The Download Blog

This past year felt like a rebuilding year for Firefox add-ons, with two new frameworks implemented to help guide the future of extensions. Personas gave Firefox on-the-fly theme-switching, and users can expect it to be part of the stable version of Firefox 3.6 when that gets released. Jetpack takes a similarly-minded approach to feature add-ons, allowing programmers to create feature-rich add-ons from little more than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Expect JetPack to eventually be part of Firefox by default.

In no particular order, here are eight other of our favorites:

Weave Sync gets added to your Options menu.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Weave Sync is another project from Mozilla Labs, although it's not as clear whether it will eventually end up in Firefox as a default feature. This homegrown tool for synchronizing Firefox across computers and devices introduces incremental syncing and a more-streamlined, less-obtrusive experience, fitting in smoothly in your Options pane. Although it still conflicts with some extensions, including the massively popular and arguably more essential AdBlock Plus, in general it works well and brings a long-missing feature to Firefox.

Multi Links is simple in purpose, but so effective that it's one of the best add-ons of the year. Right-click in a browser tab and drag it, highlighting multiple links in the box. By default, selected links open up in new browser tabs, although you can go into the options to choose whether you want them to open up in new windows, or be bookmarked instead. You're also able to change the color scheme of the box, and the outlines of the selected links, just in case you're into that sort of thing.

Originally known as SmarterFox, FastestFox is a multitasking fiend that helps make searching, pasting, surfing, and downloading faster. Highlight a word or phrase on the Web page and FastestFox will display a bubble filled with search engine icons. After a few seconds of inactivity, the search bubble fades away. The add-on automatically merges linked pages into one, which some users prefer for reading long articles, and it also allows you to check other search engines from any single engine's results page.

Users with WebReview installed can see a slew of links when they load up their browser, including their most visited pages, along with suggestions of what they should read based on past browsing history.

(Credit: WebReview)

Whether you're looking for an unobtrusive panic button, or your just need to clear your screen of those 153 tabs for moment, HideTab can help you out. You can hide all of them at once, or merely one--just don't forget that the hidden tabs are still running in the background.

WebReview makes your start page smarter and more suggestive based on past browsing habits. It's a bit like the Speed Dial feature in Opera, Chrome's new tab page, or Top Sites in Safari, but Firefoxified. It tells you the last batch of tabs you had open, along with most visited pages. But it also shows you a group of sites you visit daily, along with a suggestion of sites you may be interested in going to. It sorts these out by what day it is, along with the time.

WebReview also offers a replacement history tracker, allowing you to search by domain or number of visits. Sites in the WebReview history come with thumbnail previews. Lastly, there's a Graph View, showing the breadcrumb trail of how you went from site to site for that entire session. You can also go back to specific days and see a large graph for the entire day. It's visually appealing and exploratory at the same time.

FastestFox can be a bit of overkill, and one of our favorite features from it is available separately. PageZipper takes stories split over multiple pages and "zips" them into one. It's a bit wonky, and doesn't play nicely with Flash- or JavaScript-based photos, but in general works well. It's also designed to be inoffensive to publishers, who often have legitimate reasons for splitting content into multiple pages. The "zipping" loads the next page in full below, including ads, so their potential revenue goes unharmed. The reader, on the other hand, benefits from significantly less stop-and-go clicking.

Tiny red balls tell you how you got from looking at video game descriptions to the molecular makeup of precious metals.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Wikipedia Diver hooks deep into your Wikipedia browsing to provide a fascinating look at what you've been researching. It organizes your Wiki searches down to the day, order, and session in which you visited the sites, making it easy to revisit old entries. Fortunately, all this data is kept on your local computer and not in the cloud, so there are no privacy issues. The reasonable offshoot of that is that it doesn't track external links you click on from within a Wikipedia article, but that's a small price to pay.

