It’s safe to assume that you have more than one browser installed on your system. I have five. Though we may not use more than two, all of us suffer from a bit of browser fancy. As soon as developers announce a launch of a browser that promises to speed up the web for us, we click on the download link. That’s not a problem, but keeping the same set of bookmarks across the browsers is.

Xmarks is a nifty solution to migrate bookmarks across the world. But for now, it supports Firefox and IE (with Safari in Mac OS). The one for Google Chrome is in the works. The browser that’s missing is Opera. That leaves us with a job half done. Bookmark syncing using Delicious and its bookmarklet tool is one roundabout. But it’s public by default and you have to log-in to change it to private. So, it’s still not as easy a click.

Transmute attempts to fill the gap by letting us migrate bookmarks across all the browsers.

Why Is it Such a Headache to Migrate Bookmarks?

Not very much so, but every browser has its own way of storing its bookmarks. Most bookmarks are stored as HTML files. Opera uses an .adr format. Firefox 3.5+ too differs in that respect as it stores its bookmarks in a Places.sqlite file which is a database file. The bookmarks.html files that used to hold all the links in the earlier versions had been discontinued from Firefox 3 onwards.

Does this create problems in migration of your bookmarks to other browsers still using the HTML formats? No, because Firefox, just like all the others has an import export utility under the Bookmarks Library that allows you to convert the database format to the HTML one for it to be picked up by the other browsers.

The imported bookmarks also get added to the existing bookmarks usually in a separate folder with the name of the browser that was the source. For instance, imported Firefox bookmarks get located in a folder that’s marked Netscape. Imported bookmarks in Chrome get added under Other Bookmarks. You can then manually shift the bookmarks around into any other root folder.

Next, you have to manually weed out the duplicates by going through each and every link. This is where the headache can start.

Transmute Offers Better (& Quicker) Control Over Bookmarks

Why such a name? Is it because it does the job of bookmark transfer ‘silently’ and without fuss? Perhaps, because the Transmute interface is hassle free.

1. You have two dropdowns – Source and Target. You can use the path field to select the location of the bookmarks file for the individual browsers in case you ever changed the default location.
2. Use the dropdowns to select the respective source and target browsers. There are 12 supported browsers and I am guessing that should cover most of what the world uses. The 13th placed XBEL format (XML Bookmark Exchange Language) covers a few other browsers like Galeon, Arora and Midori which use this one to store their bookmarks.



3. Transmute gives you two more options to migrate bookmarks – Overwrite Collections and Backup Collections.
   • Duplication can be handled if you select the overwrite option as it will plant a fresh copy of the bookmark links (but will also remove the older but unique bookmarks in the target).
   • Backup collections are a safety net in case something goes wrong with the conversion process and you want your old bookmark collection back. By default Transmute timestamps and backs up your bookmark collections before changes are made, providing extra safety.

   

   • To restore the old order, just browse to the bookmark folder location and rename the time stamped backup file to the default file name.
4. Close the source and target browsers and press Start. An alert box pops up and with your agreement the transfer begins. A preview window is the last stop before the conversion starts.

And finishes! That’s it; you can migrate bookmarks across multiple browsers without the hassle of import and export.

Transmute also comes in a PRO flavor giving some extra bookmark selection controls and co-ordination with services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious. But for the simple task of keeping all my browsers with the same bookmarks, the free version more than stands up. If you hate installing things, then there’s a portable option too.

Having the same bookmarks across all your browsers is such a basic need and keeping them all updated with each other is where Transmute steps in with a speedy click.

Transmute v1.63 is Windows only and requires Microsoft .NET Framework. It may also run on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

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Being an Opera long-time fan (back to the days of Netscape vs. IE), I’m also curious about what goodies Opera 10 has to offer. So I gave Opera 10 – Mac version for me – a test drive, and here is my Opera browser review with several nice features that I like.

Speed Dial those pages

The first thing that users will notice is the “speed dial” page which will always be shown every time a new blank page is opened. The idea is that users will be able to access their favorite pages using these pre-configured “dial-pad”. Something like “Top Sites” in Safari.

There are nine default boxes, click an empty one to add a web page and click on an assigned one to go directly to that page.

Users can configure how many dial-pad boxes they want – from 4 (2 x 2) to 25 (5 x 5), what background image to show, or whether they want to hide or show speed dial.

What makes this feature special is the ability to synchronize these speed dial boxes to other Operas in other places, even under different OSes and different devices.

Link with Opera Link

The synchronization process discussed above is done using a feature called Opera Link. Using this service, users can synchronize Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Typed History, Notes, and Searches.

But before using it, users should sign up first for an Opera account.

I think this synchronization feature could be Opera’s strongest selling point because of the existence of Opera Mini. As one of the leaders in mobile browsers, Opera Mini could “persuade” its users to try the desktop version just to have all of their data synchronized between devices.

Playing with Panels

Opera has a customized side panel which can be opened by clicking the “Panels” button next to tabs.

Users can fill in the panels with useful tools like Bookmarks, Widgets, Notes and History, by going to Tools –> Appearance menu

and then choosing the Panels tab.

Mail and Chat

Opera has an email client built-in the browser. Even though some users might prefer a stand-alone client, others would likely embrace the idea of Mail-Browser integration.

The first step of using this client is creating an account.

Beside email, there are other kinds of account that could be set, such as Newsgroups and IRC chat. (I wonder whether anybody still use these two classics and I also wonder why Opera included them).

Peeking through tabs

This one is a simple feature which I think is very useful. Users can peek into the background tabs just by hovering the mouse above the tab.

Turbo-charge the browsing experience

Opera 10 has another unique feature called Opera Turbo. Opera claims that this feature is able to boost the Internet bandwidth speed on slow connections by using Opera proxy servers to compress data and image traffic before they reach the browser.

To enable the feature, just click on the Opera Turbo’s teeny-weeny button on the bottom-left corner of the window.

Users should customize the turbo setting first before using it. There are three settings available: Automatic, On and Off.

Those with slow internet connections will be grateful for this free service provided by Opera as there are many similar services out there that charge high monthly fees for more or less the same features.

Surely, there are many more features in Opera 10 such as mouse gestures and widget support (similar to addons for Firefox), but for now, I’ll limit myself to these favorite features of mine.

And if you think you still need a little bit “nudge” to try Opera, please look at the CPU usage comparison between Opera and our favorite Firefox. (Those are dynamic numbers which always change slightly from time to time, but you get the picture, right?)

One more thing, for this Opera browser review I used Opera for Mac, but I assume the features would be the same under different OS. Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, QNX, OS/2 and BeOS.

Do you use Opera? Which features do you like? Share your thoughts and opinion in the comments section below.

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Doing my research for this post (yes, it’s almost like real journalism here at MakeUseOf), I was surprised to read the first version (1.0) was released only five years ago, in November of 2004. Even with the recent extra competition brought on by Chrome from Google, Internet Explorer and Opera, it kept gaining popularity. Mozilla Firefox now has a market share of about 22%.

Alright, enough with the history lesson. Many people like to take Firefox with them on a USB drive to college or work so that they can use their personalized settings and plugins. A lot of these places still use Internet Explorer 6 or something like that, so using a portable version of Firefox seems like the smart thing to do. Installing is easy when you use the portable version PortableApps, but updating Firefox portable is not so easy. If you don’t have a portable version of Firefox installed yet, read this article on how to turn your USB drive into a fully functional PC or just go to www.portableapps.com to install it. But if you want to update a portable Firefox app, you can’t just click the auto-updater button that pops-up when there’s a new version. You have to install a normal version of Firefox, with some special settings. Here’s how.

Download the regular setup file

You can download the regular setup file from Mozilla. The latest version at the time of writing is 3.5.2. So if you have a previous one, it’s wise to update because Mozilla keeps plugging security holes all the time.

Start the installation

Double-click the file you have just downloaded. Click ‘Next’ in the first window. Now pay attention as it goes a little differently than usual. In the second screen, select “Custom” and deselect the check-box next to “Use Firefox as my default web browser”.

Click ‘Next’ to continue.

In this screen, click “Browse” to search for the folder where your portable Firefox is installed on your USB drive. Select the “DefaultData\Firefox” folder so the location ends with “\FirefoxPortable\DefaultData\Firefox”. This way, you overwrite the files from the current installation but keep all your settings and plugins. Click ‘OK’ and ‘Next’.

In the next screen, deselect the options to create icons since you already have icons from the previous installation. After this, you can click ‘Next’ to check the summary and press “Install” to do just that.

There you have it, your portable Firefox is updated, all secure and future-proof. Until the next update anyway. Click “Finish” with the checkmark in place to check out the newest version of the open-source browser. You can take Firefox with you to your school or office. It’s also a great way to try out the newest alpha versions without endangering your stable version. You can find the latest test versions here, but as Mozilla themselves claim it “might delete all your files and cause your computer to burst into flames”.

If you’re new to the portable apps, I recommend looking around at their site Portableapps.com. There is a suite of the most used software that you can start with. Some apps to check out are OpenOffice.org Portable, Pidgin Portable and FileZilla Portable. Here are some more portable app suggestions.

Do you use portable apps? How do you update them to the latest versions? Share your technique in the comments.

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Today, not only can browsers go to websites and view information but they can also interact with the websites they visit and that can end up leading to trouble if you’re not careful of what you download, specifically with installing Active X controls.

A brief history of ActiveX before we start. ActiveX is a software and coding framework made by Microsoft in 1996 and now competes with Sun Microsystem’s Java platform. ActiveX controls are almost like “mini” pieces of software that can be used not just in Internet Explorer, but also in other pieces of software such as the Offfice product suite and Windows Media Player. When the controls are in your browser, they are usually used for visual plugins, such as specialized 3rd party media players, remote control applications, online virus scanners and other things of that nature.

You might visit a website occasionally which will prompt you to download/install ActiveX in your computer, and say “yes” to the couple of security confirmation prompts that come up not knowing what you’re really accepting, but this is exactly where the danger lies. Most people only care to get to the content they’re visiting, so they will keep clicking “yes” and “accept” as many times as it takes to see the final page, and that is where the danger lies for you to be opened up to viruses, trojan horses, spyware and even phishing attempts.

ActiveX controls can be dangerous because, once you finish installing Active X controls, they have most of the functions a regular Windows program running on your desktop has, which is a significant security problem if the control was from a malware infested site or was downloaded by mistake. That’s why if you have a prompt for a questionable or suspicious ActiveX control from your browser, the worst thing that can happen will simply be that you won’t be able to see the site or page you’re trying to visit.

