Tools for Digital Scrapbooking

Well, no freebies today . . . I actually got some scrapbooking done for myself! The layout is created mainly using Shameless by Kim Jensen. As soon as I saw that kit, I knew I would have to get it! Needless to say, it didn't remain on my Kaboodle list for long! Here is my two-page layout from today:

Complete Credits

Now, I promised you some tools for scrapbooking . . . I will share a few with you today.

First, I will deal with a few tools that make your online shopping and viewing experience a LOT easier and more enjoyable.

Firefox Mozilla is my browser of choice, even though Internet Explorer has recently been upgraded to contain some similar features. Why do I like Firefox? I first switched over to it because of the tabbed viewing. Tabbed viewing allows you to have multiple web pages open at the same time and navigate easily between them by simply clicking the "tab" for that page. Having several pages open at the same time allows me to view one page while another is loading or to download from one page and read a forum in another. I can also bookmark groups of pages/tabs to open at the same time. This allows me to organize the forums, for instance, that I read on a daily basis. Instead of opening one bookmark and then another, I can open all at once.

Another reason that I am partial to Firefox is because of the many Add-ons or Extensions that you can get for it that also help me to browse forums quickly or to navigate more effectively. One such add-on I would not be without is Cooliris.

Cooliris really lets me fly through the forums! Instead of clicking on each post that I think I might like to read, I can simply hover my cursor over the link to get a popup window which displays the page. I can easily navigate through this page to read an entire thread or simply move my mouse to exit from it if it doesn't appeal to me. If instead I had clicked a link, I would then have to click the back button to return to where I was and wait for the page to load. Cool Iris is also good for checking out freebies. A lot of posters of freebies will include a preview in the post. I can easily view the post to see if the freebie is of interest to me.

Another tool for the web that helps me keep up with the world of scrapbooking is the blog reader, Google Reader. Google Reader allows me to easily subscribe to all the blogs that I read ( and there are several!) but keep and access them all in one place. The listing of blogs is easily configured to show you a link only to those blogs that have been updated since your last visit. This is a tremendous timesaver because I don't have to travel to each individual site to see if a blog has an update.

Click on image to see larger view

Well, that's all for today! Stay tuned for some time saving tools to help you with your scrapbooking.

One other tool that I have just started using and enjoying is Kaboodle. However, I will have to save blogging about that one for another day as it is getting late!