This is an update to Want To Shoot Rich In The Face?

Quake Live is an FPS style game that’s completely in-browser, and that means it’s cross-browser/cross-platform compatible.

The plan here is to schedule an event to get a bunch of PCMech readers (yes, that means you’re invited) into the game to see if you guys and gals actually like it or not. Consider it a "mass review" to test out the game along with being able to play with an actual PCMech author, that being yours truly.

From the previous article, I’ve discovered a few things, with the biggest being that if you’re running things that block scripting and Flash such as NoScript or FlashBlock for Firefox, the game will not work. You will need to temporarily disable those for gameplay.

In addition there are several options you can set to make gameplay better per your computer’s specifications, such as adjusting texture detail, full-screen mode and so on. This is accessed in-game by pressing ESC on your keyboard and making the appropriate adjustments. The video below shows you how to do this, so be sure to watch it. Bear in mind you can go higher or lower, so even if you have an older computer, you can disable/downgrade enough stuff to make the game enjoyable and fluid on play.

Note on the video: My frame rate is crappy because my capture software isn’t designed to "grab" high-frame stuff like that. Believe me when I say the frame rate you’ll get will be a million times better and completely fluid.

This video makes note of my Quake Live ID:

http://www.quakelive.com/#profile/summary/frostedside

After logging in to Quake Live, you can add me in as a friend by going to the above link, or you can manually add by searching for the ID frostedside.

See video below for more details. There are also some scheduling notes below the video.

Scheduling notes

As for when I plan on getting everybody in on a game, it may happen this evening (as in today Wednesday November 18) during the PCMech LIVE broadcast from 8pm to 10pm EST.

Browser skinning simply means to change how it looks. The functionality remains the same, but the icons, background, menus and so on have an altered appearance. In some instances, browser skinning can also include adding in functionality it didn’t have prior.

Here’s how to use an alternative skin for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Internet Explorer

IE has never been easy to alter per its appearance. It’s tough to move around buttons, and any attempt to skin it usually results in it not working correctly due to the fact a DLL or two has to be altered (and that’s not smart.)

The way around this is to simply use another browser that uses the IE Trident engine. A good choice for this is Avant Browser. It is fully "skinnable" and just about everything you can think of can be changed in it. It also has something very desirable: A built-in flash animation filter to cut out unwanted Flash content when browsing. In addition to that it’s compatible with many exiting IE add-ons such as Google Toolbar.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox has several ways in which you can skin it. The traditional way is to browse the themes available, and add in the one you want right from that web site. The second way is to use Personas, which you may find more attractive due to the fact you have more options. For example, you can use any background image you want with Personas and save your own custom themes easily.

The last way to skin Firefox is, if you’re daring, to directly edit the CSS files it uses in the chrome directory. This is not to be confused with Google Chrome. Chrome has two files that you can edit and enable for hand-coded customizations.

Opera

Like Firefox, Opera has its own dedicated directory for skins. An advantage over IE and FF is on that page you can simply pick the color type you want:

..and go from there.

Other apps you can skin to your liking

Windows Media Player 11

This takes some effort but it’s do-able.

First, launch Windows Media Player.

Press CTRL+1 to go to "Library Mode" (CTRL+2 is "Skin Mode", CTRL+3 is "Now Playing Mode", which is the default most people use).

Press CTRL+M to show the Menu Bar.

Click View and then Skin chooser, like this:

Click the More skins button:

You’ll then be taken to a web site where you can download compatible skins.

Skins are single files with a .wmz extension. You can simply run them and they’ll install themselves.

This is what WMP 11 looks like with the Batman Begins skin:

Note: Some of you may get an error on install of certain skins. If you do, try them anyway. Most of the time they’ll work fine. If not, just switch back to Library Mode with a CTRL+1, go back to the skin chooser and try something different or just remove the skin.

Trillian Astra

This instant messaging program has long had the ability to use custom skins. Astra, the latest version of Trillian also has full skin support.

Below is one of the built-in choices, "Cobalt."

You can find many more skins for Trillian here.

VLC

It is, for whatever reason, widely unknown that VLC can be skinned easily. VideoLAN themselves has a whole section of their web site dedicated to it.