I use URL Tooltip in conjunction with several other, not-new-in-'09 add-ons to maximize my screen real estate when browsing. URL Tooltip is new this year, and is quite savvy for those with larger monitors. It reveals a link's full URL as a mouse-over tool tip, thus allowing you to hide your status bar at the bottom of Firefox if you've got nothing else in it. Along with Personal Menu and the Stop-or-Reload Button, and removing the search bar, I've been able to see more of what I want to be looking at on my screen when browsing.

Have a suggestion for the best new Firefox add-on of 2009? Or think I just got it all wrong? Tell me about it in the comments below.

The latest Opera browser preview version may not be entirely stable, but it's definitely got its jetpack strapped on. Opera 10.5 pre-alpha, for Windows and Mac, is the first browser that's not powered by Webkit to approach JavaScript rendering speeds previously reached only by Chrome and Safari.

Opera 10.5 pre-alpha introduces Windows 7 support and a slight redesign, along with a rocketing new JavaScript engine.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

In empirical testing done on an HP desktop running an Intel Core 2 Q6600 at 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 32-bit, the pre-alpha scored 435.6 milliseconds in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. By contrast, Google Chrome 4.0.266.0, the most recent development build, notched 510.4 ms. The current stable build of Opera was more than 7.5 times slower, at 3284.4 ms.

Opera attributes this dramatic improvement to the new Carakan JavaScript engine, which they have designed from scratch to replace the Futhark engine in the stable build. Opera 10.5 also includes improvements to the Presto layout engine, and a new graphics library called Vega.

Other improvements noticeable in the pre-alpha include changing the URL address bar to include the same style of predictive smart search that Firefox and Chrome have, and the search and address bars now both remember searches, support deleting specific items, and have redesigned layouts.

The main browser interface has been redone, too. The tabs are now on top, the menu bar has been minimized behind a drop-down on the left nav, and the browser has better integration with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. On Windows 7 there's Aero Peek and Jump List support to access Speed Dial and tabs from the Taskbar. For Macs, there's a unified toolbar, native buttons and scrollbars, multitouch gestures, and Growl support. Dialog boxes are now non-modal, which you means you can now switch tabs without a pop-up commanding your browser's focus, for example. This will affect verification and authentication pop-ups, and JavaScript alerts.

There are some known problems, including a lack of printer support in the Mac version and noticeably high memory usage. Users can expect these to get addressed before the stable build of Opera 10.50 is released. The Opera 10.50 official announcement and changes can be read here, while the current stable version of Opera 10.10 is for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Mozilla, racing to release Firefox 3.6 by the end of the year, issued a fifth, and likely final, beta version of the new browser.

The open-source browser backer announced the new Firefox beta (download for Windows and Mac OS X) in a blog announcement Thursday.

Firefox 3.6 builds in a feature called Personas for customizing the browser's appearance, adds the File interface for better file management such as selecting what to upload, and, my personal favorite, placement of new tabs next to the ones that spawned them.

A total of 127 bugs were fixed since the fourth beta, but this time Mozilla didn't announce any new features. The first Firefox 3.6 beta arrived in October.

Mozilla had considered issuing its first Firefox 3.6 release candidate this week: "If we can go to build today or tomorrow, QA [quality assurance] will scrap Beta 5 and we'll release RC to the beta audience ASAP," the Mozilla meeting notes said.

Mozilla has updated its Firefox browser to patch three critical security holes.

Firefox 3.5.6 and 3.0.16 both fix earlier memory corruption issues. "We presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," the security advisory said.

In addition, the earlier version of Firefox 3.5 had two critical vulnerabilities in its technology for playing Ogg-format media, one with the liboggplay media library and one with the libtheora video library.

The patches are among 62 fixes in the new Firefox, software that's translated into dozens of languages and runs on multiple operating systems. Users of the OS/2 operating system will be delighted to know that problems with Firefox's full-screen mode and with print preview have been resolved.

