The Download Blog

Tom and Rafe discuss the apps they put on first thing when they get a new computer.

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Securely see stored passwords on your iPhone.

(Credit: Siber Systems)

We have long regarded the RoboForm browser toolbar for Windows as an uberconvenient freemium tool for storing and securing scores of passwords. In contrast, the new iPhone app, RoboForm for iPhone, is decidedly less acommodating.

The problem isn't so much that you have to have a free online account to use RoboForm for iPhone, or even that to have the online account you must first fill up the desktop version--either the free or premium software--with credentials. Part of the trouble is more that restrictions in Apple's SDK inhibit RoboForm's usefulness. Other flaws stem from the application itself.

It's helpful to understand how RoboForm works on your PC. RoboForm installs as a system tray icon and as a browser toolbar. It works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. When you enter your log-in credentials, RoboForm offers to save them, storing a file protected by 256 AES encryption on your computer. Selecting that credential later on from RoboForm's list fills in the log-in. In addition, you can keep credit card information and other sensitive data secured away in RoboForm, filling in online forms with a click when you go to buy an item online, for example. RoboForm secures passwords, includes a password generator, and uses one master password to manage the rest of your passwords.

The iPhone version of RoboForm is a cross between a data store and a unidirectional syncing app. It can give you access to the passwords you store via RoboForm for the desktop, which makes the iPhone version inconvenient for new users. First-timers would have to first set up an account, install RoboForm, input their passwords, automatically install the company's GoodSync syncing plug-in, and sync the secret data to an online account for which they would also have to register. In contrast, existing users only have to sign up for an online account, if they don't have one already, and sync data.

Once on RoboForm for iPhone, you sync to the online RoboForm account to transfer over your passwords and other credentials. Sounds reasonable so far, but here's the catch. Since Apple doesn't allow multiple third-party applications to run simultaneously, you can only fill in passwords from within RoboForm for iPhone--by clicking the Login button--and only then once you've entered your master password.

RoboForm on the desktop automatically installs a syncing plug-in.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

A rival app, 1Password for iPhone, encountered similar hurdles when it debuted in July 2008 (review). Both 1Password and RoboForm for iPhone solve the tangle to some extent by including an in-app browser. The key to successfully using either app is to retrain yourself to open the password app to browse, instead of the Safari browser.

Assuming you believe that the benefits of RoboForm for iPhone outweigh the drawbacks of surfing the Web through a password app, there are two other solutions that might make RoboForm on iPhone less handy in some users' eyes. The iPhone's Safari browser features autofill in the iPhone 3.0 operating system update. If you opt out of that, you can take advantage of certain Web sites, like Google's Web apps, that offer to remember log-in credentials for you. RoboForm VP of Marketing, Bill Carey, counters that the software, in production for a decade, is more accurate in determining when to fill in credentials, and in some cases is more secure than browsers' password managers.

In addition to the awkward workaround for using RoboForm's smarts are other downsides. First, there are the known limitations. You cannot currently update or edit log-in information from within RoboForm on iPhone, making data currently one-directional--it flows into the iPhone, not out of it. RoboForm for iPhone won't work if your master password is four characters long. Your free account at RoboForm.com can't contain special characters, like the + or - symbol. RoboForm's publisher says that the company is working on fixes.

RoboForm downloads passwords to the iPhone from your online account.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

We also encountered weak spots in testing RoboForm for iPhone. RoboForm for iPhone's practice of placing the Login button on the same screen as the exposed password pricks our nerves. Sure, you've already logged in with a Master password at this point, so theft is not an issue, but potentially flashing that information in public is. In addition, we received a "page invalid" error message when attempting to log in to Gmail. The same action worked flawlessly on RoboForm for Windows.

RoboForm's Carey informed us this is a known issue in which long URLs like Gmail and Wachovia Bank break on mobile phone browsers. The fix is fast, but since you can't edit on the iPhone yet, you'll need to be in front of a computer. In RoboForm on the PC, click Tools, then Edit Passcards. Change Gmail's log-in URL to http://www.gmail.com, then sync online and sync the iPhone app.

Kludgey workarounds like this make the app workable while development continues, but the weak spots are many, and the alternative options to using RoboForm on the iPhone are at this stage more robust. Existing users will get the most from RoboForm for iPhone. New users may want to weigh other options for the time being.

With a project called Closure Tools, Google plans on Thursday to start helping developers who aspire to match the company's proficiency in creating Web sites and Web applications.

Google is a strong proponent of using JavaScript to write Web-based programs, part of its Web-centric ethos. Indeed, the company has pushed the language to its limits with services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and it developed its Chrome browser in part to enable JavaScript programs to run faster.

But writing, debugging, and optimizing heavy-duty JavaScript can be difficult--in part because a given JavaScript program sometimes works differently on different browsers. Google's open-source Closure Tools project is an attempt to help with some of these challenges.

The first in the suite of tools is the Closure Compiler, a software package designed to boil down a JavaScript program so it's smaller and runs faster. For example, a function named DisplayAddress() could be replaced with just a().