One of the most popular skins, oddly enough, is to make VLC look like Windows Media Player 11:

Looks pretty darned convincing if you asked me. The only thing that tips it off that it’s VLC is the orange cone VLC icon at the top left of the app window, and of course the title bar.

Some notes about skinning applications

Customizing the look of apps can be fun, but how it will work is largely dependent on how well a skin or theme is programmed, as there are some crappy ones out there. The general rule of thumb is to choose one that has been downloaded many times, has good ratings and in best case scenario has comments on what work and what doesn’t when using it.

It’s also good to know how to remove skins if you download one, install it but then decide you don’t want it later. Most skins are self-contained, but some put hooks into applications that if left installed may adversely affect functionality of the program. This doesn’t happen often but it’s good to be aware of it.

Opera 10 is out of beta and in official release, so if you want to try it out, go for it.

Note before continuing: PCMech Premium members can see me review this browser in a 20-minute video.

1. "Windows Native" skin

Accessible by: Tools/Appearance or Shift+F12

The default look of Opera is "Opera Standard". It definitely looks better than Opera 9 did, but "Windows Native" is better. It makes the browser look much cleaner and icons are easier see because they’re color coded (in "Standard" they’re not).

This combined with the fact the tabs are above the address bar by default (Note: It can be moved easily, I’ll cover that in a moment) makes this one of the easiest browser interfaces there is.

It used to be that all browsers had different colored navigation buttons on purpose to make it easier to use. Opera is the only one left that does it right.

2. Fastest address bar search there is

Example:

Firefox’s "Awesome Bar" stutters and/or chokes when trying to search your recent history from the address bar. Opera never, repeat, never does any of that crap. Just start typing and blam, there’s your results. Instantly.

3. Sessions

The Sessions feature is when you can load up specific sets of tabs on demand at any time that you want.

Example 1 – You want to load up Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all at once.

So you do:

Then while these tabs are open you click File, Sessions, Save This Session:

Title it and click OK:

Now whenever you want to open those four sites all at once, you click File, Sessions, [title of session you saved]…

…and ta-da, the session is opened (as a new Opera window) with all four sites loaded exactly as you saved them.

You can have as many saved sessions as you want.

For those saying, "But IE 8 has that too!" No it doesn’t. It has the ability to load multiple tabs on startup, but with Opera’s Sessions feature you can actually save sets and call them up at whim whereas in IE 8 that must be done manually.

4. Just as fast as Chrome in a way better package

If you’re all about speed but Chrome is just way too watered down for your liking (a common complaint by many), Opera 10 is the best of both worlds.

Some benchmarks out there may say Opera 10 is not as fast as Chrome. I disagree because I’m talking real-world use here. And in my experience, Opera is faster than Chrome for day-to-day stuff. It loads my online banking web site faster. It resolves sites faster. It caches better. The interface allows me to find stuff quicker. It’s extensible with widgets. It has the best mouse gestures of any browser that exists.

I could go on and on about this, but you get the idea. Speed means nothing to me without features that make that speed worth it. Opera gives you the speed and the features.

5. Best smooth-scrolling there is

Most people can’t stand smooth scrolling and instantly turn it off. Opera is the only browser I use with it turned on because it’s the only one that does it right. It’s not too "stiff" or "loose". Opera has that nice happy medium when it comes to smooth scrolling, so much so you would probably leave it on as well.

In addition: The default setting for the mouse wheel concerning how much it scrolls up and down is also just right.

6. Ability to move anything just about anywhere

This has been a feature of Opera for a while, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Example:

Of all browsers I’ve ever used, Opera is the one you can customize the most. Want the tabs on the bottom? Do it. Want the address bar on the top, right, left or bottom? No problem.

Other browsers only dream of native customization like this.

7. Help documentation that’s actually (gasp!) helpful!

One thing I knock other browsers for is the seriously crappy documentation they have.

The F1 key, as most people know, is the key you press when you want help in an application in Windows.

When you do this in IE 8…

…the first thing the help section does is tell you what’s new in the browser. I don’t want to know what’s new. I want a table of contents because maybe, just maybe, I’m looking for documentation on a feature but don’t know what to call it (so I can’t search for it being I don’t know the title).

