After launching nearly 7 release candidates for its Windows web browser, Opera released Opera 10.50 final today, that claims to be the fastest browser in the world. We almost lost the count on the number of release candidates, when Opera came out with 4 release candidates yesterday!
Testing its speed, fixing various bugs and optimizing the browser for windows environment were all a part of updates that were made in various Beta updates, so as to make user experience smooth.
Giving a new shape to User Interface, the whole look and feel of the browser has been improved. For windows 7 users, the Aero glass, Aero peak and Jump list support makes it look the best! The much needed feature, Private browsing as well as private Tabs feature has been introduced and that enables users to hide their activities on web.
The major improvement came in the form of New Javascript Engine – Carakan, that makes the browsing fastest. HTML5 for video support and supports CSS3 for enhanced effects are also some of the featured improvements.
The launch comes at a crucial time when European users of windows OS will be having a choice to choose their browsers, as Microsoft rolled out Browser Ballot screen for the European Union users of windows OS yesterday.
The browser will soon be available for Linux and Mac users. For windows users, it is available for download in nearly 42 languages.
So what do you think about Opera’s claim to be the fastest browser in the world?
Closing in to make World’s fastest browser, Opera today released another beta version of opera 10.50 . Just a few days ago, Opera 10.50 beta 1 was introduced.
With opera storming its way through alpha and beta releases, this move can be crucial ahead of browser ballot where windows users will be presented with the Microsoft Browser Ballot from 1st March, which will force users to choose between the five most popular browsers presented in random order. Beta 2 contains many significant improvements over the first beta.
The changelog includes a list of bug and crash fixes along with tweaked styling. Some of the highlights of the changelog are-
Skin work, and tweaked styling of internal pages (opera:* and error pages)
Improved opera:config
Improved overlay authentication dialogs to avoid spoofing
Context menu fixes
Basic Web Storage user interface
Lots of crash fixes
Widgets fixes
Links:
You can download opera 10.50 beta 2 for windows directly from opera’s ftp server.
Opera for Linux and mac are in different development stages, so linux and mac users will have to wait a little longer!
Seems like the war between all the social networking sites is now spreading to the Web browsers! If you are one of those users who are tired of the monopoly shown by Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc , go ahead and try out Opera`s latest offering – Opera 10.10. We promise you, the other browsers will safely be resting in your computer while Opera is at work!
When we talk about browsers, a couple of things are of prime importance.
Security.
It must not consume too much RAM (h/w resources).
It must be highly efficient and easy to use.
Opera will not disappoint you, instead it promises a fantastic browsing experience! Let us take you through why we think Opera has scored a homerun with this release. Google chrome indexes your recent website visits, and shows them as thumbnails when you open a new tab. Now these sites may not be the ones you would want to visit regularly, and the bookmarks in chrome are arranged with a drop-down menu. What Opera has done is, they use what they call – Speed Dial! This feature saves a thumbnail of your recent websites, at the same time it also allows you to customize it to your convenience. Here`s a snapshot of the same :
Another feature we would like to highlight is the – Opera Widgets. You can download them by clicking on Widgets in the Menu bar or by clicking here. Among the widgets are cool apps and some super cool games! Do check this one out.
If this was not enough, Opera has a built-in server side optimizer – Opera Turbo. It reduces the amount of data that is transferred between your computer and the web server by up to 80%, although Opera warns that this compression might lead to poor image quality in cases, our tests have yielded fantastic results! You can find the Opera turbo button on the bottom of your browser and tweak it to your convenience.
The most eye catchy feature of Opera 10.10 is the – Opera unite!Opera unite is a platform that allows you to stream content, whether that be music, documents,videos etc without uploading it to a website. To break this into easier words, Opera unite creates a end to end connection between you and the people you wish to transfer files. The Opera unite suite contains a assortment of apps like :
Opera Unite Home: An overview that lists all the applications you are running, activity information, and also shows the applications others are running.
File Sharing: Share files directly from your computer easily and safely.
Fridge: Enjoy fun notes left on your computer by friends.
Photo Sharing: Share your personal photos with friends around the world without the need to upload them.
Media Player: Access your complete home music library from wherever you are.
