Filed under: Browsers

Mozilla Jetpack contest winner harnesses GPU power to process data

by Lee Mathews Nov 6th 2009

Mozilla Labs has announced a winner of the Jetpack .5 contest. While Jetpack is known primarily as a framework for allowing coders with a web development background to put together add-on type enhancements for Firefox, the winner 's project wasn't your run-of-the-mill sidebar hack.

Alex Miltsev's submission was jetpack-to-CUDA, and it provides Jetpack developers with a simple way to offload intense processing tasks to GPUs. CUDA (demo video above) is NVidia's parallel computing architecture - and with CUDA-capable chips in more than 100 million PCs, Miltsev's handiwork could enable some seriously cool (and powerful) Jetpack add-ons to be developed.

The runners up (not to take anything away from them) were much more standard Jetpack offerings - a Google Translate extension, link shortener and sharer, and Twitter client.

Kudos to Miltssev for his creative entry! Here's hoping we see some truly awesome things in future versions of Firefox and Jetpack as a result.

Tags: add-ons, addons, cuda, extensions, firefox, jetpack

Filed under: Hardware, Windows, Google, Browsers

Game on, Microsoft: Google Chrome shipping as default browser on some PCs

by Lee Mathews Nov 6th 2009

The EC might be content with Microsoft's browser ballot screen, but that's not stopping Google from getting OEMs to turn away from Internet Explorer on their own.

Google already has deals with several OEMs to include their software, of course. They've been shipping Google Desktop on OEM pcs for quite some time now, and their plans to drop Google Chrome on new users have come to fruition as well.

As you can see, I unboxed a new Sony Vaio laptop running Windows 7 yesterday. Nestled amongst the other desktop icons was the tri-color Chrome orb.
Not only was Chrome pre-pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, but a quick look at the internet options on the laptop revealed sad news for Internet Explorer: it had been bumped from default web browsing duties.

If we weren't already in the middle of an all-out browser war, the introduction of Google Chrome as the preinstalled default on Windows PCs could well set things off.

Tags: browser wars, BrowserWars, google chrome, GoogleChrome, microsoft

Filed under: Google, Open Source, Browsers

Embed a (very) basic Twitter client in Google Chrome with the ChromedBird extension

by Lee Mathews Nov 5th 2009

Hot on the heels of my roundup of 15+ great extensions for Google Chrome, I've already found some more that deserve to be mentioned. First on the list: ChromedBird.

You probably guessed from the name, but yes, it's a minimal Twitter client which you can access from Chrome's main toolbar. It hides inside a little birdie button until you want to check your stream or post an update.

ChromedBird displays the last 5 tweets in your stream and allows you to post updates - and that's it. Links you paste into your updates are automatically shortened using bit.ly. Sure, it's a pretty stripped-down Twitter experience, but it's still nice to have close at hand when browsing with Chrome.

ChromeBird is a little buggy, but it's a very early build. I'll turn a blind eye, since we only get extension support in somewhat buggy dev builds (click here to download) of Chrome (or Chromium) right now anyway.

You can find the ChromedBird .crx over at ChromeExtensions.

Tags: .crx, chromium, dev channel, DevChannel, extensions, google chrome, GoogleChrome, twitter

Filed under: Utilities, Browsers

Get a Firefox 3.7 feature early with Tab Progress Bar

by Jay Hathaway Nov 5th 2009

If you're gung-ho about upcoming versions of Firefox, you can start testing some of their features via add-ons. Firefox 3.7 is slated to introduce a new look for the progress bar, relocating it to the top of each individual tab but you can enable the feature in current versions of the browser right now, with Tab Progress Bar. This neat little add-on won't cost you much disk space, weighing in at a miniscule 6kb.

A new-look progress bar sounds like frivolous decoration, but it serves a practical purpose, too. If you often load bunches of tabs at once, It's helpful to be able to see the progress of each page you're loading at a glance. With this new design, you won't even have to change tabs to know whether those huge videos are almost done loading. One minor quibble: I've found that Tab Progress Bar best used with a theme that doesn't highlight your current tab in blue, as the progress bar tends to blend in with blue tabs.

Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 will certainly have bigger and better things to offer, but Tab Progress Bar is one small slice of the future that you don't have to wait for.