It no wonder that nobody ever uses the help section in IE – even in 8.

When you do this in Firefox…

…you are brought to support.mozilla.com where you are shown, quite loudly, to SEARCH FOR WHATEVER IT IS YOU WANT TO GET HELP WITHIN A BIG YELLOW BAR.

Once again, no table of contents. You get "featured tutorials" and "handy references" instead. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I want an itemized list. It’s not here. You’ll waste time going thru other "handy" sections just trying to find out how to do simple things.

Note to Mozilla: We as users don’t want a "knowledgebase". We want plain English documentation. And yes, there’s a difference and a big one at that.

When you do this in Opera…

Well, glory be, look at that.. a list of contents on the right showing every single feature in the browser in a nice clean categorized way. This is proper.

Do you realize how rare this is these days that a team actually took the time to document this the right way the first time?

It’s gotten so bad these days that we as browser users expect the documentation to suck. But Opera’s docs don’t suck. Not by a long shot.

Final notes

At present Opera isn’t enough to pull me away from Firefox mainly due to the way it handles bookmarks and the fact I don’t get the plugins FF has.

However I will say this browser is staying installed on my system. It gave me a solid reason to ditch Chrome and go with Opera instead. I was happy to uninstall Chrome after using Opera 10.

This browser is also going to kick serious ass on my netbook due to the native Opera Turbo feature.

A big thumbs up to Opera 10. It finally looks modern, acts modern and has the big-player features people are looking for.

And by the way, yes it’s available for Mac and Linux too.

Caret Browsing is when you use your keyboard to navigate a web page as you would if you were in a text editor or word processing application. This style of moving within a document is nothing new as it’s been around for a very long time, however most don’t know it exists in web browsers. IE and Firefox both have the Caret Browsing feature, accessible by pressing F7 on your keyboard.

The best use of Caret Browsing is to precisely select blocks of text. When you use your mouse to highlight text, often it will occur that the browser selects something you didn’t want to. With Caret Browsing, the browser enables a cursor that you can move with your keyboard and get right to where you want to be, highlight, select, copy and then paste into your preferred text or document editor.

See video for details below.

Google seems to have an odd way of deploying their Chrome browser. The first reaction when it appeared was, "Hey! Where’s the Mac and Linux versions? What gives?"

It was nothing short of strange why Google seemed to concentrate on Windows so much concerning their own browser offering. Granted, Windows is the most-used desktop operating system in the world, but hey, there are plenty of Mac and Linux users out there.

So now the 64-bit version of Chrome is available for…

Linux.

And nothing else.

I’m not kidding. Linux people can build it right now if they want to in all its 64-bit glory.

Windows people still get the 32-bit flavor only.

As for Mac OS X? It’s still in development. Sorry, Mac people.

In all seriousness, this is why so many people stick to Firefox. When Mozilla has a release of that browser, it’s worldwide, has almost every conceivable language version available and has versions ready for Windows, Mac and Linux that are ready-to-run.

And yes, there’s 64-bit Firefox just in case you were wondering (as well as several other Mozilla products).

I’m seriously trying to like Chrome.. but.. well.. um.. no.

To our Linux users in the audience, if you’re able to build a 64-bit Chrome and get it to work, please feel free to comment on your experience with it. Many would be interested in your thoughts on it.

In our last episode.. I talked about how much web browsers suck. But now it’s time to discuss how great they are.

The best way to describe the greatness of modern web browsers is to point out the features we have now that most people take for granted.

1. Tabbed Document Interface

Most people know this as simply tabs. This was one of the best improvements ever made in a web browser. And said honestly, I cannot browse without them. I first remember first using a tabbed interface with Maxthon (which used the IE engine). IE took a very long time to develop a tabbed version of their own, but finally brought one to the table with IE 7. Better late than never, I suppose.

2. Zoom

I first used a zoom feature in Opera way back at version 5 and it was great. Unfortunately Opera was a pay-browser back then so that was a no-go for me. IE always did have the ability to increase text size but not images (that wasn’t until much later). Firefox always had a zoom but it didn’t work properly until version 3. Fortunately, all browsers now have a proper zoom feature. They will even zoom Flash content now.

