Posts from Online Tech Tips for 07/25/2019

In this issue: How To Install Discord On Ubuntu Linux - [View in browser]( Wednesday, July 24, 2019 How To Install Discord On Ubuntu Linux by Joseph Boone | [Online Tech Tips]( Originally designed with the online gamer in mind, [Discord]( has become a juggernaut in the world of VoIP communications. So much so that gamers, still the app’s most prominent userbase, no longer hold exclusive rights to its services. Consider yourself a budding chef in search of new recipes? Join a cooking server. Perhaps you want some pointers on how to better advertise for your online business? There’s a Discord server for that too. Discord in 2019 isn’t just for gamers anymore. This welcome change can be solely attributed to Discord’s hard stance on accessibility. It should be no secret that almost since it first hit the market, Discord has remained dedicated to keeping its servers [free and open to all major platforms and operating systems](. This includes the likes of every power user’s most preferred operating system, Linux. Windows and MacOS may receive all of the headlines, but Linux remains the go-to option for those who seek [a more secure]( and simplistic operating system. The focus of this post is to offer all Linux novices, dabblers, and veterans alike, a step-by-step procedure for procuring access to Discord’s services, in as painless a process as possible. Installing Discord For The Ubuntu Linux OS The whole process is very straightforward and can be completed in just a short time, so long as you have a basic grasp of Linux commands. Ubuntu users specifically will find they have a more streamlined option of installation through the use of conveniently bundled-in packages that can be found on most Linux application sites. There are two primary ways of acquiring Discord for Linux, both of which will require you to type in a command or two. I’ll be going over both of them, starting with the much faster method of using [snapcraft.io](. This will be followed by the more traditional way, requiring a slightly lengthier time investment, but also the most familiar to longtime Linux users. Regardless of the method that you ultimately choose, the results will be the same. The Sprint This method will require that your version of Linux has snap package management capabilities. For all Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS or later users, Snapd comes pre-installed. For earlier versions of Ubuntu, you’ll have to install Snapd manually. If you find yourself in the latter camp, open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard) and enter the following command. Once you’ve got Snapd installed, you’ll also want to download the Snap Store app. This is the site where the Discord package you’ll be downloading is located. Type this command into the terminal. Access to the Snap Store is now available to you. Not only for Discord but any future apps you may want to add. But for now, you can use the Snap command to install Discord for Linux. With your terminal still open, type in the following. Hopefully, you already have a headset with a working microphone ready because Discord is now your oyster. You can begin using the app with the Ubuntu Linux OS whenever it strikes your fancy. Just type the command $ discord into the terminal and you can join the 250 million other registered Discord users around the world. For those Linux veterans who prefer a more traditional approach to installation, or newbies who’d like to learn a thing or two, the next section is meant for you. The Marathon Before you can begin, you’ll need a few dependencies that Ubuntu requires. This just means that other programs are required before you can get your hands on the Discord app. Luckily for everyone, the necessary dependencies are available in an easily installable package. Open up your terminal and enter the following command. Mission accomplished. Now that that is over, the next step depends on if you prefer the use of commands to that of the GUI. New-User Friendly The GUI was meant for newer Linux users who may be more familiar opting for a graphical interface for installations rather than typing in commands. Anyone coming from either of the big two (Windows, MacOS) will find more comfort in choosing this option. Open up your web browser and migrate over to the [official Discord website](. The site should automatically detect that you’re running Linux and suggest that you download the .deb package. Click the Download Now button. You’ll be asked by your browser if you would prefer to open the file with the Ubuntu software installer or simply download the file. Either option is fine but things will be a lot simpler by selecting the software installer. The download should be quick, and you’ll soon be able to install the newly-acquired Discord package. Click on the Install button and wait for the process to run its course. Discord will be available for use once the installation is complete. Bring On The Commands Not a big fan of the GUI? Prefer the use of terminal commands as the original creators intended? Then these are the steps you’ve been waiting for. Open up a terminal and change it over to your download directory. We’ll be using wget in order to retrieve the .deb package for Discord. Complete the download and use dpkg to install the .deb package. You now have access to the Discord app. Open up your software launcher and type Discord into the search. Click the icon to launch the app when it appears. Prior to participating in the service, Discord will require that you’ve previously registered an account. You