• Offline viewing
• An RSS feed so you can subscribe to your bookmarked pages and keep track of them in a reader
• Synchronize your saved pages with other computers

• US News
• International News
  
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Movies/TV
• Fashion/Lifestyle
• Science/Technology
• Business

For a long time, NetFront was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile and PocketPC web browsers. While Pocket Internet Explorer comes standard with most Windows Mobile phones and PDAs, the browser renders pages slowly, lacks support for tabs, and doesn't handle AJAX very well. NetFront does all of those things and more. And if it weren't for the introduction of Opera Mobile a few years ago, which has the same features plus speedier page rendering, we would still heartily be recommending NetFront.

But ACCESS, the company behind the NetFront browser is working hard to keep up with Opera. This week ACCESS released the second concept version (or beta) of NetFront 3.5 for Windows Mobile. When the final version is released you'll have to pay for this browser, but while it's in beta, it's free and definitely worth checking out. Here's a short list of updates in the latest version:

• Improved CPU usage
• AutoCruise function has been removed
• Faster page rendering
• Faster page zooming
• Faster scrolling
• Faster switching between rendering modes (landscape or portrait, single column or desktop style)

The beta will expire on August 31, 2008. Note that you should install NetFront to your device's main memory, not to a storage card or you may experience some stability issues.

The add-on manager in Firefox 3 adds a couple of nifty new features, including a recommended add-ons section. When you click the Tools menu and select Add-ons, the first thing you should see is a list of 5 recommended add-ons. This list will change regularly, and there's a link you can click to go to the add-ons web site to find more Firefox extentions.

But what if you want to see more than 5 items? Easy, jsut change hte default number using the about:config screen.

1. Type "about:config" (without quotes) into your address bar and agree to any warnings you may see about voiding your warranty or being attacked by dragons
2. Type "extensions.getAddons.maxResults" into the filter field
3. Change the number from 5 to something higher (or lower)

For some reason, Firefox 3 won't return more than 8 results no matter what number you put in the box. Go ahead and try 112, it won't break Firefox, because your browser will still only show you 8.

[via Daily Gyan]

Want to tweak the heck out of your Gmail interface, but don't want to install dozens of Greasemonkey scripts one at a time? Lifehacker's Gina Trapani has whipped up an updated version of her awesome Better Gmail 2 extension for Firefox. The latest version adds support for Firefox 3, plus a few other nifty features. Here are a few of our favorites:

• HTML signatures
• Gmail Redesigned skin, which makes Gmail look more like a desktop app. An awesome desktop app.
• A few other slightly less awesome skins
• Hide Spam count
• Include icons for file attachments

Once you install Better Gmail 2, you can find the options dialog in the Firefox Tools menu. Just check the boxes next to the features you want to enable and refresh your Gmail window.

Don't want to download a massive ZIP or RAR file just so you can extract one tiny file contained in the archive? ArchView is a Firefox add-on that will let you preview the contents of ZIP and RAR files posted online before you download them. And you can even download individual files from within the archive.

Archview hangs out in your status bar where you can click on it to enable or disable the plugin or change its settings. Future versions will add support for additional archive formats including ISO and 7z. Archview supports Firefox 2 and Firefox 3, but the version available at the official Firefox add-ons page claims that it isn't compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5 r Firefox 3 RC1. This isn't true, but you'll have to install the plugin from the developer's page if you're using anything newer than Firefox 3 beta 4.

[via gHacks]

IE7Pro is a plugin for Internet Explorer 7 and 8 that brings some of the best features of Firefox and other web browsers to Microsoft's browser. Yes, we know many folks would suggest just using Firefox or Opera, but if you need to use IE for one reason or another (perhaps there are some web sites you visit regularly which aren't rendered properly by other browsers), IE7Pro can make your browsing experience much more pleasant.

IE7Pro 2.3 was released today, with a handful of bug fixes and new features, including:

• FasterIE module with support for prefetching, which should speed up your browsing experience
• Session Manager which allows you to save open tabs when closing your browser and reopen those tabs next time you login.
• The MiniDM download manager now supports drag & drop and multiple links

You can check out a complete list of updates in the IE7Pro 2.3 changelog.

[via CyberNet]

Opera has released a report on the state of the mobile web. And considering the company claims more than 44 million users for its Opera Mini cellphone web browser, Opera's in as good a position as any company to report on mobile web usage.