3. Better bookmarks

Bookmarks now not only hold information on the URL of the site you want to go to, but also the "favicon" (small image representing the site, should it have one) and can also contain keyword tags in browsers like Firefox.

4. In-browser search bar using search engine of choice

This is something a ton of people take for granted. Early browsers had absolutely no search bar whatsoever. You had the address bar and that was it. If you wanted to search Yahoo, you had to physically go to www.yahoo.com to do it.

Before the search bar there were add-on toolbars for both Netscape and IE. One of the more popular offerings was Google Toolbar (which is still available). However with any toolbar you were forced to the search engine provided and no other.. that is unless you wanted to install yet another toolbar. And of course people remember their Netscapes and IEs back then with 2 or more toolbars in it. Rather terrible. And crash-prone.

Search bars now allow any engine to be used with no additional memory munched up since it’s integrated into the browser.

5. Full screen mode.

This is yet another vastly underrated feature. It is (to the best of my knowledge) universally accessible on the Windows platform by pressing F11 in IE, Firefox or Opera. You press F11 again to go back to windowed mode.

Full screen mode is great because it dedicates your entire screen to whatever web page you’re viewing. In fact, you can make it "book like" by pressing F11, then increasing the zoom a few times (CTRL-plus or just plus in Opera) for maximum readability.

A small note for those looking to buy a netbook: Know your full-screen feature in your browser because I’ll guarantee that you will use it. A lot.

What features of modern browsers do you like?

Chime in with a comment or two.

The web browser is the most used application on your computer, period. Even when you’re not using it, it’s probably minimized to the taskbar/dock/panel.

Unfortunately web browsers still to this day have a fair degree of suck factor. Here are 5 reasons why web browsers suck:

1. Plugins are the browser’s own worst enemy

I call them plugins. Call then "add-ons" or "extensions" or whatever else you want. They’re plugins.

Plugins are a wonderful way to seriously screw up your browser in short order.

In Internet Explorer 8: In Manage Add-ons there is absolutely no way to uninstall anything there. Not possible. This sucks. You can "disable", but not uninstall. This is because add-ons in IE are "tied" directly to external programs. So in order to get rid of it, you must actually go uninstall the program that uses IE – assuming you know which to uninstall.

In Mozilla Firefox: Many plugins create SQL tables internally to the browser in order for them to work. On an uninstall of many different plugins, files are left behind and the SQL tables remain – in several different places. And darned if you know which tables within Firefox you’re supposed to drop. Thought you could kill this stuff with a registry/file cleaner? Wrong. Has to be done manually. This is assuming you actually know where to look.

And, of course, whenever a new version of the browser is released, plugins break.

2. Proprietary crapola

Internet Explorer is the one to blame for this catastrophe. The fact there are still web sites to this day that are "IE only" is simply ridiculous.

And if you put a tag on your site that says, "Best viewed with Firefox", that’s just as bad. You should be ashamed of yourself for doing such a thing.

3. Copy/paste text from a web page is still a nightmare

Sometimes all you want to do is copy a little piece of text rather than type it out. Good luck with that, because you’ll need it.

Some web pages have it so you can copy/paste text easily. But on others when you attempt to highlight anything this huge BLOCK of text is copied. Then when you try to adjust the highlight you made, it gets even worse.

Let’s say for the moment you’re successful in copying some text to the buffer. Okay, we’re good, right? Wrong. On paste into something as simple as Notepad these huge SPACES happen. "Wait, wait.. I didn’t copy any big-ass spaces.." Well, Mr. Browser thinks you did.

Out of frustration you just have to type out whatever you wanted to copy yourself.

4. Printing web pages is still terrible

Some web sites make it easy to print things. For example, many bank web sites smartly offer PDF versions of bank statements for print-out. This is great because PDFs always print exactly the way you see them.

But let’s say you’re not on a bank site and you want to print something out. The text is either too big or too small on the printed page, the graphics (should any exist) look terrible, and what is that font that printed? That’s not what’s on the web page..

5. Slow!

Believe it or not, there was a time when IE was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 3. And it was wonderful.

