Who's missing from this uber release party? Oh, that would be Microsoft's Internet Explorer...the browser with the #1 market share. After their less than stellar (and way less than standards compliant) version 7, Microsoft better come up with some EPIC for Internet Explorer 8.
Opera as you know is focused on security, speed, and mobile.
The sometimes over the top Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner stressed that Opera 9.5's most innovative and most important feature is the cross-link between your desktop and mobile devices. A feature that other browsers haven't even bothered to start playing with yet.
Will Opera's mobile first, desktop second strategy work? We shall see.
When we saw Surf Canyon, we figured it was just another search add-on. It was obvious after installing it and searching around on Google for about 3 minutes that we were wrong.
Here's why.
Surf Canyon wants to bring those meaty good search results to the forefront. You know, the ones that we never see on page 2,3,4,100 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Do you ever search past the first 2 pages? We don't.
That's where Surf Canyon differentiates itself. It has developed search technology that recommends posts to you based on the content of the top search results on each of the search engines.
It sticks a bull's eye next to the results and when you click it, you'll see results that are recommended. Not only that, it'll tell you the search result page it was found on. See this example here:
We really like snarky comments. Or maybe we just really like the sound of our own voices, if by saying sound we mean "incessant tapping" and by voices we mean "keyboards." So needless to say, when we heard about iComment, we were intrigued.
iComment is a plug-in for either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox-based browsers. The install instructions have a definite Windows slant, but we can verify it seems to work quite dandily in Linux. The idea behind iComment is simple. It allows you to leave your two cents on any website, or photo, or bit of text that appears on a page. You want the rest of the world to know how freakin' annoying a gratuitous bit of Flash on a page is? Tell 'em!
Of course, there are some issues that limit the usefulness of this plug-in at the moment. The first and foremost is the one that really can't be helped -- every plug-in starts somewhere. Through iComment, we are able to see the comments other people have left on a site, as well as our own. Very cool, but it's a bit of a hunt to find sites with comments, as this is a relatively new service. It is sort of interesting to hear, though, that the development team is working on a "friend/private" function where you can share comments with approved friends.
The big announcement at this week's MIX08 conference was undoubtedly Microsoft's latest version of Internet Explorer, IE8. With all the questions flying around about standards support and what's under the hood of the new browser, we wanted to make sure you didn't miss the news about web apps that are getting a boost from IE8. One of the early entries showcased at MIX08 was the social browsing platform Me.dium.
Me.dium is a service that turns websurfing into a social experience, adding the ability to chat with other users and see what sites they're browsing. IE8's Activities feature, which finds microformats in web pages and lets you work with them, is a great fit for Me.dium. If you're going to share social data, why stop at webpages? Me.dium is also planning to include IE8's Web Slices in its recommendation features, so you'll be able to see the most popular pages and slices in your Me.dium network.
A lot of other services should be announcing integration with these new features soon, but Me.dium got an early jump because Microsoft specifically asked them to prepare something for MIX08. That can't be bad news for Me.dium's value as a company or the features it brings to the table for users.
We didn't think we would find another entry in the "totally useless but very cool for a few seconds software" section so soon, but as luck would have it...
Internet Explorer Retitler is small, simple, and does what it says. Open the program up, type in any title you want, and hit the "retitle" button. The next time you open Internet Explorer you'll see your new title in the title bar (along with whatever site you happen to be visiting).
Now we'll construct an imaginary dialog between us and a loyal reader.
Reader: What else does it do?
Download Squad: Nothing.
Reader: Does it have any preferences, any customizations?
Download Squad: Nope.
Reader: So what good is it?
Download Squad: The only limit, friend, is your imagination. How about typing in a marriage proposal to your significant other (oh, that would be so geeky...)? How about playing a practical joke on your friend? Or maybe programming a reminder to yourself, so that every time you open IE, you are reminded of some event or some inspirational thought?
Internet Explorer Retitler is mercifully free, and Windows only.
Back in January, Microsoft caused quite a stir when they announced that the default behavior of Internet Explorer 8 would be to render web pages the same way as they are rendered in IE 7. The problem with this? One of IE 8's most touted features is its web standards compliance and its passing of the Acid2 test. However, web developers and standards advocates were miffed at the idea that rendering the "correct" way would require an additional line of code.
Well, it looks like Microsoft is listening. Yesterday they announced that the default browser behavior will be to render according to standards. If sites want to render in the "quirks" mode (thus, look the same as it would look in IE 7), the site maintainers will need to add in a line of code to reflect that.
