Browsers
High Hopes for Office Web Apps
Aug 27th
(click images to enlarge)
With Microsoft Office Web Applications, the productivity suite will have a real web-facing side for the first time. It will be released alongside Office 2010 and will be supported by all major browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Google Chrome. Anticipations and stakes for this release are high and I personally think it’s going to sweep current online productivity suites like Google Docs right off the table. Yes, I have extreme high hopes for Office Web Apps. And perhaps you should too.
Feature Set
While not much is known about the real specifics of the online Office suite, it is certain that the traditional desktop software applications like Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote will certainly be represented in the online version of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft describes the suite as online siblings for its Office applications. They will be “lightweight versions of the applications from the desktop product”. According to the General Manager of the Office-project, users of the web applications will be able to “view, edit, and collaborate” on Office documents. The web-version of Office will also, most importantly, retain document fidelity to the fullest, allowing a user to view documents in full quality online, make alterations and save it again (online or off) without loss of quality. This is stellar functionality lacking currently in all online productivity suites.
Google Docs – as a common example – incorporates support for Microsoft Office documents in rather shoddy way. After you upload your files – frankly – they become half-assed HTML variations of the originating document. Microsoft’s solution promises to retain all of the rich formatting, lay-outs, styling, charts, transitions and image quality.
This is obviously a big improvement over any of the current implementations. And it’s one with far-reaching ramifications.
High Hopes
If you have ever sampled an online productivity suite like Google Docs you instantly realize what a step back it actually is from Microsoft Office 2007. It’s slow and feature-impaired. In Google Docs’ case it feels more like a old Office 2003 replica, with the toolbar UI bringing back bad memories with every click. Support for pretty fonts and advanced page layout capabilities are simply neglected. There isn’t anything significant implemented around text styling, nor is the revisioning system in GDocs very much impressive. If we’re honest here, it’s a downright fluke. In my opinion, Google Docs is more reminiscent of an advanced WYSIWYG-editor for blogging purposes, rather than an online word processor. And it’s not even decently apt at producing the aforementioned blog posts, since the HTML it outputs is extremely semantics unfriendly.
Microsoft’s solution, however, could be a game-changer. It will feature the ribbon interface, albeit it less feature-rich, because some functionality simply doesn’t belong in a browser. It will support many of Office’s advanced presentational niceties, though. Couple this to the online storage we’ll be getting with Office Live and true cloud computing starts to show its colors.
Reduced Functionality
I talked about reduced functionality, but don’t let that scare you. The online version of Office will be feature-limited to the degree that the most used functionality will remain present. And since most Office-users only utilize a small percentage of the full suite’s feature-set, I don’t think there will be problems with using Office in its reduced form through Office Web Applications.
To me, this is all very exciting, but I realize I should reserve judgment until I can get my hands on it for some real experience. But what’s a geek to do? I just can’t help myself. Microsoft’s introduction of the ribbon interface to its Office line was big. And so will this be. I sure can’t wait to check it out.
Firefox Portable: Circumvent IE6 in corporations
Aug 25th
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is the extremely antiquated web browser that up till today still manages to ascertain a significant chunk of browser usage share. Even though this browser is incompatible with a plethora of modern-day web applications and is holding the Internet back as a whole, a lot of big corporations still use it as their primary web browser.
IE6 is truly entrenched in corporate life and will most likely remain to uphold this position for quite some time to come. At least for now, many companies still use Windows XP with IE6 on most of their workstations, because they are convinced it is a proven technology. Additionally, it has been around for so long that every experienced IT-professional is comfortable with the management tools that come along with it.
Additionally, many in-house, custom-made software and web applications for corporations was built explicitly for IE6 and haven’t been brought up to date to be more web standards compliant and all-round more contemporary.
Thus, IE6’s usage continues to make up a significant chunk of the overall share. In most cases, the employees who still use IE6 in such companies are forced to do so because computers in such environments are extremely locked down. It is often the case that nothing additional can be installed to these systems. IT guys usually have their reasons [as stated above] to keep maintaining ancient software like IE6, but in this case it’s time for everyone to move on. Perhaps they will make the jump to Windows 7 when it reaches the SP1 milestone somewhere next year. Let’s hope so.