Believe it or not, there was a time when Firefox was a really fast browser. That was way back at version 1.5. And it was wonderful.

Both are now are memory hogging, plugin-infested lumps of digital slowness.

Want to know why Google Chrome and Safari appear to run faster? It’s not because of less memory consumption or faster scripting. It’s because you’re not using the same plugins as in your IE or FF.

Unfortunately most don’t like Chrome or Safari.

Am I saying to run IE or FF with no plugins at all? Well, if you can browse that way, I’d say go right ahead. Ditch the toolbars and any plugins installed to breathe life back into the browser. It will speed up quite a bit. That is until you open up a few tabs with some Flash, and then.. it.. gets.. slower.. and….. slower…… and, well.. it would be faster for you to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich.

What do you hate about web browsers the most?

Let us know by writing a comment or two.

The most-used browser on the internet is still Internet Explorer. It surprises me how many people do not know how to make basic customizations to this browser. This video will show you how to do it. You may learn a few things you didn’t know about the browser before. See video below.

Opera is one of those browsers that has a very dedicated community, but pales in usage compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The perks of Opera have pretty much always been the same.

• Best native tab management
• Lightning fast operation in just about every way
• Low memory usage
• A user interface that just makes sense
• More options that are actually usable

I’d dare to say that other browsers "borrow" features from Opera routinely. The Opera browser always seems to come up with something really cool but people really don’t take notice of it. Then after a while, a competing browser will introduce a very similar feature and be lauded as if they invented it.

An example of this is the zoom feature. Opera was the first browser I can remember that got zoom right the first time. Firefox didn’t get that right until version 3 and IE not until 7, both several years after Opera more or less perfected it.

The only thing about Opera that was obvious is that it looked old. The current Opera 9.64 does look a bit antiquated while IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome look snazzy and modern.

Opera 10 on the other hand finally gets a freshened interface. It’s nothing particularly groundbreaking, but considering how often we all use our web browsers, this is a welcome sight to see. There is no part of this browser that says "old" anymore.

Concerning the address bar…

The AwesomeBar in Firefox sucks. Even in FF 3.5 it’s still a drag to use. You will realize why once you use Opera’s address bar. Why? Because Opera never "thinks" when trying to pull up information. The moment you start typing, wham, instant search of your bookmarks with no "thinking". It is nothing short of amazing how fast it is (even on slow PCs!)

Concerning better web integration…

From the Opera 10 page:

If you use a Web mail service as your default mail client, you can tell Opera 10 to do the same. Clicking on e-mail addresses or "Send by Mail" in Opera will open the compose page from your Web mail service provider. The same is true with the Feed reader — you can now also add any RSS/atom feed into your favorite online feed reader from within Opera 10.

This is actually really cool. But unfortunately the selections available do not include what most people use.

For example, when you click on an email address on a web page, this is what happens:

Okay, cool, I can choose a webmail service of my choice, let’s see what choices I have.

That’s it? No Hotmail? No Yahoo Mail? No Gmail? I’m hoping those services will be added in when this browser is out of beta.

Concerning the other stuff…

Opera Turbo

The Opera Turbo feature is an accelerator of sorts that is supposed to increase the speed of browsing when on a slow or choked (i.e. a slow public wi-fi) network. It is enabled by clicking the clock icon at the lower left of the browser. I can’t use it because my network is too fast (oh, darn it all). You can read more about Turbo here.

Resizable search field

At top right next to the address bar you can search Google (just like in Firefox or IE) and now you can adjust the size of it, but I bet you didn’t know that IE and FF can do the exact same thing. Opera makes it easy to spot. The other guys do that hiding-in-plain-sight thing.

Auto-update

Summed up: It’s about time Opera got this.

Would I recommend Opera now?

Opera 10 is the first version of this browser that I would actually recommend. As good as 9 and all the previous versions were, I just couldn’t recommend those. And the main reason for that is sub-par web standards support.

Version 10 on the other hand does have proper web standard support (believe me, that’s important). And as soon as the loose ends are tied up from the beta to the final release, I think this will finally be the one that will get Opera more new users.

