Sometimes it's the little things that count.
The most prominent feature of Firefox 3.6 is Personas, which let you reskin the browser with thousands of different looks. But my single favorite change is a subtler change to the open-source browser's user interface.
CNET News Poll
Specifically, when you open a link in a new tab, it appears immediately to the right of the active tab. Before, the new tabs would appear to the far right of the strip of tabs.
Yup, that's it. For those of us who spend hours a day in a browser, though, the new tab behavior helps group related tasks together. I constantly shuffle among dozens of tabs, and the new approach automatically brings some organization to my cluttered life.
However, I know it's not everybody's favorite browser behavior. So along with explaining why I like it, I'll also take some potshots and share instructions on how to get the old way back.
Why it's better
The more things I do with a browser--and the number has increased steadily for years now--the more important it becomes to be able to find different tasks amid the chaos. Microsoft and Apple understand this, as evidenced by the new taskbar features in Windows 7 and dock expose in Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. Those features make it easier to pluck out the one window you need from among the many you may have open.
There's a pattern to how I spawn the dozens of tabs I use as a day progresses. On a variety of pages--Gmail, Google Reader, Yahoo Finance, somebody's blog post--I'll encounter a host of links to other pages. I'll middle-click my mouse button to open interesting pages as background tabs, then use Ctrl-Tab to switch to the new pages when I'm ready. I repeat this pattern many times a day.
With the old behavior, each tab appeared to the far right of the tab strip. That's fine when getting started, but when I've moved halfway across the list and want to open another batch, I want the new ones--call them children--to open next to their parent tab. When I go away and come back, or when I lose place juggling tasks, it's easier to find my bearings again.
It's like being in a library. When you're in the European history section, you don't want to find books on rewiring your house and on vegetarian cooking.
As a longtime Firefox user, I didn't realize tab positioning could be better. When I started using Google's Chrome, which introduced the new tab behavior to me, the scales were lifted from my eyes. I immediately could get to the next tab with a quick press of Ctrl-Tab on the keyboard rather than have to use the mouse to click over to the far end of the list. I use both browsers daily, but until the Firefox 3.6 beta arrived, the new-tab position had become a sore point for me when in Firefox.
The change is actually a big deal in a couple ways. First, even seemingly minor changes in software can be disruptive. Old habits die hard, and computer users wrestling with constant change can get angry when more is foisted upon them.
Second, though, browsers are assuming an ever greater role in what people do in their personal and professional lives, and keeping one's bearings is commensurately important. That's especially true for those people for whom a gaggle of browser tabs represents a collection of chores going on in parallel.
Internet Explorer 8 categorizes related tabs by color.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) How the competition handles it
Tabs are now universal among browsers, but new-tab behavior isn't. Firefox and Chrome handle it the way I like best, but how do others tackle the issue?
First, let's look at Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft showed it understands some of the challenges of tab management in its latest version of its browser by coloring child tabs the same hue as their parents, but I have a gripe with how it works. Specifically, although child tabs get the same color as their parents for easy grouping and arrive to the right, grandchild tabs are the same color as child tabs. Similarly, grandchild tabs appear to the far right of the whole group of child tabs.
In my mind, I consider grandchild tabs a separate group from the child tabs. But with IE, grandchildren get the same color and position treatment as children. The only way to get a new color is to start a fresh empty tab There's no easy way to give grandchildren a new color without causing some confusion, though--should the child be the same color as the original parent or change color to be grouped with the grandchildren?
Next is Opera, which gives users a choice. By default, it opens new tabs to the far right, which I don't like, but in the Advanced|Tabs section of the preferences dialog box, you can check "Open new tab next to active." Huzzah!
There's a subtle change here I don't care for, though. Tabs always appear immediately to the right of the active tab. I'd rather have all one tab's children appear in sequence to the right. For example, if a parent tab is in position 1, then the first child would be in position 2, the second in position 3, and the third in position 4. Opening three child tabs in Opera leaves the parent in position 1, the third child in position 2, the second child in position 3, and the first child in position 4.
Last, there's Safari. It does it the old way I loathe with no option to change. Too bad.
