The folks behind the PicLens browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer are on a roll. Earlier this year the company rolled out an improved version that lets you view image slideshows from Google, Yahoo!, Flickr, Photobucket, SmugBug, Photobucket, and DeviantArt as a never-ending wall of pictures. Last month, PicLens added support for YouTube videos. And now PicLens 1.7 adds a whole new "Discover" section that lets you browse images and movies in categories such as:
US News
International News
Sports
Entertainment
Movies/TV
Fashion/Lifestyle
Science/Technology
Business
The content comes from several sources including MSNBC, ESPN, and movie trailer sites. And the content is constantly changing. You can access the Discover tab just by hitting the PicLens icon in your browser and selecting the Discover button on the left hand side of the screen.
PicLens has also added the ability to search Amazon.com from the main search box. And probably one of the most useful new features is a "Return to PicLens" button that pops up in your browser window any time you follow an image from PicLens back to its original source. This lets you go back to your PicLens session without starting over from scratch.
HHOTT View is a plugin for Internet Explorer designed to let you surf faster and safer. We're not entirely convinced it accomplishes either goal, but the concept is intriguing. Once the plugin is installed, you should see a green, blue, red, or gray arrow appear every time you hover your mouse over a link. Green means the link is safe, red means it's unsafe and you probably shouldn't click. Blue means you've disabled the plugin, while Gray means HHOTT View is in the process of updating or is not responding.
If you click the arrow instead of the link, resizable mini-browser will open up. The feature works especially well on sites like Flickr or YouTube where you can watch a video or view a larger image without navigating away from the page you're currently on. But it's a bit less useful if you want to actually click a link leading to a text-based web site. In those instances, you might as well just open a window in a new tab.
You also have to hover your mouse over each link for a second or two before an arrow pops up, which mean that while HHOTT View might help prevent you from clicking on unsafe links, it certainly won't save you any time in your daily browsing.
The free plugin is currently only available for Internet Explorer. A Firefox version is in the works. HHOTT View is still in public beta, but the full version is scheduled to launch next week.
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
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.
Still haven't made up your mind about Internet Explorer 7? No problem, you can always uninstall it and revert to the Internet Explorer 6 web browser that came with your operating system. Unless you've upgraded to Windows XP SP3, that is. Because Microsoft is telling computer users that if they install IE7 before XP SP3, there's no going back.
Basically, when you install IE7, your IE6 files are saved in an uninstall directory that includes the original IE6 installation files and any security updates you've added over the years. But SP3 includes a different set of security updates. So if IE7 is already installed when you load SP3, the uninstall directory that was created when you were using SP2 is no longer valid.
If that's all a bit confusing, here's what you should take away: If you don't plan to use IE7, don't install it. Period. If you do plan to install it, but want to be able to uninstall it, then you should load Windows XP SP3 before upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If you upgraded Internet Explorer before installing XP SP3, the only way to uninstall it would be to uninstall the entire service pack, which is really far more trouble than its worth.
One of the nice things about modern desktop browsers is that there are tons of third party add-ons. These plugins let you do everything from change the way web pages look to making it easy to save web pages to social bookmarking services like del.icio.us.
Mobile web browsers haven't gotten nearly as much love from third party developers. That's why we're excited to see that Dale Lane has written a Post to del.icio.us plugin for Pocket Internet Explorer, the stripped down web browser that Microsoft includes as part of the Windows Mobile operating system for cellphones and PDAs.
When you click the link from the Menu toolbar, the plugin will automatically submit the current web page to your del.icio.us bookmarks, taking the name of the page from Internet Explorer. You can also add tags before saving your page.
Post to del.icio.us is available as a free download. You can also get the source code from Lane's web site. The plugin requires Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6.
As expected, Microsoft has released the first public beta version of Internet Explorer 8. While IE8 superficially look a lot like Internet Explorer 7, it sports a bunch of new features including a redesigned favorites bar, automatic crash recovery, a new "WebSlices" feature that lets you subscribe to content within a web page much the way you would with an RSS feed, and some rendering engine changes.
But make no mistake, this is clearly beta software. IE8 beta 1 is not compatible with pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1, doesn't work with a ton of IE7 add-ons like Skype, Google, and Yahoo! toolbars, and appears to enjoy making abstract paintings out of some web sites as you can see in the image above.
We know many Download Squad readers have been testing IE8 beta 1 out since the download links went live at about 3PM EST today, so what have your experiences been like? What works? What doesn't? What do you like? What needs improvement? And is Internet Explorer 8 likely to convince you to switch from Firefox, Opera, or whatever web browser you currently use?
Microsoft has posted two new web pages related to Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. The first page outlines some of the new features you'll be able to find in the next generation web browser, while the other page offers download links. Unfortunately the download links don't seem to be live yet, but we wouldn't be surprised if they start working later today as the MIX08 conference gets underway.
In the meantime, here are some of those new features:
Automatic crash recovery works much like the crash recovery feature in Firefox. If IE8 crashes, the next time you load your browser it will attempt to restore your tabs and other data
Activities feature which makes it easy to send a link, web page, image, or snippet of text to Digg, Windows Live Maps, Facebook, Dictionary.com or other online services without copying and pasting. Users can install and manage their activities.
WebSlices allow users to subscribe to just a portion of a web site. Web publishers can add WebSlices to their web page and IE8 can automatically discover WebSlices and add them to your favorites bar. You can view them in a drop-down window like the one you see in the image to the right.
Internet Explorer 8 also has a redesigned favorites bar and improved phishing filtering.
Microsoft has sent out a letter to a select group of beta testers offering a chance to participate in a technical preview of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1.