After trying out Safari 4 beta and not being overly impressed with it, I went ahead and downloaded the latest version of the Opera web browser, version 9.64.

The petite 5MB installer file whizzed thru its installation process. I don’t remember a browser installing itself this quickly since Firefox 1.5.

This browser is lightning quick. Pages which ordinarily take a time to load in IE or Firefox load much faster in Opera.

Many of Opera’s widgets are useful, easy to install and moreover easy to uninstall. Widget management is far and beyond better than the way Firefox handles add-ons. However this is not without a huge drawback. Opera widgets essentially run as separate apps. While this isn’t necessarily a problem, what happens is that each widget appears as a task in the Windows taskbar. So if you’re running 5 widgets, that’s 5 things cluttering up the taskbar. Widgets should have a way of running in-browser without separating themselves so much.

Skins in Opera make the browser look better and do not require a restart whenever you decide to change it around.

A knock against Opera is that it does not have a private browsing mode, nor are there any plans to have that feature. Not natively, anyway. You could enable it with the 3rd-party OperaTor app, but it would be better if the feature was native.

My single largest complaint about Opera is the same I have about other web browsers, that being horrible memory management.

When using Opera for a while the memory use will blow up like a balloon. You can watch this happen in the Windows Task Manager with the opera.exe file. A quick restart of the browser fixes the problem, but the fact I have to do that is flat out irritating.

The memory management thing is certainly not an Opera-only problem. Internet Explorer and Firefox balloon up just like Opera does.

Small side note: Google Chrome is the only browser I’m aware of that separates out tabs as sessions where the memory used by a tab is released when closed.

The interesting thing is that when Opera balloons up in memory use, you really can’t tell. But I don’t know if this is good or bad.

Really good features for power users

Cached option for image viewing

With browsers there’s show or no-show for images. But Opera has a third option, that being Cached. If you load a site, then revisit it using the cache, this speeds up load time quite a bit.

A ton of import/export options

You can import/export quite a bit more compared to other browsers. Furthermore the import/export process is easy – a huge plus.

Using Firefox 3 as a comparison:

If you want to export your Firefox bookmarks, this is the b.s. you have to go thru just to do it:

Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks, Import and Backup button, Export HTML. And I guarantee if I didn’t tell you that, you had no idea that was the process.

Opera makes is much easier to do the same thing without hunting around menus just to figure it out.

Print options

Other browsers have one way of printing, their way. Not so with Opera. You actually get options of how you want your web page printed.

Opera Link synchronizes as little or as much as you want

Opera Link will synchronize a whole lot more than just bookmarks, and this is all native to the browser.

This is something I wish Firefox had natively.

What do you think?

Is Opera worth it and still a contender? It’s certainly got the goods. Oh, and let’s not forget it’s got a fully-enabled mail client that does IMAP/POP, newsgroups and IRC!

There are some web browsers that are safe in older versions and some that aren’t.

The safest (and fastest) web browser in the world is Lynx. This is because it’s 100% text-based. There is no malware, spyware or malicious code that exists for Lynx that I know of. The only drawback is that there aren’t any images in Lynx, nor can you use a mouse. But it is safe.

Older versions of the Opera web browser do quite well because they’re not a primary target to develop malicious code for. However there really isn’t any significant advantage to running an older version of this because the newer versions are better, more stable and more feature-packed.

Where you really see the difference in speed and security is when it comes to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Firefox

The fastest and most stable version of Firefox was arguably the last release of version 1.5, that being 1.5.12 (available here). It’s really fast and the US English Windows installer is just a tick over 5MB whereas the current 3.0.7 is 7.3MB. Firefox has fattened up quite a bit since 1.5.

Is running FF 1.5 safe? No. There have been many security fixes since 1.5 and it’s worth it to run the most current version.

Fortunately if you yearn for The Firefox That Once Was, there’s Seamonkey. I recently wrote about this. This browser runs how Firefox used to run. Speedy, quick, fast, light. And you can run it alongside Firefox easily; it won’t "argue" with Firefox whatsoever so you can easily have both installed without a problem.