"We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release," Mozilla said in a blog posting. By default, Firefox downloads updates automatically then prompts users to restart when it's ready; updates also can be retrieved through the "check for updates" menu option.

Mozilla plans to cease supporting Firefox 3.0 in January. Meanwhile, a significant update, Firefox 3.6, is due by the end of the year.

Correction 1:23 p.m. PST December 17: This story was corrected to note that it was the earlier versions of Firefox that suffered the vulnerabilities.

Even without extensions, Google Chrome's market share grew phenomenally during its first year. Now that the No. 1 most-requested feature comes baked into the Windows (beta and development) and Linux (beta and development) versions, it's time to look at some of the best extensions available for the upstart browser.

Google Chrome's extension manager.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The No. 1 extension on my list is the No. 2 most-requested feature for Chrome: RSS support. The RSS Subscription Extension allows Chrome to automatically detect RSS and Atom feeds on a page. It's not entirely clear why this isn't a default feature since it's part of every other browser, but at least now there's a way to add it.

There are a host of Google-service related extensions, all based on letting you know at a glance if there's an update for you to check in on. The Google Alerter covers Gmail, Wave, and Google Reader, although there's also individual support for them as the Gmail Checker, Google Wave Checker, and Google Reader Checker. There's a Google Calendar Checker, too.

The Google Translate extension adds a slick pop-up toolbar.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The Google Tasks extension hides your tasks behind a button that opens a list of them when clicked. The most useful Google-related extension is for Google Translate, which will offer on-the-fly translation of a site that doesn't appear in your default system language.

Expect security to be as big a subcategory of extensions for Chrome as it is for Firefox. Popular and effective secure personal password storehouse LastPass provides a safe and near-universal way to manage your passwords, making them easily accessible without compromising their integrity. LastPass also supports Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows, making it an excellent one-stop solution. When Chrome's extensions get activated on the Mac version, the reasons for using LastPass will become even more compelling.

LastPass options in Chrome.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Also cross-browser, Web of Trust evaluates Web sites based on consensus. It may sound counter-intuitive to some, but it's proven in the past year to be an especially effective tool for determining whether you can trust that sketchy link you're thinking of clicking on.

UnShorten.com is one way to see what that shortened URL is hiding, but ChromeMUSE is another. This useful extension not only can shorten URLs via several different shortening services, it can also expand embedded short URLs automatically.

FlashBlock is a good way to kill Flash and Silverlight-based content. It leaves a blank spot where the ad or embedded video would've been, which you can then selectively load by clicking on it.

Despite the name, AdBlock+ should be avoided. It's not made by the same publishers who manage AdBlock Plus, the popular and effective ad-blocker for Firefox. This is actually a fairly serious problem with Chrome's extensions, where unknown entities are appropriating identical or similar names to well-known and trusted Firefox add-ons for what amount to nefarious purposes. So far, the ad-blocking extension that most users seem to be trusting in Chrome is AdBlock, but don't be surprised if it causes more problems than it solves until there's more consensus on these name-squatters.

AniWeather offers an animated weather pop-up.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

On that note, there are some excellent Firefox add-ons that have been ported successfully to Chrome. Bookmark synchronizer Xmarks has a beta version for Chrome, as does IE Tab for viewing rendering sites with Internet Explorer's engine within Chrome, and the resource-heavy but still-fun way to view visual media Cooliris.

Facebook for Chrome simplifies Facebook access, putting news feed and status updating in your toolbar. YouTube Downloader grabs Flash video embeds and saves them to your hard drive but interestingly doesn't come from Google itself. AniWeather is another, providing those without windows an excellent way to see what meteorological events are going on outdoors. iMacros will run Greasemonkey scripts and allows users to create their own solutions for repetitive data entry and tasks. The one I can't live without is another name-squatter, AutoCopy. It will copy any text to your clipboard when you highlight it. Unlike the Firefox version, it doesn't open any options when you finish highlighting, so it's a bit hard to tell if it's working as it should.