will find the Register link toward the bottom of the login prompt window. Already have an account? Even better. Just use your credentials to sign-in and begin using Discord immediately. You may also like these other posts from OTT: [How To Change Google’s Background On Your Web Browser]( [How To Use a Public Computer Safely]( [The 3 Best Sites To Use For Archiving Webpages]( [Use Excel Mobile’s New “Insert Data From Picture” Function]( [How To Search Your Open Tabs in Google Chrome]( The 12 Best Bookmarklets Every Browser Should Have - [View in browser]( Wednesday, July 24, 2019 The 12 Best Bookmarklets Every Browser Should Have by Aseem Kishore | [Online Tech Tips]( Bookmarklets are small pieces of JavaScript that run in your web browser. They appear to be bookmarks/favorites, and are just as clickable, but instead of opening a webpage when selected, they execute the JavaScript code they’re programmed to run. JavaScript snippets like you’ll see below expand the functionality of your browser without requiring any additional installations. They’re used to expedite tasks that would normally take several clicks to complete. You’ll grow to love using bookmarklets for many reasons: - Updates are never needed (unless to customize). - They’re highly customizable so that they work exactly how you want. - System resource usage is extremely low compared to full-fledged browser add-ons. How To Use Bookmarklets Using a bookmarklet is as easy as clicking it. It’s the setup process that might confuse some people. On this page are bookmarklets written in their JavaScript form. This isn’t how you’ll see them in your browser once you’ve “installed” them, but you need to see them this way in order to get them added to your browser window. Here’s what to do – highlight the bookmarklet code that you want (only the code, nothing else), copy it, and paste it into a new bookmark in your browser. For example, in Chrome, right-click the bookmarks bar and select Add page. Name the bookmark, but in the URL area, paste the JavaScript code. Use the Save button to save the bookmarklet right where you clicked. Tip: There are several situations where a bookmarklet might come in handy, so having a single folder on the bookmarks bar where you store all of them is a great idea. 12 Best Bookmarklets Search Any Site If you’re always searching through a particular website, but you hate opening it to use their search box, click this bookmarklet to run a site search on Google. What this does is it lets you type into the pop-up box anything you want to search on the website in question. javascript:(function(){void(q=prompt('What are you looking for?',''));if(q)location.href=' '+escape(q)})() Note: This bookmarklet needs to be edited to fit your situation. Erase online-tech-tips.com and replace it with the address to the site you’re researching. View Wayback URL If the webpage you’re wanting to read is no longer available, is throwing an error, or the website as a whole has been taken down, you might still have luck finding it on [Wayback Machine](. Select this bookmarklet to see if there’s a recent archive of it on Wayback Machine, from where you can view the page or entire website just as if it were live. javascript:location.href='/'+location.href Gmail This If you love Gmail, you’ll love this email bookmarklet. Click it while on any page to instantly open the Compose box from Gmail and autofill the page heading into the subject field and auto-paste the URL into the body. All you need to do is address it and send it off. javascript:(function(){popw='';Q='';d=document;w=window;if(d.selection){Q=d.selection.createRange().text;}else if(w.getSelection){Q=w.getSelection();}else if(d.getSelection){Q=d.getSelection();}popw=w.open(' Share On Facebook The Facebook bookmarklet makes sharing links on Facebook easy. Visit the page you want to share with your friends, and then click this bookmarklet to open the Share on Facebook page where you can add text, tag friends, limit who can see the post, and insert emojis before sharing. If you share a lot on Facebook, this will quickly become your friend. javascript:var d=document,f=',l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,p='.php?src=bm&v=4&i=1563462283&u='+e(l.href)+'&t='+e(d.title);1;try{if (!/^(.*\.)?facebook\.[^.]*$/.test(l.host))throw(0);share_internal_bookmarklet(p)}catch(z) {a=function() {if (!window.open(f+'r'+p,'sharer','toolbar=0,status=0,resizable=1,width=626,height=436'))l.href=f+p};if (/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else{a()}}void(0) Paywall Bypass A paywall is the last thing you want to see when trying to read a news article, but you’re not without hope. Using [Outline.com]( this bookmarklet can bypass paywalls on some websites in just a few moments. javascript:void(window.open('+document.location.href)); Tip: This is just one method of several that can [help you get around a paywall](. View Hidden Password Can’t remember the password that your browser saved? If all you see are asterisks (which is normal) but you don’t know what they translate to, click this bookmarklet for a pop-up that shows your password in plain text. javascript: (function() { var s, F, j, f, i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for (j = 0; j < F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i = 0; i < f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; }} if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page."); })(); Shrink URL Sharing really long URLs just isn’t pretty. Use this URL shortener bookmarklet to instantly convert the page’s URL into something much cleaner, courtesy