Netvibes Tutorial

October 3, 2006 | 18,281 views | Trackback | |

A few months ago I caught wind on the mighty Techcrunch Blog about a new Web 2.0 home page solution called "Netvibes".

Little did I know upon registration and further exploration, that this site, while basic in concept, would truly revolutionise and economise the time I spend on the web each day. All of a sudden I now have ONE central set of tabbed pages that deliver the latest stories, headlines and photos from over 30 of my favourite blogs and websites. No longer do I have to visit each of these sites individually leading to a lot of wasted time when I don't find anything new or of interest on any given page.

I thought it would be a bit selfish if I didn't share the benefits of the site with those of you who haven't already discovered it. Netvibes accounts are most effectively used when you pump it full of RSS feeds from sites scattered all around the web. To a lot of you, the thought of having to deal with setting up something new and dealing with RSS feeds (whatever they are, right???), isn't all that attractive and perhaps a little daunting. Fear not!

I have just spent a good few hours compiling a great little Netvibes tutorial that covers EVERYTHING you need to do to get set up including an explanation as to what this "RSS" thing is all about!

So grab a coffee, a comfy chair and grab my hand as I lead you down the path to a fantastic new web experience for you all!

Click here to view my Netvibes Tutorial »

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Your Comments

41 Responses to “Netvibes Tutorial”

Comment by Camel Toe on October 6th, 2006 @ 9:24 am

your hand is clammy, might just walk beside you. by the way, how can i follow you now that i have found my comfy chair..confused already. this is going to be tough

Comment by Masey on October 17th, 2006 @ 6:16 pm

I just received a great little email from "Tariq" at "Netvibes.com" saying:

"I've just got through your tutorial on netvibes and it is amazing.

Thanks for your trust and your support!..."

Awwwwww... I'm stoked that they have seen it!

Comment by Devang on October 19th, 2006 @ 4:03 pm

Hi

Thanks for the great tutorials. Absoulutely wonderful work. Thanks again.

Regards,
Devang - A Newbie Netvibes User

Comment by Taro on October 19th, 2006 @ 10:59 pm

I've used netvibes for ages and this thing would have been great for me getting started. My only suggestion would be about adding rss feeds which can be a pain with all the copy and pasting. The add to Netvibes extension for firefox makes it all very simple and is worth a mention. Check it out on the eco page.

Great tutorial, I'm off to tell everyone on digg

Comment by Masey on October 19th, 2006 @ 11:05 pm

Thanks for your comment Taro. I have full intentions on adding in a small section regarding the Firefox extension, but to be honest I'm just waiting for the plugin to become compatible with the latest Firefox 2.0 release before doing so.

Comment by ~an* on October 19th, 2006 @ 11:13 pm

Fantastic work for the tutorial. Funnily enough I was on digg and drifted off to your site.

I'm a newbie Netvibes user and I totally find it saves me so much time and effort in surfing around the net.

However it's unfortunate that not ALL sites have RSS and I can't get much out of those sites to link into my netvibes page.

Any ideas?

Comment by Masey on October 19th, 2006 @ 11:21 pm

A great tool I use for some sites that don't contain their own RSS feeds is Pony Fish RSS. Depending on the layout of the website in question, with a few simple steps that the site walks you through, you can have a customised feed all ready to go.

Hope that helps...

Comment by Opo on October 20th, 2006 @ 2:10 am

Thanks Masey, very good work: Netvibes should pay you...

I would like to give more information on the "Image Module".

I work on it 3 full days to understand it because of lack of good explanations and also because I am not a "specialist".

You can Modify and personalize your "Image Module" by typing in just after the url also the:

title and/or
width and/or
height and/or
link (to the clip)
but all choices must be preceeded by: &

That'all.
I used it to show on netvibes a pic remembering me a YouTube clip (it should work with GoogleVideo and also my hardDisk)

Bye
Opo

Comment by Masey on October 21st, 2006 @ 11:02 pm

Check out "MobuzzTV" for the lovely "Karina" giving a good rundown of Netvibes including an interview with Tariq. I got a mention and a link too... I'm stoked!
Comment by Galen on October 22nd, 2006 @ 4:35 am

Thanks, thanks, thanks a lot. I don't need this tutorial but I like this kind of order. A clear and simple way to show info. A lot of people will thank you about that.
Comment by Johannes on October 25th, 2006 @ 12:43 am

Well done... And what an amazing adoption of Squible!!!
Comment by Kyle on October 26th, 2006 @ 6:18 am

Hi Masey,

Thanks for the tutorial! If you ever need any Chinese-related help, let me know!
Best,
Comment by Mary on October 27th, 2006 @ 7:30 pm

Absolutely, you've made a GREAT tutorial.
Comment by Roy on October 30th, 2006 @ 6:07 am

Very well done tutorial!

Comment by Otir on October 30th, 2006 @ 9:02 am

Thanks for the nice tutorial. I read it after I learnt how to use Netvibes (I know, it sounds strange to read the tutorial afterwards, but that's how I learn, trials and errors, and then I check what I missed in the first place, otherwise it is hard for me to understand what you're talking about).

The tutorial is great! I have been advised to use more tabs to lighten the burden of loading each page (when you have lots of rss feeds on it, which is my case). What do you think about mentioning it?