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: firefox, firefox 3.7, Firefox3.7, tab progress bar, TabProgressBar, tabs

Filed under: Productivity, Browsers

Make your Firefox more like Google Chrome with Pin Tabs

by Jay Hathaway Nov 5th 2009

One of the slick visual elements of Google's Chrome browser is pin tabs. They're those compact tabs that're only as wide as a favicon, and they save a ton of space in your tab bar. You could point out that Firefox doesn't have this feature, but I'd give you the Firefox fanatic's standard answer: there's an add-on for that! For Chrome-style mini-tabs in Firefox, grab the Pin Tab extension.

Pinning a tab using ctrl-click shrinks it and moves it to the left of your tab bar. A pinned tab is preserved across all sessions, and you can't accidentally upset it using the address bar. If you enter a new URL while a pinned tab is selected, that URL opens in a new tab instead. You can pin tabs by dragging them to the left of the tab bar, and unpin them by dragging them to the right. Pinned tabs save a ton of space, since they're several times smaller than regular ones, so this add-on is ideal for those who have dozens of sites open at once.

[via gHacks]

UPDATE: The developer of this add-on seems to have taken it down for right now.

Tags: add-on, chrome, firefox, pin tab, PinTab, tabs

Filed under: Internet, Browsers

Old Man IE6 shakes fist as Firefox surpasses him in browser share

by Jay Hathaway Nov 4th 2009

Web designers and standards advocates have tried everything to kill Internet Explorer 6, but it just refuses to die. In fact, Microsoft has extended support for the aging browser until at least mid-2010, and longer for some versions of Windows. However, there is strong evidence that people are coming around to browsers that support standards, don't make web designers cry, and have frickin' TABS, for crying out loud ...

Firefox is now more popular than IE6.

That's right: according to October browser usage stats reported by Ars Technica, the old, incontinent granddad of the browsing world has finally been overtaken by the cool kid with all the rad accessories. Although IE6 still has 23% of the market - sadly, more than any other version of IE - when you add up the usage on every version of Firefox, you get 24.07%, enough to top that single old edition of Internet Explorer.

I assume the shift is accounted for by home web users shifting to newer browsers with the release of Windows 7, because corporate IT departments are still the last bastion of widespread IE6 use. As Ars speculates, high Windows 7 adoption rates could be the stake through IE6's cold, tab-less heart.

Meanwhile, in the Webkit browser wars, Chrome and Safari both made gains this month. Chrome is still growing faster -- right now it's closing in rapidly with 3.58% to Safari's 4.42%.

Tags: browser wars, BrowserWars, firefox, ie6, internet explorer 6, InternetExplorer6

Filed under: Google, Open Source, Browsers

Customizing Chromium with Userscripts gets way easier in nightly build

by Lee Mathews Nov 4th 2009

You won't notice this change in Google Chrome just yet, even if you're running the developer channel. But if you happen to be one of the intrepid souls who routinely download and roll the dice on Chromium nightly builds, you've now got a much easier way to install Userscripts.

In past releases, you had to manually save Userscripts into your Chromium (or Chrome) Userdata\Default folder. Not any more! Now, all you have to do is click on the .js download link for any Userscript. Once saved, Chromium automatically converts the script to a Chrome Extension.

Tags: chromium, extensions, google chrome, GoogleChrome, userscripts

Filed under: Internet, News, Mozilla, Holiday Gift Guide, Search, Browsers, Web

Track Black Friday prices with Invisible Hand add on for Firefox

by Dolores Parker Nov 3rd 2009

We've covered Invisible Hand, the discreet shopping comparison add on for Firefox, which displays prices on items you are searching on the web. Just in time for Black Friday, the hand has trotted out a new add on which along with other improvements, incorporates Google search results.

Now, you can get your price results in real time so you know you're getting the best deal. My test drive of the hand went smooth, the results loaded up within a second or two and updates were very discreet. This is a real time saver for getting price results.

The add on will be officially released to the Mozilla site within a few weeks, but the first 200 Download Squad readers can download the beta version. Just click on the link below and key in invisibleDLS for the access code.

http://preview.getinvisiblehand.com/

Tags: Black Friday deals, Black Friday Sales, BlackFridayDeals, BlackFridaySales, firefox-add-on, HGG, Invisible hand add on for firefox, InvisibleHandAddOnForFirefox, online price comparison, OnlinePriceComparison, shopping comparison tools, ShoppingComparisonTools

Filed under: Google, Beta, Browsers

Google Chrome 4 hits beta, includes bookmark sync

by Jay Hathaway Nov 3rd 2009

The latest Windows version of Google Chrome, version 4.0, is now in beta. It's reportedly a scorching 30% faster than the current release, and it includes a bookmark syncing feature that's been floating around in the developer preview version of the browser for some time.

