This handy Google Labs tool will allow you to see your website as seen by users with different screen resolutions. One of the major challenges while designing a website template is to design the template so that user can read the relevant information at the very first glance itself. Sadly this depends on the visitors screen resolution. This tool from Google Labs will overlay a transparent ruler like layout to the web address you give it, thus enabling you to see how your web site looks at  screen resolutions other than yours.

Screen Shot of Simple Informations on browser Size by Google Labs

The tool allows basic settings such as transparency adjustment of the ruler. You can use Google Analytics to know what resolution is used by most number of your visitors. Then you can head over to Browser size and see what all portions of your website is viewable at that resolution. This will allow you to make your web site more accessible and improve the “page views/visit” as well as “bounce rate”.

The following is a screen shot of my Google Analytics page showing the details of this blogs visitors and their screen resolution.

Statisctics of visitors to this site by resolution - Google Analytics

Link : Browser Size | Google Labs | Google Analytics

Some images in Flickr are protected so that nobody would save them to their computer. This is done by overlaying the image with a transparent spaceball.gif image. You can see this in action in the following image.

Here when the save Image As option is taken you can save only spaceball.gif which is a simple 1×1 transparent image. So how do you save such images. One method that will come to your mind immediately will be saving it from cache. Yeah that works, but there is a method which is a lot  easier. You can use this in Firefox.

When you right click on any page opened in Firefox you can see an option Page Info. (Note that a similar option is viewable under the DOM Inspector) Click on that, Goto the Media tab. This can also be accessed through Tools » Page Info You can see that here there is a list of all Images, Music and Shock wave objects used on the page Just click on the image name you want to save and select Save As. Thats it.

One you get familiar with images in Flickr you can see a similarity in all the main images addresses used in Flickr ages. Just check the image. You can easily spot tis one after some trial. Also any object can be saved fby using this method.

You might also be interested in knowing how to disable right clciks using simple HTML tags. If this method is used you can select Page Info from Tools menu on the top.

Resizr is a free online image editing site. I will allow you to use almost all the basic photo editing features. “RESIZR was conceived in July 2006 by Matt Miller, after trying to help a user upload an image to the Urban Pug Forums. After suggesting some tools, it became apparent that there might be a need for a brutally simple online image resizer.”

With Resizr you can Crop, Resize, Change filetype (GIF,PNG,JPG), sharpen, adjust levels, change the tone of the image (to B/W &&; sepia), adjust brightness and contrast and even control the quality of output file. Resizr is equivalent to a photo editing software. It is free and also saves your file for a specific amount of time before which you can download it.

Google Sites” is now available for free public registration and use. With Google sites you can start a personal or group managed web site.

You can upload content and manage all your files from one location. You can also decide who all could see your site and files uploaded. You don’t need to know HTML or other coding to build your own site. So if you were looking for one good reason to start a web site why wait, start it right now.

I have made a test page on Google Sites. Check it out and post your comments there.

Themes -

Although the sign up process is simple the default themes available really sucks. You can edit theme, images used in template, colors and fonts from Appearance in site administration. Even the repeat options are provided for background images. Also you may change the home page to whichever you like as far as it is on the site itself.

Attach files -

Google sites has the ability to attach files to specific pages. So if you attach a file abc.def to a page you will get the file link as under this page.

Page history -

the author of the page is provided with the ability to view or revert a page to an earlier version.

For this a detailed history is provided including Author, time of edit, time after edit etc. Also you may subscribe to page changes.

File editing -

Editing the file has been made too simple so to say. Even if you know nothing about web page coding you will be able to create really good looking and attractive pages. The ability to insert Google docs, Google calender, Youtube and Google videos are major plus points. You can also insert Picassa sideshow directly to a page.

Automatic site map generation (not for search engines) -

A site map is generated automatically as you add more and more pages. The site map is not the one used by search engine bots. It is intended to make human navigation easier. You can add Google Analytics with the click of a button.

Search -

Web site search is built in. The search results page is rather neat and functional with the sidebar shown and results easily navigable.

Bottlenecks -

You cant use <embed>, <script>, <iframe> or <style> tags even while editing HTML code of the site as they are considered to be unsafe tags. So if you need to add a video you are forced to upload it to Youtube first. Pretty thoughtful from Google.

Over all Google sites is a great combination of functionality and ease of access for those who don’t want to get deep into the troubles of managing a site. You are provided with almost all the tools for basic site management. As always  uploading of an exe file is prevented, but after ZIPPING it can be uploaded. And at 100Mb although the storage space isn’t so much to boast about you will be satisfied for sure.

Here are some methods you may try to save the Videos from various sharing site. Most of them work with more than one site. All of them have been tried by me.

1. Real Player Browser Plugin

You can use Real Player 11’s browser plugin to download flash videos right away with the click of a mouse button. Read more on How to Download streaming Videos with Real Player.

2. Use Free File conversion sites.

Both of the Free file converter sites allowed users to download streaming videos from Youtube. Read about the first one here and the second here.

3. Use the Download Video Button (youtube only)

You can use the JavaScript Download Video button to download the original youtube file as mp4 right from the Youtube site itself. Here is how you can add such a button to your “Link Bar” of your browser.

4. Use downloader sites

Many sites allow you to download videos hosted on sharing sites by submitting the URL of the video page. In most cases the disadvantage is that you get an FLV file. Here are some sites that allows you to do this – DOWNLOADYOUTUBEVIDEOS.com, downloadyoutubevideos.in – allows you to download videos from many sites like Google, Youtube, Blip, Bolt, Dailymotion, MySpace, ifilm and Break.

The old method of copying Flash files from the browsers saved files folder still works. But who wants to do it when all these easy ways are here.

Many softwares and websites have been introduced which allowed users to download Youtube videos directly. But many of these have been disabled by Google in some way or other. but there is an easy solution to all these downloading problems.

The Youtube videos can actually be downloaded from the Youtube web site itself in mp4 format. Thanks goes to Google operating system blog. You can easily add a button to your browser that when clicked will add a download as mp4 file link under the video properties in Youtube. Add this button by dragging and dropping it to your bookmark toolbar just below the address bar in the browser.

Download mp4 video

Know how to download embeded video from any site using Real Player

VLC media player is a free player which can play all formats of audio and video including those from youtube