Web Server: Host your Web sites directly from your own computer.
Messenger: Communicate with your friends in My Opera in a one-to-one, live session.
Besides the above listed apps, you can integrate more apps with Opera unite by clicking on the unite button , next click on the Add button, and then choose your app to synchronize it with Opera unite.
So guys, our verdict is Opera has unleashed a monster! Go ahead and try taming this one! You can download Opera 10.10 by clicking here. With Opera 10.50 still in the Beta release, this is most definitely one of the best browsers out there! Do let us know what you think of it!
Opera announced the release of beta version of its web browser Opera 10.50 today, claiming it to be the fastest browser on Earth. Previously, Opera also launched its pre-alpha version, which came out to be very unstable, though it was the fastest of all versions.
With the new JavaScript engine – Carakan, beta version of Opera 10.50 turns out to be even faster than the Latest version of other browsers including firefox 3.6 and even Google chrome 4.0 . A comparison of the browsers is available on opera blog, based on the tests conducted by opera team.
Some of the features of the release are-
Opera widgets – Multi-process architecture allows each widget to be run separately as an application on your desktop.
Faster JavaScript Engine – Makes opera 10.50 almost 8 times faster than its previous version.
Windows Integration – It integrates well with windows 7 and Vista.
Private Browsing – Like other browsers, now you will find private browsing tabs in opera also, so as to hide your activities on web. You can open a private tab for this or, private window.
Support For Web Standards – It features HTML5 for video support and also supports CSS3 for enhanced effects.
A host of other features like improvement in design, improved search, auto-complete address, dialogue boxes etc. make the beta release even better. Unlike the pre-alpha release of Opera 10.50, the beta version is much stable and can be used.
Browsing through images can be a little boring and monotonous but there is an extension which works really well using a 3D like interface for looking up images or even videos.
Cooliris is a extension which works on Chrome and you can just about browse any image online with its very interesting graphical browser. Before downloading the extension I need to warn you that the Cooliris extension does use your graphics card for rendering.
Download the cooliris extension from here and install it in Chrome.
While using Chrome you come across any image it will show you a new symbol.
Clicking on this icon starts the Cooliris extension and allows you to browse images as if you are viewing them against a wall in an exhibition.
I clicked on a friends image on Facebook and I could browse all the pictures he was tagged in through the extension without needing to go through the album.
I started playing around with this extension and really think it is a brilliant way to browse images or videos online. It is said an image is worth a thousand words and going by that logic a video should be worth a million. So I decided to put up the Cooliris demo video.
Go ahead and download Cooliris extension and try it out for yourself. Do drop in your comments about your opinions on it.
Gmail has now a days become the first choice email for many and very often we have more than 2 or 3 Gmail accounts. For instance you might have separate Gmail accounts for your blog, personal mail and work related email. As you might know that we at rtCamp use Google apps and I have a personal Gmail account. So monitoring multiple account makes sense for me.
I wrote a few days ago about using Greasemonkey scripts to use multiple Gmail accounts from the same page.
Now I wanted to share with you Gmail Manager 0.6 which is a Firefox add-on. In the case you have some concerns having Greasemonkey scripts running on your browser from a security angle; Gmail manager makes a lot of sense.
Gmail Manager add-on can be downloaded by clicking here. Once the add-on is downloaded restart Firefox browser.
The add-on options allows your enter your Gmail ID and Password. This will give you notification for any acocunt when you get an email.
Just clicking on the relevant account will take you directly to your Inbox.
If you hover your mouse pointer over the Account tag; you will get a pop-up which shows your emails that are in your inbox. Unfortunately you cannot go directly to the email from the pop-up. I guess that is what can be considered room for improvement.
If you are using Firefox browser and have a lot of active Gmail accounts Gmail Manager add-on is something which should interest you.
If you are using Firefox and Chrome, the one big complaint you would have had is that Chrome browser does not support Greasemonkey scripts. GreaseMonkey scripts are scripts that run inside Firefox thanks to installing the Greasemonkey addon.
There have been ways to get Grease monkey scripts running inside Chrome before and one way was using GreaseMetal for the Chorme. Now Google Chrome version 4.0 has officially offered support for GreaseMonkey scripts.
