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The last fortnight saw major updates to the two main browsers viz., Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, with IE trying to retain its mammoth user base and FF trying to grows its user base. I have not gone through the new features available in IE7, but I must say the improvements over IE6 are huge and you should update to IE7 without rethinking.

I am a FF user and have been using the FF 2.0 from its Release Candidate stage, i.e. FF 2 RC1, and have been blown away by the features improvement in this version. Let me make a quick note of the improvements I liked:

• Tab browsing Improvements: The new version has a close button for each of the open tabs, rather than one close button for all the tabs, it makes life much easier while browsing the web. The other major improvement has been ‘Undo Close Tab’, very very useful when you close a tab by mistake and want to get it back.
• Session Resuming: The advantage of using tabs is that one can open as many webpages as one wants, but what if you want to close the browser or browser crashes what happens to the open tabs, in FF2, you can now get back all the open tabs.
• InLine Spell Checking: A major reason to upgrade from FF1.5 to FF2, the inline spell checking works well and helps in pointing out errors, especially useful for users who type fast and of course for those words which have always confused you.
• There are various other features like, a newer slick theme, integration of the addon/theme manager, Phishing protection, and how could I forget the improved RSS/XML feed handling capabilities with an option to add it to any web based reader or a software reader along with preview capabilities.

So people update you browser to its latest version and experience the internet from a whole new perspective, the browser wars are going to hot up even more, considering that FF 2 has had over two million downloads in first 24 hours with a peak rate of over 30 downloads a second, means that MS is going to work harder and try to innovate new features into IE, the future is certainly good. Happy browsing.

Orkut is a friends network created by Google. A scrap is a message that you leave on your friend’s scrapbook, or a message that he / she leaves on your’s. When you see a scrap from a friend, and want to reply to it, the only way to do so is to click on his name, travel to his profile page, find the link to his scrapbook, then type in your message… which, in my humble opinion, is p-a-i-n, especially when you are on a scrapping spree.

This extension (to be used with Mozilla Firefox browser) adds two links to every scrap seen on your scrapbook. One link allows you to reply to your friend from the same place (without going to his scrapbook). The other link is for the nosy among us - the ones who like to look at others’ scraps - a direct link to his / her scrapbook. This is useful when you don’t want to go to your friend’s scrapbook through the normal route (profile page -> scrapbook).

The above sentences were directly from the extension homepage. It was nicely written so I did not change it. Coming back to the extension, though I use Orkut once in a while, I don’t go on a scrapping spree, but I believe I should atleast reply to the people who scrap, to do this, I find this extension the best solution. Also this extension is one of the many extensions that can be used with Firefox to make the online experience better, so download Firefox now.

More Details + Dowload: Orkut ScrapEasy Scrapping made simple …

I am starting a series with this post wherein I will be posting about the Firefox extensions that i use. As most of you all know, Firefox is a great browser which is better than I.E. in terms of security, but what makes Firefox cool are the hundreds of extensions that one can use with it. If you do not know extensions are small addons that increase the functionality of Firefox. In this post I will be talking about two extension viz., Flashblock and Viamatic foXpose.

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Flashblock Extension
Flashblock is a cool extension which replaces Flash based objects in a webpage with a button. To view the flash object, one just needs to click on the button. This extension is extremely useful now that making flash content is easy, and more and more websites are including flash objects in their pages. There was a time when Flash was used mainly to create animations to describe something, but today, Flash is used more for displaying Advts than for explaination. So using this extension will make your life easier by blocking all the flash content on the webpage, but at the same time providing a convenient way to view them if need.

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Viamatic foXpose
Tabbed browsing is great, but what happens when you open many tabs in the same window? the tabs become very small and also finding a particular tab becomes very difficult, so what is the solution, try Viamatic foXpose extension for firefox which will open up a page with a Thumbnail view of all the open pages. You can open this view by either clicking on the icon which appears in the status bar or using the configurable shortcut key. Once open you can select the tab you want by just clicking on the thumbnail or even close that particular tab by clicking on the close button provided. This is one useful extension for people who open up large number of tabs and have a difficult time navigating through them. Another extension which provides a similar functionality is Reveal which does a bit of animation and also allows you to search for words in those pages. As per what i read, it does something similar to what one can find on the Macs.

Madpenguin reports:

Jan. 12, 2006 - Mozilla Corp. today announced the launch of Thunderbird 1.5, the latest version of its full-featured email client, available now as a free download at www.getthunderbird.com. Renowned for its intelligent spam filters and customizable views, Thunderbird has attracted more than 18 million downloads since its launch in December 2004. Thunderbird 1.5 is the culmination of a year’s worth of feedback from its users and delivers a safe, fast and easy-to-use email solution.
read complete

Hurrah! I will update my Thunderbird client immediately, the best thing that i like about these latest 1.5 releases of thunderbird and firefox is that from now on, people can update the software instead of downloading it and then installing it.

I found this on digital inspiration blog.

Though Firefox doesn’t provide native support for viewing or writing MHTML files, the Mozilla Archive Format (MAF) Firefox extension can help you. Once installed in Firefox, this extension lets you save Web pages in the open-source .MAFF format. It can also read and write .MHT files, which IE users can open.

However, the MAF Firefox extension requires Firefox 1.5+. If you are on a previous version, you can either install the View in IE or IE Tab extension.

read full - digital inspration.

Mozilla has announced its beta schedule for the upcoming release of Firefox 1.5, according to a posting on its developer news Web site. Beta 1 will be released on September 8, followed by a second beta on October 5.

Furthermore, the first release candidate of the browser is expected on October 28, which indicates the final version of Firefox 1.5 would likely come sometime during the month of November.

More Details: Betanews.com
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Cool! Can’t wait till Nov for the final release, the new version is supposed to have a few nice features up its sleves. Till then i am happy with FF 1.0.4

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit public benefit software development organization, has launched a wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. The Mozilla Corporation is a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation, and will be responsible for product development, marketing and distribution of Mozilla products.

The Mozilla Corporation is responsible for productizing and distributing Firefox, Thunderbird, and related branded products built on the Mozilla open source code base. The Mozilla Corporation’s mission, shared by that of the Mozilla Foundation, is to promote choice and innovation on the Internet.

Full Details: http://www.mozilla.org/reorganization/

Would it bother you if the only browser you could use to preregister a copyright claim with the United States Copyright Office is Internet Explorer, version 5.1 and higher? Well, you might be getting bothered real soon, because that is what the Library of Congress has in mind.

More details: Newsforge.com

Yahoo! Toolbar Product Manager Jon Granrose writes in with news that version 1.0 of the Yahoo! Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox is now available: “We just released the first non-beta Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox. All the usual good stuff such as portable bookmarks, plus a resizable search box, right-mouse-click and open in tab for toolbar buttons, and support for trunk builds, among other things.”

The official Yahoo! Search Blog has a post with more details about the Yahoo! Toolbar 1.0 for Firefox. As well as the new functionality that Jon mentioned, this latest version also adds several other new tools, including the ability to add RSS and Atom feeds to My Yahoo! using the Live Bookmarks icon on the Status Bar. It also retains all the features from the beta versions, such as new mail notification for Yahoo! Mail.

More details at: Mozillazine.org