Quick Tour of Inslices

Feature Overview

Have you ever tried to copy & paste a piece of a website or a video and finaly decided to simply grab the url of the webpage?

Inslices isn't one more bookmarking tool! It lets you collect any portion of any webpage on the fly. No more reason to thrive copying & pasting text, images or videos, or just copy a link: the Inslices tool lets you easily pinpoint the content you want to keep.

The Inslices addon also includes a sidebar that delivers an instant overlook to your slices in one easy-to-access place and a easy-to-use and readily available adress book makes it easy for anyone sharing discoveries while surfing the web.

Sections

The Browser buttons

After having installed Inslices in your browser, you will notice that two new buttons have been added to your the toolbar.

  • Slice button :click the Inslices button to start slicing webpages. You can either select the portions of contents you want by clicking directly on select areas or enter the "quickslice mode" which enables to select the whole browzed webpage.
  • Sidebar button : the Sidebar button lets you display or snooze the sidebar according to your needs.

In addition to the default button, you can also perzonnalise your inslices button by picking in your toolbar options one of the two others available button, each one respectively directing to the slice and quickslice mode.

Making your first slice

Inslices mainly offers two ways of slicing contents: the "Slice this" mode and "Quick Slice" mode.

When clicking on the "Slice button" in your browser, the default mode is on " Quick Slice"

"Quickslice" mode

The quickslice mode is the default mode when clicking on the main browser button. This mode will allow you to save and/or share the essence of a webpage in a few clicks without doing any direct selections on it.


Right after you clicked on the Inslices button, a dialog box will be opened and will show in the "Slice Preview" panel the result of the auto-selection

If you're not satisfied with the auto-selection and want to directly slice content on the page, click on "Edit selection" to return on the webpage.
Then, click on the elements of the webpage you want to slice to select it. To cancel the selection, just click on more time to unselect or click on the "close icon" in the top right corner of the selected element.

Slice this mode

To pick anything you want from a webpage, click on the "Inslices button Drop Down down option menu" to choose the "Slice Mode".

How to select things manually on a webpage?

Once you've entered the Slice mode, you will be able to select what you want from the webpage. To select only the things that you're interested in, Inslices offers three ways of selecting contents:

On the Fly Selection

Inslices shows with orange lines the area selected. It can be one or many paragraphs, an image, a video or one entire bloc of contents. Just click one time on the highlighted portion to select it. Click another time to cancel the selection.


Selecting videos, images and slideshows follows the same rule: go over the piece of the webpage you want to slice and just click one time on it.

Net Selection

This original mode lets you select a whole block of information by draging & expanding the Inslices net. Click one time on any portion of the page and then drag one of the rounded corner till the net recovers the desired area to select. The selection net can be resized at anytime.

Previewing and Editing your slice

Either trough auto or on the fly selection, the dialog box allows to preview your slice(s) at anytime before saving and/or saving it

Opened by default trough the auto-selection, you can open or close the "Preview Slice" sliding window by clicking on the "See Slice Preview" or "Close Slice Preview" button to make sure that you or the Inslices add-on only selected what matters to you.

If you want to add or remove an element from you selection, just click on the "edit selection" button to go back to "slice mode" and review your selections.

Saving & sharing slice

Saving a new slice

Saving a slice is always the same process, regardless of the slice mode that you've chosen.

But, before clicking on the "Save" button, you can edit some elements of your slice to find it more easily on your dashboard, make the thumbnail fits the content selected or just make it more sexy.

Once you've sliced something, the dialog box will show the following fields:

  • Contact field : people (email contacts) and Inslices users you want to share a slice with.
  • Message field : write a message that you appear with your slices. If you do not share or publish your slice, your comment will stay private. If you share a slice with contacts, the chosen contacts will receive your message.
  • Open Contacts Manager : this will toggle the contact manager sliding windows and let you select frequent or imported contacts at a glance.
  • Webpage Title : click on the field to edit the title of the webpage
  • Slice Privacy Setting : checked by default on "public", you can choose not publish your slice and let everyone see it on the "Explore" page.
  • Webpage Description : click on the field to edit the description that will appear with your slice
  • Default thumbnail : Inslices takes on image in the webpage that most fit your content. Click on the default image or on the button underneath to open the Thumbnail Edition Sliding Window and pick another one if available.
  • Open Thumbnail Edition Window : click on the field to open/close the sliding windows displaying all available thumbnail images.
  • Tags field : enter one or more tags separated by space.Altough this step is optional, it will helps you organize and find your slices later more easily.
  • Suggested tags : if the webpage is popular, Inslices can suggests relevant tags that you can choose.
  • Open Slice Preview : click to open/close the "Slice Preview" sliding windows and check if the selected elements are the one that matters to you.
  • Save Button : clicking on the "Save button" will send the slice to your dashboard by default and send it by mail and/or people Inslices Inbox if you share the slice with contacts. It will also publish your slice if you let the "make it public" checkbox checked.

How to change the thumbnail

Inslices detects all existing images in the webpage, and when creating a new slices, it suggests an default thumbnail that best represents the content sliced. However, you can edit this thumbnail whenever you want by clicking on the "Thumbnails" .

The thumbnail edition window will then open and if there is more than one image in the webpage, you will just have to click on one image to make it represent your slice.

How to share a slice

Inslices makes it easy to share news, links, videos, images or shopping items. You can easily share a new slice with your contacts through the message field . Just write down emails to whom you want to share a slice with.

To share a slice even more easily, import your contacts trough the Inslices website in the "Contacts" section. Currently working only with Gmail, you can import all your contacts and then get an easy access to them with the "Contact Manager" in the dialog Box.

The Status Bar

On the bottom right corner of your firefox window you will see a little flower icon; when somebody shares a slice with you a little notification will pop up right there, and the flowers will get colored! Click there to see those new slices. A little number will keep growing to notify you of how many messages you have received.