Monthly Archives: May 2012

Have you ever found yourself staring at Facebook (or any other site) and the font in your browser was either really small or really big? Here's a quick fix and explanation.

Pressing Ctrl+0 (zero) will reset your font size to the default in all modern browsers. It's a quick fix, and a good thing to remember!

But Wait, What Happened?

How did the font size get changed to begin with? Two simple explanations:

1. Most likely, you held down the Ctrl key on accident while scrolling with your mouse wheel. In most browsers, this changes the font size bigger or smaller. I'm not sure if anyone actually uses this feature or finds it useful, but it always seems to confuse users!
2. Pressing Ctrl+ in most browsers will increase font size, and Ctrl- will decrease it. But the chances of hitting these keys on accident is much smaller.

This helpful tip has been brought to you by Social Fixer – the app that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality.

-- Matt Kruse

Facebook has a porn problem! Why won't they add the simple features needed to help Page owners prevent porn from appearing on our walls? Share this post to put the pressure on them!

I have been battling porn spam on the Social Fixer Page for months. It works like this:

1. Spammer creates a new Page on FB, usually called "Sexy Videos", "Hot Movies", etc.
2. They post a porn picture to their wall, tagging other pages like @SocialFixer
   
3. The post then shows up on my wall, because they tagged me
4. I and others report the post as spam, and it's deleted (I have a great support team!)
5. The porn Page is disabled or deleted soon after being created
6. They create a new page and repeat…

The problem is that Page owners have no ability to stop this!

1. It's not possible to prevent people from tagging your Page, since all pages are public
2. It's not possible to stop tagged posts from showing up on your wall
3. Turning off the ability of people to post pictures doesn't help, because they aren't actually posting pictures to your wall, they are posting it to their own.
4. Adding words to your "Moderation Blocklist" like "Sexy" doesn't help, because those words are in the Page name, not the post itself, so the posts don't get blocked.

This is a real problem for me and many other Page owners. Facebook is probably working hard to prevent this kind of activity, since I'm sure they don't want porn appearing on their site. But what they really need to do is implement one or both of the following features:

1. Allow Page owners to prevent people from tagging them in updates.

2. Provide an option for Pages to require approval of tags before they are shown on the Page's Timeline, like they do for personal Profiles:

Facebook needs to be pressured to implement these settings for Pages, to give owners the control needed to keep their Pages safe from spam. Please share this post to spread the word and hope to get Facebook's attention, since they don't provide an easy way to contact them directly, and they generally ignore user emails or Help posts!

Hopefully, if users bring this issue into the spotlight and give Facebook some unwanted attention in this area, they will feel pressured to add the features that Page owners need to prevent it.

Thanks for helping!

Facebook recently started showing a "Trending Articles" box to most users, informing them of what news articles their friends have read. Facebook provides no way to hide this "feature", but with Social Fixer you can hide it from your page!

Starting with version 6.6, there is an option in the "Popular" tab. Check this box to hide the Trending Articles section, and you'll never have to see it again!

The hiding is based on searching for the text "Trending Articles", so if you are using a language other than English, it won't work by default. That's why the second box is there – you can enter the translation of "Trending Articles" in your language which will match, and then it should properly hide.

And while you're at it, are you annoyed when you click on a story that your friend read, and it opens up a box to add a Facebook app, rather than going directory to the story? Social Fixer can fix that too!

By default, it fixes these links so they do NOT open the Facebook App. The setting to control this can be found in the Posts tab of Options:

If you don't already have Social Fixer, go to http://SocialFixer.com to install it into your browser, then enjoy a better Facebook experience!

Do you ever see links to stories, videos, pictures, etc in your Facebook news feed and wish you could easily save them to view later? Now you can, with Social Fixer and Pocket!

Social Fixer is a free browser extension that removes annoyances from Facebook and adds great new features. New in version 6.6 is the ability to easily send posts to your Pocket reading list. Now you can scan your Facebook news feed and save interesting links for reading at a more convenient time!

What is Pocket?

Pocket (formerly known as Read It Later) is a service that stores content that you put in it, that you want to read later. It can plug right into your browser, or you can download their free app for your portable devices. Social Fixer adds a "Save" icon to each post to add stories to your Pocket list. Then you can look at your Pocket Queue at any time – even when you're out and on your mobile device – and get access to the stories you saved earlier.

How Do I Save Posts?

When you hover over any post in your newsfeed, you'll see a "Save" icon in the tray of icons added by Social Fixer:

Clicking it pops up a simple dialog directly from Pocket's site, prompting you to add the link to your list. When you click "Save", the story is added to your list.

You can then click "Close" and the popup goes away. Then if you fire up Pocket on your mobile phone, for example, you'll see the story at the top of your queue:

Saving Facebook Posts Themselves

If you want to save a link back to the Facebook post itself rather than the content that it links to (maybe you want to check back later and see if there are any comments), you can do that too. By clicking on the "Save FB post instead" link in the lower right, you can change the saved link to the Facebook post itself. Then you need to click "Save" to add it to your list.

What Is It Good For?

It's very convenient, once you start using it! I subscribe to a lot of "Pages" on Facebook, and there are always lots of links I want to read. But when I'm sitting at my computer, I never have time to actually look at them all. I used to bookmark them or keep a lot of open tabs of things I want to check back on. Now I use Pocket.

I save each article I want to read later. Then, I mainly read them on my iPhone later when I'm waiting in the car for my daughter to come out of sports practice, or even when I'm in a boring meeting. I always have a list of great articles to read, wherever I am!

FAQs

Before you ask, here are the answers:

Q: Can I integrate with another reader/queue service?
A: Not yet. Future updates will allow this.

Q: When I pop up the window, I see a login screen in a small scrollable window?
A: That's because you're not logged into Pocket. You need to first create an account, and be logged in your browser.

Q: Can you make it automatically close the popup when I click Save?
A: Not right now, for technical reasons. I'm working on tighter integration with Pocket to even make the dialog popup unnecessary.

What Next?

Do you have any other great ideas of how to enhance Facebook by adding great new features or integrating other functionality? Then join the Social Fixer community and help us improve your social experience!

-- Matt Kruse, author of Social Fixer