Install Firefox 3.5 without ‘installing’ it
Yes, you read that right and it’s actually very simple to accomplish. To achieve this, I grabbed the portable version of Firefox at portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable. Portable Apps is a suite of software retrofitted to run directly from a USB thumbdrive. They don’t require installation at all: simply run the executable to extracts its contents to a folder of your choosing.
Naturally, portable apps don’t necessarily have to run from a USB key. They can just as well be run from an arbitrary directory on your Windows desktop. And I decided to go for that route, since many corporations are now also disabling the use of outside thumbdrives because they carry in computer viruses and worms.
While Portable Apps can be downloaded as a suite consisting of numerous applications, you can also pick and choose. And thank the heavens, Firefox is in the suite and is being kept current on par with Mozilla’s release schedule.
Note: Be sure to unpack the portable app to a location on the computer’s hard drive, avoid placing it on corporate network location because it will slow Firefox down. Moreover, extracting it locally has the benefit of IT-personnel not being able to peek inside its contents. You can easily permanently delete Portable Firefox’ folder without leaving traces on the corporate network – this way – too.
A quick how to
- Grab the latest portable release of Firefox at http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable.
- Run the .paf-file you just downloaded and specify the path for decompression.
- Navigate into the folder you just specified and run the Firefox executable.
In a corporate environment it may interesting to delve into Firefox’ preference panes to make sure Firefox doesn’t keep track of your browsing history. You can easily set it to ‘Never’, so it will operate in ‘Private Browsing Mode’ permanently, evidently wiping your tracks as you go and as you quit your browsing session. Don’t forget to check this option if you want to prevent your boss from finding out you have been wasting precious office-time on Facebook or YouTube.
Note: Many corporations intercept your traffic on its way out. If this is the case in your company, private browsing will not obscure your traffic data.
Getting Firefox to work behind a corporate firewall
Corporations usually have airtight IT-infrastructure in place, enforced by exceptionally stringent firewall policies. Internet Explorer 6 will usually be pre-configured to play nicely with the aforementioned setup, but Firefox most likely won’t be. It is oftentimes easy to do, however, so don’t despair (just yet).
Frequently, corporate workstations are behind a proxy-server, which is set up in one of the settings screens in IE6. A proxy-server is a server within the company’s IT infrastructure that intercepts every workstation’s internet traffic on the way out (and in) and consequentially relays all traffic. Companies primarily do this so they can monitor and control their employees’ traffic, possibly even blocking certain sites or services, or prioritizing traffic in favor of internal sites and servers.
All you need to do, in most cases, is enter this proxy server’s address into Firefox’ connection settings and you’re off. In a nutshell:
- Fire up good old IE6
- Go to ‘Tools’ > ‘Internet Options’ > Tab: ‘Connections’
- In the section ‘Local Area Network (LAN) Settings’ click the button ‘LAN Settings’
- In the section ‘Proxy Server’, make note of or copy to the clipboard the information listed there.
The address-field is usually filled out with something similar to ‘proxy.companyname.com’ and the port number is usually 80. - Next, open Firefox
- Go to ‘Tools’ > ‘Options’ > Icon: ‘Advanced’ > Tab: ‘Network’
- In the section ‘Connections’ click the button ‘Settings’
- Select the radio button ‘Manual configuration’
- Fill out the fields ‘HTTP Proxy’ and ‘Port’
- Most of the time you need to check the box ‘Use this proxy for all protocols’ to use the same proxy for all web protocols outside of regular protocols like SSL-enabled (secure) sites.
To find out whether you should tick the box in step 10 you can click the ‘Advanced’-button in the IE6’s ‘LAN Settings’ window. This isn’t usually necessary, but in case you need those settings, they’re right there.
Note: You can make an extra attempt eavesdrop-proof your connections to the outside world by using SSL. Make sure you use secure connections (SSL) whenever you can. Sites that contain your sensitive/personal information usually offer this ability. Make sure you make use of it by prefixing your URLs with https:// instead of the usual http://. Some sites will automatically switch you over to https if you don’t explicitly ask them to. Others only go secure for the log-on process, after which everything else is transmitted in the clear. Beware.
