The other day someone commented on the post about the Firefox Browser Yoono social networking sidebar, saying that it was doing things that annoyed her/him and wanted to know how you uninstall it.

This raises another couple of points about the level of understanding we bring to the use of these tools that increasingly concerns me.

It is deadly easy to install software or add-on applications like YooNo, but they have little interest in you being able to remove them which so often results in people becoming permanently annoyed by these tools or abandoning them altogether when another option arises, like Google Chrome's browser which I mostly don't use because it can't install the add-ons. Of course that then results in even more sioftware loaded on your system and, being unused is also unpatched so that when, at some later date you use it again, you also expose yourself to the unpatched vulnerabilities.

Maybe we should pay a lot more attention to teaching not 'how this bit of software works" as to "how common tools on your system function".

One that I use a lot when something appears confusing is the "right click" on a Microsoft mouse.

If I right-click on this post as I write it, I get this dialogue.

That gives me some options about the content of the field I am working on in my browser. But if I select some text and right click, I get an expanded set of options, like this

Two of those options refer me to other add-ons in Firefox called Scribefire (which i use to post most of these blogs) and Zotero (which I use to organise content for posting later or that I want to keep copies of).

So to change my YooNo settings I just right click YooNo and get this

And then left click "Options" to get this.

And I can change how YooNo responds to new new content by checking or unchecking when it should display an alert popup. Sometimes I just right click stuff to find out what is there, its often worth the 10 seconds to find out.

Oh, and In Firefox, if you really do decide to uninstall an add on, use Tools/Add Ons and you get this window.

And click "Uninstall"

Three questions, answers in the comments please.

1. Did you already know this stuff?
2. How did you learn it?
3. Why are there NO keyboard shortcuts for any of these functions?

OK, the last one isn't compulsory, but as a keyboard afficionado, it annoys me no end.

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