Have you ever been reading an email or surfing the net and come across a word you wanted to lookup, but didn’t because it takes too much time?  Even with Dictionary widgets and websites like Dictionary.com it still takes too long to have to copy and paste the word or wait on the internet.

So, I have the solution for you Mac users out there.  This quick little tip will allow you to lookup the definition of any word in any Mac native program (Coco).  The best part is the Dictionary application does NOT need to be open or even running in the background.

All you need to do is hold down Control+Command+D with your mouse hovering over the word you wish to lookup.  You can even continue to hold down the keyboard shortcut and move the mouse from one word to another.  The dictionary description will automatically update for each word.

If you are not sure what programs this will work with, here is a small list: Safari, Mail, TextEdit, Text Wrangler, Comic Life, iWeb and some other native Mac programs.

However, this shortcut will NOT work with programs that are not written in Coco.  So even your favorite programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera, Camino and Flock wont work with this shortcut.

By now most of you probably know that the newest version of the Ubuntu has been released. Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 was released about a week ago. This is the second Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu. The LTS desktop versions are supported for 3 years and the server edition for 5 years.

I have installed Hardy on my laptop (HP dv2000t) and have had few problems so far. From what I can tell Hardy seems to be a step in the right direction. For me, the jump to Hardy came from Feisty (7.04) via a fresh install. I tried Guty (7.10) but had several problems on both my latop and desktop. However, I know several people who had no problems at all. I will be upgrading my desktop in a few days and I hope the transition goes as well as it did with my laptop.

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For those of you who don’t know whats new in Hardy Heron, let me give you a quick overview. For more information, check out the Ubuntu Features page.

To start off, Wubi is now on the installation CD, so you can install it without having to download it separately. Wubi is a way to install Ubuntu from Windows. Wubi is great for people who want to try Ubuntu but are afraid of messing up their Windows installation in the process. If you try Ubuntu via Wubi and don’t like it, all you have to do is uninstall it in Windows and you’re done.

There are updated versions of all your favorite software including Gnome, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, etc. There is also a new bit torrent client named Transmission which is installed by default. If you are Mac user, you are probably already familiar with Transmission. There is also a new VNC viewer installed.

For the next several Linux Friday’s I will be covering how to setup and use Ubuntu Hardy Heron. These posts will include using everything from installing Ubuntu using a Wubi, to checking your system temperatures using lmsensors. So be sure to check back for our newest Linux Friday posts. Check out the WLMTips Extras section in the sidebar to be sure you don’t miss a single post.

For some more information on the newest version of Ubuntu, visit Linux Format: Hands on with Ubuntu 8.04.

To get your copy of the Ubuntu live CD, visit the download page.

Are you using Ubuntu and want to use the latest versions of Mozilla’s Firefox and Thunderbird? If you don’t want to wait for the Ubuntu repositories to be updated, you can use repositories straight from Mozilla. Check out the Ubuntu wiki for more information on installing the new versions of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. The MozillaTeam also has a wiki page that lists all the Ubuntu packages.

For Hardy users, add the following repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu hardy main universe

For Gutsy users, add the following repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu gutsy main universe

For Feisty users, add the following repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu feisty main universe

For Dapper users, add the following repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/ubuntu dapper main universe

If you use Gutsy or Hardy, simply install the ‘firefox-3.0‘ package to get the latest testing release of Firefox 3.0. Currently, the latest version is 3.0b3pre. The repositories also contain the latest official release of Thunderbird (2.0.0.12).

If you use an older version of Ubuntu, Feisty or Dapper, the repositories should at least have the latest stable version of Firefox and Thunderbird (2.0.0.12).

Once you have Firefox 3.0 installed, you will need to install Flash.

First make sure you have the Adobe Flash plugin installed, since it is not included with any version of Firefox.

sudo update-flashplugin
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

The flashplugin-nonfree was made before the Firefox3 pre-releases, therefore, the only way to install Flash is to manually add it to the libraries. To do this, we will link the libraries from the default install location. This way, if you upgrade flashplugin-nonfree in the future, it will automaticaly be updated for Firefox 3.0 as well.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.0b3/plugins/flashplugin-alternative.so

If you receive an error then you are probably using a different version of Firefox 3.0 and you will need to change this command. The best way to find out what this line should read is to navigate to /usr/lib/ and locate the firefox-3.0 folder. This folder name might be slightly different. Once you know the folder name, you can substitute it in the previous command for ‘firefox-3.0b3′. Once you have done this, close Firefox, reopen it and go to Adobe’s test site. This will test to ensure you successfully linked flashplugin-nonfree to Firefox 3.0.

Information on how to install Flash for Firefox 3.0 was taken from the following website.

If you use one of the older versions of Ubuntu and still want to have Firefox 3.0, try some of the following links.

Lifehacker

Linux owns

Mike’s Ubuntu blog

Topical Matt

Ubuntu Forums

Ubuntu Geek

Pictures were taken from the following website respectively:

http://www.library.drexel.edu/blogs/librarylog/firefox.jpg

http://static.howstuffworks.com

http://newtech.aurum3.com/images/firefox-3.jpg

http://www.basement.org/