If you think you’ve installed a risky ActiveX control, it is easy to remove. If you’re using Firefox, click on Tools, click Add-Ons, then click on the Plugins tab and disable the control that you’re trying to remove by clicking disable.

In Internet Explorer, click on Tools then on Manage Add-Ons and make sure that the “Toolbars and Extensions” type is selected on the left menu. Click on the control you’d like to remove and then click disable by its information in the lower right corner.

Finally, a word about how to stay safe. Some online toolbars (such as the Google Toolbar) and many browsers (including Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox) can help by warning you that a site you are trying to visit is known for downloading malicious code to its visitors browsers so if you do get such a warning from a browser, be sure to pay attention to it. Most browsers usually show a red screen before loading the page to make sure you get the message!

Do you have tips on how you stay safe while browsing? Share them with us in the comments below!

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Being the native Mac OS X browser, Safari – which should have been a no brainer choice for Mac users – faces a fierce challenge from Firefox – the browser that can be anything you need it to be. Add-ons are Firefox’s ultimate weapon.

But Firefox is not the only browser that can add functionalities using add-ons. The Safari browser also has plugins to expand its ability. While there are far less Safari browser plugins than there are for Firefox, not everybody needs everything.

So for anybody who are still deciding which one of the two should be the main browser, maybe these list of Safari browser plugins can help you choose sides.

Multifunctional

1. Glims is on top of my list of all other Safari plugins. It has expanded the search box functionality of Safari plus some other bonuses such as: re-opening closed tabs, automatically re-opening the tabs from the last session and full-screen browsing.  It’s been discussed here.

2. SafariStand also adds a few helpful features to Safari such as: Stand Bar (for quick access to bookmarks), history, Stand Search with Spotlight support, an Action Menu, option to restore last workspace, a site alterations preference window with the option to put custom CSS layouts on specific sites, and syntax coloring in viewed source. Go to more detailed explanation here.

Please note that you need to install SIMBL 0.8.2 or later before you can use SafariStand.

Searchbar

3. Inquisitor beautifully extends the functionality of the search bar. It auto-completes your search term, gives you search recommendations and lets you quickly see the results for your specified terms on another sites. If you need to have the powerful searchbar only without additional extra functions choose this one over Glims. Inquisitor also supports IE and Firefox. More about it here.

Multimedia

4. CoolIris (Preview and PictLens) will transform Safari into a picture and movie viewer – in style. ‘Nuff said.

We’ve covered CoolIris before, and it’s nice to know that this product is also working fine under Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux; and for other browsers like Firefox, IE 7 and IE 8, and Flock 2. Safari under Windows is not supported though.

Blockages

5. Safari AdBlock and SafariBlock are the ultimate tools to block ads and provide cleaner browsing. Most web publishers would hate these two as parts of the publishers’ revenue come from advertising. But for users, blocking ads means less clutter and more browsing speed.

6. Click-to-flash – will prevent any flash content from automatically loading and will replace it with an empty grey box. Just click on the box to load the content. Anyone with a slow internet connection will find this webkit plugin indispensable.

Social Media

7. Safari140 is the tool to tweet. This plugin will allow you to send direct tweets from Safari, auto filled with the current site while the long URL’s are shortened.

8. DeliciousSafari is self explanatory. This is the tool to create and use del.icio.us bookmark from Safari.

Tools

9. Greasekit is the comparable Firefox’s Greasemonkey in Safari. It gives users the scripting ability to change looks and add new functionality to their favorite sites. Greasekit is compatible with most Greasemonkey scripts.

Just like SafariStand, Greasekit need SIMBL.

10. Firebug lite is the answered prayer for users who want to have Firebug ability – once Firefox exclusive – in other browsers. There are two ways to activate Firebug under non-Firefox browsers: insert the code in the site, or use the bookmarklet.

This one is not exactly a plugin but it is the solution for those who said that the only reason he/she stays with Firefox is Firebug.

More

11. Pimp My Safari – is the place to go to find more Safari add-ons in the form of plugins or bookmarklets. Please note that not all of the plugins are free.

This list is far from complete, but I think it’s a good start. So if you know (and use) other good Safari plugins, please share them using the comments below.

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Alternative web browsers are aplenty and have a low barrier of entry even for less technically savvy computer users, but people are generally not keen to change their habits or spending time researching, downloading and installing another application – especially when the one that comes preloaded appears to be working just fine.

1. Firefox is not perfect software, but its vulnerabilities are fixed in a considerably shorter amount of time. Many new users are curious – is Mozilla Firefox safe? Updates are released immediately, not on a monthly schedule, and clock in at fewer than 10 MB. Users are notified automatically and prompted to install the update with a single click. The update process doesn’t take more than a minute on a modern computer.

2. Since Firefox is open source, anyone can look at the source code, anyone can spot a problem and contribute a fix. Would you leave your car keys with a guy that says “trust me” or at a car lot with video surveillance and a logbook?

3. ActiveX applets, the way IE extends the functionality of the browser, are a known highway for malware and viruses. Firefox works with verified and signed add-ons. Even if you choose to install a malicious add-on – and the browser warns you – the damage is limited to the information in the browser whereas ActiveX exploits could be used to take over the whole computer.

4. Conscious users can install NoScript, an add-on that takes care of vulnerabilities that are not yet patched, either in Firefox or other plug-ins such as Java, JavaScript and Adobe’s Flash. It achieves this goal by allowing the user to selectively enable interactive objects that the user decides to trust, automatically blocking the rest.

5.  Security through obscurity; malicious programmers will always target the browser with the largest user base, especially if that user base is less tech savvy.

6.  Firefox uses a service provided by Google that notifies the user before entering a potentially malicious web site. These websites ask for your financial data under false pretenses or contain malicious software often posing as something useful such as codecs or registry fixes.

We check the radiator on the car when the temperature indicator turns red; by the time the computer starts acting up or not starting at all, and by all chances appearing to work just fine, your documents, passwords and financial data might already siphoned half a world away. Most people don’t realize this, there are no clear warnings, but using Internet Explorer is in itself a security threat.

I substantiate that statement by citing the Google Analytics on my blog – there are still people using old, un-patched and therefore vulnerable versions of Internet Explorer. The reasons behind this range from the hassle of dealing with Windows Update, millions of machines without a valid license which cannot access updates and users not realizing the importance of having up to date software.

This is not news, yet there are people unaware of the danger posed. Washington Post’s Brian Krebs reports on the Security Fix blog “Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006”. Even a fully patched and up-to-date version of IE 6 contains at least 22 discovered vulnerabilities; IE 7 stands at 9 and IE 8 at 2. By comparison, the latest version of Firefox (3.5.1), a free and open source browser, has zero un-patched vulnerabilities; the previous version (3.0.x) also stands at zero.

As always, you’re welcome to leave a comment below. Is Mozilla Firefox much more safe compared to IE? You might also want to check out some MakeUseOf posts on security, Firefox or browsers in general.

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Unite eliminates the need for a third party server that would normally proxy or relay the content, such as Flickr, Twitter or Yahoo Messenger. It’s essentially like setting up a web server on your own computer, without the hassle of manually installing various software, configuring them and getting a DNS (Domain Name System) account. It also makes the installation of new functionality a “point and click” process.

I’m sure we’ll have a review of Opera 10 shortly, but let’s focus on Unite for the moment. Here are the steps you need to take in order to use the various Unite services.

1. Click on the propeller icon on the left sidebar.
2. Click on the icon labeled ‘Home’ and then on ‘Start’. A wizard will appear. Click next.
3. Create an Opera account for free or sign up for a new one. It is extremely simple and fast, just choose an username, a password and enter an email address.
4. Choose a name that would describe the computer. If you install Unite on more than one computer, this will enable you to differentiate between them and enable sharing. A descriptive name could also help a friend who wishes you to send photos, for example – naming one “The home PC” and another “The office laptop” can easily distinguish the two. Using UPnP port forwarding poses some security issues, but it allows access to your files from outside the local network (Internet) without using Opera’s proxy server which provides a speed boost. If you want a direct connection without UPnP, add port (8840) in your router’s ‘Port Forwarding’ list.
5. Click Finish to save the settings and close the wizard.

You will now be able to start any of the services listed in the left sidebar, such as file sharing. They are designed to be extremely easy to use. For example, to enable File Sharing, click on the File Sharing icon and then on Start. To protect your privacy, it will ask you to select the folder that you want to share.

After you click the OK button, a web page will open that will showcase the content you selected in the previous step. On the left, you’ll see your files, on the right the instructions for sharing with your friends and the permissions. All your friend has to do to access the files is to paste the link given in the right sidebar. A regular webpage will appear in your friend’s browser along with download links for all the files.

All the files are hosted on your computer and are never transferred to Opera’s servers. For the duration you wish to allow users to connect to your Unite services, you need to have the computer and browser open. Be aware that transferring unencrypted sensitive information is not recommended, as all transfers are done using HTTP. The Photo, Media and File Sharing use the same underlying technology while adding specific controls for each media type like a Flash music player and photo thumbnails.

This technology is not limited to the 5 bundled applications: Fridge (secure notes), Lounge (instant messaging), Photo and File Sharing, Media Player. It’s open to developers and uses well-known open standards such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Below is a screenshot of the Lounge, a quasi-instant messaging application. To invite other people, the host needs to send a link to the other participants. They can use any modern web browser to join the discussion.  It is similar in functionality to a private IRC channel.

The Fridge application lets you leave notes for friends or yourself, similar to the ‘Wall’ on Facebook or direct messaging in Twitter.

You can write applications — in the form of Opera Unite Services — that use this server to serve content to other Web users. Why is this exciting? Well, it allows you to interact with contacts, sharing data and services without the need for any third-party Web sites/applications to be involved at all. –Opera Developer Blog

Opera lets the geeks get a taste of the next paradigm shift in web browsing, a great way to win hearts, minds and developers. I’ve radically changed my tune about Opera after hearing from tens of fans and Thomas Ford, Communications Manager.

I invite each one of you to give Opera Unite a try. Download the alpha which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux; and let us know what you think in the comments. What applications should the developers start working on to further extend Unite’s functionality?

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The good, the bad, and the unscientific test

I’m just an ordinary Mac user and not a certified software tester, so don’t expect to find scientific result here. All I did was take this incomplete Mac version of Chrome for a ride, doing the things that I usually do everyday with a browser.

But first, I downloaded from here and installed it.

Opening, closing and re-opening the browser

As silly as they sound, there are reason why I do this: first is to know how fast the browser starts, and closes; second is to glance at the look; and third is to know whether Chrome saves the previously opened tabs upon restarting.