Activate bookmark syncing on each of your computers, and Chrome will automatically synchronize any changes to your bookmarks across all your machines. It's made possible by the magic of XMPP, which also powers Google Talk. Sound good? Go ahead and download Chrome 4.0 Beta.

This beta version of Chrome is also notable for what it leaves out: extensions support. According to Stephen Shankland at CNET, Google is reworking the extensions interface for Chrome, so that feature is disabled for now. Shankland also tracked down some news on the upcoming Chrome Mac Beta. The team working on it has been instructed to fix all their high-priority bugs by the end of the week, and it looks like getting the Mac version out is near the top of Google's to-do list.

[via CNET]

Tags: beta, bookmarks, chrome, chrome 4.0, Chrome4.0, google chrome, GoogleChrome

Filed under: Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Google, Browsers, Lists

15+ great Google Chrome extensions

by Lee Mathews Nov 2nd 2009

We've already mentioned other ways to power up Google Chrome. Before extensions arrived on the developer channel, Userscripts and bookmarklets were your only options. Both are still great ways to add some kick-ass functionality to Chrome. If you're running the stable or beta builds, you may want to stick to them for now.

10 handy Userscripts for Google Chrome users
15+ handy bookmarklets for Google Chrome (and other browsers, too!)

Now, onto the extensions!

If you have a favorite that I left off, feel free to share it in the comments!
Share

Tags: add-ons, bookmarklets, browser, browsers, chrome-4, chromium, developer-channel, extensions, features, google chrome, google-chrome, GoogleChrome, lists, productivity, UserScripts, utilities

Filed under: Microsoft, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox 3.6 has juicy Superbar integration with Windows 7 (and you can disable it)

by Sebastian Anthony Nov 1st 2009

Yesterday I told you about the new Firefox 3.6 Beta -- and today, I can show you a neat bit of Windows 7 integration. Windows 7 uses Microsoft's Aero window manager and theme -- you've probably heard about it, or learnt to hate it in Vista -- and in it there's a cool technology called 'Aero Peek'. As you can see in the screenshot above, in Firefox 3.6 Beta, Aero Peek is now fully enabled, and smoother than its implementation in 3.6b1pre.

Aero Peek lets you see what's going on in a particular program without having to actually click anything -- you can just mouse-over it on the alt-tab running-programs menu or on the Superbar. In Firefox 3.5 this works for the Firefox window itself, but not the tabs within. Now, in 3.6 Beta, you can see what's going on in any tab by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail. I do wonder if this requires massive disk-swapping though, or if it takes snapshots -- but I'm pretty sure Aero shows you the window contents in real-time. Either way, it's cool, and beats the hell out of tabbing through 20 different tabs to find what you're looking for.

Those of you that are already using 3.6 might have noticed another neat thing: when you have a bunch of tabs (10+ in our testing) open, you get a "buttonized" list of favicons and page titles, instead of thumbnails. You can still jump straight to a tab or see a preview from the Superbar.

Don't like the Aero Peek integration? You can easily disable it -- if you're worried about the potential performance hit -- just whack about:config into your Firefox address bar and set browser.taskbar.previews.enable to false.

[Download Firefox 3.6 Beta here]

Tags: aero, beta, firefox, superbar, windows 7, Windows7

Filed under: Linux, Mozilla, Browsers

Mozilla release mockups for upcoming Firefox Linux releases

by Brad Linder Oct 31st 2009

The folks at Mozilla have released the first mockup showing what Firefox 4.0 may look like on Linux... and it looks an awful lot like the Windows version.

Firefox 4.0 isn't due out for another year or so, but the developers have already stated a few goals for the project. One idea is to move the browser tabs above the location bar. Another is to consolidate the menus into a few tabs that will hang out next to the location bar. Both movies will free up space, allowing more of the browser to be dedicated to displaying web pages.

If the end result looks familiar, that's because it looks an awful lot like the default layout in the Google Chrome web browser.