Firefox can show thumbnail previews of new tabs, but I find them hard to recognize in front of busy Web pages.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Why it's not enough
Most browser makers are excited about the fact that their software is subsuming more and more computing tasks that previously ran on computer operating systems. But as browsers inherit this central importance, they also inherit some of the hassles.
The new tab positioning behavior in Firefox is a step in the right direction, but there's more that needs to be done. Moving from one tab to a related adjacent one, whether through a keyboard command or mouse clicking, is a minor change. But things get harder when you need to switch from one group of tabs to the next.
There's work under way here. Opera is perhaps the leader with the ability to show thumbnails as you use Ctrl-Tab to cycle your list of open tabs.
Firefox has been noodling with the approach too. It tried then dropped tab thumbnail previews earlier, but the technology is still present. Using the about:config system for tweaking the browser (more on this later), you can change the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" setting to "true."
But for reasons that aren't clear to me, I don't find this effective either in Firefox or Opera. Perhaps I haven't used it enough, or the thumbnails are too small to be immediately recognizable, or they're just hard to see against the noisy background. There's a good reason that Apple dims the background most of the way to black when using Expose.
Aero Peek in Windows 7 lets the task bar show a glimpse of Firefox and IE tabs.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Windows itself is helping, too. The new taskbar in Windows 7 can show individual tabs, once browsers support the feature. It's in Internet Explorer 8, and it's in the new Firefox 3.6 beta.
Add-ons such as Firefox Showcase can further tweak Firefox. (Indeed, for a wealth of options, check Mashable's handy Firefox tab management guide.)
More interesting to me, though, is work under way to expand Firefox's "awesome bar" abilities. Today, typing in it opens Web pages and retrieves ones you've already visited or bookmarked. In the future, it could be able to move you to another open tab, too. I'm a keyboard guy, so particularly appreciate this idea.
You can get a taste of the idea now. If you've enabled the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" option, hitting Ctrl-Shift-Tab will not only show you thumbnail previews, but will put a cursor in a search box.
Typing the letters of the Web page name will winnow down the thumbnails. For example, typing "netap" will cull my open tabs so only Net Applications and NetApp show. If you have a bunch of similar tabs all open, this might not help much, of course.
However, the feature only works with the tabs of one browser window, so if you can't use it to search among other browser instances.
How to get the old way back
Perhaps I've convinced you that the new approach is better. But perhaps not--in which case I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments so people will hear more than my opinion.
For those who don't like the new tab positions, you can revert to the old method.
To get the old style back for new tab position, use Firefox's about:config system.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)First type "about:config" in the Firefox address bar. You'll get a warning that you're tinkering with Firefox's innards and you should be careful, but this isn't brain surgery, so don't be frightened. Click the "I'll be careful, I promise" button, and you'll see a big list of all the browser settings that can be tweaked.
Next, in the text box labeled "Filter:", type "tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent"; you should see just one entry below. In the column marked "Value," double-click on the word "true" to change it to "false." You're done.
But I'd encourage you to at least give the new way a try. If you don't like it, you can always change back.
The World Wide Web Consortium has published a draft of an interface that browsers can use to manipulate files better, one of a series of steps aimed at gradually improving the sophistication and polish of Web site interfaces.
The draft File API (application programming interface) defines a number of ways that browsers and Web sites can handle files better. One big part of it: being able to select multiple files for upload, such as on photo-sharing sites or Web-based e-mail, a task that often relies on Adobe Systems' Flash today.
But there are other aspects, too. For example, the Files interface governs the use of "blobs," or packages of raw binary data such as video files. Google has touted blobs for its Gears browser plug-in as a way to divide large videos into small chunks so that uploads can be more easily resumed if a network problem interrupts the process.
Another benefit: files are handled asynchronously, which means the browser won't freeze up while a file is being uploaded or otherwise handled, and the browser reports progress on file transfers.
The technology is one example of work to transform the Web into a better foundation for interactive applications, a move that usurps some power from computer operating systems such as Windows and that's embodied most boldly in Google's Chrome OS project.