Along with the compiler come some extra tools that run in the Firefox browser. One, Closure Inspector, is an extension for Firefox's Firebug add-on designed to help programmers understand and debug the rewritten JavaScript--linking a() back to DisplayAddress(), for example. Another add-on for the Google Page Speed extension lets programmers see how much the compiler helped.

Google also plans to make the compiler available as a Web application hosted on its Google App Engine service.

The second element is called the Closure Library, a collection of prebuilt JavaScript code that lets programmers handle relatively sophisticated technology--arrays and string manipulation, for example.

Last are Closure Templates, more prewritten code to ease creation of JavaScript and HTML user interfaces.

In an earlier era, programming tools were expensive packages bought by a select few, but open-source software, new marketing strategies, and new business methods have made that approach the exception rather than the rule these days. Now programming tools are often a means to another end--encouraging programmers to produce the software that will make Windows or the Palm Pre useful and therefore popular, for example.

In Google's case, the objective is often to make the Web more popular because it sees more activity on the Web as corresponding directly with more activity on its revenue-generating search site. Among the high-profile projects to this end are Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android, all subsidized by Google's powerful search-advertising business.

One interesting contrast to Closure is another Google project called Google Web Toolkit. It's designed to accomplish some of the same goals as Closure, including paving over browser incompatibilities and producing high-performance JavaScript. But with GWT, coders write programs in Java that gets translated into JavaScript.

So one last question: why the name?

Google's reply: "Being a functional language, the concept of a function closure is fundamental to the JavaScript language."

The consensus of experts is that Windows 7 is the best operating system Microsoft has ever released. I managed to perform a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate on an XP PC with no problems whatsoever, but not all Windows 7 upgrades go so smoothly.

In fact, I was getting ready to install Windows 7 Home Premium on a blank partition of my Sony Vaio laptop so I could dual-boot Vista and Win7 but was scared off by a handful of reports of serious upgrade problems. Call me chicken, but I count on my notebook PC and don't want to risk breaking it. (And besides, I don't dislike Vista near as much as many other people do.)

Some veteran PC users postpone upgrading to a new Windows version until the first service pack is released. Unfortunately, service packs often cause problems of their own. Back in 2008, glitches with Vista SP1 caused Microsoft to offer free support, as Suzanne Tindal reported. Microsoft provides the System Update Readiness Tool designed to resolve update problems for Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

You can minimize the chances that you'll encounter upgrade woes by doing two things beforehand: back up your data and save the Windows 7 drivers for your hardware to a removable medium. This applies whether you're doing an in-place upgrade (which preserves your data and settings) or a clean install (which wipes out the current Windows installation).

That's the theory, anyway. There's no guarantee that the official Windows 7 drivers will work without a hitch on your system. Paul Mah of the IT Business Edge reports success rolling back to the Vista driver for a device that balked under Windows 7.

Some Vista users fall into an infinite loop when attempting to install the Windows 7 upgrade. Microsoft provides a Fix-it for the problem on its Support site. Seth Rosenblatt describes in the CNET Download Blog two Win7 upgrade gotchas to avoid.

Microsoft's guide to upgrading to Windows 7 relies on the Easy Transfer wizard, but ZDNet UK's Adrian Bridgwater points out the risks of trusting your data and software settings to an automated process that can be "easy" to derail. (The wizard doesn't bring over the applications themselves, which have to be reinstalled separately.)

I may eventually upgrade my Vista notebook to Windows 7—probably long before Win7 SP1—but only after the early adopters have cleared a path.

Facebook's "like" feature has been around since February, but the massive social network never provided users with a way to quickly voice their opinions going the other way. French developer Thomas Moquet took matters into his own hands by creating a cute (albeit useless) Firefox extension that adds a dislike button to Facebook, letting users who have it installed mark things they don't like.

In order to make the tool work, Moquet had to use his own servers, which keep track of every item that's disliked as well as who clicked it. Any other Facebook users who have the extension installed can then see who disliked it right next to the usual like list.

Feeling grumpy? Add a "dislike" button to Facebook.

(Credit: CNET)

There are a few very clear downsides to this system, one being that if the dislike servers ever go down, you won't be able to see what you or others have marked as not liking. It also cannot be seen by other users who don't have the extension installed. Nonetheless, it fits in quite well with the rest of the Facebook interface, peacefully coexisting alongside the likes while adding a bit of snark.

It's worth noting Facebook's exclusion of a dislike button was under the pretense that likes were added as a quick way to replace simple one-word comments. By adding a like button the hope was both to better surface content in its news feeds, as well as cut down on throwaway comments like "this is great!" or "cool."

Facebook dislike is an experimental add-on, meaning you'll have to grab it from Mozilla's add-ons site. See also the competing Facebook Dislike Button add-on, which goes one step further and will actually send the person who's news item it is a Facebook note saying that you didn't like what they posted. Ouch.

We all know the mathematical adage detailing how many words a picture is worth. The principal applies equally to search results. Search for anything in Google, Bing, and Yahoo and see how long it takes your eyes and brain to max out on all the written input. (The concept of text fatigue also applies to blog posts, which is why we've included a nice, large picture near the top of ours.)

