Windows software

Browsing and installing all of the free software we offer at Download.com can potentially bog down your computer over time. It can be hard to resist installing something just because it is new, looks useful, or simply, is free. It is a good idea to do a house cleanup and getting rid of junk that you don't need once in a while to improve the performance of your computer. But how do you know what to remove?

It can be easy to forget which program does what and why you have it installed, making PC cleanup a nightmare. … Read more

Mozilla, which bowed to the market power of the H.264 video compression technology last year, now has built support for the patent-encumbered standard into the Nightly version of Firefox on Windows 7.

Mozilla can't actually ship H.264 in its open-source product because of the patent licensing requirements, so it decided instead to adapt Firefox to draw on H.264 support built into newer operating systems. The first step is done -- if not fully tested and debugged -- on Windows 7, according to a Mozilla blog post today.

Mozilla had thrown its weight behind VP8, a royalty-free … Read more

Retooling its browser with the WebKit engine isn't the only big change at Opera Software. The Norwegian company also cut its staff significantly in the last quarter of 2012.

According to the company's fourth-quarter financial results (PDF), the company had 777 employees at the end of 2011 and 931 at the end of 2012. But that figure includes 91 "employees associated with the organizational restructuring."

Moving to WebKit and dropping its in-house Presto browser engine. means Opera is cooperating with Google, Apple, and others using the open-source WebKit software, and that means the company could get … Read more

Did you ever want to leave a message for a Skype buddy who just wasn't there? Skype's new video-messaging feature, now in a beta of sorts, is the interactive way to do it.

Available today for users in the U.S., U.K., and other select countries (Skype isn't listing them all,) video messaging sends a recording to friends who may be offline or on another call.

Android, iOS, and Mac users don't have to do anything to play around with the prerelease feature, except to make sure they've got the most recent software update (… Read more

The Computer History Museum has made the source code for Photoshop 1.0.1 into an exhibit that lets the public, or at least programmers, appreciate the inner workings of the historic software.

The museum published the software yesterday, following up on its earlier release of the source code underlying Apple's original MacPaint.

Source code is what humans write -- in Photoshop 1.0's case the brothers Thomas and John Knoll. The initial Photoshop is written in written 128,000 lines of code, a combination of the high-level Pascal programming language and low-level assembly-language instructions. When converted to … Read more

Opera Software is acquiring Skyfire Labs and its technology for squeezing video onto congested mobile-phone networks in a deal worth up to $155 million, the Norwegian browser maker said tonight.

Opera, the fifth-ranked browser maker in terms of global usage, gets paid for adapting its browser for mobile network operators and for driving searches to sites like Yandex and Google. It's been gradually expanding its business into domains such as advertising, though, and the Skyfire deal adds a new dimension to its business selling technology to operators.

"Both companies have evolved far beyond their browser roots," said … Read more

The best antivirus software available does more than just stop computer viruses, it also addresses the myriad and complex modern threats that you'll encounter. Indeed, from the merged antivirus and anti-malware detection engines to enhancing online privacy controls, security suites are an essential part of Windows and Mac desktop life. And just like driving a car without wearing a seatbelt, you shouldn't try to get by can get by without using antivirus software just because you can.

Because of their long history of deleterious consequences to system performance, security suites deserve closer scrutiny than any other category of … Read more

Mozilla is catching its browser up to Windows 8.

The Firefox Nightly version -- the precursor to Aurora, beta, and final releases -- now supports the touch-oriented, no-menu interface of Windows 8 formerly known as Metro, according to a tweet from Mozilla about the development.

Mozilla developer Paul Rouget posted several screenshots of the Metro version of the early Firefox build.

The early build features a number of Metro features, including a no-menu-bar look that relies instead on actions triggered by swiping in from the edges of the screen. That includes the access to search engines, downloaded files, and tab … Read more

It was a good day for the WebKit browser engine yesterday when Opera Software adopted it in place of its in-house Presto. But yesterday's developments also became an opportunity for a high-profile JavaScript programmer to lodge criticisms about WebKit.

"Each release of Chrome or Safari generates excitement about new bleeding-edge features; nobody seems to worry about the stuff that's already (still!) broken," complained Dave Methvin, president of the jQuery foundation and a member of the core programming team that builds the widely used Web programming tool, in a blog post.

"jQuery Core has more lines … Read more