Hasta La Gadget!

Could this be a case of Baidu’s browser in Chrome’s clothing? The Wall Street Journal seems to think so and the Chinese company isn’t exactly dismissing the KIRF claims. Announced back in April, the recently beta-released Baidu Browser brings a “sleek, stripped-down interface” eerily reminiscent of Google’s web-surfing entry to an otherwise Internet Explorer 6-loving Chinese population. The copycat similarities don’t just end in the looks department: there’s also an app store, fast-tab functionality and familiar menu icon placement. In its defense, the company claims its 30,000 plus free app offerings, in addition to China-specific entertainment features are enough to set it apart. Sure, this may seem like a case of the Asian search giant that doth protest too much, but it’s the company’s desire to drive traffic to its own engine that has us seeing Google.

[Thanks, Hardy]

Baidu Browser tips hat to old Steve Jobs’ quote, steals Chrome’s special sauce originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 is scheduled to be finished in the next month or two, and with it users will begin seeing a completely redesigned interface that is tailored to the operating system that they are using. This version of Firefox has already made significant advances in terms of performance, and it seems as though the only thing people have been criticizing in Firefox 3 are the new themes. When it comes down to it there is a different theme available for Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP.

Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer at Mozilla, put together a rather comprehensive review of how they visually tied Firefox 3 into the different operating systems. Personally the only thing that I really dislike in the themes is the “keyhole” design for the back/forward button. All of the themes, except for Linux, have this type of button. I find it to be gaudy and not flow well with the other aspects of the themes.

Luckily you can easily ditch the keyhole-styled button by enabling small icons. Just right-click on the navigation bar, choose Customize, and then check the Use Small Icons box. Notice how the oversized keyhole design is nowhere to be found?

I was really looking forward to Aero Glass integration in the Vista theme, but that won’t be happening this time around. For the time being we’ll have to rely on an extension to get that job done, that is until the next version of Firefox arrives:

On Vista we do a great job visually integrating with icons and with our set of secondary windows, although the main window is notably missing support for Aero glass. Users will hopefully be able to get this functionality using an extension during the life cycle of Firefox 3, and we will have glass support added to XUL for the next release of Firefox.

Faaborg even went as far as to say that “Safari 3.1 does a number of [visual] things wrong that we get right.” An example he gave was how the navigation buttons are not grayed out in Safari 3.1 when the window is not selected, which isn’t consistent with some other Apple applications. One commenter who goes by the name Superdotman called Faaborg out by saying:

Apple’s attention to detail is huge. If you see something that seems inconsistent, there’s usually a good reason.

Safari glyphs remain dark because when the window is deselected, they still accept click-through. Finder’s don’t.

Aqua controls are used for webclips because webclips are done with a modal dialog. Inline find uses the appropriate textured controls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you guys are trying to integrate more with OS X! Just tone down the ego a bit until you have some more knowledgeable Mac guys to back it up.

Mozilla definitely deserves some credit for being one of the first cross-platform browsers to developer OS-specific themes. I’m curious as to how many of you like the new themes, and how many of you will actually go hunting for a new one to use.

Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Some more fun phone facts from the folks at Pew: 83 percent of American adults own a cellphone, 35 percent have a smartphone, and 87 of percent smartphone owners use their handset to browse the internet and read email, apparently having decided that the things are good for more than just making phone calls and keeping papers from blowing away. Also of interest is the fact that 28 percent of the 2,277 people surveyed actually use their small screen devices as their primary method for accessing the internet. It’s worth noting that it’s not a huge sample size we’re working with here, so maybe hold off on declaring the PC dead — still, it may be a sign of lots of squinting to come.

Pew: Smartphone owners increasingly ignoring other devices to get online originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on June 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Win; Mac; Linux
I never thought Opera was going to make this possible, but I’m pleased to say that in the new Opera 9.5 you can actually customize how many Speed Dial entries are shown at any one given time! They are so incredibly useful that I’ve found myself needing more than the nine that comes standard in the browser. I will say that the Opera team could have made it easier for users to customize how many Speed Dial entries are shown at a time, but I’m just grateful that in Opera 9.5 this can now be changed. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Note the path to the Opera Preferences (type about:opera into the address bar to find it). Also, make sure you have at least one site added to Speed Dial already.
2. Close Opera. This is important to prevent Opera from modifying the configuration file we’re about to edit.
3. Open speeddial.ini file in any text editor from the Opera Preferences directory that you found Step 1.
4. Add the following lines (somewhere near the top is fine), and adjust number of rows & columns to meet your needs. I’ve got the speeddial.ini file open in the background in the screenshot above, and you can see that I set the number of rows and columns to 5.
   [Size]
Rows=5
Columns=5
5. Start Opera.

You’ll need to play around with the number of rows and columns until you find something that fits your screen well. In my example I added five rows and five columns, but you’ll notice that some of the rows don’t show up. Opera requires a minimum size for each of the Speed Dial entries, and if they don’t all fit they will simply run off the screen. Once that happens there’s no way to access them since scrollbars aren’t shown.

Options like these would probably be better served in the opera:config advanced options area, but hey, I won’t complain. Speed Dial is Opera’s most useful feature for me, and having more of them makes it even better.

One thing that you should note is that Opera Link will keep your Speed Dials synchronized across multiple computers, but it will only do work for the first nine entries you have. So don’t expect to all 50 of your Speed Dial entries to appear on all of your computers running Opera. Sorry, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has been investigating ways to make it easy for users to carry information (bookmarks, history, etc…) from one browser to another. What they came up with is an extension called Weave, and it can be used across several computers to synchronize data.

After signing up you will receive a confirmation email (I got mine in a matter of seconds). The link provided will give you the information to get started, which primarily consists of the link to download the extension. You’ll then restart Firefox and setup the extension using a Wizard. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to change the settings at anytime:

(Click to Enlarge)
 

The initial transfer of data may take a little while to complete depending on how much has to be synchronized, and after that Firefox will scan for changes every 30 minutes. In the future they hope to take a new approach much like what the Foxmarks extension has done, where it synchronizes changes immediately when they occur.

This is by no means extravagant, which is expected from such an early release. It will surely be compared to Opera Link (review), and right now I would say Opera is ahead since they have an online interface for browsing bookmarks. I’m sure Mozilla will capitalize on “add-ons” for Weave, which would allow users to synchronize data/settings saved in the browser and even extensions. All of this could result in the ultimate backup for your browser.

You must be using a pre-release version of Firefox 3 in order to test this out, and I would say that Weave still needs some polish before hitting the mainstream market. I tried out the extension, but for the time being I don’t really feel like I need it.

Tip: If you’re looking to install the add-on without signing up again, just go to https://services.mozilla.com/ and click on the Need the add-on? link.

Get Mozilla Weave for Firefox 3
Thanks to “S” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Firefox Weave 0.2: Sync Bookmarks, Tabs, History, Passwords, and MoreFoxmarks Beta for Firefox 3Space Saving Extension for Firefox Bookmark Toolbar UsersGoogle Sync Let’s Firefox Users Save SettingsTip Of The Day: Recovering Your Lost Firefox Bookmarks