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.
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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."
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Location-based social network Brightkite announced its first native BlackBerry application on Thursday. It was created by a third-party developer using the company's application programming interface. Brightkite already offers native applications to iPhone and Android users.
Dubbed myKite, the BlackBerry app, which was created by developer Chris Hallgren, locates the user through the BlackBerry's built-in GPS. It then finds other Brightkite users nearby in real time. When other people are found, myKite allows users to browse profiles, check status updates, post photos, and write notes on different establishments around town.
Prior to the release of myKite, BlackBerry users had to access the company's mobile site from their phones. According to Hallgren, he used Brightkite's API to develop myKite because he "wanted a native app for the BlackBerry."
myKite is available now for free in the BlackBerry App World. BlackBerry owners can download the app by either accessing it from their devices or by following this link.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Those attending Microsoft's TechEd event will not only get to hear about Office 2010, they will also be among the first to get to try it out.
Microsoft said Monday that it will launch an invitation-only Technical Preview Program of the new Office in July, and said that those at this week's Microsoft conference in Los Angeles will be among the first to get to kick the tires on the new version of Microsoft's flagship software.
Microsoft first talked about the browser-based abilities of Office 2010 (then code-named Office 14) at a developer conference last October. Click image for full gallery.
(Credit: Microsoft)Whereas Office 2007 introduced new file formats and a major overhaul of the user interface, Office 2010 is a more modest change to the desktop programs. However, in conjunction with the release, Microsoft is also releasing browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, known as Office Web Applications. It will also be the first version of Office to come in a 64-bit version, as well as the traditional 32-bit variety.
Microsoft had previously said that a test version would come sometime in the third quarter. Microsoft said it will scale the test version to users beyond those at TechEd, but did not give a time frame.
The final version of Office 2010 is due out next year.
To run the desktop versions of Office 2010, Microsoft said that users will need either Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. Hardware that is capable of running Office 2007 should also support Office 2010, Microsoft said.
In addition to announcing the timing of the Office technical preview, Microsoft is also using the first day of the TechEd event to announce more details on the next versions of SQL Server and Windows Server and to confirm that it will release Windows 7 in time to be on PCs this holiday season.
Version 1.5 of Google's mobile operating system is well on its way to bringing flashier features to Android phones. Some, like the virtual keyboard, are as sturdy and sensible as a bread roll, while others, like "live" dashboard folders and video recording and playback, pack in much more flavor and fat.
Until that blessed day arrives, here are nine free Android apps that take our G1 somewhere in between. You can download them all via the Market icon on your Google Android phone.
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Vimeo.com)
Moov: It calls itself a mobile interface, but in reality Moov is a launcher. From the dashboard view, slide open the keyboard and begin typing the first few letters of your MP3, application, address book contact, and so on to get a list of search suggestions popping up on a separate screen. Moov even helps you out by offering tabs that let you search your term in the publisher's other apps: Fbook, Quickpedia, Local (Yelp), and Dial Zero. I have to give Moov's developer, Next Mobile Web, a little credit--most of their apps made this top list, too. One setup note--for best results, make Moov the default search organism, or else you'll waste time choosing to search through the contact list or through Moov, and this app subsumes Android's own search.
Fusion Visual Voicemail: If you haven't yet discovered visual voice mail, don't waste another second. It's high time you scissor off the shackles of regular, "blind" voice mail. By simply forwarding your voice mail calls through PhoneFusion's service, you'll be able to see the messages stacked up in your in-box and listen to calls in any order you choose. You can play and pause the message, mark it unread, call or text the caller (extremely useful if you're in a meeting or another locale where it would be imprudent to field a call.) You can also add the contact, or even resurrect a deleted message. While PhoneFusion's visual voicemail service is free, it's likely that PhoneFusion will soon follow the lead of competitors on other platforms and offer premium services to transcribe voice messages into text, making them truly "visual."
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Make your home screen all business.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)I'm no cheerleader for most Windows Mobile interfaces, and that goes double for phones like the Samsung Omnia, with its widgety sidebar of management tools that rubs me the wrong way. A decently designed theme is typically an improvement.