GreaseMonkey on Chrome
This of-course means that over 40,000 add-ons are now available on the Chrome browser and basically takes the one thing that might be keeping away Firefox loyalists from moving over to Chrome.
Make sure you have the latest version of Chrome. It needs to be a stable version of Chrome version 4.0 (stable) was recently released.
I used Grease Monkey scripts which I use with Firefox and have had no trouble using any one of them. But I am not really a GreaseMonkey fiend and hence I am sure that in these early stages many scripts might not work with Chrome browser.
Why I liked Chrome’s approach was because unlike Firefox where you had to install a Grease Monkey add-on and then install the script from UserScripts.org, with Chrome you simply download the script and Chrome automatically converts it into an extension.
Sounds cool? I think it would give that extra push to some Firefox loyalists to move to Chrome if not atleast most of them will feel a sense of familiarity with Chrome.
Let me know what do you think about Google Chrome supporting Grease Monkey scripts?
Before going into some of the pros and cons of if Internet Explorer 6 is a defunct browser here are some statistics regarding its market share. 20.99% of internet users use IE6 while IE8 the latest version is used by 20.86% of internet users. This basically means out of every 5 internet users 1 of them is on Internet Explorer 6. I took these statistics from Marketshare.histlink website.
This reveal that when it comes to Internet Explorer people prefer using an older version than the newer one. What has compounded the problem is that Microsoft as yet has not forced its users to upgrade.
Google has recently announced that it will not support Internet Explorer 6 as a browser version if you are using Google Docs or Sites. I think considering certain reports that the latest Chinese hacking into Google incident took place by taking advantage of a security flaw within Internet Explorer 6; Google might even stop supporting Gmail for IE6 very soon.
So if you are using Google Docs and using Internet Eplorer 6 you will get a message to upgrade as certain new features will not be abvailable with IE6 at all.
This is a bold move by Google considering they are now essentially telling 1/5th of the internet users to either upgrade their browser or not be able to use their services fully. I think Google probably has with this statement passed a silent message that people should now start using Chrome.
Problems for Internet Explorer 6
Windows XP was well received and subsequently it’s default browser IE6 was also well received.
Windows Vista was not as well received and that led it’s default browser IE7 being not so well received. What probably should concern Internet Explorer developers is that many who did not opt for Vista also did not opt for IE7.
Now that Windows 7 has been well received you can expect the numbers for Internet Explorer 8 to pick up.
In the mean time more and more people are prefering to use Firefox and Chrome. Chrome is still an infant but it’s growth is quite phenomenal.
IE6 will see a rapid downward spiral considering many companies and security experts lampooning it for security flaws. Recently German government recommended people not to use it at all.
What do you think? Is it about time Internet Explorer 6 is given a retirement? Let me know your opinions through your comments.
I am sure a many of you have Gmail accounts and if you frequent internet a lot you might have two or even Gmail accounts. Sometimes for a backup, sometimes to keep work and personal related emails separate majority of us might have two Gmail accounts. For instance I have two accounts, one was a personal one, the other I use for testing purposes, like I used it during this post.
If you have two Gmail accounts and need to use them often it can be a bit of a bother considering when you sign-in with one account you cannot sign into the another account on the same browser. Rahul Bansal did write about it previously on how to go about using different profiles on firefox at the same time.
Recently I used another method by using a Firefox add on for using two Gmail accounts at the same time. For using this add-on you need to have Greasemonkey installed on your Firefox browser. If you are using Windows with Firefox you can install Greasemonkey from here.
The add-on is installed and you can use Gmail multi user login.
Once this add-on is installed on Firefox it replaces the Sign-Out link to the right hand top corner of your Gmail account with a drop which allows you to log into another Gmail account.
Here is a video of how the Add-on works.
Go ahead and try it out and let me know what you think about this add-on through your comments.
If you are using Chrome and interested in stats about the website you are viewing on the browser you will love this extension for Chrome. Its named SitezMeter and allows the user to easily look up details while on a website. About 3 months ago I did review Alexa toolbar for Firefox and started to search for something similar for Chrome. Here I came across SitezMeter extension for Chrome.