The results:

Chrome opens pretty fast. Actually, pretty darn fast. That is a good sign.

Google search functionality is embedded directly in the address bar. So, you may just enter your search queries into the field, hit Enter and boom, you’re redirected to Google’s search results page.

Chrome actually saves passwords using Keychain Manager and allows you to add bookmarks. There isn’t a bookmark manager as yet, unfortunately. So don’t go adding bookmarks unnecessarily, there’s no way to delete them!

Unlike what Damien said regarding the Linux version, Mac’s Chrome alpha does have support for complex tab management i.e. you can pull individual tabs out of their current window and shift them around.

Flaws:

There is no Flash support yet. This means that everything that depends on Flash like YouTube or flash games won’t work.

Generally, I think the appearance is OK for a Mac app, but that is personal preference. But just like with Safari 4 beta, I disliked the way Chrome arranges the tabs above the address bar because the page title would be partially missing when many tabs are open.

I found a few minor bugs, though — such as the absence of favicons and the also the absence of green button to maximize the window. Another bug is the missing titles from some opened tabs as shown below.

After restarting, Chrome did not re-open the previous tabs automatically. Although, this setting is easily enabled in the Preferences. They do inform you which tabs were recently closed, that’s a nice touch.

Read Emails in GMail

I’ve been a GMail fan since its first appearance. And because Chrome also comes from Google, I think it would be logical to try to open GMail from Chrome.

I don’t have high hopes because several early reviews of Mac Chrome stated that GMail was not rendered perfectly. Yet, I didn’t encounter any problems. Another good sign.

Open a whole bunch of tabs

I think the concept of tabs is one of the best things that have ever happened in the browser world. The Windows version of Chrome takes it further by separating each tab into an individual entity. The idea is, if one tab crashes, the others will not be affected.

To see whether the same concept was also applied to the Mac alpha version, I tried to open as many tabs as possible at once (more than 20 before I lost count), and hoped that one of them would crash.

I was unlucky. Everything went fine. But I found that opening lots of tabs consumes a lot of processing power, and there was a lag for a few milliseconds for a page to appear when switching between tabs.

Just for your information, Chrome uses the same key combination as Firefox to switch between tabs: Command + Option + Left/Right Arrow.

Downloading

Beside emailing, chatting and browsing, downloading is another main activity of the netizen.

By default, Chrome handles the download by itself. But to monitor the process, you have to open the download tab by going to the Window –> Downloads menu. No complains here either.

Editor’s note: By default, Chrome stores downloads to the Downloads folder but the settings to change the download location is bricked.

Blogging

Last but not the least, I tried to blog using Chrome.

Maybe it was my connection or maybe it was Chrome, but I felt that logging in to one of my Wordpress blogs took quite a while. Uploading pictures and saving post were not as snappy compared to Safari 4, and there were also several unsuccessful login attempts to other Wordpress blogs.

In Conclusion

This is just a short test drive of the Mac alpha version of Chrome, but I already like it – a lot. And after experiencing it first hand, I have to say that I can not wait for the final release. I must admit that it may be a tad more refined than its Linux counterpart. Read Damien’s article to see how it performed on Ubuntu

Have you tried it yet? What do you think? Does it give you hope for the final release? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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For those Linux users who have been waiting hard and long for the release of Google Chrome Linux Alpha, there are both a good and bad news for you. The bad news is, Google Chrome for Linux is still not available yet. The good news however, the alpha build is now available for testing, which could be a joy for some Linux geeks.

Last week, Google released the first alpha build (build 3.0.183.1) of Google Chrome for Linux (and Mac). I have tested the Linux version on my Ubuntu machine and compared how it fares against Firefox. It is apparent that there are plenty of features missing, but it also comes with some juice that proved to be a surprise for many.

Warning

On the Chromium developer’s blog, they have stressed that the alpha build is not meant for mainstream public use and should be used only by developers. Being a public user, you are still free to download/install the software, but do bear in mind that many of the features are still missing.

Next step, installation.

Installation

Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu is very easy. Download the deb file from the Chromium Early Release Channel to your desktop. Double click on the downloaded file to initiate the installation.

When the installation is complete, a warning window regarding the instability of this software will pop up. In the window, you can also opt to help the development of Google Chrome for Linux by sending in the crash reports to Google.

First impression

The very first impression of running Google Chrome Linux on my Ubuntu is that it is very fast.

Whenever I click on the Firefox launcher, I always have to wait for several seconds (at least 10 seconds) for it to load in the background before I get to see the home page. The more extensions I installed, the slower it got.

For Google Chrome, the moment I click on the launcher, the browser loads instantly, almost without any delay. One could argue that Google Chrome doesn’t support any extensions now and most of its features are not available, so it is logical that it loads faster. That could be true, but still, the difference in the speed is enormous.

Other than the boot speed, the speed that it loads a web page, performs a search, accesses URL history, suggests the URL as you type is also much faster than Firefox. And also more intelligent, in my opinion.

We have already covered plenty of Google Chrome features, including the tips and tricks, so I shall not delve into that. Overall, what is working in this alpha build is basic browsing, new tabs, simple tab dragging, search from URL bar, incognito mode and full page zoom.

What is lacking for now?

In short, it is still lacking a whole great list of things. There is no flash support, means you won’t be able to watch any videos on Youtube, no printing, no complex text support, no complex tab dragging (pulling the tab out of the browser window), you can’t change the homepage, little or almost no configuration options in the Options page and many other features that are only partially implemented.

One thing that I also noticed is that the font rendering in Google Chrome is still not up to par with Firefox. In addition, the UI still needs some polishing to make full of the GTK+ theme.

Should you install?

Google has make it clear that this is still an alpha release and should be installed by developers only. I am not a developer, but I am already enjoying the benefits of its speed. For basic browsing (checking mail, reading articles, performing searches in search engines), Google Chrome can do its job well, but for anything that is more complex, you will have to fall back to your native browser. There is no harm in installing it and trying it out for yourselves, I am already using it as my default browser. For complex stuff, I guess I’ll have to stick with Firefox.

Don’t forget that this is only the Linux version. My colleague, Jeffry, will be reviewing its Mac counterpart. Watch out for his article. Will it be better or worse? Find out soon.

What do you think about this alpha release? Did Google do the right thing by releasing such a raw version of their browser? Are you satisfied with it? Let it all out in the comments!

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• Testing Google Chrome Alpha: Test #2 – Mac (8)
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But for the serious guys, the source code is often a mine of info. It’s the backdoor into a competitor’s SEO strategies – keyword use, design optimization etc. In brief, what’s the guy doing right and what is he doing wrong.

Every browser has an inbuilt viewer, much like a notepad. Commonly found under the View menu, it displays the client side source code at the touch of a mouse. Commonly though, it is not feature rich. For instance, a feature to change the font face would have been nice. Also, a simple addition of a comment before saving the file is not possible as it is usually read only. It is merely meant to be a viewer… the word ‘editor’ a bit ill-chosen.

So can we get the browser to use the editor of our choice? Thankfully, most of the browsers themselves are open to the idea. Here’s how we can foist our own choice on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 3’s default viewer is accessed from View – Page Source. It has basic options to change the text size, syntax highlighting and a feature to wrap long lines. One feature I like is that Firefox lets me see the source for a selected area of the webpage (Right click – View selection source).

But to choose another editor, let’s do this:

1. Type about:config in the address bar. Ignore the alert which comes up and go ahead.
2. In the application preferences page, scroll to the bottom half of the page or use browser’s Find (CTRL+F) to search for two values.
3. Find and highlight view_source.editor.external. Double click and toggle it to “true”.
4. Next, just below it find and highlight view_source.editor.path. Double click on it and enter the new path of your preferred editor in the Enter string value box. If the path doesn’t exist or is not executable, the inbuilt viewer will be used.

It’s done!

Firefox has a host of add-ons which help to get under the hood of a webpage. Ann Smarty, a colleague here at MakeUseOf has covered seven of them quite comprehensively in an outside post at SearchEngineJournal.com. Of the 7 add-ons mentioned, only View Formatted Source is not updated for the latest version of the browser.

Internet Explorer

IE8’s source viewer, accessed from View – Source doesn’t add anything more than the standard options. But the inbuilt Developer Tools feature gives IE8 some extra teeth and us, an option to have an editor of our choice.

Developer Tools is a debugger which makes dissecting a webpage and its included elements like CSS, Javascript and HTML much easier. The developer tools can be opened by –

• Open IE8. Press F12
• Or on the Menu click Tools – Developer Tool.

It is a powerful tool and to explain it would require a few tutorials of its own. Here, we just want to change the source code editor.

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Press the F12 button to start the Developer Tools.
3. Click on File; Choose Customize Internet Explorer View Source.
4. Three options are presented: Default Viewer, Notepad, Other…
5. You can use Notepad or select Other for an editor of your choice. Browse to the location of your program, select the program’s executable file and click Open to set it up as the new editor.

Opera

Opera v9.64 does allow you to make changes and apply them on the fly in its source editor. The source editor is available from View – Source. Opera also gives you the option to change the default and it is easy.

1. On the Menu, click on Tools – Preferences.
2. In Preferences, select the Advanced tab. Under Programs, click on Edit for Choose application for viewing source.
3. Opera gives us three choices,
   • The Opera source viewer – use the inbuilt one.
   • Open with default application – specify the path of your preferred application.
   • Open with other application – here you can browse to the program of your choice, select its executable and set it as the editor. You can also fix launch parameters for the program in the Parameter field.
4. Click OK to close the source viewer options and set the changes.

A short note on Google Chrome…

Google Chrome does not allow us to change the default source viewer (yet!). Chrome has a Developer’s section under the page icon, from where you can view the source of the current page, use Debug JavaScript function and open a JavaScript console. The source viewer itself is minimalistic with syntax highlighting, line numbers and active links.

The view source option is akin to a diagnostic kit, especially for a web developer. Therefore, it makes sense to use the better ones on the table like for instance Notepad++, SourceEdit, or even dedicated but lean HTML editors like Homesite (good but not free). For more free options look at 3 Windows Text Editors For Programmers.

As we are talking about the ‘language of code’ why not also look at Damien’s post on tools to clean up CSS files.

Have you changed your source viewer/editor? Or are you sticking to the default? Also let us know your own editor of choice.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)

If you are a web developer, you sure have to take care of browser compatibilities and ensure that your web app looks and works almost the same, if not entirely the same across different browsers and platforms.