Swooping to the rescue, the recently released (and awkwardly named) Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 lays out a heap of good-looking screens, shortcuts, and widgets onto the mobile dashboard without ever deleting the default Today screen. There's a professional layout, casual themes, room for customization, and an extended mobile desktop that triples the real estate when you swipe left or right.
The professional view sports a clock and weather widget, your various voice mail and message in-boxes, alarms, and the calendar on a glossy background whose maroon default you can change (the black looks especially snappy.) Clicking a widget launches a similarly skinned window for further management. Below is a contact icon that opens your contact list. Newly added Facebook integration lets you set your friends' profile picture or take a new one. There's also a launcher that pops up a skinned view of your recently used apps, plus shortcut icons to take you to your full program list, the settings, and the task manager.
Press another icon to see a stylized 3D carousel of screens to swipe through, like the Spb settings menu, your call log, or what's called the Lifestyle layout. This is the theme aimed at casual users, or for off-the-clock business types. Here you're able to change the background and add widgets--like a battery meter, a mini media player, the weather, and clocks. You can drag and drop them around the screen to place them where you'd like. This view also supports that expanded screen I mentioned above, where swiping to the left or right reveals two more panels as large as your main screen. While spacious in theory, widget pack rats will find ways to clutter it.
Add Facebook photos to the contact card.
(Credit: CNET/Jessica Dolcourt)
Switch among tools and views.
(Credit: CNET/Jessica Dolcourt)Spb Mobile Shell navigates smoothly and intuitively, and the app goes a long way towards making Windows Mobile interfaces engaging and attractive. The color settings should be easier to get to, but the biggest drawback for some may be the price. $30 is more than most cosmetic apps, but the trial download gives you time to decide if the sleekness is worth the dollars. It's tempting at the very least.
Earth Day may or may not appeal to your eco-conscience, but keeping the reins steady on your computer's carbon footprint and energy consumption makes good technological and financial sense. Reducing your energy output can prolong the life of your hardware--especially a laptop or Netbook--and can help save cash, which we all know is the 'greenest' motivation around.
This collection of environmentally friendly software lassos together these apps, plus a few others to help understand and appreciate our planet's cities, flora, and outer space neighbors.
ENERGY-SAVERS
Edison
(Credit:
CNET)
Edison for XP and Windows Vista is the newest one-stop app for monitoring how much energy and money you save when you tighten up your computer's sleep and shutdown schedules. A slider lets you decide after how many minutes you want to shut down your computer's display and hard drive during the peak work day. You can program differing criteria for off hours. Manual customization is also possible if you need to ease into greener computing.
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Believe it or not, the way to help us get out of this recession is to shop as often as you can manage. And Amazon just made it even easier for you to do that, if you have a BlackBerry.
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Amazon)
Amazon's iPhone app launched in December, and on Thursday the company released its Amazon App for BlackBerry. Like the iPhone app, this new application can be downloaded for free.
The app takes advantage of the BlackBerry's trackball for a quick and simple way to find, discover, and buy products from Amazon.com, as well as from thousands of other retailers.
Beyond that, according to Director of Amazon Mobile Sam Hall, the app also allows you to access the Amazon Remembers feature, which is an easy way to build an image list of products you want to remember for later or to make price comparisons across multiple merchants.
The coolest feature of the app is that it allows you to snap photos of a product with your BlackBerry, and the photos are automatically uploaded to Amazon.com. The company will then try to find products similar to the ones in the photos. As soon as a product is found, you can purchase it immediately or save it to the "remember it" file in your Amazon account.
Other features of the app include:
- Purchase using Amazon's 1-Click ordering and Amazon Prime
- Track packages or modify orders using the Your Account feature
- Receive personalized recommendations
- View editorial and customer reviews
- Get the Gold Box Deal of the Day
- Access to Wish List
There you go. Now you have no excuse not to shop, at least for inexpensive things. Just remember to do it responsibly.
The rumors and speculations that Research In Motion would launch its anticipated BlackBerry App World application store at CTIA were dead on. On Wednesday, the Canadian smartphone and software maker will make BlackBerry App World available for download. RIM's application store seems to enjoy a logical layout, sharing some similarities with the iPhone App Store (mostly in the app discovery department), but also has a dark look all its own. Vicariously step into BlackBerry's App World through our gallery of screenshots: Introducing BlackBerry App World.