Internet Explorer

The IE browser is well known to the the #1 target for spyware and malicious code as far as web browsers are concerned. To run an older version of it is literally inviting trouble. And it doesn’t matter how careful of an internet user you are, because if you run an old IE, it’s just bad news.

What you can run for IE depends on what version of Windows you have.

Windows 2000 can run 5.01, 5.5 or 6.

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 can run 6, 7 or 8.

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 can run 7 or 8.

With 2000, IE 6 is the most recent version you can run and that has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. Yes, I know there are more than a few readers out there running 2000 and IE 6. And most of you would proudly state, "I use IE 6 and have never had a problem." That may be so, but your luck will eventually run out. I strongly recommend switching to Opera, Firefox or Seamonkey for 2000 users.

With the rest of the Windows versions after that, IE 7 is still considered to be a safe browser. It is routinely updated by Microsoft and has wide adoption. IE 8 is new, it’s great and better to use, but some people have been reluctant to upgrade for compatibility reasons. For example, you may ask the question, "Will I be able to access my bank’s web site with 8 like I did with 7?" For some, yes. For others, no.

The next question after that is, "How long should I wait before upgrading to 8?"

Most web sites that require IE will deploy updated versions in around 90 days. If you want to be extra careful before upgrading, wait 6 months. During this time Microsoft will not stop supporting 7. Updates will be deployed routinely and you can continue to use it as you always have.

Some notes on IE 8

I downloaded IE 8 the first day it was released and after using it can say the following:

First, it does not require a huge learning curve. In fact it hardly requires any learning curve at all. IE 8 is not some massive departure look-and-feel wise from 7.

Second, I haven’t noticed any web site that didn’t work with 8. Some have reported some issues with some sites, but I haven’t personally.

Third, 8 did not do any weird "hey what’re you doin’, IE?" things to my XP Pro setup whatsoever. With past versions of IE, yes it did do that. But 8 did not.

Last, and most important, I recently performed and IE 8 upgrade on my father’s computer. He’s 74, very set in his ways and doesn’t like it when things change around on his computer (but then again who does). He was able to use IE 8 with no problems whatsoever. He has an older Dell box with a 2.4GHz CPU and just 512MB RAM. IE 8 runs just fine. In fact it runs better and faster than 7 did, so he was happy. If that doesn’t say 8 is better than 7 I don’t know what does.

Do you use IE 8? Did you find certain sites that didn’t work?

If the answer is yes, please comment. Users of 7 thinking of upgrading to 8 would be very interested to hear what you have to say.

Later on today I will be downloading the new official release Internet Explorer 8 web browser (around noon-ish EST is when it will be available on Microsoft’s site) and look forward to putting it thru its paces.

However I’ve also downloaded another browser that hearkens back to the way Netscape used to be, Seamonkey.

Yeah, Netscape? Remember that? Remember how people really liked it over Internet Explorer before Firefox came around?

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could run a modern Netscape almost exactly the way it looked back then, but with a better engine and lightning-fast operation?

And wouldn’t it be even cooler if it was all old-school style with the email client and HTML editor built in?

You’ve got it. Go download Seamonkey. It’s Netscape the way you remember it, except a whole lot faster and a whole lot more stable (we’re talking by leaps and bounds here).

Using Seamonkey; my impression of it

If you’re the type of user that likes all the whiz-bang plugins/addons you can stuff into a browser, you won’t be tossing out your Firefox for Seamonkey. Not a chance.

However..

If you’re the type of user that wants a browser that’s slimmed down, Firefox-ish in feel and style but eats up way less memory (it idles at just under 31k in Windows XP) and is just plain frickin’ fast, you’ll love Seamonkey.

Seamonkey is new-school in an old-school wrapper. It even has the now-ancient Netscape “classic” and “modern” (but not really) themes in it. Everything is exactly where you remember it being back in the late 1990’s with Netscape 4 (something Firefox never had), except now it’s solid as a rock.

Mozilla decided with the Firefox and Thunderbird projects long ago to purposely separate them and stay away from the whole “internet suite” thing. As such, FF and t-bird are two distinctively separate apps.

Seamonkey goes back to the all-in-one internet suite. And to be honest it’s a breath of fresh air. Having a browser, email/newsgroup client, simple HTML web page maker (Composer), IRC with Chatzilla (optional) all within very easy reach isn’t really such a bad idea.