If you have been looking for an easy solution to see how your site looks in different browsers, then check out the new Adobe BrowserLab. Adobe BrowserLab provides you with exact renderings of your webpages as they would look in different browsers and operating systems. The service might remind you of Browsershots which also provides you with screenshots of your site in different browsers. There is however, no waiting required in Adobe BrowserLab and you get to see the results almost instantaneously.

Adobe BrowserLab allows you to preview your work in Firefox 2.X Windows, Firefox 3.X Windows, Firefox 2.X Mac OS, Firefox 3.X Mac OS, IE6.X and IE7.X and Safari 3.X; which is less than what you can get with Browsershots but includes the popular browsers.

You can view the results side by side (2-up) view, or any individual screenshot (1-up view) or compare the renderings with the “onion-skin” view which overlays one screenshot over the other (as seen below).

You can install BrowserLab MXP extensions to integrate Adobe BrowserLab with Dreamweaver CS4, which would then allow you to preview and compare the local files which you are developing for your site.

Looks too good to be true? Well it is true, at least for a certain period of time anyway. Adobe BrowserLab is a limited free preview service. While Adobe is testing the service, they are letting people hop on board. The final product would most likely require you to shell out some bucks. However, with the time most webapps take these days to drop out of beta stages, you might be able to use BrowserLab for at least a considerable amount of time. You can give it a thorough spin and decide if you would like to spend some money to avail its services in the future.

Interested in webdesign? Check out our MakeUseOf posts to help you become a web-designing wizard.

What clever ways do you use to preview your work in different browsers? Virtualization? Or you install all the browsers? Let us know about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

The semantic web, as Wikipedia puts it, is:

an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

In this case, semantic recognition technology means that Glue can figure out when you are visiting a web page about the same “books, music, movies, wines, stocks, movie stars, recording artists” as your friends, but not necessarily on the same website.

If your friend left a comment on, let’s say, Slumdog Millionaire’s page on IMDB, that comment would also show in the Glue toolbar when you are visiting the Wikipedia page of the same movie. The technology basically aggregates information from across the web and serves it back according to ‘semantics’.

After you go to getglue.com and install the 500KB add-on, you’ll be presented with a bar at the top of the page you’re visiting. This bar shows friends that have liked the same thing you’re looking at as well as their comments. You can add it to your favorites or leave replies/comments.

It’s extremely easy to use Glue, it doesn’t seem to slow down Firefox and it only shows up when it detects one of the aforementioned categories i.e. you won’t see Glue popping up on the Wikipedia page for LHC.

It connects to Facebook – which makes importing friends easy for you and gives them a  great opportunity for exponential growth. They also invite you to give your Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Linkedin, FriendConnect and Myspace in order to allow fellow Glue users to “instantly see your books, music, movies, and more!”. However, it’s vey easy to close your account from: Glue For You>Account>Delete Account.

If you’re not sure yet whether to install Glue or not, check out this short video which explains how Glue works:

Glue Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Glue is definitely a very interesting and useful Firefox add-on, and I invite you to try it and let us know in the comments what you think about it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
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• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
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• Lazarus – Bring Your Form & Browser Data Back From The Dead (3)

We will be looking at two similar services Fileai and FilesOverMiles. As simple as it can get, both of them only require a web browser for you to start sharing files. That is it. No setting up your own servers, no creating private torrents, no uploading the file to third-party server.

Just click on the Send Files button within Fileai or the browse button within FilesOverMiles and you can pick and choose the files you want to send. You will then be provided a unique URL that identifies the transfer you are about to initiate. Pass on the link to your recipients, and as soon as they visit the link, they will start downloading the file directly off your computer.

So what are the advantages? Apart from the ease of use, virtually zero configuration and platform independence, there are other significant benefits as well. For one, the file is available for download instantly because it is being transferred directly from your computer to the receiver’s computer. Moreover, since your files are not being stored on any servers and the fact that you get unique random URLs coupled with encrypted transfers, you can share your personal files with your friends and families without having to worry too much about privacy issues.

There is no limit on file size when you send files using FilesOverMiles. However, it uses flash for transfers and therefore requires the entire file to be copied to the RAM, so you might not want to try your luck with a 2GB file on a computer fitted with only 2GB of RAM. Similarly, the recipient can download files that are smaller than half of the RAM available on their side. In any case, if you have a fairly new computer this may not be a problem for you.

Fileai requires Java runtime and runs as an applet that allows you to choose files and generate URLs. Similar to FilesOverMiles, there is practically no limit on the file size you can transfer because you and the person on other end will be using your respective bandwidths.

The one thing that I found missing in FilesOverMiles was BitTorrent-like inter-peer sharing algorithm that is available in Fileai. Using Fileai, if you send download link to multiple recipients, they will interact with each other resulting in faster download speeds for them and less upload bandwidth usage for you. Password-protected links and the ability to limit the number of transfers are some additional features that distinguish Fileai from FilesOverMiles.

A potential downside of such services is that both sender and receiver have to be online and connected to the Internet at the same time. You must also keep the browser window open till the transfers complete.

All in all, you should keep both of these sites handy in your virtual toolkit. You can pick and choose amongst them depending upon your needs or may be the availability of flash player of Java runtime on the computer you are on!

Not convinced? Maybe Pando or Podmailing will work for you instead.

With all the options that are available these days we are curious to know what service(s) you use to send/share files (large or small). Mention them in comments

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Using Pando To Send Huge Files Across The Web (16)
• Transmission, The Lightweight BitTorrent Client (11)
• Top 3 Reasons Kazaa Lite English Is Better Than Kazaa (8)
• The Guide to Biggest File Sharing Networks: Pros & Cons (14)
• P2P File Sharing From Within Your Browser With LittleShoot (6)

Internet has become an inseparable part of our daily lives and the web browsers are the gates to enter that virtual world.

And speaking of browsers, most Mac users rely on Safari and Firefox as their two main browsers. But those are not the only options. There are other browsers, such as: Opera, Flock, Shiira, Stainless, Camino and Sunrise. You can even try Chrome on your Mac if you really want to. Yet, there’s one great free browser that not many Mac users talk about: OmniWeb.

This browser – developed by The Omni Group (creator of many well-known Mac apps) – used to be a commercial application. Maybe that’s why OmniWeb is not popular among freeware seekers. The developer decided to make it available for free earlier this year – around February 2009. Due to the unbelievable number of free, great web browsers out there, I think it was a wise (and unavoidable) decision for the developers to make.

Why OmniWeb and why not?
Let’s start with the “why not” part first. There’s a catch behind the whole “free” statement: Omni Group have decided not to put this browser under active development anymore, although it is not discontinued. This might discourage some people to even try to use it. But still, it’s a good application and the latest available version (5.9.2) is two updates since becoming free.

If you are willing to try, OmniWeb is available as 23.3 Mb download for the International version or around 14 Mb if you prefer the English-only version.

As for the reasons to use OmniWeb, there are a lot goodies that users might find useful. A few of my favorites are:

• Thumbnail Tab Drawer –> All modern browsers have tabs but OmniWeb tried a different approach on utilizing this feature. Instead of placing the tabs above the browsing window like every other browser, OmniWeb’s tabs are located at the side, inside a drawer. The larger drawer space makes it possible to show thumbnails of the opened web pages. The thumbnails are arranged vertically. To move between tabs, users can use the shortcut Command + Up/Down Arrow.
  

• Multiple Workspaces –> Tabbed browsing cultivated a new habit for web surfers: opening many of web pages at once. When the number of tabs (and windows) increase to chaotic level, organizing them is a must. OmniWeb comes with a feature called Workspace (Command + Control + 0) where users can group tabs into different categories like: work, personal, fun, entertainment, or any category according to user’s preference.

• Customizable Search Box –> “Google” has become a new verb in the English language. It shows how often web users perform searches using Google. But there are other search engines that users may want to use/search on. OmniWeb lets users add/delete sites to the search box and also define the shortcut keys for different search functions. This process has a relatively simple learning curve.

There are many other features that you can read on the site or you can just download the manual if you would like to learn more.

OmniWeb will work with Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher and is Universal Binary.

So, why not try this browser out and share your opinions in the comments below. Or if you are a part of the OmniWeb cult since the beginning, please share some experience below.

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• Three Alternative Mac OS X Browsers Worth A Try (6)
• Shiira – Another Alternative Mac OS X Browser (5)
• Google Chrome – A New Chapter in Browser History? (28)
• 7 Things Google Chrome Needs – Now That It’s Out of Beta (100)
• 6 Reasons Why Firefox Dude May Want to Switch to Chrome (144)

As user opinions sally back and forth about browser preferences, one thing is not open to question. Firefox is definitely more expandable and customizable than all others out there (Don’t they call it the Swiss Army knife for the web).

But if you like the Chrome’s agility then there are ways to make it more versatile. We at MakeUseOf.com have gone over quite a lot of ground with the Chrome. You can read about some tips and tricks here and here.

Here are some more ways to reach under the hood and exploit some handy Chrome features.

1. Make Chrome’s consume less memory

By default, Chrome is a multi-process browser. Yawn! What’s that? Simply, it means that each tab runs as a separate process asking for separate resources from the computer. The current working tab gets the most priority over the others. This was intentionally designed to make web apps run faster in Chrome. This feature makes the browser zippier and more stable even with multiple open tabs.

But if you aren’t a heavy user and use the browser to surf only a single site at a time then disabling multiple processes can free up some CPU resources. To handle each web process Chrome has three settings –

–process-per-tab
The default mode; each tab gets an independent process of its own. This increases the rendering of webpages and makes the browser stable as each tab is a separate process from the rest. But it also consumes memory.

–process-per-site
One process for each unique website; for instance a user with two tabs open for Gmail and another for MakeUseOf will have the two Google tabs running under the same process.

–single-process
The simplest mode; all tabs run in a single process, much like the other browsers we have now. This setting frees up memory for other applications. This is what we are looking for.

Create a shortcut for Chrome. Open the Properties tab. Edit the Target field as shown in the picture by appending –single-process to the path.



Similarly you can create two more shortcuts for the other two processes to handle your web sessions in three ways.

2. Manage tabs with the Task Manager

This is an offshoot of Google Chrome’s multi-process nature which allows each tab to run separate from the other. This allows us to manage, reload or shut down each tab without affecting the rest of our browsing. All this can be done through the Task Manager. Press Shift and Escape to start the task manager or right click on the blue top bar. An unresponsive tab can be shut down without bringing down the browser by a simple press of the End process button.



