Wired Geeks

Archive for the ‘Browsers’ Category

Most of us take them for granted, but web designers have to deal with a myriad of frustrating problems on a daily basis. From browsers that ignore standards to different screen resolutions, there’s a lot for them to grapple with. Today, Google has launched a new addition to its collection of Labs tools called Browser Size that’s meant to help alleivate one of these headaches.

One issue web designers face is ensuring that they keep their important content “above the fold” — you don’t want users to have to scroll down to see the hottest story or a call to action. Browser Size helps with this, by visualizing just what percentage of the Internet-browsing population can see a certain part of your page. This is related not only to screen resolution, but also how large people keep their browser windows.

Using the tool is simple: type a URL in at the top of the screen, and the site will load your webpage in the background. It will then overlay a semi-transparent graphic depicting how much of the web’s population can view each section of your page without scrolling. The results aren’t particularly exciting — the further down or to the side you go, the fewer people can see it. But this will certainly be helpful for web designers. The data is generated based on the browser size of users who visit Google.com. Google says that it found that the install rate for Google Earth increased by a whopping 10% simply by moving it 100 pixels higher on the page.

Many people, they don’t inspect the product that we are downloading in our personal computer, we just download the things we desire. And afterward on we understand that these programs are damaging our files. I was astonished by the website that I regularly visited it’s the duplicate file finder wherein they give so much information about our disk space. They are giving free download especially for all persons who want to know about their product. They maintained that it’s not always possible to find suitable and simultaneously functional decision in the field of disk space analysis. It also contradicts such concepts as convenience and functionality have blends. All these concepts are functioning especially it assumes the presence of a great number of functions, and such number of functions is very hard for realizing in the simple and convenient interface. One that struck me most is their directory size with real interesting disk and folder structure analysis tool and file manager. On the one hand, it is the full-function disk space analyzer which includes such tools as analysis, disk classification and a folder structures conductor, data visualization. This astonishes me more because the program is easy and friendly user. So, what are you waiting for check them out now at www.fileutilityblog.com for more details.

Orbit is one of the most famous download manager that can be used for your browser. Even though there are many other download managers such as download accelerator plus, flashget, wellget, and the most widely used internet download manager, but these browser license are not free and we have pay for it. Orbit is a latest download manager which comes for free of cost. Using Orbit download manager we can download music, videos, mp3, softwares, documents and every other thing worthy to be downloaded. It is super fast and it even has a search through which you can search for softwares. It can speed up your download speeds up to 20 times. It even boasts of splitting your files in 10 parts which makes your downloading more fast. It also has browser integration such that it can automatically take downloads from your browser. You can even add URL’s of your choice and can get it downloaded very easily.the best part of it is resume function which can start download from the last time it stopped. In all it’s a great tool which enhances your whole internet experience.

Google is a big fan of minimalism,which is known to everyone of us, especially when it comes to its famous homepage, Google tries to keep its word count in its homepage down upto 28 words, but it might be up to around 30 words. Experiments are being done by Google by taking that concept to a whole new level.This means that, bucket testing is done by the site to induce a new effect which hides everything on the homepage of Google aside from the search box and Google’s logo, only revealing the rest of the navigation elements with a nifty fade effect when you move your mouse. Some omissions from the homepage with the fade effect can be noted easily, especially the site’s “Google Search” and the famous “I’m Feeling Lucky” button are both missing and can be noted very easily. But,there is another screen shot in which these two buttons appears, so it seems that Google is testing multiple versions. Don’t worry as you don’t have the new, streamlined page, this is nothing but, a part of Google bucket test, this means that only a small subset of users have access to it.

Flock,which is a new and another web browser entering in to the race in the world of web. Everyone might be wondering why the browser is said to be social,the reason is that this browser instantly connects to your social networking sites viz. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and keeps you notified with all the updates.The wonderful features of Flock makes everyone attracted towards it.This helps you to keep in touch with your friends,family etc. everytime. Flock browser is purely based on Mozilla Platform and it is as secure as Mozilla with a wonderful speed in browsing. It supports feed subscription, suppose if you are subscribed to Gmail feed then any new mail in your mailbox will appear on your browser.That means no need to even remain logged in.The favorite sites which we visit daily are added and the site can be visited with a single click. If you are addicted to any serial and you watch it on You Tube or any other site then on adding the media stream of that particular site,you will be notified when there is any new inclusion, such as any new episode added to the site. I have used it for quite sometime, and I think that ,I went mad about it due to its wonderful features.

