The cult favorite Opera browser is moving into the next cycle of "the browser ring." After beta testing, and before the final version, we get the release candidate for Windows and Mac OS. What does this mean for fearless Opera fans?
The new skin for Opera 9.5.
(Credit: Opera Software)There's a massive spate of bug fixes in this update, so if stability issues kept you from using previous 9.5 betas, this version should be much more appealing. Other improvements include fixes for downloading e-mail message bodies from all POP accounts, the introduction of a new skin, and smoother upgrading from Opera 9.2. Mac-specific improvements include skin changes and better support for OS X 10.2.
Opera is a Download.com favorite, if you're looking for an alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer, in no small part because of cross-platform compatibility with mobile devices.
However, if Opera's own message boards are any indication, there are still stability issues that plague this update, and there will likely be another release candidate before the final version sees daylight.
You could create every document, spreadsheet, and presentation you work on from scratch, but if you're like me, you'll likely spend more time futzing with the file's layout and design than entering the data that comprises it.
That's why I rely on the many free templates and extensions for my favorite productivity apps. I've written in the past about places to find add-ons for Microsoft Office, but there's also a wealth of free extensions and templates for OpenOffice.org's Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, and Impress presentation program.
Start at OpenOffice.org's Extensions page. Click one of the options at the top left to list the extensions by application, category, popularity, or other criterion.
One extension that workgroups may find helpful is O3Spaces Workplace Community Edition, which offers version control, check in/check out, and other collaboration features for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice apps. The add-on combines an AJAX Web client with a desktop component that you can access via a system-tray icon. It even works in mixed Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org/StarOffice environments.
I'm less impressed with OpenOffice.org's templates for Writer, Calc, and Impress. Still, I have to admit that they're better layouts than I would be able to devise on my own. One compilation of OpenOffice.org templates that business people will likely find indispensable is Sun Microsystems' own Professional Template Pack, which provides an abundance of templates for business letters, presentation backgrounds, and worksheets.
Preview your templates in OpenOffice.org apps
Before you can select the right template for your needs, you need to be able to see it. Previewing templates in OpenOffice.org apps isn't as easy as you might think. If you click File > Templates > Organize, you see the templates installed on your system and can place them in new or different folders, but you can't see what they look like.
You can view some of the templates via the applications' wizards: click File > Wizards, and choose one of the top five categories. When the wizard opens, choose From template and select one of the templates listed in the window below the radio buttons.
Preview the templates in OpenOffice.org by running a wizard and selecting "From template" on the first screen.
(Credit: OpenOffice.org)Another way to get a glimpse of your templates is to click File > New > Templates and Documents. With Templates selected in the left pane (it should be highlighted automatically), double-click a folder in the middle pane to view the templates in that category. Select one to preview it in the right pane. When you find one you like, click Open and start entering your data.
Preview the templates in OpenOffice.org via the Templates and Documents dialog box off the File > New menu.
(Credit: OpenOffice.org)A wonderful resource for OpenOffice.org templates, tips, and tutorials is Kaaredyret's all-purpose site.
Monday: customize Windows' context (right-click) menu.
On Monday, I described Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, an add-on that finds duplicate copies of Outlook messages, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks. Now, I'll continue to trim my bloated Outlook in-box by using another freebie: the Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover created by Bruno Marotta.
After you download the program and restart Outlook, you see a floating Attachment Remover toolbar that you can drag and dock at the top of the screen along with all the other toolbars to keep it from blocking your view. Click the toolbar's one-and-only button to open the program's one-and-only dialog box.
The Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover shrinks your in-box by storing attachments in a separate folder and placing links to the files in the original messages.
(Credit: Kopf/Bruno Marotta)You can choose the folder to scan for attachments, the type of files to remove, the size limit (the default setting is to remove all file attachments more than 10KB in size), the folder to place the attachments in, and whether to replace the file with a link or text message, or to simply remove it.
The add-on will recreate the structure of the folders and subfolders you scan, but I wish it offered a way to separate attachments by file type or by sender prior to the scan. This would let me detach all the PDFs from my boss, for example.
Since Outlook Attachment Remover is donationware, be sure to drop a couple of bills in the hat if you find the program beneficial.
Wednesday: tweak the Registry to return missing icons to the system tray.
Sometimes I wish I was one of those people who manages to keep their e-mail inbox empty by assigning the messages they need to keep appropriately named folders and deleting the mail they don't need.
Most of my inboxes have thousands of entries dating back years. And since I've combined my ISP's POP mail account with my Gmail account, the inbox-overflow problem has gotten out of hand.
Rather than spending half a day manually removing the duplicates, I installed Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover. The program places an "ODIR" entry on Outlook's standard toolbar. Click it and choose "Remove duplicate items" (or press Alt-O, R) to open the add-on's window showing your Outlook folders. Select one of the folders and click the "Remove duplicate items" button at the bottom of the window.
The free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover add-on makes finding and removing duplicate Outlook entries a breeze.