There's not a whole heck of a lot of information about what IE8 will look like, what features it has, or anything else. A few months back we did get word that IE8 passes the Acid2 test, so that's something.
The letter also says that Microsoft is "nearing the launch" of IE8 and will be making it available to the general public. But it doesn't seem likely that you'll be able to install Microsoft's next generation browser before March without an invitation code. The company plans to show it off at MIX '08 in a few weeks, which would imply that they'll be showing off something the general public hasn't seen yet. Probably.
StumbleUpon is a web discovery service that makes it easy to find cool and interesting web sites. All you have to do is install a browser toolbar and start hitting the "stumble" button whenever you're bored. The service also begins to get a sense of your tastes as you give various pages a thumbs up or down.
But there's at least one problem with StumbleUpon: There're no toolbar for Opera, Safari, or any web browsers besides Internet Explorer and Firefox. So what's a bored Opera users to do? Well, fortunately StumbleUpon has a nifty demo feature that lets you stumble pages using a virtual toolbar. All you have to do is enter http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url= into your browser's URL window, and then add the site that you want to start at. For example, http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url=http://www.downloadsquad.com/.
You should now see a virtual toolbar with all the features of the regular StumbleUpon toolbar. But since this is just a demo, you can't actually vote on sites or submit new sites. And there's no way to enter your account information. But you can hit the stumble button as many times as you like.
Web design has come a long way in the last ten years. But some people still just don't seem to understand that there are a handful of mistakes that will make a web page pretty much unreadable.
While dark gray may be your favorite color, setting your page background to that color and then leaving the text black is just going to make your web page unreadable.
Fine print may be fun if you're trying to trick readers into signing away their firstborn child when they register for a service, but that's about all small fonts are good for.
Pages with textured backgrounds.
IE Surfgear provides solutions to each of these problems. The application adds three icons to your Internet Explorer toolbar. One will automatically resize any text in a tiny font to a readable font size while leaving other text on the page untouched. The next will remove background colors from any text. And the third removes textured page backgrounds.
IE Surfgear is freeware, but if you'd like to see how it works before downloading it, check out the demo on the product home page.
Ever find yourself sitting in front of a computer that's been locked down by an overzealous IT administrator who won't let you install any software or even open Internet Explorer or Firefox? If that PC is running Windows XP, there's a good chance you can still visit Download Squad (or other sites if that sort of thing appeals to you).
All you have to do is launch a Windows application like Calculator, and then click the Help button. Under Help, click "Help Topics," which will bring up a help window. Next, all you have to do is right click on the title bar and select "Jump To URL." Now you can type in any web address you like, but make sure to include "http://" at the beginning. Basically what you're looking at is Internet Explorer 6 inside a help window, but this version of the program isn't quite as smart as IE6. It won't automatically add the http:// for you. And of course, there's no bookmarking feature.
Internet Explorer 7 may have a bunch of features that were missing from earlier versions of Microsoft's web browser, like tabbed windows, but that doesn't mean IE7 can't benefit from a few tweaks. And IE7Pro is probably the most full featured tweaker on the block. Last time we looked at IE7Pro, it was looking pretty good with support for mouse gestures, Ad Blocker, and a Greasemonkey-liked script for users who want to write their own code.
Now IE7Pro 2.0 is out, and it has a few new features that make this Internet Explorer add-on even more valuable. Probably the most remarkable new feature is a download manager with support for pausing and resuming downloads.
IE7Pro 2.0 also now comes in both 64-bit and 32-bit flavors.
Opera Software is going where many have gone before, and filing a complaint against Microsoft. In a nutshell, Opera is asking the European Commission to force Microsoft to take two actions:
Divorce Internet Explorer from Windows
Make sure Internet Explorer supports web standards
The first part makes sense. Microsoft has an unfair advantage in the web browser wars because it bundles Internet Explorer with its widely used Windows operating systems. This isn't the first time someone has cried monopoly and pushed for Microsoft to unbundle software from Windows. And in fact, the European Commission has already ordered Microsoft to offer versions of Windows without Windows Media Player.
Opera wants Microsoft to either unbundle IE and Windows or to bundle alternative web browsers as well as Internet Explorer.
As for the supporting standards bit, are you serious? Opera's argument is basically that Microsoft is breaking the web because many web developers design pages to render properly in IE without paying much attention to competing browsers like Firefox or Opera. But should the European Commission or any regulatory agency be issuing rulings about what version of CSS, XHTML, JavaScript and other software developers should be supporting?
Last year Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, next year (or the year after) the company will launch Internet Explorer 8. Seriously, how do those creative folks in Redmond keep coming up with these clever names?
We can't tell you what IE8 will look like, or what improvements it will have over IE7. All we know is that it's got a name. Apparently the IE developer team has been referring to the next version of Internet Explorer as IE8 for a while, and when Bill Gates recently dropped that name, it kind of sealed the fate.
According to the Internet Explorer blog, some other possible names included IE VIII, IE1000 (eight in binary), IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet. Honestly, we were a bit surprised they didn't go with the last one, but then we realized that it might have been a joke.
One of the nice things about modern desktop browsers is that there are tons of third party add-ons. These plugins let you do everything from change the way web pages look to making it easy to save web pages to social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. 
Update: Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is available for downloading now. And please let us know what you think of Microsoft's latest web browser.
Microsoft has sent out a letter to a select group of beta testers offering a chance to participate in a technical preview of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1. 
Web design has come a long way in the last ten years. But some people still just don't seem to understand that there are a handful of mistakes that will make a web page pretty much unreadable.