of [Shrunken.com](. javascript:void(location.href=' Enable Right-Click Some websites have right-clicking disabled, which can be rather frustrating if you want to save an image. Use this bookmarklet to instantly unlock the restriction. javascript: void(document.oncontextmenu = null) Enable Text Selection Similar to the bookmarklet above, this one lets you select text on sites that don’t let you. javascript: (function() {function R(a) { ona = "on" + a; if (window.addEventListener) window.addEventListener(a, function(e) { for (var n = e.originalTarget; n; n = n.parentNode) n[ona] = null; }, true); window[ona] = null; document[ona] = null; if (document.body) document.body[ona] = null;} R("click"); R("mousedown"); R("mouseup"); R("selectstart"); })() Find Shared Logins Need to get into a website but you don’t have a user account? Maybe you were banned or you don’t want to go through the sign up process. Either way, use this [BugMeNot]( bookmarklet on the site in question to see if there are any public user accounts that you can sign on with. javascript: (function() { var url = (' + escape(location.hostname)); w = open(url, 'w', 'location=no,status=yes,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=500,height=400,modal=yes,dependent=yes'); if (w) { setTimeout('w.focus()', 1000) } else { location = url } })(); Download Full-Size Instagram Image One easy way to [download a full-size version of an image on Instagram]( is with the Instantgram bookmarklet. Open the image you want to isolate from the page and then click the bookmarklet to launch the full-size version in a new tab. This bookmarklet is far too long to store here on this page, so go over to the [Instantgram]( website and drag the button at the top into your bookmarks bar to use it. Convert Page To PDF Saving a web page to a PDF file makes it super easy to share and store. From any webpage, just click this PDF bookmarklet to start converting it on the [Web2pdfconvert.com]( website. You can download it to your computer or save it in [Dropbox]( or Google Drive. javascript: void(window.open('#' + location.href)) You may also like these other posts from OTT: [How To Change Google’s Background On Your Web Browser]( [How To Use a Public Computer Safely]( [The 3 Best Sites To Use For Archiving Webpages]( [Use Excel Mobile’s New “Insert Data From Picture” Function]( [How To Search Your Open Tabs in Google Chrome]( Check out more posts from our publishing family: Help Desk Geek Posts [Fix Repeating Keys With These Tips]( Jul 24, 2019 by Stephanie Faris If you’ve ever had a repeating key, you will know how annoying it can be. Every time you have to double back to erase a duplicate “i” or “s,” you lose a little time. It may even interfere with your thought flow, killing your productivity throughout the day. The good news is that repeating keys […] [READ MORE]( [4 Ways To Edit a PDF File]( Jul 24, 2019 by Elsie Otachi When John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe, developed the Portable Document Format (PDF), he wanted to make it easier for people to distribute documents without the need to print them. Surprisingly, it didn’t turn out to be very user-friendly. Not only were the files large in size, but the format didn’t support external hyperlinks and could […] [READ MORE]( The Backroom Tech Posts [How To Encrypt Data In Amazon S3]( Jul 20, 2019 by Aseem Kishore Most data uploaded to the cloud is protected by the standard username and password authentication, and is usually stored in plaintext for easy access and retrieval. However, because some data can be sensitive and confidential, this level of protection will not be enough against certain threats or to meet certain requirements such as : External […] [READ MORE]( [Creating an SOFS Share on S2D using Virtual Machines]( Jul 5, 2019 by Sabrin Alexander Hello and welcome to another awesome article. This time we’re going to create a highly-available Windows share by just using virtual machines, without the need for dedicated hardware, SAN or NAS storage or any special networking requirements. Before we get started on the article let’s see what the use case might be for this type […] [READ MORE]( Switching To Mac Posts [6 Features Of iPadOS Every iPad User Should Know About]( Jul 24, 2019 by Aseem Kishore The year 2019 is going to be an important one for iOS users. It’s the year that iOS transforms into something significantly different. Until now, all Apple devices that aren’t Macs have shared the same operating system. Whether you had an Apple TV, iPad or iPhone, it used iOS. While all three devices will still […] [READ MORE]( [How To Make iPhone Screencasts With Quicktime]( Jul 20, 2019 by Mark O'Neill If you want to explain how to do something on a computer, smartphone or tablet screen, your best bet is to make a screencast. YouTube is full of these showing you how to do every conceivable thing in tech. A screencast is a video of you doing things on your screen. You can add your […] [READ MORE]( ABOUT ONLINE TECH TIPS Welcome to Online Tech Tips – A blog that provide readers with daily computer tutorials, technology news, software reviews, and personal computing tips. My name is Aseem Kishore and I am a full-time professional blogger. I graduated from Emory University with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Copyright © 2019 Online-Tech-Tips.com, LLC, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you joined our newsletter on our website, www.Online-Tech-Tips.com. You'll get an email whenever we post a new article! [Update Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](