status bar

Real-life status bar tracks game character's health

When trying to survive a harrowing near-death situation in a video game, it's likely that looking away from the action -- even just for a moment to check your health -- could mean certain doom. To avoid this gaming conundrum, Reddit user Bfayer created his own real-life video game status bar in the form of a 3-foot transparent tube filled with water and color-changing lights that shift based on his character's health (or mana, etc).

Bfayer calls his device the "Liquid Lifebar," which currently only works with the side-scrolling exploration game Terraria. The demo video shows the creation of the Lifebar and how the water rises, falls, and changes color according to his character's status as he fights monsters. … Read more

Show the flag

Flagfox is what Firefox extensions are all about: ultracompact, free, open-source, and uniquely useful. When you visit a Web page in Firefox, Flagfox identifies the country hosting the site's server with a small national flag in the address bar. You can customize the information Flagfox retrieves and displays, too.

We installed Flagfox and restarted Firefox. The first thing we noticed was a small American flag in the Firefox address bar, just to the left of the Bookmark icon. Hovering the cursor over the flag icon produced a small pop-up listing the site's domain name, IP address, and server … Read more

Focused searches in Firefox

Here's a neat add-on for Firefox. Search Everywhere doesn't actually search everywhere; it only searches directly linked Web pages. This free extension creates a Google Custom Search Engine based on pages linked to the current page. When you enter a search term, Search Everywhere queries only those linked sites. This lets you quickly zero in on content, find hidden gems of information buried deep in large sites, and browse similar sites for related interests or content.

Search Everywhere placed its icon in the Firefox status bar in our browser window's lower right corner. Clicking this icon opened … Read more

Image links displayed

Picture hunters know that file names don't always indicate content, and it can be frustrating to click your way through a list of image files, one by one, opening and closing each, just to see what they are. Text to Image is a free Firefox add-on that displays image links as thumbnails that expand when you mouse over them.

We installed Text to Image and restarted Firefox. The program places a small hurricane-shaped icon in the Firefox status bar; clicking it toggles Text to Image on and off. Green indicates the program is active, while red means it's … Read more

Move your URLs to your mouse

URL Tooltip is a simple add-on that performs a simple function. It shows a pop-up tool tip with the URL of whatever Web site link you're hovering over. You can set the font size, and toggle wrapping long URLs. That's it.

But by putting the power of URL preview into your mouse, you can then hide your Status Bar. Assuming you don't use it for anything else, this can save valuable screen real estate--especially in Netbooks.

URL Tooltip is a one-shot wonder, but that doesn't mean it's not a handy tool to have.

Killer Download: My must-have free downloads

I download and review a lot of great software, but obviously I don't keep everything. Some programs don't make the cut simply because I have a better option on my computer already or I have no use for them at work. But other applications I've downloaded have withstood the test of time and remain useful on a day-to-day basis. I'm talking about my must-have applications.

I've already given you my Big Three free security applications which should be the first programs you download when setting up a computer. Clearly if you haven't downloaded software … Read more