Windows Apps I Always Install
Want to show some Windows love today by posting a short article about the Windows applications I install after a fresh install of Windows. All these apps are free to download and use!
Firefox
The first app I install, Firefox is world's most popular alternative browser. I love this browser for its look and feel, speed, addons and tons of features!
Foxit Reader
Foxit is a PDF reader you might have never heard of. Most people will use Adobe's PDF reader, since thats the one most people only know about. I hate Adobe's PDF reader, it has loads of great features, but it is very slow and heavy on system resources. Foxit Reader is designed to lightweight, very quick to load, and just provide the features view the PDF document.
OpenOffice.org
Microsoft Office is an excellent set of applications, however it can very expensive to buy. If you need an office suite, OpenOffice.org is a free office suite which is very similar to Microsoft Office. It has word processer, spreadsheet, presentation, database and drawing. Plus, OpenOffice.org can open Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. OpenOffice has about 90% of the features which Microsoft Office has, and I believe the interface in OpenOffice is better.
VLC
VLC is a media player, and I love it, just because it will play any audio and video file format you throw at it!
CCleaner
Windows computers can get full of junk files, old applications and a messy register. CCleaner is an excellent tool for removing junk and cached files, which can save you 100s of MBs of data. It can safely clean out your registry, which can become messy over time. It is also a very good tool at uninstalling applications and managing the startup of applications in the background.
Pidgin
If you need a lightweight Instant Messenger (IM) client which can handle multiple IM accounts in one application, Pidgin is for you. There is no need to have MSN messenger for your MSN contacts and Yahoo Messenger for your Yahoo contacts, etc; you can have all your contacts in one application! It supports over 20 accounts from different providers. Plus it has great features such as tabbed chat windows, video/audio chat and file transfer.
GIMP
Adobe Photoshop is the hallmark in photo editing, however it is incrdible expensive. If you need a photo/graphic editor for free, with the majority of the same features as Photoshop, GIMP is what you need!
Enable Windows 7 features for Firefox 3.6
Yesterday, Firefox 3.6 came out, and I posted my review. I have been using 3.6 for a few days now, on my Windows 7 PC. One thing which struck me as strange with Firefox 3.6, was the lack of Windows 7 specific features such as 'Jump Lists'.
After a bit of searching the Internet I came across an article from CNET. It explained how you can enable Windows 7 specific features via about:config. Its strange their not enabled by default. Enable the following commands:
browser.ctrlTab.previews
browser.allTab.previews (These two commands show you preview windows of your tabs)
browser.taskbar.previews.enable (Windows 7 taskbar preview of tabs)
Tabs shown in Taskbar (click to enlarge)
ctrl + tab OR ctrl + shift + tab (click to enlarge)
My Thoughts on Firefox 3.6
Today has finally arrived, the release of Firefox 3.6. This new release, builds upon a great web browser, by adding a few great additions. Mozilla has this time around focused three key new features; Personas, Web Technologies, Speed and Plugin Support.
Personas in Firefox 3.6 (click to enlarge)
Personas is a new way to theme or “skin” Firefox. This feature has been out since the development of Firefox 3.5, but was just an optional plugin. It works like the themes we have been able to use in Firefox for years, but instead of themes be able to customise the buttons, look and feel of the browser. Personas just change the 'background' look of Firefox. There are thousands of Personas available at (www.getpersonas.com), just find the one you like and install it instantly. This new feature is a brilliant way to fully customise the browser. My only complaint is the amount of poor quality Persona skins, some of the best ones are designed by Mozilla. However, it is support by the community, so anyone can make a skin.
Like with Firefox 3.5, tons of new web technologies were added to the browser. This release is no exception. Improvements have been made to HTML5, which now can support full screen video. Improvements to CSS3 and Web Open Font Format (WOFF), still the only browser to support it. These advancements, does push the Acid3 score to 94, but still not beating Google Chrome or Safari which have scores of a perfect 100. It is all well and good that Firefox supports all these different technologies, but it is unlikely the end user will see these in action. With most websites which design themselves around the Internet Explorer user, HTML5 and WOFF is unlikely to be used much, since IE8 does not support them. At least, Firefox will be ready for the future, lets hope for next release, Mozilla hit that magically 100! Further advancements have been on the JavaScript engine. According to Mozilla, users should expect to see a 20% increase in performance over Firefox 3.5. Can not complain here, we all love performance increases! Sadly, Firefox is still not as quick as Safari or Google Chrome.
Plugin Updates (click to enlarge)
Firefox add-on support is second to none. There are tons of add-ons to choose from, and since Firefox 3, support for add-ons has been improved with the ability to easily manage and update them. Finally, Plugins have received the Mozilla love. Firefox will now check for updates on all plugins installed, such as Adobe Flash, Silverlight, Shockwaves and many more. I love updates! So having the ability to check for the latest plugins, is a huge bonus for me.
Firefox 3.6 builds upon, in my opinion, the best web browser. With improvements in looks, technologies and speed; it is a great update over Firefox 3.5. Its a shame that more features were not added, or that more improvements could have been made to speed up JavaScript or get closer to 100 on Acid3. Both Safari and Chrome beat Firefox in this area still. It is a excellent update over Firefox 3.5, however I am not going to suggest that you upgrade immediately if you prefer the stability of Firefox 3.5. It is a nice improvement, just in time as Internet Explorer users look for a new web browser! 
Optimise Firefox for Netbooks
I have just found a brilliant add-on for Firefox called Meerkat. It basically customises the Firefox layout to fit onto a netbook screen better, and give you more webpage space to view.
- Hides the status bar when there is no activity
- Removes the menu bar, rebuilt into a drop down button placed on the navigation bar
- Adds downloads and bookmarks buttons to the right of the location bar, followed by above mentioned menu bar button
- Reduces the navigation bar icon size to the small setting
You can download it from here!
Reclaim your webpage space!
Me!
Ed Hewitt, 19, Studying @ - Brilliant match, no way I was expecting a 4 - 0 result. Nice to see Neville.
- Nice to see the older players back in the united side.
- Playing Doom 3 on Linux, will have to review this for FCM36!