(Credit: Vaita)In just a few minutes, I watched the number of items in my inbox shrink from 4,081 to a more reasonable 2,656 (and counting). The program places the duplicate messages in a folder named ODIR_Duplicate_Files. I looked through this folder for non-duplicates erroneously identified by the add-on but didn't spot any.
If you trust the program's ability to tell duplicates from singles, you can simply delete the contents of the ODIR_Duplicate_Files folder. I played it safe by moving the folder's files to compressed folder on a thumb drive before deleting them.
I may not save a ton of time or hard-drive storage space by ridding myself of duplicate Outlook files, but every little bit helps.
Tomorrow: pare Outlook further by removing the attachments from your messages.
NewsGator converted its popular RSS feed aggregation clients to freeware in January 2008, and now that seed has borne fruit: recommended fruit, to be precise.
NewsGator's new Recommended Stories filter introduces users to stories and feeds they aren't already subscribed to, but might like.
(Credit: NewsGator)Partnering with SenseArray, a collaborative filter from Uprizer Labs, NewsGator now offers live RSS feed recommendations from feeds that the user hasn't already subscribed to. Currently available only on the online NewsGator client, the filter pulls information from NewsGator as well as its sibling desktop clients, FeedDemon for Windows and NetNewsWire for the Mac so that users who synchronize their RSS data will be contributing to the list of recommendations.
Brian Kellner, NewsGator's vice president of products, compared the process to more common Web-based ratings systems. "It takes attention from the client or online site, just like your rating on Amazon, but you're rating it with attention." That attention, he said, comes from marking a post as read--essentially telling the filter that you like it. If enough people do that and the post matches your interest, it might be suggested to you as news you'd like but haven't seen yet.
Kellner said that NewsGator will be making two kinds of recommendations. The first, a general news category, is "wide-open," as he puts it, but limited to posts from the past two days. The second is narrowed down to categories, such as entertainment or sports, and more heavily utilizes the SenseArray filters. These more specific recommendations are limited to not more than a week old, and should be adjustable to the tastes of the user.
The challenge, Kellner added, was how to recommend current stories that users aren't already getting. "We pull in six million events per week that we think are relevant." But the system won't be perfect initially. "Over time, we'll see what adjustments we need to make."
NewsGator does have plans to push the recommendations feature out to its desktop clients, but there isn't a timeline for that, yet.
I can't say for certain that ISPs, online advertising networks, and other big Web companies are already tracking our Web use and sending us ads and other information based on conclusions they draw from our unique browsing history.
But it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were. And if they aren't already, I know it's only a matter of time.
Web sites have been using persistent cookies to remember you from session to session for a long time. Usually, sites know only the site you arrived from and the site you go to when you leave.
ISPs and other organizations use deep packet inspection and other techniques to keep a history of your browsing. They claim the browsing histories are anonymous. But when your privacy is at stake, it doesn't pay to trust any commercial operation to do what's in your best interest rather than what will make them the most money.
You can take various steps to thwart the efforts of Web spies, including using products and services that promise anonymous surfing. This week, a group of "programmers, artists, and designers" posted the full release of a program called AntiPhorm Lite, which attempts to obfuscate your browsing tracks by visiting sites at random. The make-believe browsing renders the collection of your Web history meaningless from the trackers' perspective.
The AntiPhorm random browser is intended to prevent Web trackers from knowing what you're up to online.
(Credit: AntiPhorm)That's the theory, at least. The program's creators claim it is safe to use and consumes very little processing or bandwidth because it examines only the HTML of the sites it visits, so no images, videos, Javascript, or Flash are ever downloaded when the program runs in its hidden or text-only console view. (Note that in hidden view, the only way to deactivate the program short of shutting down your PC is to open Task Manager and kill its process.)
The program's name is derived from the Phorm behavioral advertising company that recently entered into an agreement with the U.K. ISPs Virgin Media, BT, and TalkTalk to tap into their customers' browsing history. As you can imagine, the plan has met with resistance from privacy advocates.
AntiPhorm also features a console view that lets you see the random sites the program opens. When I tried this mode, AntiPhorm opened a new Firefox tab every 20 or so seconds. My imaginary personality jumped from IT sites to Yahoo's search page to Amazon to IMDB back to Amazon, then over to eBay, back to Amazon, and 'round and 'round.
It was a little disconcerting to see the "Welcome, Dennis!" greeting when an Amazon page opened, and the program would've kept opening two or three new sites a minute if left unattended. The designers promise that AntiPhorm won't visit any potentially embarrassing sites, but I quickly switched back to the program's text-only mode, which merely lists the sites it is visiting.
What do you gain by using a program such as AntiPhorm to make your Web activities more difficult to track? Individually, probably not much, especially if you don't care what ads the online networks serve up when you browse. Collectively, you might play a small role in preserving the privacy of everyone's browsing history by making behavioral advertising less profitable.
That's the theory, anyway.
The initial release candidate of Firefox 3 is ready for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It's a public preview of the new Firefox code, available in 45 languages, aimed at developers and early adopters to test out the new features. It has an extensive list of known bugs.