The rationale from the original decision stems from the problems Microsoft had when migrating from IE 6 to IE 7. IE 7 had to sacrifice standards compliance in order to deal with rendering problems held over from IE 6. Thus, a web page that was built around IE 6's weirdness would look horrendous in IE 7, despite actually being displayed "properly." Thus, Microsoft made the decision to work out a way to render older sites without the appearance of breakage.
By changing course, Microsoft joins other browser makers like Safari, Firefox and Opera is operating with standards compliance out of the box. We have to give Microsoft credit for at least listening to the response from the community.
If you are a web designer or developer, one of the issues you probably face on a daily basis is browser cache. For those who are unaware of this issue, your browser - whether it be Firefox or Internet Explorer - captures all web pages and images when you browse and saves them in the browser cache. This is so that next time you go to a website, you can quickly access the saved files in your cache rather than re-download the image or related content.
This presents an issue for web designers when they make a change to a website, when their own browser uses the cached files rather than downloading the new version off the server. What web designers need is an easy way to empty their cache. We have two suggestions for this type of functionality:
For Firefox, check out the Clear Cache add-on. This fantastic extension will add a broom logo to your Firefox toolbar that will instantly clear your cache when you click it.
For Internet Explorer, we suggest you look at CachePal. Installing this will give you one-click access to the cache clearing functionality.
We hope these utilities will ease your web development duties. Check them out and let us know what you think in the comments.
AM-DeadLink, while lacking a creative name, does serve a creative purpose. The program will scan through your bookmarks: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera; and locate all the dead links that have taken up unwelcome residence, like those malign spirits in the movie Poltergeist.
Can you believe Poltergeist was rated PG? We still think about it...about the clown...it's not under the bed, it's right behind you Robbie!
Okay, where were we? Yes, AM-DeadLink. Like we said before, the program detects dead links and duplicates in browser bookmarks. If a bookmark has become unavailable, or if you find a duplicate, you can verify it in the program's internal browser and delete the bookmark permanently.
The program itself is easy to operate, with simple toolbar buttons and drop-down menus to select the browser you wish to clean up. AM-DeadLink can also scan .CSV files and tab-delimited text files for dead links. If your bookmarks are lacking favicons, AM-DeadLink can import them into your bookmarks, with the option to pass over or overwrite all existing favicons.
It's happened to us all: we've gone a little bit trigger happy with our mouse, and inadvertently closed a tab that we didn't want closed. We've recently covered a way to get those tabs back with Firefox. Now, with IE7 Open Last Closed Tab, those regrettable clicks can be undone in Internet Explorer 7 as well.
The add-on is small, simple to install, and does what it says, all qualities to be adored. Once you download and install the add-on, IE will look and act the same as before. If you need to open a closed tab, you have two keyboard options:
Alt+X will restore the last closed tab, complete with history.
Alt+Q will bring up a screen to let you select from all your recently closed tabs (up to 200!).
A heads up: there are Amazon advertisements that load on the screen where you can select from your closed tabs. However, you can easily turn them off by clicking the "disable product bar" option on the top of the tab.
IE7 Open Last Closed Tab requires Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Server 2003, XP, or Vista.
Google Toolbar version 5 for Internet Explorer has just been made available as a public beta. Does the beta tag scare you? Not to worry; Google's beta tag has traditionally meant something a little more polished than most beta software (for example, Gmail is still in beta, as is Picasa).
Version 5 introduces a number of new features, including access to your Toolbar settings from any computer that you log into with your Google Account, improved suggestions for broken links, and new keyboard navigation and access.
The keyboard navigation is simple and sweet. From inside a browser with Toolbar installed, the global shortcut Alt+G places your cursor in the Google Toolbar search box. Pressing the Tab key brings keyboard focus to the button placed immediately after the search box, and right and left arrow keys move focus between buttons.
The ability to access your Toolbar settings after signing into your Google account fits into Google's focus for giving unity to your browsing experience, whether you be on your home, work, or laptop computer. Google already has other tools to help accomplish this (e.g. Google Browser Sync, though that is only available as a plugin for Firefox), and Toolbar access is a nice addition.
You'll need Internet Explorer 6.0 or later in order to install Google Toolbar version 5.
