The Download Blog

Mozilla Messaging hopes to release Thunderbird 3.1 in early April, a date that reflects a new frequent-release strategy adopted from the better-known Firefox effort at Mozilla.

Dan Mosedale, a programmer for the open-source e-mail software, published the date in a Thunderbird schedule draft he announced Thursday.

"If we're lucky, we relabel 3.1RC1 [release candidate 1] as final and ship it on Tuesday, April 6. Otherwise, there's an RC2," Mosedale said in the planning document.

The new version is due to get an updated Web browser engine. Using the same Gecko project that Firefox is built atop means Thunderbird messages can integrate with Web activity such as Google Calendar.

Another possibility for 3.1 is a revamp of the Thunderbird start page, Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher said Friday. That redesign, which Ascher described in May, could show more useful information than the present splash screen--for example, information about what activity people has been up to help pick up where they left off.

"The 'start page,' which makes a lot of sense in Firefox, never made a huge amount of sense to me in Thunderbird. In particular, it's shown only when a folder is selected, and no message is selected. That's hardly a logical time to show the (colorful, pretty, but fairly useless) page we show now. Instead, why not show information about the selected folder and help people who clearly intended to select a folder, so most likely wanted to do something related to that folder," Ascher said in the blog post.

The faster Thunderbird release cycle is just one attribute the Thunderbird team is trying to adopt from Mozilla's higher-profile Firefox effort. Also on the longer-term plan is financial self-sustenance. Those are big challenges, though. An easier adoption will be fun names.

Starting now, Thunderbird versions will be named after beaches, Ascher said in a blog post this week.

"Firefox releases have cool code names while in gestation," Acher said. "Firefox picks national parks as code names, as metaphors for the values that go into making a Firefox release. The idea made a lot of sense to us, so we decided to follow suit for Thunderbird. Rather than parks, we picked beaches."

First up: Hawaii. Thunderbird 3.1 gets the name Lanikai, Ascher said, adding that he misspelled it "Lanakai" in the blog post.

The Sony A850, the least expensive full-frame SLR on the market, now has raw-image support from Adobe.

(Credit: Sony Electronics)

Adobe Systems released an update to its Photoshop and Lightroom products on Thursday night to support raw images from a raft of newer cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others.

Raw image formats, which record the unprocessed image sensor data from various higher-end cameras, offer higher quality and more flexibility than JPEGs but require more processing and take up more space. Adobe, Apple, and others write their own modules to decode the proprietary formats.

Adobe's update supports several newer SLRs from Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony; compact cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, and Canon; and several medium-format camera models from Mamiya. Here's the full list of cameras now supported in Lightroom 2.6, the Camera Raw 5.6 plug-in for Photoshop CS4, and the DNG Converter 5.6 utility:

• Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
• Canon EOS 7D
• Canon PowerShot G11
• Canon PowerShot S90
• Leaf Aptus II 5
• Mamiya DM22, DM28, DM33, DM56, M18, M22, M31
• Nikon D3S
• Olympus E-P2
• Pentax K-x
• Panasonic FZ38
• Sigma DP1s
• Sony A500
• Sony A550
• Sony A850

The software also fixes a problem that, on PowerPC-based Macs, could create artifacts in highlight areas in some circumstances with medium-format sensors and with some cameras from Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic.

The Camera Raw plug-in also works for customers of Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8. The free DNG Converter software can translate raw files into the Digital Negative format Adobe is trying to promote and standardize as a way to address file format longevity issues for archiving, expand use of raw photography, and handle metadata better.

Supporting raw processing keeps software makers on a new-camera treadmill. Apple updated its support for some of the new cameras on Wednesday, and DxO Labs announced it supports Canon's high-end S90 compact with the new DxO Optics Pro v6.1.1.

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.

Desktop customizations developer Stardock is giving you a few more ways to conquer desktop clutter with the release of Fences Pro, a premium version of the free icon organizer Fences.

When we reviewed Fences this past October, and as we followed the app's beta development in the many preceding months, we appreciated how Fences let us flexibly create, reshape, and edit windows on our desktop where we store our (relatively few) desktop icons. Our chief complaint was that all new icons downloaded to the desktop by default. We wanted to apply rules that automatically place specific icons in the correct folders.

Fences Pro now lets you create default rules for automatically-installed icons.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Fences Pro ($19.95) largely answers our request; or at least it tries to. Fences Pro's settings menu not only lets you name a default folder in which all newly installed icons should appear, it also showcases a list of rules you can configure to deposit specific types of icons (images, music videos, etc.) into any of your "fences." The icon installation rules worked well in our tests, saving pictures we downloaded from the Web to our specified "Pics" fence, and application shortcuts to "Programs."

In addition, you can organize icons based on name, time, and customized rules. As you tweak or create rules, you'll choose from options like "the icon's type" "is" or "is not" a program shortcut, virtual item, compressed file, executable, and so on. You may have to spend some trial-and-error time with the drop-down menus in order to make your rule watertight.