Among the major improvements are changes in the look and feel on the various operating systems, major security enhancements, and increased performance and stability. It is based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine, which includes 14,000 updates to the code.
On the performance front, the documentation states that applications such as Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, compared to Firefox 2, and memory usage has been improved. In addition, bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are less susceptible to data loss.
A list of all the new features is available on the Mozilla Firefox site.
Microsoft claims that Office 2007's ribbon interface saves time by putting the features people use most often closer at hand. For those of us who spent years learning where those functions were in previous versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the changes aren't the productivity boosters Microsoft envisioned.
I've done more than my share of rummaging around the ribbon in Office 2007 trying to find a particular command, and I've even used Microsoft's user-interface guides to hunt down the feature I needed. Now Microsoft Office Labs has developed the free Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 that lets you type in a command and access it in an instant.
After you download and install the add-on, the Search Commands tab is added to the ribbon. Click it (or press the Windows key and Y) and type the name of the command you need.
For example, the other day I was looking for the Reveal Formatting option in Word 2007. I eventually found it under the Display tab in Word Options (off the Office button menu). It would've been much faster for me to simply open Search Commands, type "reveal formatting," and enter the number that appears next to that option ("5" in this case).
The free Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 makes finding options almost instantaneous.
(Credit: Microsoft)Office Labs' only other offering to date is the Community Clips add-on designed to facilitate finding and sharing how-to videos relating to Office 2007. The site describes three other projects: one that creates a wiki on a SharePoint server, one that is intended to improve the Tablet PC pen interface, and one designed to serve as a marketplace for freelancers.
Note that all of the projects are prototypes, and Microsoft collects "usage metrics" in an attempt to enhance them, though you can opt out of sending any data to the company. I don't know about the other Office Labs projects, but Search Commands is an add-on I expect will save me quite a bit of time by slicing the ribbon to ribbons.
Sun Microsystems has released the first beta for OpenOffice.org 3 for Windows and Mac. The new version of OpenOffice, which is a popular open-source competitor to Microsoft Office, looks to offer users improvements on every component from interface to features to behavior.
OpenOffice.org 3 Start Center
(Credit: CNET Networks)OpenOffice now natively supports OS X, so Mac users won't have to install the X11 module before running the suite. Full Vista support is also included in the beta, and didn't cause any problems during light testing. Notably, OpenOffice 3 includes filters for the new Microsoft Office document formats such as DOCX and XLSX as well as continuing support for standard Microsoft formats. Support for Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac has been lacking until now.
The user interface doesn't look to have undergone many changes, besides getting a slightly snazzier gradated background and slightly larger icons. However, the new features more than make up for this. Enhancements include support for OpenDocument Format 1.2, a Solver feature, spreadsheet sharing to facilitate collaboration, improved PDF creation and importation, and improvements to the Notes feature in Writer.
The new Start Center should appeal to users who like having a landing page or only want to have one link on their desktop. It opens up a window that highlights all of the OpenOffice tools with big icons. Another of the more exciting OpenOffice extensions also being released is a Wiki Publisher tool that should make uploading wiki information from the program to a MediaWiki server a snap.
In-depth details of the changes planned for OpenOffice 3 can be found at the OpenOffice.org feature list and release notes.
Any task you perform on the Web can be automated by writing a script. But you don't have to know how to use Javascript or some other scripting language to create your own custom scripts. The Chickenfoot add-on for Firefox makes it easy for nonprogrammers to devise scripts that do their bidding.
Chickenfoot was developed by MIT's User Interface Design Group. It's similar to the Greasemonkey scripting extension for Firefox, but its scripts tend to be simpler and easier for nonprogrammers to customize.
After you download the scripting engine, click View > Sidebar > Chickenfoot (or press F8) to open the Chickenfoot Script Editor. Enter the script in the top pane of the sidebar, and click the Run icon to activate the script for the current page. You can also run scripts by copying and pasting them into the editor, or by clicking the sidebar's Open icon and navigating to the .js file. By placing the scripts in the Triggers window, they will run as soon as the target page opens in Firefox.
A silly example of a Chickenfoot script is one that changes the image on the Google home page. First you copy the script from the Chickenfoot site, and then you paste it into the Chickenfoot script editor, swap out the image-source URL for the one of your choosing, and click the Run icon. Gone is the universally recognizable "Google" icon, and in its place is whatever image you chose. Not especially practical perhaps, but a neat little trick nonetheless.
Run a Chickenfoot script that changes the "Google" image on the site's home page with the image of your choice.
(Credit: Chickenfoot)Another Chickenfoot script places an icon at the end of URLs that lead to a PDF download or anywhere other than a Web page. But the real power of Chickenfoot scripts is in customizing those in the various Chickenfoot libraries.
Keep in mind that malicious scripts can wreak havoc on your system, so be judicious in your use of scripts from unfamiliar sources. Likewise, Chickenfoot may be susceptible to cross-site scripting (XSS), so the developers recommend that you create a separate Firefox profile for Chickenfoot, and use the scripts only on sites you trust.
Tomorrow: top online scanners and speed testers.