Today AOL announced plans to discontinue development on the beloved Netscape browser. As you may know, Netscape was the first mass market Internet browser, originally released in October 1994. AOL will stop developing the browser on February 1, 2008 according to the Netscape blog.
This blog's parent company, AOL gained control of Netscape when they acquired it in November 1998 for the whopping price of $4.2 billion. The software, which is currently on version 9, was dominant in the 1990's until Microsoft unleashed Internet Explorer. Recent figures show that Netscape has less than 1 percent market share after having more than 90 during the browser wars of the 1990's.
The Netscape browser code has not been maintained to the community's expectations. AOL has also done a pretty good job of obscuring the Netscape name. Netscape.com was briefly a Digg-style social news site, and now the web site is basically a landing page for AOL.com. In order to even find the latest version of the Netscape web browser, you have to go to browser.netscape.com.
What was once a great Internet Suite gave birth to the Mozilla foundation when Netscape code was released to the Open Source community. Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird are the upshot of the once-great Netscape Internet Browser.
Netscape will always have a dear place in our hearts. For many of us it was our first window in to the World Wide Web. Rest in Peace, Netscape Navigator.
Did you run last week's round of Microsoft updates? Is your Internet Explorer version 6 crashing more frequently since then?
Microsoft last week issued a critical update for it's namesake browser, only to find out recently the fix is causing user's Internet Explorer to terminate while browsing websites. The unforeseen issues are fixed by either uninstalling the patch, or a cryptic registry hack.
Experts are unsure what is causing the issue. Some Internet newsgroups are inferring that anti-virus software is causing the issue. However an InfoWorld article has deduced that the issue is tied to sites that use secure login methods on a non-secure page (such as Microsoft Passport).
IT shops are being advised to put off auto-updating computers with the new round of patches for obvious reasons.
If you haven't already done so, it might be high time to give the parents the gift of Mozilla Firefox on your trip home for Christmas.
Today Web developers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief when Microsoft's Internet Explorer team revealed their latest milestone: IE8 now renders the Acid2 face properly!
For those who aren't familiar with this test, Acid2 is designed to determine how compliant a given web browser is with published HTML. A fully compliant browser displays a smiling yellow face. However, non-compliant browsers show varying degrees of garbage.
While we appreciate Microsoft's effort to embrace open web standards (finally), there is something a bit suspicious about the wording of the announcement. Apparently, IE8 only passes the test when operating in something called "Standards Mode".
We can only wonder what Microsoft is up to with such an odd distinction. Will IE8 run in Standards Mode or another mode by default in the future? Only time will tell.
Firefox and Internet Explorer get most of the attention, but they're not the only web browsers out there. There's also Safari, Opera, and Konqueror. But if you want to try a web browser that is guaranteed to work with every page designed for Internet Explorer without actually you know, using Internet Explorer, you might want to check out Maxthon.
Maxthon is based on Internet Explorer, so it uses the same rendering engine. But it has dozens of features you won't find in Microsoft's web browser. Maxthon 2 has just been released after a long beta period, and it includes a whole slew of updates.
Here are just a few of Maxthon's cooler features
Completely skinnable interface
Integrated Ad-blocker, popup blocker and content filter
Support for mouse gestures (navigate forward, backward, or between tabs by right clicking and moving your mouse in various patterns)
Last year eBay entered into an advertising agreement with Yahoo, part of that agreement was to build a co-branded toolbar. It's now available.
The new eBay toolbar uses both Yahoo and eBay features to power it. With it users can search for items on eBay or Half.com, and search with Yahoo using Yahoo Local, Yahoo Video and Yahoo Answers among others. The toolbar also has one click access to Yahoo Mail, and gives direct access to eBay.com. Complete with account guard to protect auction accounts and eBay auction Alerts.
The eBay toolbar featuring Yahoo is currently available for Internet Explorer Windows users only, with a Firefox version in development.
Are the oldschool browser wars starting up again? It sure seems like it.
When we saw 
We really like snarky comments. Or maybe we just really like the sound of our own voices, if by saying sound we mean "incessant tapping" and by voices we mean "keyboards." So needless to say, when we heard about 
Back in January, Microsoft caused quite a stir when they 
If you are a web designer or developer, one of the issues you probably face on a daily basis is browser cache. For those who are unaware of this issue, your browser - whether it be Firefox or Internet Explorer - captures all web pages and images when you browse and saves them in the browser cache. This is so that next time you go to a website, you can quickly access the saved files in your cache rather than re-download the image or related content.
