reference. Usually, though, only a portion of the screenshot is actually relevant to the user’s purpose, leading to a large portion of the image getting cropped. This can be time consuming, and annoying at times.

Snapper allows users to designate an area of a web page for a focused snapshot, cutting out the additional work needed for cropping unecessary information.

Get Snapper here!

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Pixel Perfect is a Firefox/Firebug extension that allows web developers and designers to easily overlay a web composition over top of the developed HTML.

By toggling the composition on and off, the developer can visually see how many pixels they are off in development.

Pixel Perfect also has an opacity option so that you can view the HTML below the composition. By being able to see both the composition and the HTML you can now simultaneously use Firebug while Pixel Perfect is still in action.

Oh yeah!

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YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool. YSlow grades web page based on one of three predefined ruleset or a user-defined ruleset. It offers suggestions for improving the page’s performance, summarizes the page’s components, displays statistics about the page, and provides tools for performance analysis, including Smush.it™ and JSLint.

YSlow is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) version 1.1, with portions licensed by third parties under other license terms. To review the terms before installing, see http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/faq.html#faq_license.

YSlow uses Yahoo!’s Smush.it service, which is subject to Smush.it Terms of Use: http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/smush_it/smush_it-4378.html

Crazy!

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If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

2.8.1 Beta 2 is ready for testing.  Download it, check out the changes since beta 1, and review all tickets fixed in 2.8.1.  We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues.  Notable fixes in beta 2:

• Translation of role names fixed
• wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
• Upload error messages are now correctly reported
• Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
• Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
• SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
• Switched back to curl as the default transport
• Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

Thanks again for testing WordPress.

Easily navigate through Google search results using a fast, simple and useful Tag-Cloud technique. Use our Topic-Mapping-Technologies for quick access to answers, news, videos, blogs, Wikipedia and more. Install now and boost your search.  Way crazy!

IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS WITH OUR TAG CLOUD - DEEPERCLOUD:
Following is a short explanation about how to use our Tag Cloud (a.k.a Word Cloud) to improve your search results:

TAGS TAB: In many cases we can significantly improve search results by adding (or excluding) a keyword from the original query. Our Tag Cloud will reveal these keywords so that you can improve your query by adding any of these terms with one click.

PHRASES TAB: Our Tag Cloud will find the meaningful phrases hidden beneath the pile of web search results so that you can rephrase and focus your search.

SITES TAB: Click on one of the site in the Tag Cloud and you’ll get all relevant results from the selected source only.

There are several clever business and internet marketing and SEO applications for using the “sites” tab: identifying main competitors, pinpointing targeted sites for most effective advertisement and isolating the authoritative websites of a particular topic.

ZONES TAB: Zones is very helpful to narrow down and focus on specific domains such as .org .edu or country specific suffixes.

QUICK ZOOM-IN BY AREA OF INTEREST:

DeeperWeb’s Topic-Mapping multiple search engine technologies reduce the clutter and help users identify search results upon topic and type (e.g. latest news, current articles, answers, blogs, Wikipedia and more…).

A few of the Zoomies (Mini Search Engines) available are:

ANSWERS SEARCH: Selected high quality resources of “questions and answers”, support discussions and social forums providing you with search results to a whole realm of questions and answers.

BLOG SEARCH: If you’d like to know what current articles in the blogosphere are relevant to your query, take a look at this blog search engine.

METRICS SEARCH: If your query should return facts, statistics, percentages or market share data, tables, graphs or numbers then our Metrics Search Zoomie will get them all.

WIKIPEDIA SEARCH ENGINE: Can’t do without Wikipedia search engine…

RESOURCES SEARCH: Are you looking to find current articles, business articles, recent white papers, a research study or just a good magazine article? Our Resources Search is the place to dig deeper!

NEWS SEARCH: When you need to find news articles, just type in your query on Google and you’ll find latest news here (relevant to your query).