For example:
- Go to https://mail.google.com instead of http://mail.google.com to make sure you’re always using a secure SSL-enabled (Secure Sockets Layer) connection.
These few steps should do the trick. The full Internet will once more be at your disposal 
.
Opinion: Google Chrome OS. Will it take over?
Aug 19th
Google to venture into creating its own operating system, it was only a matter of time. The day Google released this blurb of news, the whole Internet / Tech community went berserk over the possibility of ‘Goodie Two Shoes’ Google innovating in the operating system space, which is currently dominated by Microsoft. As far as Google’s own announcement goes: it was very low-calorie on substantial technical facts. All of the excitement – of course – was inspired by them voicing that their OS would essentially be extremely browser-centric. Like the name suggests, it will be based on Google’s recent entry into the browser market, being Google Chrome.
Browser = OS ?
Many vocal techies have been shouting this out for quite a while now. After all, the browser has become an operating system in its own right, no? Similar to desktop operating systems, like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS, the browser serves as a platform for other software to live on. In this case, that software just happens to be web-based. These web apps often employ server-side scripting technologies [like Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, PHP, etc.] as well as client-side ones, with the main protagonist being JavaScript.
But can scripting languages genuinely be classified as real software? This is a tough question. Maybe si, maybe no.Cite from Duma Key, written by Stephen King. Fact is that web apps are more and more turning into fully fledged desktop-esque applications. They are taking over the tasks that traditional desktop software used to do so well.
Web-based e-mail is the most popular example of traditional software being ‘webified’. While webmail has been around since the nineties, the true cloud-based e-mail technology was inspired and primarily architected by Google. Gmail – especially in the light of recent developments – has become increasingly more of a program you download every time you point your browser to mail.google.com, rather than just a static listing of your inbox.
Other milestone initiatives have also risen to the occasion to shed some light on the cloud-centered future that may be ahead of us. To me, the most iconic example of this future just has to be Aviary, the online Photoshop replacement. It loads fast, does most of Photoshop’s basic graphical editing, it’s free and it integrates social networking into the digital art creation process. This is what a cloud-oriented world could look like if multiplied. Exciting indeed.
Back to Chrome OS
I started this post by introducing Chrome OS and the exasperation that surrounds it. But what do we really know about this [currently fictional] operating system? It turns out we’ve picked up painfully little in the intervening weeks between announcement and the present.
A quick rundown of its [alleged] feature-set:
- It will be Linux-based: Chrome OS will build off open source code – not a real shocker. Google will not architect the OS’ underpinnings from scratch.
- It will boast Google’s own, proprietary window management front-end, instead of adopting existing window management systems under Linux, such as KDE, Gnome, etc.
- It will incorporate instant-on booting technology, meaning it should start up within a few seconds, much like some existing ‘instant-on’ Linux distributions work today.
- It will be based on the Google Chrome browser. From what has been disclosed, it looks like native software might not even be supported. Web applications will surely be preferred, with Google’s own products naturally being pushed to the forefront.
- Its release is due in 2010 (!). Any excitement generated now is actually uncalled for. The tech community should reserve judgment until someone actually gets some hands-on experience with it.
It’s safe to speculate that Chrome OS will not embrace [taking advantage of] advanced hardware capabilities like 3D hardware acceleration, and nor will it encourage the development [native] third-party software. Google’s take on their operating system is clean and simple: it must be lean on features and fully dedicated to the web.
A big step for Google?
All things considered, I think we all agree it’s a big thing for Google to take on software giant Microsoft – and niche computer maker Apple – at their own game. Google is no longer a small and insignificant competitor: it has spread its business to a multitude of markets. It seems as if it has made a sport out of nipping away at other companies’ core businesses.
But will Google actually know success with this [hopefully] innovative OS? Or, more likely, will it merely serve as a role-model for Microsoft and Apple to build off, an example for ushering their own OSes into the cloudy future?
