by Niklas Waller on February 24, 2011
in Web
When working as a developer, tester or other member of the maintenance team you are most likely using different Salesforce ORGs, since this is the way to work when developing new functionality in Salesforce. You develop in one sandbox, test in another and then put it in production in a third.
We actually have more than three since we are also using Salesforce as an ideas platform. And then I have a personal developer edition account as well. So as you can see there are many usernames and passwords to remember.
I am sure there are many different tools to use to store user credentials in, but the one I have in mind for todays entry suits me well in my hunt for Salesforce chrome extensions.
The Google Chrome extension Force.com Logins by Toshihiro Takasu allows you to add user credentials for your different Salesforce accounts.
So once you have added them you can press ‘tab’ or ‘window’ to login either in a new tab or a new window. There are also functionality to categorize accounts and to import or export accounts.
It didn’t actually work for me to login in a new window but I hope that there is only something with my browser or that it’s a temporary bug.
So, I like this extension although I think it might need some more work.
Tagged as:
extension,
google chrome,
salesforce
by Niklas Waller on February 10, 2011
in Web
There are many both useful and funny chrome extensions to choose from. One of them that is good to have for my work is the Force.com utility belt extension by Jeff Douglas.
Since I work with Salesforce in one way or the other most of the day; I need access to Salesforce help, Salesforce reference materials, discussion boards, searching etc. This extension helps me with this. Install it and you will (with a button click) get access to:
- Quick Reference Topics
- Apex
- Visualforce
- Visualforce Components
- SOQL
- Ajax Toolkit
- Web Services API
- Search functionality on different scopes with keyword search
- ID Converter from 15-digit ID to 18-digit ID
Good work from the Salesforce guru Jeff Douglas!
Tagged as:
chrome,
extension,
salesforce
by Niklas Waller on January 27, 2011
in Web
As a fun and smaller project I decided to create a Google Chrome extension for Wohill.
The Wohill blog is, roughly speaking, divided up into Design, Development and Photography. All our photographies can also be browsed on our Flickr account. One way to create an extension is to make API calls to other sites, like Flickr. So this is what I have done.
Creating a small extension is not difficult at all, especially since there are extensive help to get from the Google Chrome Extensions site. But it helps of course to have some basic skills in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
So what this extension does is that it, when clicking on an icon located at the top of the browser, displays all images from the Flickr photostream for the Wohill account. It displays 12 images at a time. The next and previous sets are fetched by clicking links at the bottom of the popup window. Each image has a link to the corresponding post on Wohill where more information and comments etc. can be found.
At the bottom of the popup window I have also added a search function which opens up a new tab on Wohill with the search results. And also a reference to the feed and to the website itself.
The extension has been published to the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery as well.
Why don’t you Try it out?
Tagged as:
chrome,
extension,
flickr,
google chrome
by Niklas Waller on January 20, 2011
in Web
There are tons of URL shortener services out there for free. The purpose of them are to shorten long and complicated urls with something more simple. Not necessarily because that should be easier to remember but rather because it takes less space. Something that is important when it comes to Twitter or other social networks when you need to keep down the amount of characters you type in a status message.
Some of the services are: TinyURL, buzzup, Tweetburner, SnipURL, bit.ly, urlShort, Adjix, cli.gs, urlborg, idek.net, chilp.it, krz.ch, shortna.me, Digg, migre.me, short.ie, kl.am, rly.cc, dot.tk, trim.li/nk, awe.sm
Since I am a huge Google fan I can’t help to mention that they now have their own url shortener service called the Google URL Shortener.
The same way as it works for other services you type in the long url and get the short url back that can be copied and pasted somewhere. These types of services are often included automatically in other services as well.
Google URL Shortener also provides you with a history of created URLs. You can also see how many times it has been clicked on with more information like referrer, browser and platform. Of course you will have to be logged in for this feature.
The advantage of using Google’s service according to themselves is because of its:
- Stability (reliable service with good uptime)
- Security (warning message if the short URL points to a suspected malware, phishing, or spam website)
- Speed (fast resolution of short URLs)
Also check out the Google URL shortener API for JSP.
Tagged as:
google,
url shortener
by Niklas Waller on January 6, 2011
in Web
A new website has started called Playalistic. The idea is to provide playlists in Spotify in an easy way and to manage these I hope. Playalistic is a brand under EMI Music so they say most music will come from there but they will also include music from other music companies.