3. Some stats for nerds

There is a simple way to tell which browser is using the most resources on your computer. Chrome’s task manager lets you examine the memory use of the opened browsers on your computer irrespective of make. Open task manager and click on the ‘Stats for nerds’ link at the bottom. A new tab opens with detailed memory info for all running browsers. The second part of the page also describes Chrome’s process usage stats.



4. Some more stats on the Resources page

More for site administrators than for you and me but the resources page has a ton of info to offer. To track the resources used by a web page – right click inside the page. Select Inspect element – go to the Resources tab and reload the web page. You can view a list of images, scripts and objects from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.



5. Drag to resize any text box

Do you feel that the size of a text box on any website is not worthy of your thoughts…then just place your mouse on the bottom right edge and drag to increase the size. Give MakeUseOf.com’s comment box the first drag.



6. Split Chrome into double-pane view

This bookmarklet from Chromeplugins.org is incredibly useful. The dual view feature is useful when you want to compare two websites or search results side by side. Drag the Chrome Split Browser bookmarklet into your bookmarks toolbar. When you click the bookmarklet, it asks you to choose the two websites you want and displays them in a double pane.



7. Startup with multiple pages

On launch, Chrome opens up with the ‘Most visited’ area. But it also lets us set options for starting the day by opening our most favored sites in several tabs at once. Click on the wrench icon (Customize and control Chrome) on the top right corner. Under Options – Basic tab we can add the pages we want to open on startup.



8. Drag and drop downloads from Chrome

After finishing a download, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by a simple drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.

Did I miss any of your favorite tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments and lets help each other create a more sleek Chrome experience.

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• 7 Things Google Chrome Needs – Now That It’s Out of Beta (100)
• 6 Reasons Why Firefox Dude May Want to Switch to Chrome (144)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
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Luckily, in Linux, there are plenty of great alternative browsers that you can use. So, check out 12 alternative browsers for Linux.

1) Flock

Flock is also known as the Web 2.0 browser. It is based on the Gecko engine (the same engine used by Firefox) and it is geared toward many of the Web 2.0 stuff. You can easily connect to your friend in Facebook, MySpace, Digg. watch Youtube video, browser Flickr photos, write a blog post or save a public bookmark and many more Web services. It may not be the fastest, but it is surely the most complete in Web 2.0 sense.

2) SwiftFox

If you haven’t have the courage to ditch Firefox, but wish for it to run faster, then Swiftfox could be a good alternative. Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox and is fully compatible with the Firefox profile and extensions. There are builds for both AMD and Intel processors and is based on the most cutting edge Firefox source code available.

3) Swiftweasel

Another optimized build of Firefox. The difference between Swiftweasel and Swiftfox is that Swiftweasel is open source while Swiftfox has a proprietary software license. Same as Swiftfox, Swiftweasel loads faster than Firefox and uses far less memory. The default installation of Swiftweasel also comes with the AdBlockPlus extension to block all the javascript and ads.

4) SeaMonkey

The SeaMonkey browser is part of the SeaMonkey Internet Suite, which comes with a browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and Web development tool.

SeaMonkey has a well-designed menu layout, enabling you to access to various options in the menu bar quickly and easily. If you are looking for an all-in-one email and browser package, then SeaMonkey will be a good choice.

5) Konqueror

Konqueror is the default browser in KDE system. It is more than a simple browser. It is also a file manager and an universal document viewer.

One good thing about Konqueror is that it is fully integrated into KDE 4 and is able to manage the memory usage and allocation better. It is lightweight and loads much faster than non-native browser. The ability to double as a file manager and document viewer is also useful at times when you need to access the documents in the local system.

6) Midori

Midori is a lightweight web browser that is fully integrated with GTK+ 2. Midori uses the WebKit engine (the same as Safari and Chrome) and it is fast in rendering web pages. Midori uses the Open Search API and allow you to specify and define your own search engine easily. It is still in the early development stage and is currently under heavy development.

7) Epiphany

Also known as the Web browser for GNOME desktop, the goal of Epiphany is to be simple and easy to use. Epiphany is based on the Gecko engine and supports tabs and extensions. It may not be the best among all the browsers, but when it comes to simplicity and ease of use, Epiphany definitely lives up to its name.

Kazehakase

Kazehakase is a Gecko based browser that comes with plenty of surprises. On the surface, it looks like a stripped down version of Firefox, but further exploration reveals plenty of useful features that are only available via extensions in Firefox. It include a mouse gesture function and key accelerator to allow you to perform tasks faster. You can also customize the size, width and color of the tab and there are options to manage your current session. Kazehakase is definitely a great browser that is worth checking out.

9) Opera

Opera is another popular browser used by many people. Some of its innovative design such as the Speed dial, mouse gesture, panel splitting have been implemented in other browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and IE.

10) Arora

Arora looks like a super slimed down version of Firefox, but it is in fact based on the Webkit engine. It is a lightweight and minimalistic browser that is most suited for normal Web surfing. It does come with a private browsing mode that are not even available in the current version of Firefox (private browsing is available in Firefox 3.5beta)

11) Amaya

Amaya is more than a browser. It is also a Web editor that allows you to create and update documents directly on the Web. You can browse the Web and use the editor to change the color of the text, images layout or any other things that you see in the screen. A great tool for Web developers/designers.

12) Lynx

Lynx is the text web browser, which means that it is text based and you won’t see any images, javascript, advertisement or popup in the page. It is very useful for those who value speed over looks and just want to read the text rather seeing plenty of image advertisements.

This is a great list of alternative browsers for Linux. Do share with us which one is your favorite.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• 7 Things Google Chrome Needs – Now That It’s Out of Beta (100)
• 6 Reasons Why Firefox Dude May Want to Switch to Chrome (144)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)

We’ve seen multiple applications, trying to expend the reach of Torrent clients and the like. The Vuze and xTorrent clients both implement the web in their applications, allowing you to browse torrents as well as downloading them.

However, why is it that the web should be integrated in a Torrent client? Why not integrating torrents into a web client? Well, Wyzo manages to do just that, and the results are astounding.

Wyzo – The Media Browser

Wyzo’s long-term aim is to make web browsing smarter and more enjoyable. They want the user to feel home and to have the tools he needs, at any given time.

Most of this reflects upon the ease of downloading, but doing so without repressing the global browsing experience.

The browser is based on Firefox, and many things remain the same. Other things however, got a real makeover. You can read about the features of the browser below.

New Look

This third version of Wyzo has been completely restyled. You’ll notice that the tabs and buttons have adapted a slick chrome-like appearance. It’s a professional-looking skin that’s easy on the eyes – nothing too graphical, like some of the things we see these days.

Torrent Downloads and Acceleration

In the area of downloading, Wyzo comes with two major trump cards; FireDownload and FireTorrent, two great addons developed by the guys behind Wyzo.

FireDownload is a simple download accelerator. It doesn’t do anything particularly fancy, except speeding up your downloads. A lot. By using multiple connections with the server, FireDownload can accelerate your downloads up to ten times their original speed.

FireTorrent handles, as you might’ve guessed, the torrent integration. All torrents are simply added to your browser downloads. You can download in multiple sessions, and seeding happens automatically. Using FireTorrent, torrents become as easy as direct downloads.

FireDownload and FireTorrents are also available as Firefox add-ons via FireAddons.com.

Search … Everything

Wyzo comes with a customized startpage, which allows you to search the interwebz for almost everything, including torrents, images, video, news, blogs and maps. Each section gives you access to multiple search engines (e.g. you can search for torrents on YouTorrent, Mininova, Vuze and Torrentz).

Loaded With Add-ons

Besides FireDownload and FireTorrent, Wyzo is pre-loaded with various other Firefox extenstions, that enhance the user’s browser experience.

Remember your OS’s alt-tab function? Ctrl-Tab does the same in your browser. It’s a slick and easy way to visually navigate between your open tabs.

Cooliris - previously covered on MakeUseOf – gives you a visual representation of web content. On supported sites, it crawls for pictures, videos and articles, and presents these as a picture wall. It’s an extremely beautiful, and addicting way to surf the web.

FireGestures allows you to perform simple actions through mouse gestures. Hold a trigger and draw simple shapes to navigate and interact with web pages. You can also add new gestures, by using user-scripts.

So what’s your take on Wyzo? What do you, or don’t you like about it? Tell us, and your fellow MakeUseOf readers, all about it in the comments section below!

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(image credit: Andreas Solberg)

My number one reason for breaking things off with IE is that I don’t want my family or visitors to use it, lest some unpatched security hole get exploited while I’m not looking. Nuh-uh. Not even Decepticons can breach Big Daddy’s defenses on my watch.

To be fair, there are security vulnerabilities present in just about any Internet software, especially browsers. In a recent hacking competition, the only browser that wasn’t compromised was Google’s Chrome. David recently gave us six compelling reasons to switch to Chrome, my current default. Firefox and Explorer, I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.

Once you’ve picked your new browser, it’s time to call things off with IE. This poses a bit of a problem, as many Windows functions and programs depend on IE’s rendering engine. While it’s technically possible to remove IE completely, you may be better off leaving it in, if you value functionality. In Windows XP and Vista, you can do the next best thing: Removing access to IE for all users of your system.

So, how do you disable (block access) to Internet Explorer?

From the Start Menu, click on “Programs.” An icon labeled “Set Program Access and Defaults” should be near the top of the menu. If it is, you may skip the next paragraph. If it’s not, please continue below.

You’re going to want to open your Control Panel, also from the Start Menu. Next, open the Add or Remove Programs window. You’ll have four choices on your left. What you need is the lowest option: Set Program Access and Defaults. I’m sure you’re anxious to break this off. We’re almost done.

Select the “Custom” option, and then go ahead and designate what you want your default programs to be. You may disable access to Internet Explorer by clearing the checkbox next to it. All program shortcuts to Internet Explorer will be removed, and your default Internet browser on the Start Menu will be of your choice.

There may arise a situation during which you may need to open IE. Most often it will be to open a site which doesn’t play nicely with other browsers. With all the shortcuts gone, just open the Run box (hold the Windows Key and press R), type “iexplore” then hit OK. See? While you’re no longer exclusive, you and IE can still be friends. It’s alright, really. I won’t tell the other browsers.

Geeks such as myself can get very defensive of their software of choice. I expect to see grand levels of evangelizing your favorite browsers in the comments!

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)

Chrome is only getting better – rolling out more features, making existing features work even better, and generally getting faster and awesome-er.

Here are the six reasons that ultimately lead me to checking that “make Chrome my default browser” button:

(1) One Tab, One Process

My biggest issue with Firefox was always that it’s a memory hog. Leave it open overnight, and suddenly it’s taking up 400MB of RAM. That’s a lot of RAM. The only solution would be to close Firefox, and restart it – either losing all my tabs, or waiting approximately 19.5 hours for them all to open again.