Once more, no-one should close their eyes to the fact that Chrome OS will be extremely sparse-featured. Google has a history of taking their spartan concepts just a tick too far. A testament to this would have to be the Chrome browser. If it’s to be any indication of what’s in store for us, one doesn’t need a lot of imagination to envision what Chrome OS will look like. It’s not because it’s branded Google, that it’ll necessarily become a good product…
However, there is no doubt in my mind that Google will leave a big impression on the OS industry, which in turn will cause matters to change significantly. I don’t believe, though, that Google will be the one reaping successes from it left and right. In the long run, Microsoft, which is already slowly adopting the cloud-religion, will eventually migrate Windows to a more cloud-based paradigm. It will undoubtedly take them an extended period of time, but in the end I’m sure they’ll nail it.
Although I still strongly believe in Microsoft’s adeptness, it has become a disproportionately big corporation which is inherently slower at maneuvering into new markets / business models than rivals like Google. So inevitably the question to be raised here is whether Microsoft will get there in time…
A world of change is ahead
Either way, no matter who seizes the crown jewels, a world of change is impending. The future is cloud-computing – we all realize it – and everyone is making a jump at it. There is one problem though: nobody really knows exactly what they’re jumping at. Will everything move to the cloud in the end? Or will things remain to be more hybrid, like where we’re at today?
I’m leaving it open.
It’ll be an interesting case to see where we’ll stand in 5 to 10 years.
Ushering Total Ad-Silence with Firefox
Aug 17th
Display-ads are the money makers of the world wide web. While I encourage everyone to support his or her favorite website by allowing ads and perhaps even clicking on them if interesting enough, online advertisements are often over-used with the clear intent of baiting visitors. If you’re also the type to easily get annoyed with online ads constantly prodding at you wherever you go, there is a non-laborious way to make them a thing of the past.
You may have guessed it: Firefox can infer ad-silence if loaded up with the right extensions. In this post I would like to discuss two of my most beloved ad fighters: AdBlock Plus and FlashBlock. And interestingly, they will work in tandem to eliminate ~90% of ads encountered on the web so you can surf clutter-free.
AdBlock Plus
AdBlock Plus on addons.mozilla.org
AdBlock Plus has to be my favorite extension. It’s probably one of the most popular add-ons for Firefox, too. Nonetheless, it still pays off to discuss some of its most important features that help combat unwanted Internet ads.
Upon installation and after the compulsory Firefox reboot you’re presented with a dialog urging you to make a selection from of the list of available blocking-filters. I generally pick the first one off the top of the list, because I don’t believe it makes a substantial difference which one you pick.
AdBlock Plus blocks ads based on a set of filters which are pulled from the list you’ve just chosen. Because it’s list-based, it has to be maintained by someone, so be aware of the fact that it isn’t always up-to-date. As a result, ads sometimes crop up on websites anyway from time to time. Although the aforementioned event is an oddity, you’re able to add additional filters by simply right-clicking the trespassing ad and selecting ‘AdBlock Plus: Block Image’. From then on the disturbance won’t be able to pierce through AdBlock’s armor any longer.
FlashBlock
FlashBlock at addons.mozilla.org
Most unsurprisingly, there are ways for advertisers to get around add-ons like AdBlock Plus (of which they’re undoubtedly very aware ). One of the most popular ways of doing this is to make use of Flash animations instead of conventional HTML and/or images.
To counteract Flash, FlashBlock was born. When run in conjunction with AdBlock it stomps on advertisers specifically circumventing browser-based blocking mechanisms like AdBlock by employing Flash. Additionally, Adobe Flash has become a serious security-threat and with Adobe’s track-record in this field there’s little hope for change in the near future.
FlashBlock’s original use wasn’t necessarily to block Flash-based ads, in fact, it was designed to block all Flash-content in a convenient way. Coincidentally, it can also be applied to the disposing of ads.
When activated, Flash content will be replaced by a placeholder graphic featuring a familiar play-button. Pressing this button will evidently load up the animation of your choosing. This does away with flashy animations (no pun intended 
) and disturbing music starting at will upon visiting a website. I’m sure you’ll receive the silence well, as did I.