SitezMeter add-on can be really handy for SEO and SEM specialist along with a must have for webmasters and website owners.
About SiteMeterz
SiteMeterz works with both Firefox and Chrome. It displays information you need in a pop up instead of providing you with links to some website.
The pop up includes an overview of stats of the website you are viewing with the browser.
I could see Google Page Rank, Alexa Ranking and Compete Rank.
I could also compare websites and their relevant stats within the extension or add-on.
There were some graphs to make the stats more interesting but I do not think they could be called a serious representation of data. It is more sensible to think of the graphs as representative of trends.
If you love to blog or write you might like to sit with a dictionary even though it is quite impractical. Not just so that you avoid spelling mistakes but also get the exact context of a word you come across. Many of us might not have English as our first language of choice and this can be a bit of a problem when articulating exactly what you want.
The dictionary can be added through an extension in the Chrome browser and I am quite enjoying it. While writing this post I have already used it in twice and hence decided to record the video on how I can use different words or improve my choice of words using this extension.
An example is the word ‘articulating’ that I used before. It was not my first choice of word and I was planning to write ‘explaining’. But while reviewing part of the post I tested the extension. (See video at the end of the post)
A simple double click gets the dictionary started.
It has options to look up related information from dictionary.com, Wikipedia and much more.
Ironically when I added Google Dictionary it seemed not compatible with the extension.
It is quite easy to use with a popup appearing of your the dictionary after double clicking on any word of the text your are reading.
Video
What do you think? Will it help you improve your writing or even vocabulary? Or will you find it interesting just for a quick reference of a word you came across but were not sure about it’s meaning. Let me know through your comments.
Okay many of you might be aware of Google Wave and by now might have even forgotten about it. Not a lot of people really found Google Wave as important and path breaking as they expected it to be but it is still early days. I will more on that some other day. For now for people using Google Wave I want to share with you a couple of ways to get notifications on while using Chrome or Firefox browser.
Google Wave notification
Firefox:
First just download the Add On for Google Wave from the Mozilla website.
Once the add-on is installed, you need to click on Tools >> Add Ons and then select the options for Google Wave Notifier Add On.
Now enter your Gmail username and password. You can change the refresh time for the Add On to check for new updates.
The updates are displayed at the right hand bottom corner of the browser. It as a small number which shows the number of unread waves. If you hover over it for a few seconds it will show a show a tiny pop up of the subject line of the wave.
Google Chrome:
Install Chrome Extension for Google Wave notification from the extensions library. (Chrome browser needs to be a beta version)
Now once the extension is installed it works automatically and gives notification to the number of waves unread as long as your were signed into Google account.
The notification part is like the Firefox Add-on neatly packed away and visible next to the address bar on Chrome.
The updates are displayed as numbers. If you single click on the extension symbol for wave, it pulls up a list of new unread waves. Click on one of them takes your directly to the new wave.
In case you are using Wave and want to keep an eye on the unread wave messages these two downloads will be quite useful. Do try them and drop in your comments and views.
Now here is a new twist to it.Google through an extension allows us to inject a little bit of Internet Explorer into Chrome.
IE Tab
Add the IE Tab extension on your Chrome browser and start using Internet Explorer within Chrome.
Once installed you can click on the small IE symbol next to end of the address bar. (see image)
I liked using IE Tab within Chrome as I could bookmark my favorite sites in Chrome but they were added to Internet Explorer’s favorite list.
Also the right click menu within Chrome changes to IE’s menu withing the tab.
I could also access Internet Options from the tab which can be accessed usually only through the IE browser or the Control Panel.
I do not think that this one will be as controversial as Chrome Frame. But for people using Chrome and Internet Explorer this one should be quite handy. What do you think?
There is a song with the words ‘I am just a monkey man’. I am not kidding you, its a fact. The reason I am telling you this is while looking up Google on a friends computer to prove that Rollings Stones actually had a song with the words ‘I am a monkey man’ ; inadvertently I came across a very interesting Chrome extension called Quick Scroll.
Quick Scroll
Download the Google Quick Scroll extension to your Chrome browser.
When you search for a group of words or quote on Google you will obviously get search results.