Rules aren't the only extra features to crop into Fences Pro. ... Read more

(Credit: Microsoft)

Snigger as you will over Microsoft's decision to call Bing, its overhauled search engine, a "decision engine," but those giggles should dissolve when you start up Microsoft's brand-new Bing for iPhone (and iPod Touch). As a search app goes, Bing, which debuted Tuesday in the iTunes App Store, is the real thing.

The Bing app has a slew of expected features, including voice search, maps, directions, search suggestions, and location-awareness. That's no surprise. Besides these being features common to Bing.com and to the Bing application on other mobile platforms, they're also necessary to compete with Google Mobile App for iPhone.

Bing's stylish layout is a pleasant surprise, and one that adds up, screen by screen, to a cohesive search experience. Opening Bing, you see the image of the day as your background (this doesn't appear to be customizable,) with the search field and voice search button at the top of the app. A rounded, six-panel grid of buttons jumps you to Bing's image collection, movie listings, maps, directions, business look-up, and a news feed. A drop-down menu on the search bar lets you filter your searches in all those categories, save directions. The semitransparent navigation strip below has a Home button and back and forward arrows, plus a button to hide the button panel, and an icon that pops up settings to clear your search history, set your search filter, and so on.

Bing gives you directions for your car and for navigating on foot, but it doesn't yet include directions using public transit, as the Google Mobile App does. Bing, however, has a neat feature that lets you swipe a transparent ribbon to advance through each direction, which moves the satellite, hybrid, road, or shaded map along in turn. We like that tapping a search result on the map brings up a tag with ratings and with icons to call the business or launch into directions.

Another difference to keep in mind between Bing and its Google rival is that Bing smashes a map and search app into one, whereas Google's mapping program is also the iPhone's default map app. When you access maps from Google Mobile App, you'll wind up opening up the Maps app for the actual search.

The Bing app for iPhone still isn't complete. As far as we can tell so far, it lacks some of the extras of other mobile Bing apps, like the capability to lay down pushpins on the map and save locations, and the capability to view multiple locations on the map. The absent features in the iPhone app indicate the direction of Microsoft's plans for Bing's growth on iPhone.

While Bing's performance during our initial testing was good, individuals may notice fluctuations based on their data and Wi-Fi connections. There may be other areas where Bing might not match up: for instance, Google claims its iPhone app can detect British and Australian pronunciation in addition to U.S. and Canadian accents. Do our international friends notice parity with Bing's voice search?

Although Bing may not match every bell and whistle that Google Mobile App and Maps apps do combined, Bing 1.0 for iPhone does offer a viable alternative to Google's searching and mapping dominance.

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.

PC problems can be real time sinks. That's why people are willing to pay for programs that them help find, fix, and prevent tech glitches. Smith Micro's $49.99 CheckIt Diagnostics claims to help you prevent hardware failures before they happen. The program's hardware tests put your system components through the wringer, but if it finds a problem, the solutions suggested by the utility can be severe.

For instance, when my 8-month-old laptop failed CheckIt's memory and video tests, the advice the program offered in the first case included reinstalling the CPU. For the second failed test, I was instructed to update the machine's video drivers and to avoid using third-party drivers.

I hadn't noticed any problem with the notebook's memory or display, so I thought these might be examples of the failures the utility nips in the bud. What stopped me in my tracks was the memory-failure advice, which entailed disabling external cache and changing a BIOS setting in addition to reinstalling the CPU, memory modules, and cooling fan. These actions seem a little extreme to perform on a relatively new system that hadn't exhibited any symptoms of trouble.

Smith Micro's CheckIt Diagnostics may suggest dire solutions to failed tests.

(Credit: Smith Micro)

As for updating the video drivers, I'm disinclined to update a driver when the device in question is functioning normally. But at least the test results have made me more diligent in monitoring my PC's health. While CheckIt's test results may be difficult to interpret, the program provides a thorough view of your system components.

CheckIt's System Information screen gives you the lowdown on your memory, processor, BIOS, video, audio, storage devices, network adapters, printers, and software. An uninstaller is provided, but it doesn't offer the features of the free Revo Uninstaller is described in a post from last August.

The details of your system components are presented in a single, multitabbed CheckIt Diagnostics window.

(Credit: Smith Micro)

Other CheckIt tools include a video calibrator, a ping and tracert automator, a benchmarker, and a stress test that combines various component tests. In addition to the memory and video tests, CheckIt tests your processor, audio, modems, graphics, and disks of every sort.

The scope of CheckIt's tools and tests is impressive, but Iolo's System Mechanic—which I reviewed along with Stardock's TweakVista in a post last May—remains my preferred all-in-one Windows utility, despite System Mechanic's annual fee.

Still, if you manage more than a handful PCs, especially machines that are getting long in the tooth, CheckIt Diagnostics can save you plenty of time, and possibly some money by helping you get a jump on component failures. Just be sure to take the program's advice with a grain of salt.

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)