Blacklisting vs. whitelisting
There’s a fundamental operational difference between the extensions I just talked about: AdBlock relies on blacklisting, while FlashBlock opts for explicit whitelisting. In the case of FlashBlock, all Flash is expelled, except for the exemptions you enter into the whitelist by using the pull-down menu, incorporated in the toolbar button installed into Firefox along with the add-on.
Adversely, AdBlock Plus can be configured to whitelist a site you’d like to see ads on. You can easily do so by selecting ‘Disable on www.somesite.com’ – once more by using the drop-down in the toolbar.
Closing Note
FlashBlock and AdBlock Plus are great tools for getting rid of most of the unwanted advertising that plague the Internet and its users. That said, I’d like to add a little disclaimer to this article:
It’s not because I wrote this article that I condemn all forms of online advertising.
Quite to the contrary, I feel it is our duty as good netizens to support the sites/blogs we really like by disabling these tools selectively. You’ll be doing the site/person in question a favor, in most cases, since this is how people monetize their sites. This, in turn, keeps them running.
So if you particularly like an online venue, please allow ads, by all means. And while you’re at it, you may want to consider whitelisting mine .
* Promo image courtesy of Steve Rhodes on Flickr. Creative Commons License applies: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Please, let me rant about Microsoft's ballot screen and the EU
Aug 3rd
First off, let me say one thing before I initiate my disgust-laden rant: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggggggggggh. It may not be as relieving as actually screaming it out loud, but what the bleep’s going on with the EU?! Before I continue my mile-high rant, it may be interesting to sketch the background of this story, especially for those who haven’t been following the happenings leading up to this outright farce…
Microsoft vs. EU: A short history
The EU has developed a disliking to the Redmond-based software giant and has sued Microsoft over numerous of its anti-competitive strategies, mainly related to the bundling of Internet Explorer and Windows. Microsoft is also currently being held liable for several other anti-trust cases. The EU’s antipathy for Microsoft spiked after Microsoft reached a complete monopoly in the browser market. Because bundling is illegal in Europe, Microsoft was forced to pay a big fine to the EU some time ago and sell ‘N’ (nitwit?) editions of Windows. These N-versions are regular versions of Windows bereft of Windows Media Player — and never sold a single copy.
The whole issue flared up once more in recent events when Opera – a EU-based browser company sporting a pathetically low market-share – called on Microsoft for “being unfair” and stifling competition in the web browser market by its own browser with Windows.
Microsoft’s reaction to this was to remove Internet Explorer entirely from its upcoming operating system ‘Windows 7’. Initially, this would only be applied to EU-territory and consequentially, the Windows 7 E edition was born. This was a harsh measure, decidedly put in place to taunt the EU into dismissing the whole thing.
Shortly thereafter, the E-edition was yanked because — no kidding — it would cause unnecessary complications to Microsoft’s partners and would incur too much confusion to Microsoft’s European customers (said the EU).
Thus, in response, Opera “proposed” to introduce the “browser ballot screen” to Windows 7.
Ballot screen?
Ballot as in voting, yes. Microsoft has confirmed it would pursue this proposal to satisfy the EU’s demands:
Unless Opera acts up again, this will likely be the final design of the ballot screen. Microsoft specified that as many as eight browsers are to be displayed, sorted by market share. Yes Opera, you’re fifth down the list. Bummer.
In addition, Microsoft will retroactively be pushing this screen to Windows XP and Vista via Windows Update. A far reaching measure. Way too far if you ask me.
This is bad for the end user
While Opera argues that this is beneficial for the end user because it ensues the freedom of choice, I simply say it’s bull.
Opera, to its credit, got to market first with technology that is now mainstream in almost all browsers (tabs, etc.), but has failed miserably to grab an honorable spot in the browser market. Opera has been around far longer than most of the other browser makers, but still, after so many years pretty much no one would be caught dead using the darn thing. Firefox – for obvious enough reasons – made humongous strides in nipping away at IE’s market share. In a complimentary fashion both Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome rose above Opera without ghastly efforts.