Clicking on a link takes you to a page; this is where Quick Scroll extension on Chrome kicks in.
As you can see in the image above, on the right hand corner of the web-page I got matches for the exact text I had entered before.
This means that now after I click on a search result, the search keywords are automatically highlighted without me needing to search for text on the browser page. Look at the video below for a demo of how this extension works. If you like it do let me know through your comments.
In our daily life we really tend to visit more than one Google service now visiting Google service made easy with Google Shortcuts add-on for Firefox. This add-on is really useful and handy add-on to visit any Google product with Firefox browser. If you’re a blogger or person who using more than one Google service then this add-on is recommended. The name itself indicates that it is simple shortcut for visiting Google service/site easily.
The Google shortcuts add-on helps you to visit Google services/sites without typing the URL manually in the address bar of the browser. This Google shortcuts add-on takes you to the appropriate Google website by just one click ! yes, it’s true only one click is needed to visit any Google sites/services. Just click on the appropriate icon of the Google product which is available in the toolbar of the Firefox. You can easily customize the icon or product that you want to add to the toolbar. This customizing option is available in the add-on itself.
Google Shortcuts add-on:
The appearance of Google shortcuts can be easily change just by navigating Tools >> Add-ons >> Google Shortcuts >> options >> Display options in this we will get a option called “show buttons like a” in that we can select how the icons need to be displayed in our browser. Assume that if we select the Toolbar option then the selected Google product will display the icons on our browser in a liner order or just as icons.
The above image show the how the icons are displayed if we selected the “Toolbar” type buttons display. But if you selected a large number of Google product then the space required is more so to minimize the space usage the developer provided another option know as “Dropdown Menu” this option can save a lot of space in your browser. The Dropdown Menu option won’t displays the Google service/product icons as displayed in the Toolbar option. This dropdown menu option displays the icons in the pattern of Dropdown so it can save lot space. If have only few products then you can select Toolbar like display.You can also able to choose the option to open in new window or to open in the same window in the “tab behaviour” option.
The above the image of how Google shorts are displaying in Dropdown Menu style option this style can save lot of space in your browser.
Coming to the “Service selection” tab here can get the controls to choose which service of Google product you need to have the shortcut icons of the Google service in the browser. To select the Service just check the box and then click save settings button.
That’s it now you’re no need to type the long URL of the Google sites. To visit just click on the icon you will be taken to the Google site. If don’t find you’re favorite Google product URL is not present here(Add-on option) then just inform to the developer by clicking here .
Smarter Fox is a Firefox browseradd-on which does exactly what it claims. It makes your browser a lot more smarter. It quickens up the browsing experience a lot but giving the user a host of options to search and lookup information.
Smarter Fox Features
Awesomebar: This is a enhanced version of Bookmarks. If you want to go to a particular page just press Ctrl + Spacebar. There is a screen that pops up with all the websites you can visit in a click of a button. To add your favorite website into the Awesomebar just drag and drop the link from the address bar. It will be added automatically.
The pop up bubble is another great feature. Just highlight any text and bubble pops up with symbols of Google, Twitter, Wikipedia. Click on the symbol and a page opens after searching with the relevant service.
Example of Pop-up bubble using Fastest Fox.
Finally just start typing in your address bar and search results are shown in the address bar drop down itself. No need for search engine page to load hence saving me time.
Below is a video I made for you to demonstrate how you can use Smarter Fox addon and speed up Firefox usage.
Try out Smarter Fox and let me know if you liked it through your comments.
Mozilla Firefox will be watched quite closely since now more than 1 in 4 people use the Firefox browser. The browser wars are back with Chrome browser leap frogging over Safari and is now the 3rd most used browser.
Firefox 3.6 beta version has had a new upgrade and I thought I would let your know what is new with this version. If you already have Firefox 3.6, the new upgrade will be done automatically from your browser. If you are using a version lower than Firefox 3.6 you might want to download it from their beta website.
The new upgrade support HTML 5 File API. This means its possible for allowing user to select a local file using HTML. This means it can be done using HTML input element or using drag and drop.
Scripts will be run asynchronously which essentially makes the speed of the browser a lot faster. Even though I have not testing the browser for speed, but I did seem a marked difference in speed after I upgraded.