Google continues to update it’s search experience through the algorithms and the way by which the results are displayed.But,the search box of Google was left alone without any update for long years except the fact that drop down were added for suggested results.The search box had a thin input field all these years.But now,Google thinks to make a change in it’s search box, especially the size of the in.Last week,when I was using Safari browser,I noticed that the search box appearing bigger to me than the previous one. I thought that it may be a fake to my eyes,but when I noticed the buttons,all buttons were square in shape,then I thought that, definitely there has been a change and found that Google has updated it’s search box.I am not the only person who noticed the change but there are many.It is a trivial update made by Google, as millions of people use Google for performing searches everyday.Just notice the  previous Google search box which is below and see the difference from the new one which is above.This change first took place in Safari and slowly many reports say that it had been noticed in Firefox too.The Vice president of Google also confirmed about the update that has been made by Google in the search box.For more Google news visit Yongl.

This is really a great news for the people who used Firefox and switched for Chrome recently,but these people were using Chrome all the day without any extensions in Chrome. Last week, Google has announced that extension support was turned from now in all the developer versions of Chrome  of  Windows by default from now onwards. Before,extension support in Chrome was hidden largely and only few extension can be used with Chrome now and others are yet to be added.Few examples has been compiled by Google in a list,these examples includes simple things in Google Reader button such as auto-subscribe for URL’s and Gmail inbox checker. This is the first step by Google in its “launch process” for the Chrome features. I think that this feature is worth nothing,  as Chrome’s regular users are still using only version 2x,whereas the developed releases coming now are in 4x versions.So,it is not clear that Google will turn on extensions atleat in 3.0 version of Chrome (Chrome3.0) and whether it becomes official,right now beta version of it is available .Google has enlisted some help features to speed up the extension of Chrome builds on Linux and Mac. Extensions in latest build of Chromium has not been highlighted on Mac, but by putting “chrome://extensions/” on the URL you get the extensions.

Google Listen,latestly a new project that Google has added to Google Labs  and it’s sure to crowd pleaser for Android users..Google Listen,is an Android  application,which lets us to search through a web audio content, as quickly as possible.This application not only allows to search  the audio content ,but it also allows us to download or stream the audio content directly to our phone.This application acts similar to a podcaster by allowing  us to subscribe to audio feeds and new content is downloaded over the air. It is very simple to use this application, just go to the search bar, then you type and enter the thing whatever you are looking for,let it be a more general term or a specific podcast.The most relevant podcast and audio clips which are scattered across the web is pulled up by google ,then you can begin the streaming immediately. If you want to make multiple choices,you can build a queue, the playing of our  subscriptions will be automatically begined by Google Listen,when it has reached the end of the playlist.At this point ,the application is indexing “ thousands” of content sources only in English, But Google intends to expand to other languages.At this time ,Google Listen is available only on Android.This is due to the reason that, application is still under development. A fact that,this application has been omitted from iPhone has created a big issue,because Google has  got  its application approved  for App Store recently.Apple has also rejected a native application of  Google Latitude and it has also banned all the Voice apps of Google in the past few months.For competing with iTunes podcasting functionality, Apple would have smacked the app down well.Whatever the thing is, Google rocks  by supporting the devices it plans.

I came to know  about this recently that,Yahoo is asking the  Firefox users to switch to Internet Explorer 8,saying that it is a new and  safer browser and they also added that, the users would get a  better experience when they use Internet Explorer 8 than using Firefox,but I don’t know exactly, from when this had started occurring.This may be a fresh and direct result of the recent Yahoo and Microsoft love fest.Ironically,a year ago, when Microsof failed a acquisition attempt, Yahoo gave a recommendation to its users on its very front page, advising the users of  Internet Explorer to switch to Firefox 3, which is more faster and safer browser than Internet Explorer.The fact is, browsers recommended by Yahoo are purely based on the latest business alliances,as Micheal said “The Safest Browser For Yahoo is The One Who Pays Him The Most”. My idea is, Yahoo can develop their own browser and market them, so that ,they can get rid of such confusions.

A exciting news which came last month was that,the support for themes in Chrome were included by the latest developer builds of Chrome.A couple of them were found even by few sites,so that we can right now easily install them using special links.The links seem to be less than a ideal way of installing these themes as we can’t see what they look like before we turn them on.But,Google has become ready to launch a theme directory for the skins.The site,which will reside here, is not live.But if you notice on the new tab/new window page, which is default,it will appear as thumbnails of our most visited sites.If we want to remove some of them by clicking “X”,a theme page is shown up as a thumbnail.Clicking on the thumbnail takes us to the not-live-yet page,but the page having a bunch of themes for Chrome is clearly shown by the thumbnail.According to my counting skill there are about 24 themes shown in that thumbnail alone.This was a little trick used to get the themes directory thumbnail to show up works in the latest developer builds of chrome for both Windows and Mac But,this has not been tried on Linux.Chrome for Mac continues to come along nicely,as limited support for Flash have just been added to it recently.But,the same has been under working for as well for linux build.Improved support for extensions have been included in the new Chrome built along with the themes.For this time,themes are available on Chrome,but we have to download them and know them to drop them in the correct folder.The latest build is useful as it allows for push-button skinning and an easy way to revert.