This ‘bullshit screen’ will only confuse [normal] people since many won’t even know what a browser really is (it’s the Internet, Ma!). They just want to surf the web and go about their daily business. How does the average Joe even distinguish whether one browser is better than the other, anyway?
I just don’t think Microsoft should have caved to the likes of an insignificant player like Opera. After all, an operating system should come with a browser in order to get your hands on another one, right (in the light of the E-editions)? Besides, those who are techie enough are up to speed on browsers and will get Firefox if they are so inclined. Others shouldn’t be bothered and get the best browser the market has to offer novice users (read: Internet Explorer or Firefox, NOT Opera).
Anyhow, it’s not like Microsoft holds 90% of the market anymore. A product or service is only monopolistic if it’s the only viable thing to choose from. The mere fact that there are eight browser to display in the ballot screen shows anyone with an ounce of brains that there’s enough diversity to choose from in the browser space.
Bottom line:
Up yours, Opera
Perhaps there’s something wrong with Opera itself. Perhaps? No, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Opera: their product isn’t in the least compelling and nor is it very impressive. It’s competent – sure – but that’s where their story ends. Maybe they should try [positive] marketing..?
So Opera – in my opinion the most childish company of late – tries to gain market share by forcing Microsoft into a stranglehold by leveraging the EU’s preconceived aversion toward Microsoft. And they’re winning. Microsoft should have fought back on this one.
It’s easy to predict what will happen once Mr. End User sees this. He’ll pick one of the first two icons. And no one will go for Opera’s little icon, no matter how loud a raucous Opera causes. And it’ll be what Opera’s got coming to them. I’m already looking forward to it.
As much as I want to continue on, I’d better stop here. I got my point across .
P.S.: Opera’s logo looks like a big zero, it really does.
Firefox Addon Tip: Easy Drag-to-Go
Jun 26th
Easy Drag-to-Go is a Firefox plug-in that will decidedly make you more productive by implementing mouse gestures when handling hyperlinks and text on web pages.
- Find this add-on here [Free].
Web browsing, to me – and I gather this goes for many people nowadays – has become something of a second nature. Not a day goes by without me surfing the web for something or other. It has just become a part of my life [style].
Everyone has different habits when it comes to the use of a computer, but generally – as I see it – there are two types of people. Firstly, there are keyboard-people who try to accomplish as much as they can using solely the keyboard by taking advantage of the multitude of keyboard shortcuts most operating systems and applications carry with them.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are mouse-people, who evidently accomplish most of their work by virtue of the mouse. I assume this group of people is far greater in size since it was the one that ignited the whole GUI-movement in software interfaces.
Web browsers are applications that require a hybrid interaction style, though, combining extensive keyboard use with mouse movements and clicks. While surfing the web, I personally like to keep one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. This way I can easily open new tabs using the various keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+T, Cmd+T) and move between tabs quickly (CTRL-TAB).
A big part of my web routine involves open links, obviously, and I prefer opening links in new tabs. This usually requires me to hold down the CTRL or CMD button while clicking a link (Windows-based browsers often allow the middle-mouse-click to achieve the same effect). While this is behavior I can easily get used to, I found a great Firefox Addon that handles all of my link opening and text searching by use of mouse gestures, which have increased my productivity exponentially.
‘Gesturing’ your way through
Easy Drag-to-Go is not your usual mouse gesture-enabling add-on. While traditional
gestures usually employ the right mouse-button to open new tabs, to go to the next/previous
tab and to close the current tab, Easy Drag-to-Go has a different take on gestures. Here’s how it works by default:
Opening links
To open a new tab you can simply do the following:
- Drag a link up to open the link in a new foreground tab
- Drag a link down to open the link in a new background tab
This dismisses the need to hold down a keyboard button to insure that a link opens in a new tab, and, you have to the choice to open something in the background in case you decide you want to deal with something later on.