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

If you browse the Web with Firefox (Windows | Mac), the free extension SearchPreview (Windows | Mac) breaks up text blocks by inserting thumbnail images of the site's homepage to the left of the text, where your eye naturally goes. If you're unsure which of the many returned links you really want, a glance at the thumbnails could settle the dispute.

If the thumbnail image scenario sounds familiar, that's because until recently SearchPreview has been known as GooglePreview. An upgrade to version 4.0 added support for Microsoft's Bing search engine and repositioned the product with a name change.

As you use SearchPreview, you may notice some results tagged as SearchPreview's sponsored links. These are the developer's way of recouping costs, but you can disable the sponsored results from the Options menu of the add-ons manager.

Mozilla may have released the first beta of Firefox 3.6 nearly two months late, but the organization believes the final version still will arrive on schedule before the end of the year.

The Mozilla wiki page on version 3.6, code-named Namoroka, listed early September for the scheduled release of the first beta, but it actually arrived October 30. Despite that, Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering, said Mozilla wants to release the browser before the holidays and is sticking by the overall schedule for the open-source Web browser.

"We're still looking at a release candidate in November and (final) release in December at this point," Shaver said in a Tuesday interview.

That means Mozilla has a compressed schedule for producing the final version, but Shaver said coders are working hard. "We're not going to coast into it," he said. "We're going to continue shipping beta updates aggressively."

Those involved in open-source projects, with different motivations and pressures than those in the traditional proprietary software industry, sometimes have an attitude of "we'll ship it when it's done." Mozilla, though, recognizes that time matters even for an open-source project.

"We've always been more quality-driven than time-driven," Shaver said. "But we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness."

Parallels on Wednesday released Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, a new version of its virtualization software that allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows and Linux alongside Mac OS X.

According to Parallels, the new version of its software is up to 300 percent faster than the previous version, Parallels Desktop 4. The company also hired Crimson Consulting Group to do performance testing on Parallels 5 and said it was 22 percent faster than its nearest virtualization competitor when running Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro.

While the competitor wasn't named by Parallels, it is widely thought the virtualization market is ruled by Parallels and VMWare's Fusion for Mac.

Speaking with CNET, Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov said company had three main goals when making Parallels 5 for Mac: make it faster; make it smarter and easier; and make it more powerful.

Beloussov said the company achieved those goals by adding support for gestures, supporting a broader range of 3D features, and optimizing Parallels to handle virtual hardware and drivers more efficiently.

Parallels 5 also adds a new viewing mode called Crystal, which is similar to Coherence, where Windows completely disappears from your desktop. However, Crystal adds the Windows taskbar items on the top of the Mac OS X menu, allowing easy access.

Apple also offers a way to run Windows on an Intel-based Mac. It's called Boot Camp, but it requires the user restart the computer and run Windows separately from the Mac OS. While that may be inconvenient for many users, the native speed of running on the hardware was always seen as a major advantage. Parallels says they can now beat that.

"Parallels is faster than Boot Camp," Beloussov said. "Most slow downs with Windows is not because of computational problems, it's handling drivers. We offer optimized virtualized hardware and drivers, making it faster."

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is available for $79.99 or $49.99 for an upgrade.

"Skype is going open source!" screamed the headlines over the weekend. If only.

While Skype has acknowledged an interest in making its Linux client open-source, this may not mean very much in practice.

I love Skype and use it daily for both instant messaging and voice calls. Its quality is superb and the Skype team continues to enrich Skype's functionality (now including the ability to screen-share and video chat).

We've decided to open-source this logo.

Open source won't help with this. Not in the way Skype means.

As ZDNet captures, Skype isn't planning to open-source its underlying protocols, and certainly not its back-room server technology. Instead, it's just talking about open-sourcing the Skype graphical user interface (GUI). And only for its Linux client, apparently.

Snore.

First of all, why only Linux? Open source long ago stopped being the exclusive province of Linux, if it ever was. Without Mac OS X and Windows support, Skype is actually locking itself out of the vast majority of the market for software developers.

And then there's the question of what is being open-sourced: GUI code? Really? That's it? No protocols? Does Skype think developers simply want to add fuzzy dice to the UI?

It's not really Skype's fault, as ZDNet explains, because its source code is in legal no man's land right now. You can't open what you don't own.

But maybe it doesn't matter. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols believes an open-source Skype is unnecessary, given that there are credible open-source alternatives that are already available. Perhaps. But they lack the adoption that Skype has, and in communication the network is everything.

But, again, this is probably the biggest reason to yawn at the news of a Linux-based Skype GUI being open-sourced. The magic of Skype is not in the client. It's in the cloud/server, and that's remaining closed because, as TechCrunch posits, Skype doesn't want its competitors to free-ride on its services.

In sum, despite the euphoric greeting of the news of Skype going open-source, there's actually very little to celebrate. This isn't good for developers, and it's not good for Skype. In open source, it's generally worse to contribute too little than too much, because the community's first (negative or positive) impression tends to last a very long time.