MORE ZOOMIES (search engines) will be added to our Firefox Addon toolbar and
search plugin in the upcoming versions…

DeeperWeb is very intuitive and an easy to use Google sidebar. If you presently use related a add-on or search plugin, such as any one of the following great search tools addons list: CustomizeGoogle, Webmynd, Surf Canyon, Zotero, ScrapBook, Cloudlet, Google Scholar Googeefree, GoodSearch, A9, Web Search Pro, FoxTab, Groowe, OneRiot, BetterSearch, Google Redesigned, GooglePreview, Googlepedia, GoogleEnhancer, StumbleUpon, Gmarks or Yahoo Answers, MSN Live Search and AOL Search, we are sure you’ll find DeeperWeb an additional great add-on for your information expediency.

Good Golly Miss Molly!

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Killer?

Remove with one click all the Flash contents of the current page, preserving space.

It works under all Operating Systems, but it’s interesting especially for Linux.

The Flash plugin for Linux has a painful bug, all Flash content is always covering the other elements of the page, hiding and making inaccessible other parts of the page like dropdown menus, preventing to navigate on these sites. Flash Killer remove them with one click!

Flash Killer add an item to the contextual menu, as well as an item in the Tools menu. You can remove these items in the options if you prefer.
A button is available too for your toolbar. Right click on the toolbar, choose ‘Customize…’, drag and drop the ‘Flash Killer’ button.

How to put back the Flash contents?
Just reload the current page.

If you desire a more radical extension, to block all Flash contents as soon as a page is loading, take a look at the FlashBlock extension.

The PrefBar extension contains too a button to eliminate the Flash, so if you use it, Flash Killer is useless.

So, Flash your bad self!

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366 Ways to Get Web Visitors -

I have decided to release a list of 366 Traffic Methods all at once. So now, you can’t ask me how to get traffic for a WHOLE YEAR.

Go away!

Okay, I’m just kidding.

Really.

The great thing about this guide is that it’s rebrandable.

You can just put your own link on the front page, or you can do that AND join the free affiliate program and load affiliate links in it with the rebranding kit, a zip file you can find right here or on the last page of the guide. I have committed Mac treason and created a program that only runs on Windows, (XP or Vista). Please refrain from flogging me. I will do my best to help if you have a Mac that doesn’t run Windows, just reply below.

(And… btw… HOW DO YOU LIVE? I was without Windows on my MacBook Pro for two weeks and almost drown in my own tears. Anyway.)

(You can get your 366 Traffic Methods here if you are reading this via feed and can’t see the embed above. That’s a PDF link so don’t hurt yourself!)

If you own The Evergreen Traffic System or Traffic Reality and are signed up at my site, there’s an affiliate link in your member area that will give you an extra 10% bonus, so please use that one instead of signing up twice.

Oh, and of course I forgot to mention in the guide that the cookie the affiliate code drops is good for a Year.

That’s right, even if it takes a year for someone who signs up to our newsletter at the site to buy, or even if they don’t sign up but you were the first person to tell them, it will be a year before anyone else gets to make a sale through them.

So. Uh. You might want to grab the rebrand kit and get your copy out there before everyone else.

And if you need hints as to how you can do that?

It’s a guide to generating web traffic! So you can use the traffic generating guide to generate traffic to the traffic generating guide. Lots of the methods are free, too. (See what I did there?)

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We’ve started work on the first maintenance release to 2.8.  2.8.1 will fix a handful of bugs that turned up in 2.8.  Today we’re releasing the first beta of 2.8.1.  Download it, and check out the bugs fixed so far.  Here are some of the notable issues that are fixed in beta 1.

• Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change.
• Dashboard memory usage is reduced.  Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page.
• The automatic upgrade no longer accidentally deletes files when cleaning up from a failed upgrade.
• A problem where the rich text editor wasn’t being loaded due to compression issues has been worked around.
• Extra security has been put in place to better protect you from plugins that do not do explicit permission checks.

If you would like to automatically upgrade from 2.8 to 2.8.1 Beta 1, follow these instructions.  Thanks for testing WordPress.

Morning Coffee keeps track of daily routine websites and opens them in tabs.

This extension lets you organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously as part of your daily routine. This is really handy if you read sites that update on a regular schedule (like webcomics, weekly columns, etc.).

Potential future updates include:
- bookmark folder integration
- separating lists by time (so you can have a morning/afternoon list for a day, for example)

Have at it.

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