Chrome’s better – each individual tab runs as its own process in Windows Explorer. There’s a task manager within Chrome that lets you see which, if any, tabs are using tons of memory, and close just that one. Similarly, if a tab crashes, you’ll be able to just close that one tab, rather than having to close Firefox entirely. With Chrome, browsers don’t crash: pages do. That’s a huge plus.

(2) One Box, Many Searches

With the address bar in Chrome, you can do a ridiculous number of things: search your history, do site-specific search (by typing a domain and then Tab), search Google, or get suggestions based on your browsing history. To search just about anything within Chrome, type Control+L and then whatever you’re looking for. Chrome’ll find it.

(3) Better Downloader

Firefox’s native download manager is awful – it’s a new window, doesn’t make finding documents easy, and does a bad job of showing you what’s downloading without lots of hunting. In Chrome, when you start a download, it just starts. There’s a status bar at the bottom of the page, and you can easily click to open the file, or right-click to do a number of other things with it. Though there are Firefox extensions to mirror the functionality Chrome has, I’d rather have it native – plus, Chrome’s is better anyway.

(4) The New Tab Page

Every time you open a new Tab in Chrome, you’re presented with a page full of possibilities. There’s a list of recently-closed tabs, in case you closed one by accident. There’s a box to search your history, in case you forgot the site you want to get back to. There’s a list of recent bookmarks, for some reason that I never really figured out. And, best of all, there’s a list of sites you visit most – easy access to your top 9 sites is pretty great – not to mention sad that addictinggames.com makes my list.

But that’s beside the point. There’s a ton you can do quickly and easily, right from the second you open a new tab in Chrome. Again, there are Firefox extensions that do some of these things, and the new build of Firefox promises a similar new tab page, but I’ll stick with Chrome.

(5) Application Shortcuts

Ultimately, this was the feature that sold me on Chrome: the ability to turn single sites into standalone applications. Now Gmail, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk each have their own application that can be launched from the desktop, lives in its own window without a nav-bar, and looks and feels just like a desktop app. Click on a link, and you’re taken to a new tab in Chrome, so your page always stays open. That, plus Chrome’s great use of Google Gears, means your calendar, email, tasks and more can be available online and off as desktop apps.

(6) Tab Around

This one’s not as big a deal as the others, but I think it’s pretty fantastic: Tabs are incredibly easy to manipulate in Chrome. You can pull a tab out to make it its own window, or pull one back in to consolidate your browsing. You can even – I just discovered this – drag a Firefox tab into Chrome and it’ll load right there! If you’re reading this in Firefox, try it. I’ll wait.

Awesome, right? All over Chrome, tabs are easy to move around, open and close, and they live at the top of the page which makes them even easier to find and use.

To put it simply, Chrome is faster and smarter than Firefox. I liked Firefox a lot, but Chrome seems to get how I intuitively want to use a browser. I can’t switch permanently until Chrome has extensions, or at least functional Greasemonkey support; for my regular browsing, though, Chrome’s the clear winner.

What’s your browser of choice? Why?

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• 7 Things Google Chrome Needs – Now That It’s Out of Beta (100)
• Google Chrome – A New Chapter in Browser History? (28)
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Yes that is why you learned about your Web History and cookies. You even know how to delete them when you are done with your porn your research. But what happens if you forget? Will you be fired, divorced or worse?

If this has you worried then Close N’ Forget is the plug-in for you!

Simply browse on over to their plug-in page here (in French) and you can do your due diligence and read up on it here in English.

After running through the plug-in installation you will have a right click option that looks like this:

The red X followed by “Close and erase cookies for the current site” is Close N’ Forget’s icon. Now for easier use we will add it to our FireFox’s favorite quick links by following these steps:

• Right Click on your tool bar at the top of your browser. And choose Customize.

• Select the Close and forget button, you might have to scroll down. It will look like this:

• Simply drag and drop the icon to your favorites bar and you will see it as the red x icon like this:

Now that we have the icon readily available to us let’s look at the options. This is what will happen when you hit that magic red x. We can see and configure the settings by going to our add-on manager within Firefox. You go to Tools –> Add-ons.

Select Close N’ Forget and then hit options. You can tweak exactly what it will junk with the options above.

The Author says:

Thanks to a few simple options, you can control how your privacy is protected when you close a tab with Close’n Forget. To do that, simply go to the extension manager and open the Close’n Forget options dialog.

You can then activate or not the cookie removal, and you can extend it to all subdomains of the current page’s domain. For example, if the page currently loaded in the tab is http://www.foo.com/bar.html, you can remove cookies for www.foo.com and for .foo.com, but also for media.foo.com, ad.foo.com, tracker.foo.com and so on !

You can also remove the visited site from the browser’s history.

Now let’s put it to work!

You do some super secret browsing and then you go and hit that red X on your toolbar. The button glows an eerie redish brown when you hover over it to help you distinguish it from other  buttons. Hit the button and it closes the active tab and displays a message at the bottom of your browser like so telling you what it did. If nothing appears nothing was removed:

So with the right options selected (all of them!) you can safely and securely remove whatever site you want from your browsing history. But remember if someone is watching you with monitoring software this will not help!

How do you protect your browsing history and how do you get rid of nasty entries from your history? Do you automate it or do you do it manually? Share your methods with us in the comments.

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• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Really Delete Your Browsing History – wipe MRU & index.dat files (23)

As fun as it is to reinstall and then tweak your browsers and mail programs to just the way you like them, and then retrieve all your messages from backup files, it would be way easier to backup all those settings and messages in a few simple steps.

That’s where the free MailBrowserBackup comes in. It comes in a ZIP file and requires no installation; Just run the program from within the uncompressed folder.

To test MailBrowserBackup, I created a new Windows user profile with a freshly installed Firefox profile and then used MBB to backup, and restore my own Firefox profile to the new user. The process is as simple as selecting the location of the archive files.

Once you have your MBB files, you can move them to a USB portable drive, for example, or email them to yourself. You only have to run the program again, this time hitting the “Restore” button.

The current version can only backup the settings and profiles of a few select programs: the Firefox and Chrome browsers, the Thunderbird, Windows Mail, and IncrediMail email clients, the FTP program FileZilla, and file-sharing program eMule. The author promises support for all the major browsers in the near future so this is definately a utility to keep an eye on.

On the subject of backups, here are five ways to backup your email, and another program, KLS, that backs up both mail and browser profiles. Please let us know in the comments section what your favorite browser and email backup tools are.  Cheap is good but free is much better!

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The Ultimate ‘Upgrade To Windows 7′ Guide (24)
• The Cut Out and Keep Guide to Essential Software Programs (25)
• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Backup & Restore Your Internet Explorer Browser Settings (1)

Opera, today, is closed source and distributed as freeware. It has a very clean and simple interface, while still supporting a wide range of extensions which enhances its default capabilities. Accessing the ‘Panels’, which contain bookmarks, history, widgets, notes and transfers, is a single click affair to the main bar ‘wrench’ icon. If you’re used to keyboard shortcuts like ‘Ctrl+B’, don’t worry, Opera supports most of them.

Opera Turbo is faster at start-up than Firefox 3.1, with an average 5 tab cold start-up at 3.1 seconds compared to 3.9 seconds. Chrome 2.01, by far the fastest, started in just 2.1 seconds. Testing was done 3 times on a Windows XP SP3 machine with a 2,4Ghz single core AMD Turion 64 and 1GB RAM.

Looking at the release notes for this build of Opera Beta, I can tell you that if you’re looking for cutting edge innovation and performance, you might not find it here. The so-called ‘turbo’ mode is just an implementation of their mobile web caching technology that is used for Opera Mobile to slim down download sizes for web pages. And the result isn’t exactly usable in some cases. Graphics intensive websites are literally transformed into something not very eye-catching. While this may help in low bandwidth situations, it’s not where the world is going.

Other features worth mentioning are:

• Speed Dial, familiar to Chrome, IE8 or Safari 3 users, shows thumbnails of your most visited websites when you open a new tab. Opera let’s you manually choose which pages you want to appear.
• Opera Link, similar to Foxmarks, synchronizes your bookmarks, Speed Dial and notes over multiple desktops or mobile devices. “In Opera write a note – copy directions, create shopping lists or jot down anything you need to remember – and access it on any Opera browser by simply logging in.”
• Security also gets a boost, with a 3 step authentication method for websites and phishing/malware protection from 3 providers: NetCraft, PhishingTank and Haute Secure.
• 100/100 score in the Acid 3 test. An improved javascript engine to come in a future version.

Opera, like its open source counterpart, Firefox, is very customizable: extensions, themes and now widgets. However, I think the Opera Widgets should be removed because it duplicates the functionality of more advanced, versatile software, which is integrated into virtually every mainstream operating system.

Opera has come a long way since I first met it, version 6, I remember. It survived on the market for 13 years, and still does have some marketshare. I think it will gradually lose those die-hard fans to Google Chrome or to Firefox. Why? Because it seems to me that they’ve been treading water more or less for the past 2 years, not bringing true innovation to the table. But Opera will still be there as long as OEM’s integrate it in their mobile phones, gaming devices and set-top boxes. An estimate puts mobile versions of Opera at 40 million devices.

It’s your turn now, so tell us in the comments what you think about Opera and how could the developers improve it to win you as a fan.

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• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)
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These days, many news articles, long winded stories and message boards all contain several pages that we have to scroll through, one-by-one. It would be nice sometimes to bring some of these huge, bloated, multi-page articles into a single page that we could scroll through. This is where PageZipper comes into the picture.

PageZipper, from the makers of PrintWhatYouLike, is a small bookmarklet that you can place in your bookmarks toolbar, or install as a Firefox extension that converts just about any multi-page site or article into one single page that you can scroll through until the end, without every clicking another link.

After adding a simple bookmarklet to your browser of choice or install the experimental Firefox extension, you can begin taking advantage of some of PageZipper’s unique features. It not only converts multiple pages into a single one, but it also does some nice things with images and photo galleries as well.

Along with standard web pages, PageZipper adds the ability to scroll through photo galleries with ease by simply pressing a Ctrl-Down keystroke. Each stroke takes you to the next image in the gallery. Also if an image isn’t fitting into your defined screen size, PageZipper can even AutoFit the embedded web image into your screen automatically.

If you’d like a better understanding of how exactly PageZipper works, they have a provided a nice screen recording of all of its different functions.

