A brief recap for those just emerging from their caves: Firefox 3 announced the goal of setting the one-day record for downloads of a single piece of software, and on June 17, the browser scored over 8 million downloads. Here's something even the tech-savvy may have missed, though: that OTHER browser, the one with the huge market share, has been running its own download campaign. It's called Carbongrove, and it's an Internet Explorer 7-compatible, Silverlight-based site that pushes reduced carbon usage and up-to-date web standards.
If you want to take the plunge and download IE7 or IE8 beta, you can then head to Carbongrove.com, take a quick quiz, and plant your own virtual tree. It might not be the cool, trendy thing to do (that would be downloading Firefox), but at least Microsoft is making an attempt to spread a little awareness about a cause that matters. This campaign launched two months ago, though, and we're just hearing about it now. Might be that world records and new releases trump carbon footprints and Acid Test results in the cutthroat world of browser downloads.
Microsoft's SearchTogether plugin for Internet Explorer 7 lets you share your search history with others. The plugin also provides tools for leaving comments and voting on search listings.
Why exactly would anyone want to use this service? Say you're planning a vacation and you're looking up air fare, hotels, tourist destinations, and restaurants where you might want to eat. As you search, you can save your history and share it with other members of your family who you'll be traveling with. You can also see the searches they've conducted and let them know what you think of the results. Of course, this is just an example. You can also work on group projects, plan a dinner menu, or look for birthday presents for your dad.
You need a Windows Live ID to run SearchTogether. But Microsoft doesn't require you to use Windows Live Search as your search engine. You can use Google, Yahoo! or Live Search, or select multiple search engines.
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
Well, we've done it again. We've squandered away another perfectly good hour week... wait, no. That's something else. But if you haven't squandered away your week on Download Squad, here are some of the stories you may have missed.
Wanna write for Download Squad? If you haven't heard, we're hiring. If you've always wanted to try add "professional blogger" to your business cards, now's your chance. Be the envy of your friends. Your very, very geeky friends. Click the link to find out how to apply.
Microsoft: Think twice about IE7 before upgrading to XP SP3 We're going to go out on a limb and assume this doesn't affect a lot of people. But if you want to upgrade to Windows XP SP3 and use Internet Explorer 6 (because you're only cutting edge when it comes to operating systems, not web browsers), here's a tip: You will not be able to downgrade from IE7 to IE6 unless you install IE7 after SP3.
Filemail: Email files up to 2GB We're always on the lookout for new ways to get around the 10-20MB file attachment limit imposed by most free email service providers. Filemail is a new service that lets you upload files up to 2GB to share via email. You can also adjust a variety of settings, or pay for a premium account if you need to upload even larger files.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta now available The next major OpenOffice.org release isn't due out until this fall. But you can download a public beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 today. The new version includes a handful of new features, a bunch of bug fixes, and a native OS X client.
Hahlo 3.0: Twitter freak's new best friend Hahlo 3.0 might just be the best Twitter client we've seen for the iPhone. It's fast. It's pretty. And it supports practically every Twitter feature you could want in a mobile client.
Puppy Linux 3.0 released: Linux for your flash drive Puppy Linux has long been one of the most popular "portable" Linux distributions. You can install Puppy to a flash drive and carry it with you to use on practically any computer that can boot from a USB device. The latest version includes a new theme, better hardware support, and some shiny new applications.
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.
Flash, like most things in life, has its good and its bad. The good: it's hard to imagine interactive content on the web without Flash. The bad: it's hard to imagine anything more annoying than poorly designed, seizure-inducing banners and advertisements created with Flash.
What we want is choice, isn't it? We want to be able to choose when to allow Flash, and when to keep it at bay.
Luckily there is an Internet Explorer add-on created just for this purpose: Toggle Flash. This simple add-on creates a new toolbar button on your IE window. A single click on the button turns off all subsequent Flash animation; and if you want to re-enable Flash at any time, just click on the button again.
So simple even your kid brother could do it.
For a walkthrough on getting the add-on installed, and for help if the toolbar button doesn't show up immediately, check out the developer's website.
Toggle Flash is a free download, and requires IE 7 and Windows.
On February 12, there might be some angry IT managers who aren't happy with Microsoft. This is because on the next "Patch Tuesday", Microsoft is going to include Internet Explorer 7 in the list of updates and patches being pushed out to Windows computers that:
Use WSUS 3.0 to manage updates in their organization
Have Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) that have Internet Explorer 6 installed
Have configured WSUS to auto-approve Update Rollups for installation
As Ars Technica is reporting, there is a lot of mis-information in the blogosphere about this issue.
People who have Windows computers at home will not get IE 7 put on their computer by Microsoft's updates.
The only group of people who need to be aware of what's happening are IT/Network administrators who have previously deployed the IE7 blocking toolkit to halt IE7 from being installed on computers within their network. These IT managers should closely read this knowledge base article.
Recently, we told you about some ways to organize and manage your Firefox bookmarks, and one of our readers asked for similar suggestions to use with Internet Explorer. Since we want Michael and our other IE-using friends to loved too, we put together a few ideas for you. Favorites Box lets you add extra attributes to your bookmarks to make them easier to find and organize. Add comments, categories, tags, or login information or even set up a reminders. This one's free to try, but sets you back $19.95 if you want to keep it. Favorites Finder is a free extension that adds keyword functionality to your bookmarked sites so you can access them in just a couple of keystrokes. Just type a few letters of the site you're looking for and Favorites Finder will search your bookmarks and find all the matches, including whatever's in your folders. Power Favorites is a slick little extension that merges bookmarks from IE, Opera, and Firefox, then syncs them across multiples computers. You can annotate each bookmark with notes and tags, then view them by tag list or tag clouds. (Tag clouds? Are you listening, Foxmarks?) Power Favorites has a 30-day free trial, then it's $19.95.
