My Thoughts! - by Prakash G.R.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has said that an internal build of IE 8 now passes the Acid Test. Wow! Thats an achievement. I think its the second browser after Opera to pass the test. While IE 8 is expected to be released in an year or so, Firefox 3 is close to release. Its already in Beta 2 and it rocks!

Its based on Gecko 1.9, pages now loads really fast, UI is cool, Proto theme blends well with Mac and so on. If you ask for my favourite feature, it is the auto complete feature in the location bar. No longer you have to type from the beginning. Type any character in the URL/page name you want, Firefox shows all the results. See the screen shot:

In another related news, Mozilla Prism isn’t exciting as I thought earlier. Its just creates a short cut and nothing else. I thought some nice integration such as Application Menus are on the way, but nothing of that sort. If all I want is a short cut on the desktop, I don’t need an application, all I need is the upcoming version of Google Gears!

written by Prakash G.R.

It looks promising. Offline web apps are becoming more and more popular and Firefox is making a right move towards it. I’ll be writing a complete review soon, but for now, you can click here.

written by Prakash G.R.

Disclaimer: Even on my MacBook I use Firefox rather than Safari because of the wonderful plugins that I need.

I’m using Safari on Windows since the day its announced (and switched back to Firefox today). There are some nice things about Safari (like Find) but I don’t like the product as a whole. Here are top 5 reasons why Safari is not going to succeed:

5) Safari installs unwanted apps: The installer of Safari tries to install other unwanted software. (No. I definitely don’t want Bonjour)

4) Safari doesn’t import your settings from IE/Firefox: When I install Firefox, I remember Firefox giving me options to import my settings from IE. So that I don’t have to loose any bookmarks. Safari doesn’t do that. So I’ve to recreate all the bookmarks

3) Safari is NOT a fast browser: I don’t know about the benchmark results. But the applications I use like Gmail, Google Reader takes more time to load than Firefox/IE. Googling around I found the real reason. More over, its neither a sleek browser. Even for the modest number of websites, the memory usage shoots up.

2) Safari is not a native Windows application: At least it doesn’t looks/behaves like one. For example, its Edit > Preferences not Tools > Options, you can resize only from bottom right corner, …

1) Safari’s font rendering is pathetic: Perhaps besides the other reasons like Security/websites compatibility, if there is a single big reason a user is going to dump Safari on Windows, it could the font rendering. There are reasons why Apple selected this rendering. Honestly I don’t give a shit about that. To me it should be easily readable in my screen and its not so.

I was wondering why the hell did Apple enters a game which it can’t win? The reason is simple. Steve decided to close iPhone to third party applications and the only way to write apps is Web 2.0 and Safari is the only browser in iPhone. No Firefox/IE/Opera. So why should a developer write web apps for a browser that has a single digit market share? The only way to increase the market share is to let Safari go out of Mac and explore the windows arena. Is it going to work? Who knows? It might!!! Look at what people said when iPod was released.

Related Links:
Safari for Windows announced
Gmail extension for Firefox
Top 10 Firefox extensions I use

written by Prakash G.R.

If you are using Gmail & Firefox, then Better Gmail is a must have Firefox extension. It gives you skins for Gmail, puts your Google Reader feeds, saves your searches, etc. Try it.

Related Links:
Top 10 Firefox extensions I use

written by Prakash G.R.

Microsoft is releasing a professional version of Firefox. Its awesome. Try downloading and see it yourself.

written by Prakash G.R.

With Firefox 2 and IE 7 released, the war is heating up. Now that both are equipped with tabbed browsing, phishing tools etc, its hard to say which one is better. But one area where Firefox is a clear winner is the unlimited extensions it has. The following are my top rated extensions:

(10) Splash! - What good is a software that doesn’t show a “Loading” page? From Windows to Eclipse, almost every software I use has one (Even Gmail has!). Firefox didn’t have a splash screen. This plugin fills the void.

(9) Tabbrowser Preferences - It gives you more control over tabs. eg. you can create new tab when using the search bar

(8) Foxy Tunes - The ability to control your favourite media player, without leaving Firefox.

(7) Performancing - There are many desktop tools for writing blogs, but not many extensions. This is one of the best Firefox extensions for blog writers.

(6) Cooliris - When you find a link, keep your mouse over it. This extension will give you a preview of what is available in that link. This is really helpful when are you are using some search engine and want to preview the links before loading the page in the window.

(5) Download Status Bar - If you are downloading something and want to know the status of it, don’t have to switch to and look at the Download dialog box every now and then. The status of each download is available in the status bar. When there are no downloads to show, this bar automagically vanishes (4) DownThemAll - When you want to download multiple items in your page, this extension helps you. It comes handy when you have too many images in a page and you want to download all/few of them.

(3) Adblock Plus - Firefox does prevents the nasty popups. But what about the in-page ads? Use Adblock Plus. You can configure it to eliminate most of the ad s found in a page.

(2) TamilKey - Very useful when you are in net-cafe. You can’t expect them to install ekalappai. Simply install this pluging and start blogging in Tamil.

(1) Google Browser Sync - This one is really helpful for those who use more than one computer everyday like me. No matter which computer I use, I can add a bookmark when I come across a nice site. This plugin will sync it to all the computers that I use.

written by Prakash G.R.

Recently I was trying to register a domain and looking for various options. I was surprised by the fact that Yahoo gives out a 70% discount for Firefox users where as there is no discount for IE users. Look how the same URL looks different in these browsers

written by Prakash G.R.

Firefox. The Ultimate browser, which is going to beat IE soon. The story of firefox is impressive. When AOL decided to abandon Netscape, due to its tie up with M$, it created a consortium and opensourced it. The developers initially didn’t even have funds to create a website for it. When they sent a mail across to asking for funds, it flooded in. They went ahead and created a brand new cross-platfrom rendering engine Gecko and started developing apps above it - a browser, mail client etc. The browser was aptly named as Phoenix, but then as it been a brand of another software, they changed the name to firefox. Yes, it rocks.

I decided not to install firefox at office, as the free disk space is just around 100 MB. But got net @ home and first thing is to install is Firefox. One of the primary reason is security. It doesn’t support any ActiveX fundas and so lot more safer than IE. I’m starting using it and while gazing some blogs, saw some funny looking orange icon in the right bottom. Later I found that when a site supports RSS syndication, it denotes like that. Clicking on it, you can add the site as Live Bookmark, which turns your browser into a RSS aggregator. Wow. Cool!!! I tried several tools for RSS tired of everything, I left using it. Now I’ve to rediscover it. Surprising, blogger supports it by default, and now my blog is also RSSed in my bookmarks. Another big surprise was Gmail also had an RSS feed !!! So now I don’t need Gmail Notifier at all, I’ve added it to my bookmarks I’ve to click on the bookmarks for new mails without going to Gmail site.

Another cool feature is ‘Find in Page’. When I pressed Ctrl+F I was looking for a small window to popup to find some text in the page. It didn’t turn up. I was about to file a bug then noticed a small find bar about the status bar. It highlights the words in the page automatically, when I started typing in. Another cool feature !!! It works in the source view also.

Almost all of the sites, I browse, supports firefox. It has plugins for most of the needs - from Acrobat to real player. Its nearing 10 million downloads. Impressed much by this browser, now I’ve added a link for spread firefox in my blog. So don’t stay back. Get firefox and rediscover the web

written by Prakash G.R.