After discovering PageZipper and it’s functionality, I thought of many different situations that I could use this in. Even on MakeUseOf, you can simply click the bookmarklet and never click to browse to older entries. You can scroll for days on end, until you reach Aibek’s first blog post, way back when.

Another great place that I first tested this was on a message board. Having the ability to scroll through several different sections of threads and boards was incredibly helpful.

The small ability that PageZipper provides may be small in hindsight, but is definitely something I’m going to keep in my toolbar for some time to come.

Do you know of any websites that you might find this useful? Are there any other tools that you know of similar to PageZipper that provide this functionality?  If so, please let us know in the comments!

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• Opera Unite – File Sharing, Messaging, Note Taking & more Right in your Browser (8)
• Opera 10 Browser Review: 6 cool features that make it stand out (106)
• How To Print A Web Page The Way You Want It (7)
• Change How Your Favorite Websites Look on Firefox with Customize Your Web (6)
• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)

In the world of web apps, the name refers to this Firefox add-on which just might save you a few cusswords and more than a few joules of energy if and when your browser goes down with all your typed data in it. And sometimes it’s like a breath of new life.

Oh well there are a lot of add-ons with a five star rating. Why do I choose to write about this minuscule 99KB application? Simply because I think the attribute of this add-on should be a default function in all browsers.

Imagine the chore of filling out a lengthy web form and submitting it, only to see your browser crash or some error message pop up. Our choice name callings won’t bring the data back – but Lazarus will. Lazarus lets us recover all that data with a single click.

The 99KB Firefox add-on saves whatever we type in any text field within the Firefox browser- blog entries, blog comments, online email, forum posts and online forms, etc. It automatically saves the data we enter into a form field during the process, and also saves the entire form with the hit of the submit button.

If some accidental error happens and the data needs to be resent, we just need to go back to that page again, right-click in one of the fields in the form, or just within the part of the web page that the form occupies, and choose Recover form from the menu. Lazarus restores the data in the form and we are on the go again.

Is the form data secured?

The best thing is that all the data is stored locally on the hard drive. Lazarus uses a SQLite database which encrypts and stores the data. This database is stored within the default Profile (C:\Documents and Settings\<username.\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profile) folder in the system.

For extra protection there’s a master password which has to be given before Lazarus can save or restore any web form. An additional setting can be configured to delete the form data after a set period. Lazarus also gets added in the Clear Private Data options box of Firefox. As Lazarus can also save passwords, this triple barrelled security is always desirable.

Lazarus configuration settings can be accessed from Menu – Tools – Add-ons-Extensions OR from the Ankh icon on the lower right of the Firefox browser. Version 1.0.5 is available for download from the Firefox Add-on site or from the developer site here. It is compatible with Firefox 2.0 to 3.1b3.

Even as web forms get better at auto-saving entered fields, losing our just entered data is a situation we encounter often during our web surfing. This is where Lazarus comes in handy with its one click headache curer. Do you think this Firefox add-on is a must have in our browser arsenal? Add your opinions below.

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• Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers (21)
• Close N’ Forget Covers Your Firefox Browsing Tracks (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)

Well today I’m going to play devil’s advocate and tell you what I actually liked about Safari 4.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong about copying features from competitors – once and for all – we should establish that this actually improves the experience for end-users. It is how the tech industry has worked for years and this ‘tradition’ isn’t about to change anytime soon. Everything from mobile phones to operating systems are being knocked off and implemented and at the end of the day the innovator gets the geek cred; the user doesn’t care. He’s just happy using the Top Sites feature.

Safari 4 brings us improved performance all around, from startup times to page loads and some changes in the user interface. Safari now uses the latest version of WebKit, and improved script interpreter, and puts the tabs in the title bar – a very good design choice that saves space especially on small resolution devices. Why isn’t this better? I can’t understand why people are so upset about a change in design that is clearly beneficial.

The Top SItes feature, as you probably know, was one of the new things Google Chrome brought to the table. Chrome’s implementation of the feature is admittedly barebones – I actually like the curved view in Safari, which brings me back memories of Minority Report; all we need now is the touchscreen.

There are a couple of tweaks they made to the interface since the last iteration: no more grey gradient menus and OS X background for the configuration windows and notifications.

Performance-wise we see an improvement – it uses just slightly more resources than Firefox. You can try this too; I opened Google, Google Reader and Yahoo. 3 tabs for each browser.

Apple haters – close that Gmail window, don’t send me hate mail – but I actually would switch to Safari 4 if I would be able to port 4 extensions I can’t live without: Customize Google, StumbleUpon, AdBlock, and NoScript. I got spoiled – I didn’t see an ad since last year – and I couldn’t take it. An even bigger issue is not having NoScript to protect me from scripting exploits.

As always, I love to read your comments and reply, so don’t be shy and tell me what you think about Safari 4 browser; what’s bugging you, what could be better.

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• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Opera 10 Beta ‘Turbo’ – Does It Still Have What It Takes? (85)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• A Review Of The Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Browser (7)

What’s so great about blogging with this “Firefox with a twist”? In general, it’s the simplicity and the WYSIWYG editing environment. A novice without any clue of HTML would greatly appreciate it.

“So what?” you might think, “big deal, Windows Live Writer also has it”. Yes, but non-Windows users have been longing for this feature for so long. And even for Windows users, Flock would make a worthy alternative blogging tool because of other nice features, such as:

• adding media – picture, sound, video to the blog is dead simple in Flock. As simple as drag and drop.
• quoting, re-blogging and sharing a blog post that you like via your own blog is just a matter of highlighting the material(s) and click.

Integrating Your Blog to Flock

To start using Flock to blog, you have to integrate Flock with your blog. Click the “Key” logo on the toolbar under the “Home” button and the “Accounts and Services” sidebar will be opened.

Scroll the panel below to the bottom and you will find the “Blogging” section. Choose and click the appropriate account and you will be asked to fill out the required information.  Follow the steps and your account will be ready in no time.

After adding your blog, it’s still possible to modify the account by clicking “Blog Settings”, or to delete it by clicking “Forget Account” under the blog name on the above panel.

Quick Blog

Anytime you find interesting information on the net that you think is worth to share via your blog, just highlight the text (and/or the picture, audio, video) then right click and choose “Blog This” from the pop-up menu. The blog editor will then open with the selected materials as a quote.

Alternatively, if the materials for your blog post come from several different sources, you can utilize the “Web Clipboard” sidebar. Open it by clicking the “Clipboard” logo under the “Star” button. Then you can drag and drop any item from web pages to the clipboard.

Then open the blog editor, the clipboard materials are ready on the left bar to be re-dragged and re-dropped onto the blog post. Standard editing tools are available to enrich your post.

There are three tabs from the editing windows for users to choose from:

• Editor – this one is the WYSIWYG environment.
• Source – this one is for those who understand HTML and want to add some code.
• Preview – if you want to see what your post will look like, choose this. No editing is possible here.

After you’ve finished babbling and yapping (and adding tags if necessary), click the “Publish” button on the bottom right corner of the windows.

There’s still a few more steps to do before your post is really “published”.

• You have to choose which one of your blogs this post belongs to from the drop down menu above. (or add a new one)
• Choose the categories.
• Decide whether this one is a new post or a replacement for a specific post.
• Tick the options to help promote Flock if you want.
• Also decide whether you want to visit the site after the post has been posted.

Then you can safely click “Publish”.

If you are offline, you can save the writing to be posted later.

Another use of Flock’s blog editor is to “peek” at the HTML code. I’m not a code geek and I don’t know too many of the combinations. I’m lost beyond “bold”, “italic” and “link”. But many of my blogging assignments require me to write in a HTML environment. So what I do is I write normally in Flock’s WYSIWYG blog editor, then switch to the “source” tab to get the HTML-ish text, then copy and paste the text to be used in my assignments.

And for the minus…

I couldn’t find any easy way to upload my own pictures to my blog storage without uploading them first manually to my blog then attach them (also manually) via the editor’s source tab. If that’s the case, I might as well use the online blog editor instead of Flock’s.

The available easy options are either link the pictures from the original source or upload the picture to an image sharing service then link the picture from it. If you like this kind of arrangement, then it’s fine. But I know many bloggers who prefer to keep their own media in their own place. So, it’s all down to personal choice.

So the conclusion: Flock is, and will still be, my favorite tools for quick blogging – quoting from here and there, for offline blog writing, and for editing existing blog posts. But for posts that require me to upload the media to the server, I prefer to log into the blog account and do the blogging from there.

What about you? Do you (or will you) use Flock to blog? What’s your favorite ways to blog?  Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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• What the Flock – the Social Browser Revolution (12)
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Sure, laptops are small and mobile. But you can’t slid them in your pocket, can you? We still have a long way to go before the technology can create a truly mobile laptops. For now we have to settle with our cellphones as the most mobile technological gadget that we can bring everywhere.

Unfortunately, most cellphones’ browser will give you painful net experiences. Unless you own an iPhone, you would probably need alternative browser(s) for you cellphones. So, here are what in my opinions best mini browsers out there. If you’re looking for am alternative mini web browser for your mobile phone make then give one of them try.

Opera Mini

Opera Mini has been mentioned here before, but let me give you a few quick words to refresh your memory.

With about 20 million users, this browser is perhaps the most popular mobile mini browser out there. So popular that it comes preinstalled in most modern cellphones. Some people even consider it as their native mobile browser.

Superb compression, extremely fast, skinnable and able to play online video are few of the traits that makes the latest version of Opera Mini – v 4.2 – even better than before. It’s available for free on the Opera Mini Download Page or directly from your cellphones.

UCWEB Mobile Browser

This veteran mini browser is very popular in China but unknown to most people in Europe and the United States. The latest version is 6.3 (while Opera Mini is still 4.2), and available for free in Java and Symbian.

It has all the mobile browser’s features users would need and more. The most noticable is a password manager and tabbed browsing. Other features include:

• Advanced search function with support for various search engines and the ability to sort the results.
• Email service which supports many online email mailboxes and different types of attachment formats.
• Download function to help users download files from the phone. One thing to consider though, usually the internet data connection through your phone provider will cost a lot more than a home connection.
• RSS subscription support
• Personal data management to synchronize bookmarks between phone, web and PC.

Teashark

The developer chooses to make this browser available only in one format – Java MIDP 2.0 – and for good reason: it will work on every modern cellphone. To download Teashark browser go to the download page.

Just like UCWEB, one of its strong points is the ability to do tabbed browsing. Other features are:

• Cleaner interface and startup page compared to Opera.
• Full screen browsing.
• Full text select and find text function just like desktop browsers.
• Smart URL suggestions similar to Opera.
• Bookmark organization with color tags.

