No more Firefox

The browser boots up, and gives me a list of all those addons which need updates. Of course I'd like to have the latest version. Isn't it why I had it installed there in the first place? If its my unlucky day, even Firefox would need an update. And there is nothing I can do except wait until all those messy updates are done. Wait, there's more..After the updates comes the installation. Its very frustrating I need to use a browser quickly for 2 minutes and I need to wait for 5 minutes until Firefox is done dressing up itself. And I almost forgot, update the browser and be assured that atleast 3 out of 5 extensions wouldn't be compatible. Very, very frustrating. Chrome updates in the background. I don't care what you download as long as its from a trusted vendor. 5 seconds and its ready to browse the web, anytime of the day. Installing extensions or themes is just instantaneous with chrome, no restart required. Because at the end of the day, all I want is to have is to browse the internet. Not just keep looking at progress screens of addons getting updated. Now that Chrome has all extensions I use on Firefox, its been days since I've clicked on the Firefox browser. I've still not decided to uninstall Firefox, but then I'm getting there. P.S. When I opened Wordpress to write down this post, I was informed that Wordpress needed to update to 2.9.1. Here I go again...

Why do I need a browser?

It was this review for the opera 10 browser that made me think about it. Thanks to the proliferation of apis, desktop and mobile applications which have made my devices completely internet enabled devices, I now wonder what I would the browser for.

1. I check my email. But I can check that using IMAP on my mobile phone or via Thunderbird on my desktop.
2. Facebook. I get an email notification, that's when I need to check the facebook page. I have the facebook app on my mobile, which does quite a decent job, and even Gravity supports fb. I don't use seesmic, so on my laptop, I need to use the browser.
3. News that which twitter hasn't delivered, I need a browser for. Of course I could use RSS feeds, but I find that most of the RSS feeds for newspapers pretty much crowd up my reader with several items which will remain unread forever. So I do need a browser, or I could just read the newspaper!
4. Twitter. Gravity on my phone and Destroy twitter on my laptop.
5. Reference. Most of my reference is when I don't exactly have access to a laptop or don't have time to get to it. Which means, my mobile search tool is what I use for reference. It still uses the default browser on my mobile though.
6. Google reader. Gravity does a decent job, but I still would like to see images and links on my mobile phone. Now this is something I definitely need a browser for.
7. Blogging. Thanks to posterous, all I now need to do is to send an email and I have a blog post.

My laptop is all about the browser. In fact, the browser is on the startup application list. So if I don't need the browser, I don't need the laptop? After writing this post I realized that Gravity for S60 is becoming a really important application in my mobile arsenal. I have tried to take an extreme view of certain sites in here. You must've noticed that I still need a browser for many tasks, but the point is that I'm soon beginning to see myself using my mobile more than my laptop, and my applications more than the browser.  Now if only my mobile phone had more screen real estate and a bigger keyboard.

Make your firefox look like Firefox 4

The latest news doing its rounds on the internet is the futuristic looking, theme mockups of the Mozilla Firefox 4 browser. The new theme reminds me of the minimalistic feel adopted by both Chrome and IE8. The wiki states the mock ups are only for brainstorming and might be revised several times before they make it to real browser arena..

But, the interface looks really minimalistic and I loved it so much that I went around searching for a download. And here it is, in all its glory. Download the file, extract, click and drag the *.jar file to your Mozilla addons window.

Thanks to "BoneyardBrew"  and "SoapyHamHocks" @ DeviantART for the awesome theme. Do check out more of his work at his DeviantART gallery!
You would also need to install the Firefox Personal menu extension to complete the look.
Have a cool theme to recommend? Leave a comment!

Two Adobe Photoshop replacements

You need to edit an image real quick and you are working either on a netbook or someone else's machine which doesn't have a copy of your favourite photoshop. Or maybe you never had photoshop in the first place.
Adobe Photoshop has become the premier digital one stop solution for image editing and it should come as no surprise that more than a few would have attempted to ride the photoshop success wave with their own clones.

The first clone which I have been using for a while is the Aviary Phoenix online image editor. Mind you, this has even support for layers and can handle almost anything you might want to get done with an image. Its completely on the cloud (and free as well) and all you need is your trusty Firefox (or any other browser) by your side to edit your image. I guess there's a sign up required but that's not so cumbersome. Being a web app has its advantages, such as being able to capture any webpage easily and Aviary even has a firefox addon. Aviary has a complete suite of applications for every possible form of image editing requirement online.

The second is a very light weight application called the Artweaver. Now artweaver is a fully functional free image editor. Users of photoshop would find themselves completely at home because of the interface. What's more, it even supports export/import as Photoshop format files (PSDs).
The Artweaver interface (I love GITS!!)

Artweaver even has a portable version which you can run off a USB key. You can further enhance artweaver with a number of plugins (which you can find on the download page), you even get to extend it to use XnView, the freeware image viewer.

Both these applications would not be able to replace Photoshop for power users. But when it comes to basic image editing, they get the job done quite well!

Firefox 3.5 is out. Time for an upgrade!

The latest version of your Firefox is now out! I've been using firefox ever since it was pheonix and I never had complaints. So I guess I wouldn't come up with any right now! Firefox 3.5 makes browsing faster. And adds a lot of minor/major functionality tweaks. Makes the awesome bar, even more awesome, and Introduces private browsing at last. But you could wait until all your extensions get upgraded. But most developers have already updated their extensions and you shouldn't be surprised if most of your popular extensions would move up the upgrade ladder without much trouble. Site rendering &performance has improved a lot. Read all about their performance upgrades here! Go here for a complete list of top features. Click on help > Check for updates on your firefox browser. Or use the link below.