Here's one example of use of the Files interface provided by Mike Smith, who works for the W3C on matters relating to HTML--Hypertext Markup Language, the language used to describe Web pages:
A user uses a Web-based application for reading and sending e-mail. She wants to attach multiple files to particular messages. The Web application provides an user interface that allows her to select multiple files to attach at the same time. After she selects the files, they are uploaded to the Web application asynchronously, allowing the user to perform other actions while they are uploading (for example, finishing the rest of the message she was composing before you added the file attachments). As the attachments are uploaded, the Web applications shows progress bars to indicate how much of the contents of the files have uploaded thus far.
The interface can work in conjunction with various standards including the drag-and-drop support in the HTML 5 now under development and the Web Workers technology that lets browsers better perform multiple operations simultaneously.
The interface also can help Web applications process the contents of files. For example, Smith describes a lyrics finder:
A user has on her local file system a playlist file from her favorite desktop music player. The playlist contains a list of song titles and information, and she wants to be able to easily fetch the lyrics for particular songs without needing to manually search for the lyrics on the Web. So a site can provide a Web-based application that allows her to upload her playlist. The Web application then parses the file and then presents a user interface to her, show in the contents of the file as a hyperlinked, sortable list. She can then retrieve the lyrics for any given song just by clicking on a particular song title.
Arun Ranganathan, Mozilla's standards evangelist and chairman of the WebGL working group, wrote the specification, according to Chris Blizzard, Mozilla's director of developer relations.
Standards for the Web are advancing rapidly with W3C representatives including Microsoft working in conjunction with a parallel effort, WHATWG. New standards require actual implementation in browsers before they are accepted as finished, a fact that can lead to some chaos but that helps ensure the new ideas are tested in the real world.
Firefox 3.6, in beta testing now, will support most of the Files API, according to Blizzard.
With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft showed Wednesday it's trying to retake the browser initiative.
IE remains the Net's dominant browser. But perversely, it became something of a technology underdog after Microsoft vanquished Netscape in the browser wars of the 1990s and scaled back its browser effort.
That left an opportunity for rivals to blossom--most notably Firefox, which now is used by a quarter of Web surfers, but also Apple's Safari, which now runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X, and Google's Chrome, which aims to make the Web faster and a better foundation for applications.
Microsoft has been pouring resources back into the IE effort, though, and at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, some fruits of that labor were on display. In particular, Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky showed off IE 9's new hardware-accelerated text and graphics.
The acceleration feature takes advantage of hitherto untapped computing power in a way that's more useful than other browser-boosting technology--Google's Native Client to directly employ PC's processor and Mozilla's WebGL for accelerated 3D graphics, for example--according to Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.
"This is a direct improvement to everybody's usage of the Web on a daily basis," Hachamovitch said in an interview after Sinofsky's speech. "Web developers are doing what they did before, only now they can tap directly into a PC's graphics hardware to make their text work better and graphics work better."
... Read moreWith 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."
iStockphoto's Kelly Thompson
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)Google's Gears technology may not have caught on widely in the world of Web programming, but operators of the iStockphoto photo sales site have become believers.
Among other things, Gears enables browsers to store data on a local computer, which most notably means that Web applications can be adapted to work even while offline. But for iStockphoto's purposes, it primarily means better performance for people using the site and secondarily lower operating costs for the Getty Images photo sales subsidiary.
"We're not requiring anyone to install Google Gears," the company said on an explanatory Web site. "If you do install Google Gears, though, iStock will work much faster."
Google launched the open-source Gears software in 2007, but so far, the sites that use it--among them Gmail, Google Reader, WordPress, and MySpace--are the exception rather than the rule.
Speed and money
The main motivation for the change was getting a faster site, which benefits iStockphoto's financial results, said Kelly Thompson, iStockphoto's chief operating officer.
"It was 95 percent performance and end-user experience, but let's face it: if I can get more pictures pumped out faster, with more searches, we sell more," Thompson said. "Cutting down a page load time for a user is more valuable to me than the money I'll save on bandwidth."