One thing that disturbs me about Teashark is that we always have to choose which network we want to choose to connect to the internet everytime we start the browser. It would be more convenient if we can choose one at the beginning and continue using it until we decide to change it.

Skyfire

One of the biggest limitations of mobile browsing is the ability to play Flash and video, but that’s no problem for Skyfire. The developer also claims that this browser also supports pages with Ajax, Silverlight and Quicktime.

To download this browser, you can go to the main page, or do it directly from your mobile browser.  There’s also an extensive overview of Skyfire on MakeUseOf by Joel.

Fennec

Or should we call it Firefox Mobile? I put this little baby at the end because it’s still in Alpha and only available in some selected mobile devices. But anybody can try it out for free in their home computer (Windows/Mac/Linux). Just go to the download site.

Currently, some of the features are:
- Bookmarks with tags.
- Smart URL Bar with integrated web search built in and access to many search engines.
- Tabbed browsing with thumbnail images and page zoom.
- Password manager, instant web ID, and the ability to clear private data.
- Pop-up blocker.

We can’t say too much at the moment about Fennec but judging by the history of Firefox’s desktop version, this little one will also surely be a hit.

I personally will still be attached to Opera Mini, at least for a while. What about you? Do you do mobile browsing a lot? What mini browser do you use? Share your experience using the comment section below.

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If you are interested in the latest version of Internet Explorer, but don’t want to download the RC version, here is a screenshot Internet Explorer 8 review of some of the newest features in IE8.

Accelerators

One of the best features of IE 8 are the Accelerators. As its name implies, Accelerators lets you get more things done quickly and easily. Whenever you highlight a word (or a paragraph) on a page, the Accelerators icon will appear to allow you to access various services.

For example, you can highlight a phrase on a webpage and select the “Search in Google” to immediately search that term in Google.

The default Accelerators comes with services mainly provided by Microsoft. You can also add third-party Accelerators services via the Accelerators Addon site.

InPrivate Browsing

Ever since Google Chrome introduced incognito browsing, many browsers started to include the private browsing feature in their latest version. In IE8, the InPrivate Browsing is the equivalent of Incognito browsing. When you are in the InPrivate Browsing mode, all your data (temp Internet files, web address history, cookies, password etc) will be removed when you close the window.

The InPrivate Browsing mode can be accessed via the menu (Tools -> InPrivate Browsing) or as a link in the new tab. In InPrivate Browsing mode, an icon will appear beside the address bar telling you that your current session is private. To deactivate the InPrivate Browsing mode, simply close the window.

Web Slices

Web Slices is a function that allows you to easily keep track of a particular item that change frequently. It can be your email inbox, the weather report, sport scores, stock quotes or an eBay auction item. It has a similar concept to subscribing to a RSS feed – you subscribe (add to the Favorites Bar) to the Web Slices for the thing that you want to monitor. Whenever the Slice is updated with new information, it will become highlighted and you can click on it to see a preview. You can then decide if you want to click on it to go to the actual site.

Web Slices does not work with any sites by default. Developers/Webmasters have to insert a few lines of code to their Web pages before their users can monitor their site with Web Slices.

Compatibility view

In case you come across any site that is not compatible with IE 8 and all the text and images are misaligned, you can now use the Compatibility View to view the site with the IE 7 rendering engine instead. The Compatibility View button is just located to the right of the address bar, so you can turn on the IE7 view mode easily and quickly.

You can also maintain a list within Internet Explorer 8 for sites that should be displayed in Compatibility View so you don’t have to switch to Compatibility View mode every time you visit the sites.

Enhanced Tab Management

If you open too many tabs, IE8 comes with a Quick Tab that allows you to find and go to a particular tab easily. The Quick Tab button is located at the left of the tab bar. When you click on it, it will open up a popup canvas showing the thumbnail preview of all the tabs.  You can then find the tab that you want and go to it quickly.

The concept of tab groups are also introduced in IE8. Whenever you open a new tab from a link within a page, the new tab is considered as the child of the current tab. When you close the new tab, the tab focus will return to its parent tab, rather than the adjacent tab. Also you can choose to close a single tab, or all the tabs within the same group.

Suggested Sites

Like Stumbleupon, the Suggested Sites feature in IE8 recommends sites based on your browsing habits and interests. When you turn on Suggested Sites, your web browsing history is sent to Microsoft where it is saved and compared to a frequently updated list of websites that are similar to the ones you visit often. The closest result is then sent back to your browser for your viewing. If you are seriously concerned about your privacy, you might want to turn this feature off.

SmartScreen Filter

On the security side, IE8 comes with a Smart Screen Filter that prevents you from visiting any sites, or downloading any files that could potentially cause harm to your computer. When you visit a site that is not considered safe, you will see the following splash page:

In addition, you will also find that the domain name in the address bar is now highlighted while the rest of the URL is greyed out. This helps you to avoid any deceptive and phishing sites that attempt to trick you with misleading addresses.

Conclusion

If you are a seasoned user of Firefox, Chrome or Safari, you will find that most of the ‘new’ features in IE 8 are not really that new after all. My sense is that the IE8 development team took the best feature from each browser and integrated them all into one place.

So instead of using Google Chrome for the Incognito browsing mode or domain highlighting feature, installing the Stumbleupon toolbar for site browsing, Safari for its superb Search and Find features and Firefox for its addons flexibility, you can now use them all in IE8. The Compatibility View is also a welcome addition to the browser, giving you the flexibility of viewing your site with the IE 8 or IE 7 rendering engine.

So is Internet Explorer 8 good enough to replace your default browser? I don’t know about you, but I would still stick with my Firefox for the time being.

For those of you who want to try out Internet Explorer 8 RC1, you can download it here.

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You might need a walkthrough, because even the best gamers can miss things. And missing even the tiniest things can get you stuck in a lot of games.

You might also want to kill some time while waiting for your friends to finally sign on. Or perhaps you forgot to write down or copy the server IP address. Or even search for game cheat codes.

There are tons of reasons to do it, but even more reasons not to.

In online gaming sessions, a simple Alt-Tab often got my ping levels through the roof. You might also miss out on crucial things while your game is minimized, finding yourself dead upon return.

Luckily for all the gamers among us, GotGame has developed Rogue, a full featured in game web browser.

GotGame Rogue

Rogue is based on the Adobe AIR platform, and is a complete in game internet browser. You can use it to check up on your mail, browse through walkthroughs and even watch movies online, without ever having to leave your gaming session.

At the moment, Rogue is solely available on Windows systems, though Mac and Linux support is on the way. People who want to be notified upon release can sign up to the Rogue’s mailing list.

Features

When you want to browse the web in game, you’ll need to take some distance from the standards of the nowadays internet browsers. However, Rogue hosts a lot of great features, which makes it a more than decent surfing alternative.

Normal Navigation and Bookmarks

Rogue works with a standard navigation system, and also allows you to set bookmarks and a startpage. You’ll notice that Rogue does not use any exterior option panels or dropdown menus – everything is operated directly within the browser through a simple WYSIWYG system.

Like all browsers these days, Rogue uses tabbed browsing. Though this was ‘new’ and ‘innovating’ at first, tabbed browsing has become a browsing standard these days, and Rogue doesn’t miss out.

Performance Modes and Transparancy

By default, the more memory your browser uses, the less memory there’ll be left for your game.

The optimization bar, located at the bottom of the screen, allows you to optimize the memory allocation for the browser, depending on the usage.

Select Video if you want to watch movies in your web browser. This is probably as memory-extensive as your browsing will be. The Web mode should be used for regular, mainly text based browsing. Choose the Game mode if you want to locate as much memory as possible to the game itself.

You can also adjust the browser’s transparency, so you don’t miss too much of what’s happening on your screen.

Using Rogue

Make sure you’ve got Rogue running before you start one of the supported games. To use the browser properly, you’ll also need to teach yourself a few shortcuts.

F12 – Shows/Hides Rogue in game

F11 – Transfers mouse/keyboard control from Rogue to the game and vice versa

F10 – Decreases Rogue’s transparency

F9 – Increases Rogue’s transparency

Supported Games

Not all games are supported. The games below are tested by the Rogue staff and reported working.

• Age of Conan
• Battlefield 2
• Call of Duty
• Call of Duty 2 (not on menu screens)
• Civilization IV
• Counter-Strike: Source
• Gears of War
• Guild Wars
• Half-Life 2
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• Portal
• Unreal Tournament III
• Warhammer 40,000
• Warhammer: Dawn of War
• World of Warcraft

Currently, Rogue’s overlay technology does not support the following games:

• Call of Duty 4
• Diablo 2
• Doom 3
• Quake 4
• Starcraft
• Warcraft III
• Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Games that aren’t included might or might not work. You can report your personal experiences at the New Games Forum.

The Rogue staff are already working on the reported games and expects them to become supported over the next few months.

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You can use a number of programs to backup your machine. But if you want to start clean and do a fresh install of your Operating System then you might just need a hand bringing over your Internet Explorer settings.

Don’t look at me like that.

Lot’s of people use Internet Explorer! I swear!

Yes we have covered multiple backup programs for Mozilla browsers but here is one for you hardcore IE users out there!

The creatively named Internet Explorer Backup can be found here. It is a simple download and installation of a 966KB file. I love it when authors keep their distributable files under 1MB!  It shows there is no unnecessary bloat.

After you download and install your new backup application, run it and you will see this screen:

The program is self explanatory but I will walk you through it briefly.

You click on Backup and start the process. Now it does not matter if you are backing up IE4 settings to be restored on IE7 or IE5 settings to be restored on IE6 or IE4. You can go any which way. As long as the settings you are importing work on the current revision of your browser then you are golden. If not the settings do not cause errors – they just disappear.

On the screen above you need to choose your folder to backup to as well as set compression and security options. You can also have IE Backup remember this as your preferred backup directory for less clicking in the future.

Hit the Browse button and show it where you want to store your backup.

I chose my D: drive and it defaults to its own directory as you can see below:

I then clicked “next”. You can choose what you want to backup. I went willy nilly and let it back up everything.

After I clicked Next it just did its thing without any more intervention.

The whole backup process took about 4 minutes on my Windows XP SP3 with IE7. Not bad, Not bad at all.

That’s that! Simple easy as 1, 2, 3 or well 1,2,3,4,5 and clicking Finish!

As you saw above, there is also the ability to schedule backups and password protect your archives.

Do you have a favorite program that backs up your browser? Share it in the comments! We want to hear from you!

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