Mozilla has also released some mockups of Firefox 3.7 for Linux. One of the most notable changes is that the interface will be more consistent across platforms. Firefox 3.7 for Linux will use the same Forward/Back buttons as the Mac and Windows versions, for example. The edges of the browser, tabs, and other elements will also be curved rather than angled, which will make the browser look more like the mac and Windows versions.

At this point, both the Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 mockups represent proposed changes and not finished products, so things may change by the time these browsers are actually released.

[via OMG! Ubuntu]

Tags: firefox, firefox-3.7, firefox-4.0, linux, mockups, web-browsers

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 now available!

by Sebastian Anthony Oct 30th 2009

Let's not beat around the bush: Download the new version of Firefox now.

With that out of the way, here are the new features that debut with Firefox 3.6, straight from the release page:

Users can now change their browser's appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
Support for the WOFF font format.
Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

These new changes mostly come from an upgrade to version 1.9.2 of Gecko, the HTML engine that does most of the rendering work in Firefox (and its light-weight sister Camino) -- and as with all version revisions, you will have to update most or all of your add-ons (there's even a compatibility checker!)

Developers should check out the notes for 3.6, if they haven't yet updated the add-ons they administer.

If you've heard enough, here are some direct download links to get you upgraded to the Beta ASAP:

Tags: beta, firefox, gecko

Filed under: Macintosh, Mozilla, Browsers

Lightweight Mac browser Camino 2 introduces a release candidate

by Jay Hathaway Oct 29th 2009

Mozilla's Camino, the lightweight Mac alternative to Firefox, is getting very close to a 2.0 release. The first release candidate is out now -- you can download it by checking for updates in an earlier version of the browser -- and it's got updates to appearance, security features and more. You'll notice a new, more Leopard-like look for the tabs and toolbars, making Camino blend in better with recent versions of OS X.

One of the best additions to the new version of Camino is a built-in Flash blocker. You can turn it on to block all Flash animations, and then add exceptions the sites whose Flash you actually want to see. Other security features include making use of Google Safe Browsing, which warns you when you're headed for a site that Google has blacklisted for malware or phishing. All-in-all, Camino 2 isn't as feature-packed as Firefox, or as pretty as Safari, but it's lighter than either one (and offers Firefox-equivalent page-load times using Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine).

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: browser, camino, camino 2, Camino2, mac, mozilla, release candidate, ReleaseCandidate

Filed under: News, Mozilla, Browsers

Congrats, citizens of Mozilla! Firefox population surpasses that of the United States

by Lee Mathews Oct 27th 2009

Over the past two months, Mozilla has been hoovering up new users with reckless abandon - nearly 4 million people per week. At 330 million, the projected number of Firefox users has actually outstripped the population of the United States (which is currently around 305 million).

There's a little numerical kung fu that Mozilla uses to calculate that figure, and while it might not be 100% accurate the bottom line is that there are a crapload of Firefox users out there. And all those little foxes keep chewing away at Internet Explorer's browser-share pie.

Mozilla Europe honcho Tristan Nitot was understandably enthusiastic about the recent growth. Fall typically means an uptick for Firefox. Nitot told ZDNet, "Usually it's a mixture of back-to-school and people getting new computers and installing the latest version. This boosts our numbers every year."

Clearly, the next logical step is for Firefox users to form an organized state and start drafting up a constitution and electing officials. We'll also need a flag. There's already a Mozilla army, right? That'll save some time and resources.

*hastily Photoshopped chart sort of courtesy Wikipedia - though they have yet to officially recognize Mozilla as a country.

[via ZDNet]

Tags: browser share, BrowserShare, firefox, population

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures

Download Squad at the Crunchies After-Party

Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

Download Squad bloggers (30 days)

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Jay Hathaway	112	5
2	Lee Mathews	78	34
3	Sebastian Anthony	42	140
4	Brad Linder	39	8
5	Jason Clarke	32	0
6	Grant Robertson	9	12
7	Dolores Parker	7	2
8	Victor Agreda, Jr.	7	1
9	Nik Fletcher	4	0
10	Matt Heerema	3	3
11	Paul O'Brien	2	0
12	John Burke	1	0
13	Download Squad Staff	1	0

More Tech Coverage

Control Shift It's all about the experience
Somewhat Frank Perspectives on tech as it fuses in everyday life
Switched Gadgets, web news and commentary
Urlesque Exposing bits of the web

Download Squad