It was then useful for me to know that I could drag and drop each box in the new tab. Now when I enter a new rss how will it place itself on Netvibes? on the last open tab? or the general one?

Thanks!

Comment by Boudewijn on October 31st, 2006 @ 7:04 pm

Thank you for the great tutorial.
The tutorial is truely great!!

ThX,

Boudewijn
Comment by cfraga on November 2nd, 2006 @ 1:26 pm

Thanks for this great tutorial! I am a new user of netvibes. Your tutorial clarified a lot of doubts and I also learned some new stuff about configuring my netvibes.

Thanks again!
Comment by Yoganini on November 8th, 2006 @ 10:22 am

Hi,

Really useful stuff. I wish I could produce tutorials that good for my library students!!

Yoganini
Comment by Boggins on November 15th, 2006 @ 9:03 am

Great stuff. Thanks for all the effort - I found NETVIBES only today and it and you are 1st class!
Comment by Brython on November 19th, 2006 @ 2:08 am

Hi Masey

The BBC this morning (bbc.co.uk/click) had quite a lot to say about "Netvibes" so much so, I have download your Tutorial.

Regards

Brython
Comment by Frank on November 26th, 2006 @ 8:07 am

Excellent job: I've just discovered Netvibes, and your tutorial has been very helpful. Great work!

Sorry for the fake email, but you know how it is with email addys these days...

Comment by Opo on November 28th, 2006 @ 3:19 am

Hi again,

your Netvibes Tutorial is so good that I have put a direct subject on it with a link in the New Netvibes users Forum:

http://netvibes.7.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=2

Good work!
Opo

Comment by joe on November 28th, 2006 @ 3:29 pm

hello masey,
i just discovered netvibes and i could barely make head or tails of it - until i read your tutorial which made everything clear!
a well done and also a beautiful presentation.
thanks a lot.

Comment by Cat on November 30th, 2006 @ 1:31 pm

Thanks for your work Masey, very helpfull for such a beginner as me (you make me write in english to thanks you, I haven't done it for years !!!)
Comment by Opo on December 13th, 2006 @ 4:42 am

New version is perfect !

Comment by rvr on January 2nd, 2007 @ 7:24 am

thanks for the tutorial, nice work. one issue i'm having is with the add2netvibes extension. it simply doesn't seem to be working for me and i can find no reference anywhere online to issues with it, nor can i find anywhere else to ask about it.

i installed it in firefox 2.0.0.1 and the button doesn't show up. anyone have this problem? any hints? thanks.

Comment by Masey on January 2nd, 2007 @ 11:10 pm

"rvr"...

Try checking "View > Toolbars > Customise" and look for the Netvibes button for you to drag to your toolbar.

Comment by rvr on January 3rd, 2007 @ 7:19 am

thanks masey, i found it there. there's something funny going on, though. when i put it in and hit ok to dismiss the customze window the browser doesn't render the area that was behind the window–leaves a gray area–and seems to get stuck. so i quit and restart firefox and the button is gone. i wonder if it conflicts with my theme or something. i'll have to play around.

thanks for the tip, though.

Comment by rvr on January 3rd, 2007 @ 7:25 am

ok, so it looks like it was conflicting with the extension all-in-one sidebar, which i like very much. after disabling that it seems to be working fine. not sure if it will break if i enable it again after getting add2netvibes functioning.

thanks again for the help. i had the impression that it was supposed to show up in my address bar after installation, am i wrong? does it require that you add it from the customze dialog? if so, that's not very good usability practice, especially without instructions.

Comment by Margo Haubein on February 21st, 2007 @ 1:03 pm

I am not able to remove modules from my account, I can add them but not delete. Also, when I click on certain things (even to sign in), I am unable to read because it comes up "clear" over my existing page - the back page shows thru and I am unable to read what I clicked on.

Comment by Masey on February 21st, 2007 @ 1:12 pm

Margo, I'd say that's something you'd need to take up with the development guys at "Netvibes". It could be any number of factors relating mainly to whatever browser it is you are using. My guess is you're using IE of some kind. Have you tried using Firefox? It's a far "site-friendly" browser.

Comment by Brad on April 3rd, 2008 @ 6:02 am

I worked with a group of teachers to set up relevant NetVibes pages. The only issue I couldn't solve was making NewVibes come up automatically as the home page of the browser (Firefox). It seems to require logging in to the netvibes account every time, even when "Remember" is checked. Is that correct, or is there a trick past the login?

Comment by Masey on April 3rd, 2008 @ 7:25 am

Brad, there's definitely a way for it to be done as I used Netvibes as my home page for many months there for a while. I'd say your need to log in each time is more to do with your browser settings than anything else. Do you perhaps have it set so your cookies are reset each time you shut down the browser?

Comment by ergalvin on May 2nd, 2008 @ 2:55 am

your the man, that was a great tutorial. we were trying to get our friends and family to use netvibes, so we wrote a post about how awesome it is (http://thesmoothhandle.com/?p=16) but we were to lazy to actually write the tutorial ;-9 - well done, im sending it out to my friends -

ergalvin's last blog post:
The Frango Mint Diet