Firefox 3.6 will proactively alert you about out of date plugins.
It also promises better support for CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript.
I started using the upgraded browser and its been a few hours. I must say when opening multiple tabs I found it better than Chrome. I usually end up opening over 10 tabs. Also there has not been a single crash.
It is still early days but it’s definite that Firefox will keep eating into Internet Explorer’s market share right through December.
Let me know if you have more details and interesting facts about Firefox 3.6 through your comments.
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I came across this tip on opening a new tab from Chrome’s Omnibox thanks to Peter Kasting from Chrome Blog. It is quite useful when you are typing in a website address and want it opened in a new tab.
The Omnibox in Chrome browser is a mix of both the address bar and the search bar. This means when I enter some text into the Omnibox and press enter it shows up results of the text from Google search.
Open new tabs with Omnibox
Lets say you open the Chrome browser and the homepage loads up. I want to search for information on Gtalk.
So I start typing ‘How to install Gtalk’ in the address bar and press Alt + Enter which opens a new tab with search results for installing Gtalk.
This way using Alt + Enter while typing text on Omnibox, I can open multiple tabs which are relevant without needing to open a new one and then enter the text.
Below is the demo on how browsing is easier and quicker by opening new tab with Alt + Enter with Omnibox. Every new tab is opened with by pressing Alt + Enter.
I hope you found this tip as useful as I found it to be, do let me know what you think of it through your comments.
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The Opera browser is one of my favorite ones. I started using it many years ago and even though now I end up using Chrome and Firefox a lot more, I still do use Opera quite a bit. So it was nice to know about a Twitter widget which is available with the Opera.
Once on it you can download or install the Twitter widget. Do make sure JScript is enabled on Opera.
Sign into Twitter from the widget and you are good to go.
A great feature of the Twitter Widget was that even when I closed my Opera browser the widget still worked like a stand alone application. This works only if you are using the Opera 10.2 version.
Is it any good?
I found it not all that different from most of the desktop clients available for using Twitter. The widget seemed to be ideal for people who use Twitter moderately and end up sending a few tweets every day. It surely is not a worthy replacement of many popular Twitter applications like TweetDeck as it does not still support Twitter Lists. That is the main drawback of this widget as because it does not support Lists, following incoming tweets gets a little difficult.
This widget is still in testing and hence might have some bugs. But I did not have any issues for a couple of hours I used the widget. Download the Opera Browser from their website and the widget from here.
Over a month ago Google released a stable version of Chrome 3 which signaled that it was more confident about it’s browser’s ability to compete with others. A day ago it released Chrome 4 as a beta version and the big difference it claims in its blog is that its performance as a browser has improved over 30%. I downloaded the beta version and it has been working fine. I hardly noticed anything different.
With Chrome 3 stable version I did have a problem of the browser crashing after a few hours especially if I had a theme on it. Its only been a hour since I downloaded the beta version so can not say that issue has been addressed. One exciting feature it does have is having a real time synchronization of bookmarks on two or more computers with Chrome browser.
Chrome Bookmark Sync
If you want to have the same bookmarks on Chrome browsers across 2 or more computers all of them need to have Chrome 4 beta installed on it.
Sign-in with Google account and then merge and sync the bookmarks from all the browsers. It happens real time if you are signed-in on all computers. That means if I add a bookmark it shows up on the other computer in real time. This technology is the same that is used for bundling Google Chat with Gmail.
Google has recently incorporated Sidewiki into Chrome which was earlier available through Google toolbar. Bookmarks could be previously shared on other browsers using Google toolbar, but it looks like Google is going to incorporate all that you can do with the Google toolbar into its Chrome browser as a feature. If that’s the course it is taking and assuming Google gets it right, Chrome might become the dominant browser in a few years.
There are many third party softwares and tools bars which allow bookmarks to be synced with multiple computers for example Foxmarks extensions with Firefox but this is the first time I see it as a main feature of a browser. Some people might be uncomfortable with the idea of storing bookmarks on a server which happens in the case of Chrome.
If you want to download Chrome 4 beta visit their landing page. Do comment on the post to let me know your thoughts on Google Chrome 4 beta.