Searching
Saw a word on a page you’d like to Google Search (or Bing Search!)? No need to retype it or copy-paste it into that search box! Just go ahead and select it. Once it’s selected:
- Drag the selected text up to search in a new foreground tab
- Drag the selected text down to search in a new background tab
This functionality is especially handy when researching stuff for your blog (or anything else).
Images: You can also assign the add-on to save dragged images to a default location on your hard drive.
Recommended!
How To: Tweak Firefox' look to fit into Vista/Windows 7
Apr 21st
One of the many features of Firefox 3 was native UI-integration on Windows XP, Vista, Mac and Linux. While Firefox’ Mac-version does look rather native, Mozilla completely dropped their efforts to take advantage of Windows Vista’s (or 7’s) Aero Glass effects.
Because Firefox has such a vibrant addon-community, you can achieve the effect below by using 1 custom theme and 2 add-ons:
The stuff you’ll need to achieve this look:
- The Theme: Strata Reloaded which you can find here.
Just hit the ‘Add to Firefox’-button, accept it and let it churn away. You may want to deny the restart, since we’re not done installing add-ons yet.
- Add-on 1: Glasser, download here.
While the theme above introduce prettier icons and the colored bar, Glasser makes Firefox’ chrome transparent like (Internet) Explorer windows. The latest version of Glasser is only compatible with the latest Firefox 3.1 beta. If you click the older version link, you can select the version that’s compatible with the latest stable version of Firefox.
- Add-on 2: Menu Mod, here.
You can hide the menu bar as Internet Explorer does by default by installing the Menu Mod add-on. Once installed, press F2 on the keyboard to toggle the menu bar’s visibility.
“Et voila, c’est tout” as the French say. It’s a pity Mozilla didn’t make this look the default one, it’s much nicer and certainly more native.
Many thanks to the respective theme/add-on developers.
How To: Always Open Links in New Tabs with Safari 4 [Mac]
Mar 16th
Safari 4 Beta for Mac annoyingly doesn’t always open links in tabs, and there’s no real preference control to set this like there is in other browsers like Firefox or Opera. Apparently, this characteristic has been floating around in prior versions of the browser, too. While I like Safari’s speediness and mildly dislike the new tab placement in the beta, what bugs me the most is the issue I indicated with the title of this post.
While it is possible to make Safari [always] open links in new tabs, there is no user-friendly way to do this. To accomplish this behavior you will have to enter a line in Terminal.app:
- Quit Safari (CMD+Q)
- Open Terminal (\Applications\Utitlities\Terminal.app)
- Enter:
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true - Close Terminal and re-open Safari
Tada! That does it indeed. While this is easy enough, Apple should have included it here:
Note: A solution to this problem in the Windows-version of Safari 4 has not yet been found.
First Screenshots: Safari 4 Beta for Mac
Feb 25th
Apple recently released the public beta of Apple Safari 4. Some of the new features include:
- Top Sites: Tab homepage similar to Google Chrome’s, only fancier
- Cover Flow: Integration of iTunes-like Cover Flow for viewing history and bookmarks
- Tabs on Top: Also taken from Google Chrome (see screenshots)
- Nitro Javascript Engine: Once more, inspired by Chrome. Safari’s JS engine would render web apps up to 30 times faster than IE7 and 4 times faster than Firefox.
Not that I’m complaining, but did Apple just take the Chromium project and tack on its own additions? I haven’t looked into this yet, but Safari 4 certainly shows a lot of similarities with Google Chrome… On to some screenshots.
Google Chrome Review, Part 1: The Good
Sep 23rd
Firefox has been a part of my browsing-life since it was still in pre-1.0 beta stages and went by the name of Phoenix. The reason clung so to this new browser (at the time) was due to the fact that I had become frustrated with the much lamented Internet Explorer Microsoft that was developed to sweep Netscape off the table. Back then, Firefox only held a modest percentage of the browsing market-share, its’ main selling point being its open-source nature and security.
Browsers, much like everything else in the computer software business, started to evolve into something much more sophisticated and complex than first envisioned. It seems to me that while Firefox 3.0 was vast improvement over its predecessor, it has lost a lot of its attractiveness, a direct consequence of its increasingly intricate nature.