Press this - the nifty wordpress bookmarklet

Scribefire's blogging extension for firefox was featured on thunderror.com a while ago.

I always had the press this bookmarklet on my bookmarks list, but had never bothered to use it until now. But I soon came to realize what a valuable tool it was. Instead of sending those weird bits and pieces of the internet to your tumblelog or your twitter, why not blog about them on your primary blog? Twitter as always has been a major distraction to my blogging activities. So get back to microblogging on your own blog. Thanks to Press this!

The bookmarklet allows you to post to your wordpress blog from anywhere on the web, which is as good as scribefire. All it takes is a click off the button. Like something you see on the web? Click on the bookmarklet and share it with your blog visitors.

I know most of you would already have used this tool if you own, or have owned a WP blog at some point of time. But this post is for all those people who wish to come back and blog more than they tweet!

If you have a wordpress blog, go to your tools page and you should find your press this button right there, waiting for you!

13 reasons why Internet explorer rules workplaces!

A recent survey reveals that most enterprises still love to flaunt Internet Explorer as their default browser. Most of the security updates in the organization are for IE as well. Major reasons which could be attributed to this are:

1. It is bundled with Microsoft windows.
2. Most Microsoft office applications work better with IE
3. Outlook Webaccess works better with Internet explorer
4. Microsoft sharepoint services work with Internet explorer
5. Its easier to put in admin policies for a non-open source browser
6. Other software used in the organization are dependent on Internet explorer
7. It gets updated with the windows updater
8. Its "Microsoft" Internet Explorer.
9. The admin does not know about Firefox or Chrome
10. There is so much you can do with Internet explorer
11. There are no Macs which run Safari or Firefox
12. Users have trouble learning to use any browser other than IE
13. The IT policy says so.

Let us know what you think in the comments..Should IE be the browser of choice in organizations?

Stopping Google Chrome from identifying you

  Using Chrome? Well..I do..since I find it to fast and light and runs as smooth as a browser should. I love my firefox too...but there are certain things which Chrome is good at. And security/privacy is not one of them.... Every install of Google Chrome comes with a unique ID which identifies the user. Removing it is not easy without help... After all..doesn't Google already know enough about you through your gmails, indexed chats, your browsing and search history, what you buy, your maps, your photos (if you use Picasa) and they already have the earth mapped up to them... UnChrome promises to do just that, to remove the unique ID (Just don't forget to close chrome before u do it)...If not anything, atleast their Icon looks cool!

StumbleUpon - Without the toolbar!

I remember using this one long back, so I decided to write a post about it...This one is for all of you who use browsers like Google Chrome, Flock and are unable to install the stumbleupon toolbar. A quick introduction, Stumbleupon is the remote control for the web, websites are voted and reviewed upon by users and lets users stumble upon webpages on the internet...based on your interests, search criteria, keywords etc..

Now, Stumbleupon runs courtesy the Stumbleupon toolbar and if you a browser which is unsupported or you just do not wish to install the toolbar, there is no way you can stumbleupon sites...unless of course you enable the Stumbleupon bar which you can enable by dragging the following link to your bookmarks toolbar or clicking on the following link.

Stumbleupon

The Stumbleupon bar frame lets you stumbleupon on new and exciting sites, just the way it would have done if you had installed the toolbar. But, things aren't so rosy...hmmm, the bar doesn't let you login with your SU username and you can't share your favourites with your friends...but you can send something you like to your email address..And since there is no login, the pages may not be from the topics of your interest... This bar also works great when you are at a PC on which you can't install software on and you are bored with no work... (if you liked this post, link to it and help promote SU on unsupported browsers)

Google Chrome - the browser from Google!

The logo reminds me of some japanese anime weapon which would split open and attack the baddies..but then the browser does exactly does, not just the baddies...defeats all other browsers straightaway...The minute I woke up today, I brushed my teeth and went over straight to start my google chrome download...The installer downloads the file and I keep waiting with bated breath... We use gmail for mail, gtalk for chat and every browsing session begins with the home page as google and ends with a google search result..so shouldn't your browser be google's as well? Google Chrome is to browsers what Iphone is for phones..The interface is fresh and slick....its very light compared to the slow and bulky Firefox (whoa! I never thought I would say that...well, thats competition...) But still there is time before I drive the foxes out..I still cannot drive away the fox because of one primary reason - the addons. When you load Google browser, you get to a page which has screenshots of all your frequently added websites, this quite reminds me of the speed dial feature in the Opera browser (though with Opera its user set, and not based on number of visits)..It has tabs which run as different processes unlike in any other tabbed browser... Another notable feature is, in addition to the usual tabs and windows, you can open something known as a "Incognito" window and anything you decide to open on it, is off record (cool!). Its a browser faster than the Safari and lighter than the fox and renders pages like a miracle...Chrome is something which I would call a smart browser which learns a lot from your browsing habits (automatic search engine preferences, automatic most visited bookmarks and automatic everything...) If you have been using the fox, it even imports everything to continue your browsing experience! There is another option called application shortcuts which lets you create shortcuts on your desktop, quick launch or start menu for every website/webapp you encounter. Just go to the site and create a shortcut..The shortcut loads using chrome (but sans the home, back and front button...just like a regular application...) Brings the web to your desktop...A full list of features is to be found here There is still news of a security flaw doing its rounds on the internet, but then till I switch completely to Chrome, I guess I am safe and if I am not, its ok..its a price to pay for such a great browser which is so good even its beta version...So I guess you should stop reading her and go and download it here.. This is one of the fastest reviews I have ever written so the grammar is terrible and the spelling could be wrong in several places...I just wrote this review in such a hurry.. Get more updates on the browser @ Get Google Chrome