As a test, PCMech looks perfect:

YouTube (Flash intensive) works great too:

Ustream.tv (very Flash intensive) also works with no problem:

And by the way, with PCMech, YouTube and Ustream open all at once, the browser only uses 83k. Firefox doesn’t come anywhere close to being that miserly.

The biggest trade-off is you can’t push your plugins from FF to Seamonkey, or at least I don’t believe you can. But then again I wouldn’t do that anyway. Seamonkey figuratively out-of-the-box does everything a browser should do. Very light, very fast, very easy. It may look old but the engine is modern and will load all your favorite web sites easily.

Some final tidbits:

• KLS Mail Backup does support Seamonkey mail client backups easily.
• The email client supports more or less everything Thunderbird does.
• You do have to get used to the way a “suite” does things. Everything is available from Edit/Preferences no matter what “app” you’re in (Navigator, Mail, Chat, Composer, etc.) It’s not too much of stretch to get used to it.
• You will either love or hate the look. If you liked how old Netscape was, you’ll love it. Otherwise you’ll probably hate it. It is decidedly “computery” in its look and not “Web-2.0″. But then again I like computery.
• Surprisingly, even though certain options are in different places, it’s done in such a way where everything makes sense.
• Runs on Windows, OS X or Linux. In Ubuntu it’s available from Add/Remove. The XP installer is 13MB (small for an entire suite!)

What do you think?

Is Seamonkey worth it or just a complete waste of time being that Firefox and Chrome are already out there?

If you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser you may be prompted to update to version 3.0.6. If you haven’t, click Help then Check for Updates and you can download the latest version now.

In the release notes for this version, it’s noted that several security and stability issues were fixed. I have noticed that in 3.0.5 there were a few times the browser crashed on me. It didn’t happen often but it was enough to get my attention (but obviously not enough to stop using it as it is my primary browser).

In addition, 3.0.6 has "improved ability" for scripted commands. This means for any add-on you have that runs a script or two, they should "play nice" with Firefox better than before. So if you had an add-on you stopped used due to scripting screw-ups, it should (keyword there) work in 3.0.6.

For those wondering if the browser burns up less memory than before, my initial impression is no, it doesn’t. Granted, version 3 isn’t half as bad as version 2 did concerning memory use, but it’s still noticeable.

According to the notes, 3.0.6 crashes less, is more secure than before and plays nicer with add-ons. Worth the upgrade? Yes. Go get it.

According to a recent news story, the official release of IE 8 will not be in 2008 as once planned. Basically put, Microsoft feels it needs more shakedown and testing before becoming official – and to be honest I am in 100% agreement with this.

I’ve used the beta version of 8 (which obviously isn’t finished since it’s beta), and while the browser is better at some things than 7 it does need some buttoning up. I do sincerely appreciate that Microsoft is basically stating "We want to know every single possible complaint you have about 8 and address it before release."

Some are quick to say to use Firefox or Opera as an alternative instead of IE, however there are those who (believe it or not) like IE and want to stick with it. As long as 8 delivers (primarily with its enhanced security and privacy), it will be a worthy upgrade.

On a personal note, some have written that 8 is slower than 7. In the time I used beta 8 that certainly wasn’t the case. Tabs were faster, rendering was better and simply put, it was just easier to use than 7. I will be happy to ditch 7 for 8 and will do so without hesitation – but not until official release.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

A big difference between Firefox and IE is the way add-ons are installed. Typically for Firefox, everything is installed through the browser where for IE most everything is installed through a program installation. Much like Firefox however, IE has a built in and easy to use extension manager, however I have found many people do not know how to acutally get to and use the add-on manager.

It’s simple, here is how:

1. In IE, go to Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons.
2. In the Manage Add-ons dialog, you probably want to pay the most attention to items listed in the “Add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer”, “Add-ons that run without requiring permission” and “Downloaded Active X Controls” options from the drop down.
3. Any add-ons which you do not use or, especially, anything suspicious looking you can disable by selecting the item from the list and then check the disable radio button.
4. Apply your changes and then restart IE.