The company adopted Gears with no prompting from Google, he added. "We did this on our own," with Web programmers jumping on the project because "it's sexy for them to work on it."
iStockphoto activated its Gears support September 30, Thompson said. In the first 16 days of use, Gears saved the company from paying for the transfer of 132GB of data over the network and lightened its Web servers by 8.7 million communication requests--and that's with only 19,000 Gears-installed users, a "tiny portion of our traffic," he said. Those without Gears benefit, too, since iStock's Web servers are unburdened somewhat by those who do use it.
The technology works by locally storing various Web page ingredients--photo thumbnails, JavaScript program code, Cascading Style Sheet formatting files, for example. Older files are flushed periodically so the users' hard drives don't get too cluttered.
"It's a pretty basic implementation right now: the second time a user sees any image or requests a JavaScript file, it loads instantly," Thompson said. One of his developers described it as "the opposite of a drug dealer: the first hit isn't free, (but) every subsequent hit is."
Google is trying to propagate Gears, which is available as a browser plug-in. In a more aggressive move, it built Gears into its Chrome browser. And in the longer term, the HTML5 standard under development reproduces the local storage abilities of Gears, a move that stands to spread the technology more widely.
HTML5 good, IE 6 bad
Thompson is a fan of another HTML5 technology: built-in video. iStock licenses video content, as well as photos and other content, and currently streams it with Adobe Systems' Flash technology.
"We'd love to be able to ditch Flash on the video side, but it's probably a ways out," Thompson said, citing widespread use of Internet Explorer.
IE is widely loathed among Web developers for its slow performance and lack of standards compliance, and even Microsoft wishes that people would upgrade from IE 6, but it's still the single most widely used browser out there, even though Microsoft released it in 2001, just before Windows XP arrived. Microsoft released IE 7 in 2006, and it tried to improve standards compliance and security with the release of IE 8 this March.
People are gradually shifting away from IE 6, but not fast enough for Thompson's taste--or plans.
"We announced we'd drop official support for IE 6 in 2010 back at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure we're going to be able to it: the percentage of users is dropping--just not quite fast enough," he said.
From August (top) to September (below), Internet Explorer lost a bit of usage share, compared with rival browsers.
(Credit: Net Applications)According to Net Applications statistics, IE 6 is used by 24.4 percent of people on the Web today, followed by IE 7, IE 8, Firefox 3.5, and Firefox 3, in descending order of popularity. Overall, IE has 65.7 percent share of usage.
iStockphoto has more early adopters in its population and therefore different browser preferences. The top five browsers on the site are Firefox, with 37.8 percent; IE, with 34.4 percent; Apple's Safari, with 22.3 percent; Google's Chrome, with 3.4 percent; and Opera, with 1.7 percent.
Among iStockphoto's IE traffic, the majority of people use version 7, but the tide is turning.
"We've seen an almost 2 percent migration of (IE) 6 to 8 in the last 60 days alone. We're hoping Windows 7 will push it even more quickly," Thompson said. "For us, even though it's a shrinking percentage, it still represents over 1 million visits per month, so I can't cut them off at the knees."
"I think we're dominated by geeks, designers, and small businesses, all who move more quickly than the enterprise--not to mention we're 35 percent Mac, with the iPhone about to overtake Linux for third place" among operating systems, Thompson said.
(Credit:
gDial Pro)
Back in September, we tested out a Google Voice app for Palm WebOS phones called gDial Pro. The free gDial Pro just recently updated to version 0.8.9, and is available now in Palm's App Catalog. While gDial Pro still isn't quite as integrated into the Palm Pre as Google's native Google Voice app is for Google's own Android platform, it remains a good option for Google Voice users on Palm's comeback platform.
In addition to fixing some dialing bugs, the developer made a ton of other user interface adjustments, including changing the wording in the Preferences screen to make gDial Pro a little easier for new users to set up. Web dialing, the smoother dialing option of the two, is presented as the default in an expandable, advanced-features window.
Other notable additions include now being able to dial a number in the same U.S. area code without having to dial the area code. gDial Pro will also now alert you to new voicemails. Importantly, you can also listen to voicemail messages from within gDial Pro without first calling out to Google Voice.
You can find a full list of changes at Download.com.
The upcoming version 3.6 of Firefox will be able to tell if you're listing to starboard--and pass that information along to applications running in the browser.