TooManyTabs cleverly secrets away tabs you want to keep handy but out of your active memory.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

TooManyTabs isn't TabMixPlus for Chrome, but it does something that TabMixPlus can't because Firefox doesn't yet support it. TooManyTabs manipulates Chrome's tab process isolation in a useful way, so you can move tabs to a holding dock where they're no longer eating memory, but they're still easily accessible. Click on the toolbar button and it opens up a window that displays your active tabs. Arrows next to each one let you move it to the nonfunctional area. A helpful indicator on the toolbar button tells you how many active tabs you've got. Conspicuously missing is drag-and-drop, so hopefully that's coming.

Aviary Screen Capture is another extension that offers Chrome-only features. It lets you take a screenshot of any Web site you're looking at and then automatically opens it in Aviary's image-editing Web suite to streamline your work flow.

The lack of a status bar in Chrome means that the management icons for extensions, if they have them, get added to the navigation bar, something that may annoy users who prefer Firefox's greater level of extension-placement customization. However, it's definitely a more visible placement, and may encourage users to keep their installed extensions to a utilitarian minimum.

More extensions can be downloaded from Google's site or Download.com.

Currently, extension support hasn't been activated in the Chrome for Mac, but that's expected no later than January 2010. There's also some notable popular Firefox extensions that aren't in Chrome yet, such as FoxyTunes. If I've skipped a favorite Chrome extension of yours, or if there's one for Firefox that you're dying to get in Chrome, tell me about it in the comments below.

Google's browser has passed Safari in terms of worldwide browser usage--at least by one measurement.

NetApplications' measurements of browser usage share, which track which browsers individuals use based on visits to the company's network of Web sites, gave Chrome the third-place spot after No. 1 Internet Explorer and No. 2 Firefox for the week of December 6 through 12, according to a Computerworld story Tuesday. Chrome had 4.4 percent share to Safari's 4.37 percent.

Google released beta versions of Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux on December 8. Earlier, only developer channel versions had been available. Google plans to release the "stable" versions January 12, according to the Chromium development calendar.

Take these usage share numbers with a grain of salt. Even though 0.03 percentage points still is a lot of people in the real world, it is a small fraction, and a change in Net Applications' assumptions in August led to share changes two orders of magnitude more dramatic. Weekly statistics also vary: Although Firefox cleared 25 percent share in one week of November, it averaged only 24.72 percent for the overall month.

I've asked various browser makers about how trustworthy they view NetApplications' statistics to be. The answers generally are favorable but not ringing endorsements.

Regardless of the precise details, though, the Chrome trajectory is upward: its November usage share was 3.93 percent to Safari's 4.36 percent.

And although Google relied on word of mouth for promoting its original online search product, it's taking a more active role with Chrome. The latest example: a "Chrome for Christmas" site that lets people send invitations to download Chrome.

Firefox proved that a browser not bundled with an operating system can be successful, and Chrome could show the idea isn't a fluke if its growth continues.

Google is promoting its browser through this 'Chrome for Christmas' e-mail campaign.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

(Credit: CNET)

Looking at my iPhone yesterday, I noticed that there was a crack about a centimeter long right up the middle of the back of the handset coming straight from the charging area. It's hardly noticeable and I'm sure my iPhone will continue to work, but it definitely serves as a reminder that when my two-year contract is up in June, I'm going to be ready for a new iPhone.

Fortunately, a story over at AppleInsider points to a rumor that the next generation of iPhones are set to come out right about that time. Eldar Murtazin, an insider, said the next generation iPhone has recently been slated for production by Foxconn, Apple's Taiwanese iPhone manufacturer, putting the handset right in line for a June release. Some of the reworked features mentioned in the article include a new Apple-designed map replacement and the possibility for RFID swipe support (handy in checkout lines). Like any news related to Apple, almost everything revolves around rumors, but it does make me excited for when I can finally upgrade beyond the iPhone 3G.