There are two trends that are particularly noteworthy. First, 77% of all traffic was to full web pages, not stripped down mobile pages. This probably shouldn't be that surprising, since Opera Mini renders full pages pretty quickly and lets users zoom in and out to read the fine print. And while WAP might have been pretty exciting a few years ago when there wasn't as much rich media content on the web, and when mobile internet connections were significantly slower, those days are long gone.

The second trend is a bit more surprising. 40% of worldwide traffic was directed to social networks. In some countries including the US, South Africa, and Indonesia, that number was as high as 60%. Now, it's not like we didn't know that social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, and Bebo were popular. We just didn't figure people would be spending half of their mobile web browsing time visiting them.

What sites do you visit regularly with your mobile web browser?

[via VentureBeat]

It's been a few months since Opera announced the company was working on a version of Opera 9.5 for Windows Mobile devices. And while Opera has historically been kind enough to offer public beta versions of their commercial software for download, Opera Mobile 9.5 has been pretty elusive so far. But ZDNet's Matt Miller managed to get his hands on a Windows Mobile device with Opera 9.5 preloaded, and suffice it to say he's pretty impressed. Here are some of the highlights from his review:

• Smooth scrolling and panning with your finger (no stylus needed)
• Context-sensitive zooming
• Tabbed browsing (this has been available in every version of Opera Mobile that we're aware of)
• Save pages for offline viewing
• Quick page rendering
• Flash Lite 3 support
• Supports text selection, copy, and paste
• Password manager
• Save or send web images

There were some problems. Miller says he could open Google Docs spreadsheets for viewing, but not Word documents. This isn't surprising, since Opera's desktop browser has had compatibility issues with Google Docs and other Google services for a long time.

No word on when Opera will be ready to release Opera Mobile 9.5 for general use. It looks like you may be able to get purchase a phone with the software preinstalled in the not too distant future. But what we're really waiting for is the day when you can download the software and install it on any device. Opera Mobile 8.65 currently has a $24 price tag. We're assuming Opera 9.5 will eventually be available for $30 or less.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Mozilla has pushed out the first release candidate for Firefox 3. That means this version should be more stable than any of the betas that have been released over the last year, but there may still be some bugs to work out. If you want to be absolutely certain you won't lose settings or mess up your system somehow, you might want to hold off on downloading Firefox 3 until a final build is released. That said, we've been playing with early builds of Firefox 3 for months, and it's way faster than Firefox 2 and includes some nifty new features like improved bookmark management and a more useful location bar.

Firefox 3 RC1 looks and feels a lot like Firefox 3 beta 5, but there are a few changes:

• Changes to the JavaScript engine and optimizations for web applications like Gmail and Zoho Office
• Improvements to the user interface
• Changes and fixes for bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and location bar autocomplete
• Security improvements

You can check out the complete list of changes in the release notes, or you can just go ahead and download the release candidate. Firefox 3 is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

Google rolled out an improved iPhone interface for Google Reader this week, and here's something neat you can do with it: Add it to your Firefox sidebar. While you can open practically any web site in a Firefox sidebar, some web pages are better suited to the sidebar than others. And the iPhone version of Google Reader fits the bill because unlike the full version of Reader, it's designed for small, narrow screens. And fortunately, you don't need an iPhone to access the new interface.

So here's how to add Google Reader to your sidebar:

1. Create a new bookmark in your bookmark manager, or by right-clicking on your bookmark toolbar.
2. Use http://www.google.com/reader/i for the location.
3. Make sure to check the box that says "Load this bookmark in the sidebar."

And that's it. Click on your bookmark and you should see the iPhone version of Google Reader. Bear in mind that while it's easier to navigate the new iPhone interface than the old one, Google Reader does still look best in full screen.

Here are a few other pages that work well in the Firefox sidebar:

• Facebook Chat
• Google Docs
• Google Notebook

Via Mozilla Links]

Hot on the heels of the del.icio.us beta plugin for Firefox 3 beta, Yahoo! has released a beta plugin for Internet Explorer. While Firefox is pretty popular these days, we're pretty sure there are still more people using the IE6 or IE7 browser that came with their computer than a beta version of the open source Firefox browser. Which is to say, seriously, Yahoo! is just now getting around to this?

The Internet Explorer plugin packs most of the features of the Firefox version. That means you can search and browse bookmarks from your sidebar, view recent activity, or tag pages with a button in your browser toolbar. The plugin works with IE6, IE7, and IE8 and runs on Windows XP and Vista.

This plugin is being released as a pubic beta, which means some features may change before the final release.

[via CNet]