That's because the browser will be able to detect the orientation of laptops and mobile devices equipped with accelerometers that can tell which way is down. The reason for the work: Web applications running in the browser will be able to use the information, useful for labyrinth-type games with virtual marbles rolling around boards, and any number of other gaming situations.
A demonstration application that shows Firefox adjusting a Web page graphic according to how a MacBook is tilted.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard announced Firefox's coming orientation interface Monday.
"One new feature that we're including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for web pages to access machine orientation information if it's available," Blizzard wrote. "Many modern MacBooks and ThinkPads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We've added support for Linux, Macs and some ThinkPads where drivers and devices are available."
Mozilla is working on the technology for mobile devices, too, where orientation-aware games are a big deal.
The move is one of many by browser makers eager to transform their software from passive receptacles for showing Web sites to an active foundation for interactive applications. Firefox 3.6 is scheduled for beta testing shortly and final release later this year.
Yahoo has worked on browser-based orientation technology through its BrowserPlus software.
When it comes to built-in support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, WebGL is being built into Firefox and the browser project behind Safari, and now Chrome is following suit.
"Preliminary WebGL support is now being compiled into Chrome," said Kenneth Russell a Wednesday message to a Chrome mailing list. But, he warned, WebGL itself is still under development and that new versions of the WebKit browser technology on which Chrome is based might cause incompatibilities for now.
WebGL can be used in the latest Chrome developer preview version--but only if "--enable-webgl" and "--no-sandbox" command-line switches are added when Chrome launches. The latest versions are Chrome 4.0.221.6 for Windows and 4.0.221.8 for Mac OS X and Linux.
WebGL began at Mozilla and Khronos Group, the organization that oversees the OpenGL 3D graphics interface. WebGL lets programmers creating Web sites issue commands for drawing 3D graphics, but the standard is still under development. The general idea is important for advanced Web sites and for Web-based applications, which although steadily getting more sophisticated don't yet match their analogs that run natively on computers.
Google supports WebGL but also is working on a separate, higher-level 3D interface for browsers called O3D.
Someone told me recently that they had 22 different log-in IDs. My first thought was, you must get out more. My second thought was, how do you remember 22 different Web services, let alone log-in IDs and passwords?
The answer, of course, is a password manager. These days, I see PC security as a form of insurance. The more you have to risk, the more you should spend to protect it. Anyone who banks or otherwise transacts online will find the investment in a password and personal-data manager worthwhile. Fortunately, if your password-management needs are meager, the protection doesn't have to cost you anything.
Siber Systems recently announced the beta version of RoboForm Online that lets RoboForm users store their log-in data securely online. Just log into the service from any browser and get fast access to the IDs you've saved on your PC. With just one you're logged into your favorite Web sites.
Log into the RoboForm Online service to access your favorite Web services with a single click.
(Credit: Siber Systems)The first time you use the program, you're prompted to enter a master password. You can change the master password via the program's Options drop-down menu and selecting Security settings, but if you forget a master password, you have to delete all the password-protected files and start over.
... Read more
(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)
On Monday, Palm set free its lastest WebOS update for the Palm Pre, bringing quite a number of new features to the smartphone and addresses several security issues.
If you haven't received it already, Palm WebOS 1.2 will arrive as an over-the-air update to your smartphone over the next few days. Notable additions include the integration of LinkedIn contacts, the capability to download songs from the Amazon MP3 Store over a 3G connection in addition to Wi-Fi, and cut and paste for Web pages and e-mails.
Other highlights include being able to search within e-mail folders, download files from the Web browser, and the capability to pause podcasts. We're still awaiting the arrival of prepaid apps, but it looks we're getting closer since you can now store credit card information on your Palm profile so you can purchase apps in the future.
For a full list of included updates with Palm WebOS 1.2, check out Palm's support site. Most notably absent from this update, however, is any mention of a fix to the iTunes synchronization, which was broken by iTunes 9.0. We're still waiting for the WebOS 1.2 to arrive on our Palm Pre, but let us know if the media syncing is still truly disabled and share your experience with the update in the comments below.