When you finally decide to winnow down that super-long list of Favorites you've accumulated over the past two years, it's a pain to have to check each bookmark to make sure the site still exists. Use the free tool Favorites Inspector instead. It will plow through your whole list for you and alert you to any "404 error" pages so you can delete those Favorites instead of filing them.
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.
Microsoft has released an updated version of Internet Explorer with a few minor changes. For example the menu bar is now visible without any user interaction needed. Oh yeah, and you don't need Windows Genuine Advantage validation to download the software.
Wait, what? That's right, first Microsoft goes and starts selling songs without DRM, and now the company's giving away a flagship program without requiring proof that you paid for your copy of Windows. You'd think the company actually wants people to download stuff.
The move makes some sense. If Microsoft wants to maintain its market leader position, the company might have to reach out to people using unofficial copies of Windows. After all, by Microsoft's own estimates, that could be 35% of all Windows users.
Windows XP users will be able to download Internet Explorer 7 through Windows Update or from Microsoft's IE7 home page.
Every time you install a newer version of Internet Explorer, Windows has a tendency to overwrite previous versions. And generally, that's a good thing. You're missing out on an awful lot if you're using Internet Explorer 3 to browse the web these days. AJAX, Flash, and other newfangled features just aren't going to work as well, or at all.
But if you're a developer and you want to see how your website looks to someone running an ancient browser, you might want to install an old copy of Internet Explorer alongside your IE7. And it turns out that this is completely doable if a little complicated. You need to alter some settings, redirect some DLLs, and rename a few things here and there.
Or you can just download the installer Yousif Al Saif created. It will install Internet Explorer 3, 4.01, 5, 5.5, and 6 on your PC. You'll probably want to make sure you're already running IE7 when you begin. The installer will not work with Windows Vista, but if you've got Windows XP, you can be the first on your block to run 6 different versions of Internet Explorer. Your neighbors will be so jealous.
So Apple went and released Safari for Windows. It is interesting why Apple did this. Safari may be faster, as the Royal Steveness claimed, and provides a number of nice features that are not in IE7 or Firefox by default (e.g. Forms auto-fill and resizable text fields) but I am not sure it would get much traction in the long term once the novelty factor has worn off.
Steve Jobs also announced that 3rd party developers will get access to the iPhone via web apps. Traditionally, cell phone application development is 'hard'. Hard in the sense that, by nature, cell phone manufactures are not software companies, so either the software development kit (SDK) use lower level languages (C++, etc.), an unsupported developer community (compare with web or desktop development), or antiquated OS (Palm OS 5.x). Whereas web development has a much lower learning curve as well as much bigger pool of developers to pull from.
It is obvious, at least to me, that releasing Safari for Windows is primarily a move to open up the iPhone's development environment to the largest audience possible. If Apple were to actually make a proper SDK for the iPhone, it would mean the SDK would have to support the Cocoa framework on OS X, and either port Cocoa to Windows (possible), or use 3rd party framework for Windows (not likely, given how much Apple likes to be in control). Either way, I doubt this hypothetical SDK would be OS X only, and asking 3rd party developers to purchase a Mac just to develop for the iPhone would be the death keel that many have been predicting.
Google's "Don't be evil" maxim has been called into question (again) after Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny pointed out that Google's new Internet Explorer 7 promo page looked suspiciously similar to the one Yahoo! put up a few months ago. And by "suspiciously similar" I mean practically identical. The layout was exactly the same, most of the wording was the same or very similar--basically everything except the colors and graphics. Google was quick to change the promo page, but Zawodny's blog has a screenshot of the original which is pretty damning. He says that he "checked with our PR group to make sure that this wasn't just a template that Microsoft gave to all partners," and they confirmed that that's not the case. So what's up with this, Google? Did some lazy intern put that page together? Please tell me heads are rolling.
If you do hard-core web development, which do you use? IE 6 or IE 7? I would rather use Firefox, but I have to develop for IE, since most of the world still uses it. Sure IE7 is new, IE6 is old, and they are similar, yet it is tough to develop for both, especially when you can't really install both together on the same machine. Microsoft is going to help you out with that. On November 30th, Microsoft released the Internet Explorer VPC testing image. This is a virtual PC image that lets you run IE 6 and IE 7 on the same virtual machine. The image is built on a pre-activated copy of Windows XP SP2 underneath so that could be fun for all kinds of other things too. The catch here is that the image expires on April 1, 2007. Still, it isn't a bad idea to download it and is going to help me make and break IE 6 and 7 stuff a lot faster now. You can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 for free to run the image (if you don't have it already). The IEblog states that the VPC image will also run on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (download it via connect, Windows Live passport sign-in required) if you're running Vista. Mary Jo Foley, (of Microsoft Watch fame) has written a great article on this over at her new home at ZDNet's "Unblinking Eye on Microsoft" blog that you might find interesting. Be aware, the VPC testing image is around 500MB to download, so go get yourself a cookie, a candy cane, some egg-nog or something while you're waiting.
A brief recap for those just emerging from their caves: Firefox 3 announced the goal of setting the one-day record for downloads of a single piece of software, and on June 17, the browser scored over 8 million downloads. Here's something even the tech-savvy may have missed, though: that OTHER browser, the one with the huge market share, has been running its own download campaign. It's called Carbongrove, and it's an Internet Explorer 7-compatible, Silverlight-based site that pushes reduced carbon usage and up-to-date web standards.
Well, we've done it again. We've squandered away another perfectly good 
On February 12, there might be some angry IT managers who aren't happy with 
So Apple went and released 