Anyway, the good thing about this is that playlists for Spotify are provided for free in many different categories that will be updated frequently if I understand it right. This is interesting for me since I will get a chance to follow the newest music more easily, i.e. someone else will filter it for me. When inspiration lacks it can help.
And of course they are on Facebook and Twitter as well – a must these days and also a convenient way to get updates.
One big minus is that it is only available in swedish, norwegian, danish and finnish.
But there will probably be an english version out there soon and after all the music is of course from all around the world!
Listening to this playlist at the moment…
Tagged as:
playalistic,
playlist,
spotify
by Niklas Waller on October 14, 2010
in Web
Now that HTML5 is here and at least partly available in some browsers – for example Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari – we can also start seeing more advanced, complex and funny websites.
is a site that contains experiments for the Google Chrome web browser (for some experiments it also works for other browsers). It is done in either cool JavaScripting and/or HTML5 and leads the way to what will be more common on websites in a near future.
Some of the experiments are kind of cool and this is probably just the beginning! Here are just a few of the listed.
– Type in an address. A music video will be played where the address is the place where the story takes place. This experiment uses the Google Maps API it seems.
– Search for something as usual, but your search results will be affected by the gravity.
– Create a music piece by placing dots in the universe
– Do some cool drawing and sketching directly in the browser
Tagged as:
chrome,
experiments,
google,
html5,
javascript
by Niklas Waller on September 2, 2010
in Web
I have earlier tried to do this myself and just got tired of it. Now I found an easy way that has probably been around for a while. Maybe it could be useful for you too. This assumes you have an RSS-feed, which you probably do.
First get the blog updates to Twitter:
1. Get an account at
2. Create new feed
3. Under ‘Advanced Settings’, add ‘#fb’ as Post Suffix
3. Goto step 2 and authenticate with your Twitter account
4. Create service and all done
Now get them to Facebook:
1. Goto
2. Press Goto Application and follow the instructions. You will have to specify your Twitter username for example. You can choose to update your profile and/or your Facebook fan page.
So what we have done here is a two stage thing. First update Twitter which in turn updates Facebook.
Tagged as:
blog,
facebook,
integration,
twitter
by Niklas Waller on August 12, 2010
in Web
In the spring we learned that it is now possible to as an attachment. You just drag it from you explorer or desktop and put it in the drop file area.
It is also became possible to to make it appear in the text.
And last week it became possible to .
Apparently it has now also been made for Windows and Mac.
There are always things happening over att Google’s. Love these new HTML5 features!
Tagged as:
chrome,
drag,
drop,
google
by Niklas Waller on August 5, 2010
in Web
There is now a Google Chrome extension for Spotify that is really cool.
it by pressing the install button. I had to restart Chrome to get it to work.
Now, when this is done you can surf up any page and select any text and press the Spotify extension which displays a result list. Click any result and be redirected to that particular song in Spotify.
Like it!
Tagged as:
chrome,
extension,
spotify
by Niklas Waller on July 22, 2010
in Web
I found this great chat tool the other day – Tinychat. I have been searching for one for a while now and even started developing one myself. However this seems to meet all my expectations and more since it’s very functional and free.
You start by creating an account. In the settings you specify things like the name of the chat room, description, allowed users (guest, Facebook, Twitter). Further on you can design it with some colors and background image and have 1-5 moderators connected to the chat room. The chat room can also be linked to MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. A chatroom can be open or locked with a password and the same goes for the right to broadcast.
Users can also broadcast using camera and microphone. This can be controlled by the moderator. There is also functionality for showing the desktop, sharing a whiteboard, play a YouTube video and edit a group document.
You can at any time click a user of the chatroom to see more info. If a user is logged in with Facebook or Twitter there is actually something to see here. Otherwise you are able to send private messages or ignore a user. As an administrator you can also ban the user or close the camera.
In a I mentioned the Wibiya web toolbar. It uses TinyChat as the chat tool and as default with temporary chat rooms. If you go through the process of registering and setting up the chatroom you can use this in the Wibiya toolbar as well. This allows you to moderate the chat room which is otherwise not currently possible.
Tagged as:
chat,
tinychat,
wibiya