This week's apps include a popular database app for movie buffs and a huge update for one of the first iPhone games.

The iPhone-friendly layout helps you get to info you want quickly

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

IMDb (free) is a new iPhone app that lets you access movie, TV, and celebrity information from the popular Internet Movie Database. Like the IMDb Web site, you'll be able to access just about any information you could want about movies, celebrities, TV shows, and photos, all on your iPhone. But even better than the Internet version, you'll also be able to browse movie and TV show times in your area once you give IMDb access to your location.

The interface for IMDb was clearly made for mobile, with a launch page that lets you access local movie and TV information so you can find a movie or schedule your evening viewing on the go. But at the very top of the interface is a searchbox for all those moments where you want to know a specific actor from some obscure movie. Simply type in the information you have, and IMDb gives you a huge list of results. When you drill down to actor and movie pages, you get an easy to browse layout with a filmography, actor bios, and much more. People who love movies or just like having a portable database to search for local movies, TV shows, and celebrities should definitely grab this app.

Navigating past those cannons and obstacles is going to be tricky

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Labyrinth 2 ($4.99) is the sequel to one of the early games that showed off the accelerometer capabilities of the iPhone. But where the original was a straight-forward game where you tilt the phone to guide the metal ball to the goal, Labyrinth 2 adds several more maps, tons of features and obstacles, and breathes new life into an old game concept.

The first thing you'll notice about Labyrinth 2 is the enormous amount of playable map packs. Each map pack is rated so you can pick easy levels for more casual play, medium for a little more challenge, and hard levels when you're ready to dive in to a real challenge. What moves this iteration of the old game into modern times are new features to effect gameplay. Amidst the usual walls and holes you need to navigate around, there are now magnets and fans to knock you off track, cannons that shoot at your ball, and floor switches that open gates to get to the goal. Even if you manage to get past all the included map packs you can download free level packs to keep going. Overall, if you liked the original game for iPhone (and even if you didn't), Labyrinth 2 offers so much content and new concepts to the game that it's definitely worth checking out.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Are you happy to finally see the official IMDb on the iPhone? What do you think of Labyrinth 2? Let me know in the comments!

What's behind the Google Chrome OS, technologically and from a business perspective? This week on the Roundtable, I discuss the pending operating system with CNET writers Stephen Shankland (Deep Tech) and Gordon Haff (Pervasive Data Center).

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Google introduced two search features Friday that focus on delivering search results without having to visit the search results page.

The weather information at the bottom of the Google Suggest list used to only be found on search results pages.

(Credit: Google)

Universal search features such as weather, time, and flight-tracking information can now be found in the Google Suggest drop-down list of possible results for relevant queries, such as "weather San Francisco." In addition, Google has released an extension for its Chrome browser called Quick Scroll that is essentially Google's take on the Control-F (or Command-F for you other folks) basic search function.

Google has offered image-based answers to simple questions such as "What time is it in New York?" or "How many kilograms are in 2 pounds?" for some time. Of course, you had to click through to the search results page to get that answer. The company apparently felt that was two seconds of your life it was unfairly robbing from you, and so has added those types of results directly in the list of suggestions that appears below the search box on many queries.

Quick Scroll, on the other hand, provides a bit more search horsepower on a given Web page than the old-fashioned "Find" command. Google provided the example of someone wondering whether or not Belgian street vendors sell waffles, searching on that query, and clicking through to a Wikipedia page on waffles. At that point, Quick Scroll will pop up in a small window with your original search query and a link to the text where that information can be found on the page.

These features are all outgrowths of Google's obsession with speed, highlighted by its announcement of real-time search results earlier this week. Ordinary users might not care, but speed junkies are taking over the Web and could very well find something else to do with those spare two seconds: such as conduct another search on Google that brings up (contextual and relevant, of course) ads.