Quick Translator is a Firefox add-on that can perform fast on-page translations of text. The add-on offers various modes of operation. It can translate selected text, the whole page or text entered into a form.

Probably the most used feature is the power to translate selected text on a web page. It is possible to highlight a specific word, phrase, sentence or paragraphs and get them translated in no time. The extension displays a small icon next to highlighted text. A click on the icon displays the translation in the lower right corner of the Firefox window.

Translations look more or less instant. It is possible to change the source language in case it has not been detected correctly. The target language needs to be configured in the add-on’s preferences before first use. It usually picks the right language but it is best to check the preferences anyway. Right click the icon in the Firefox status bar and select Preferences from the context menu.

It is possible to select one or multiple target languages between which it is then possible to switch.

Click on Languages and move all languages that you want to translate text to the right side of the listing. Most users will probably stick to one language here.

Click on the general tab afterwards. Here you find hotkeys that you can use to translate text even faster, change the hotkeys or switch from pointing the translate icon to translating selected text right away.

Finally, you can change the appearance of the add-on. It displays an icon in the status bar and right click context menu entries. It is possible to hide those entries or add a toolbar icon to the mix.

Quick Translator offers fast on-page translations under Firefox. It is easy to use and with enough options to make it your custom translation tool. It is compatible with all recent versions of the web browser. More information is offered at the project website over at Mozilla.

However, when you need to save a web file such as Excel sheet or Word document located on another website as a PDF file, then you should have to follow a slightly different path. You must be wondering about that different path. You will find your answer in the following lines.

The first option you have is to save the online file onto your computer and later upload it to Google Docs so that you can convert it to PDF. The second option you can opt for is related to Google Docs viewer.

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What you need to do is to open the web file in Google Docs Viewer. Next hold Ctrl + P to print it as PDF. Using Google Docs Viewer will make your task relatively easy as you need not to upload or save the web file to your computer first rather Google Docs Viewer convert it by directly getting it from the website.

With the passage of time, Google Docs Viewer is turning up to be a universal file viewer which not only allow the people to read Office documents in the browser but also supports fonts and graphics file formats which otherwise require Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator tool to display.

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Refreshing a page might have solved the problem for you but there are chances that in your next browsing session the problem may comeback. This problem is not only limited to YouTube but all the other websites which make use of Adobe Flash Player.

The long term fix of this problem is quite simple. Whenever you get this green screen while playing a video, simply right click in the Flash Player and opt for Settings. Next you will get a small window with first option saying Display. On Display tab you have an option checked saying Enable Hardware Acceleration, simply uncheck this option.

You’re almost done. Hit the Refresh button or hit the F5 key to refresh your page and you will now have sound as well as video. Well, by doing so, the performance of playback may have a bit of drop, but watching a video with sound is far better than just hearing the sound with green screen.

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Advanced Video Search in Plain English

Searching videos on YouTube is simple but if you know a few tricks, it becomes even more fun and accurate. The YouTube team has considerably simplified their video search function making it easier for people to perform advanced searches on YouTube without learning any complicated syntax. Let’s look at some real-world examples:

#1. Find a specific YouTube channel

royal wedding, channel

YouTube will have numerous videos related to the royal wedding but if you are only looking for their official YouTube channel, add the word channel to your query separated by a comma.

#2. Limit your search to recently uploaded videos

oprah winfrey, this week

This will only show recent videos related to Oprah that have been uploaded to YouTube in the past week. You may also use “today” or “this month” to limit your search to videos that were uploaded in the past month.

#3. Find only official videos, no fan material please

never say never, partner

If you are looking for the ‘official’ Justin Bieber track and don’t want to see any parodies or fan material in the search results, add the word ‘partner’ to your search query.

#4. Find movies on YouTube

jackie chan, movie

Yes, you can find full-length movies on YouTube (including Bollywood titles). The search operator for finding movies is, you got it right, movie.

#5. Find high-quality videos on YouTube

the king's speech trailer, hd

Add the keyword hd to your search query and YouTube will only show High-definition video clips that are either 720p (1280×720) or 1080p (1920×1080 pixels).

#6. Find 3D video clips on YouTube

avatar, 3d

Got a pair of 3D glasses? Add the keyword 3D to your search query and discover 3D videos. You may also enjoy some 3D content on YouTube without the glasses – see details.

#7. Find video playlists on YouTube

bryan adams, playlist

Playlists are a great option if you want to find and watch (or listen) multiple related videos in one go – like all the Old Spice commercials or your favorite Savage Garden tracks. You may also copy YouTube playlists to your own account.

#8. Find lengthy videos on YouTube

tom and jerry cartoons, long

Add the keyword long to your search query and YouTube will only return videos that are at least 20 minutes in length.

#9. Perform exact-match searches on YouTube

allintitle:"google goes gaga"

You can borrow the popular allintitle search operator from Google on YouTube to perform exact title matches. Might be useful when the original video is not available in your country due to geographic restrictions.

#10. Mix and Match

ted talks, hd, this month, long

The best part about YouTube search is that you combine multiple search operators with commas and apply them all to your query (much like the Boolean AND operator). The above example will help use find all TED talks that have recently been uploaded to YouTube.

Let’s now explore some of the popular services that’ll make it easy for you to transfer large files over the Internet without any hassles or costs.

A: Share Large Files over Email

The Gmail service cannot handle email attachments that are larger than 25 MB but the recently-revamped Hotmail service is a much better alternative as it lets you send email messages as large as 10 GB.

The maximum size of an individual file that you can attach to an Hotmail message is only 50 MB but you can use a file-splitting utility like HJ-Split to break a big file into smaller chunks and then attach them all to a single message. The recipient can then join these chunks to restore the original file and he can do without requiring external programs.

B: Share Large Files without Email

The downside with email attachments is obvious – most ISPs and web-based email programs (including Gmail) will reject incoming messages that have big attachments and therefore, if you are sending a bulky file via email, the recipients also have to be on Hotmail as well in order to receive that file.

One of the best options for sharing large files without email is Dropbox. Once you install the the Dropbox utility on your (Windows, Mac or Linux) desktop, you can upload files of virtually any size to the Internet – it’s only limited by the size of your Dropbox storage which is 2GB in the case of free accounts. Alternatively, if you don’t want to install Dropbox, you can upload files straight to the Dropbox website from your browser but the limit in this case is 300 MB per file.

You can even consider using Google Docs to share those big files over the Internet. Google Docs lets you upload files up to 250 MB in size and they can be in any format. You have 1 GB of free storage space for storing all the non-Office files on Google Docs but you can also buy more space for a reasonable fee.

Unlike FTP servers, services like Google Docs and Dropbox don’t support resumable downloads. That means if the connection breaks while the recipient is still trying to download your “huge” file, he or she will have to resume the download from scratch. That can be a deal-breaker for lot of people.

SkyDrive, part of the Windows Live family, can solve this problem in a way.

The service offers 25 GB of free online storage, with individual files limited to 50 MB. To upload a large file, split it into chunks of 50 MB each and then upload them all to a single folder on SkyDrive. The recipient can download the entire folder as a ZIP or, if he’s on a flaky connection, he can download files one by one and then join them all at his end.

C. Share Files without Registration

Finally, if you are looking for something quick and simple that doesn’t even require registration, talk to YouSendIt or WeTransfer (if the file size is really big). Just upload the files via the browser, enter the email address of the recipient and hit send. WeTransfer lets you send files up to 2 GB in size while the maximum allowed limit is 100 MB in the case of YouSendIt (free version).

Chart: Comparison of file sharing services

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