Sure, Firefox 3 is the bee’s knees (and has been since Beta 3), but will it go down in history books? It will if it sets a world record! Mozilla’s taking the quick and easy path to everlasting glory (until someone beats it anyway) by planning to set the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours on Firefox 3′s official launch day. The exact day isn’t posted, but it’ll be sometime next month. I hope they’ve got some Stark Industries-powered servers running this show. Check out the super-cute Firefox 3 download badge:
(Via Gizmodo.)
ThePhotoshopRoadmap.com has compiled a great collection of Photoshop tutorials focused on photo effects such as ghosting, pop art, and movie effects.
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(Via A Welsh View.)
Yahoo unveils a sneak preview of a new product that aims to bridge the gap between your web browser and desktop—BrowserPlus, a desktop utility that enables richer browser interaction, like drag and drop file uploads. The BrowserPlus utility is available for Windows and Mac at the moment and works with Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 7. There are only three demo applications that use BrowserPlus: a Flickr drap-and-drop image uploader, an IRC chat client, and for the web monkeys, a JSON inspector. With Google ramping up Gears, Firefox 3 building in offline webapp support, and Yahoo busting out BrowserPlus, looks like your web browser and your desktop are going to be more than just friends in the coming months. The BrowserPlus sneak preview is a free download for Mac and Windows.
(Via Lifehacker.)
Photography web site Photojojo details how to get crisp, beautiful prints from your digital photos with Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask. What’s the point of sharpening, you ask?
Digital cameras have a fixed grid of pixels, each of which can only capture one color or shade at a time. Say you take a picture that has a sharp edge between black and white… The single pixel that records that hairline edge can only record one color, so it renders it as gray. What we think of as sharpness is actually the contrast we see between different colors. A quick transition from black to white looks sharp. A gradual transition from black to gray to white looks blurry.
A little time with the Unsharp Mask, though, and you can lose the blur along the edge of color transitions and bring more sharpness and fidelity to your photos, and Photojojo’s guide is an excellent starting point. If you’re an expert Unsharp Mask-er, let’s hear your tips for making the most of the tool in the comments.
(Via Lifehacker.)
If you’ve been waiting to see what Windows 7 will look like then you may want to head over to CrunchGear to check out a bevy of screen shots that hit our inbox earlier today. Of course, the release is a couple years out, but we’ve confirmed that this is what the current build of Windows 7 looks like. Coincidentally, Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky was interviewed by CNET about Windows 7, but gave very little, if any, details on the subject. As the saying goes, though, a picture is worth a thousand words.
(Via TechCrunch.)
On paper, Creative’s Vado might outclass and out-spec the wildly successful Flip Ultra camcorder it very liberally (like crazy, PETA liberal) takes its cues from, but what about in the real world? Laptop Mag tosses ‘em together and finds that while the Vado outpaces the older Flip most respects—it’s cheaper, slimmer, more attractive and has a better layout and bigger LCD—the Flip wins where it counts: video quality.
The Flip Ultra’s clips were ‘clearer and more detailed across the board,’ while the Vado tended to overexpose and had problems capturing details. Overall winner: Flip, despite costing about $30 more. If the size issue is still pushing you toward the Vado, wait a couple weeks, since it looks like the Flip smaller and tartier pretty soon. [Laptop Mag]
(Via Gizmodo.)
I think that the obsessive drive to be omnisciently aware of everything Apple is plotting has officially gone from a little crazy to completely silly. People are tracking their bowel movements cargo shipments, and apparently the latest batch has 188 containers from Asian supplier Hon Hai and Quanta Computers, mysteriously marked ‘electric computers,’ a label that they’ve never used before. Ack! Combined with the fact that ‘desktop computer’ labeled shipments haven’t dropped, ImportGenius, the dudes who monitor this stuff, are therefore convinced it’s the 3G iPhone.
Or new MacBooks. The first shipment came in on March 27, which seems a bit early, unless they’re really, really stockpiling to meet demand. Or it could just be a whole bunch of blow and June 9 will be the biggest party ever. [ImportGenius via Fortune]
(Via Gizmodo.)
The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla’s finally made a feature-complete release candidate available, so it’s time to spotlight the biggest improvements that will make ‘Gran Paradiso’ the browser to beat. Nearly everything in the open-source app has gotten a second look from the minds at Mozilla, from back buttons to bookmarks, address bars to add-ons, passwords to performance, and the changes will make Firefox 3 worth the upgrade come its official release date, slated for sometime next month. Let’s take a look at the 10 best upgrades in Firefox 3, and how they’ll bolster your browsing, after the jump.
Note: Firefox 3 hasn’t been officially released yet—a public preview release is available and intended for testers only. While it’s a very stable preview, only use it if you’re willing to deal with bugs and instability as the Mozilla teams ready the official release.
That said, our favorite Firefox 3 features include:
A big part of what makes Firefox so special to power users is its extensibility with extensions, add-ons, plug-ins and themes, and Firefox 3′s Add-ons dialog got the attention it deserved. The Fox’s Add-Ons menu is more robust and intuitive on at least two fronts. You can search and install extensions and themes right from the pop-up box, no browsing required. Also, a new plug-in manager lets you enable and disable third-party helpers like Flash, QuickTime, and anything else that makes content work (and causes you grief).
Mozilla tweaked and updated a whole lot of little things here and there throughout Firefox 3, which amounts to a big overall boost in usability. Most noticeably when you first switch, the Back button only appears on the address bar if there is a page to go back to, and when it does, it’s bigger and easier to click. Users who want to make sites with small text more readable permanently are in luck; Firefox 3 can increase the size of images and text, or just the text, on hard-to-read sites. In addition, Firefox 3 applies favicons more consistently to bookmarks, you can click a site’s favicon to get extended site identification information, you can resize the search box to hold more than two words, and the find-on-page search box automatically grabs the currently selected word, just to name a few new UI improvements.
In the long term, once webapps catch up, Firefox 3 will let you do really neat stuff in your browser, like register your favorite webapps to open certain file types, and access your online data even when you’re not connected to the ‘net. To get a taste, see how you can configure Firefox 3 to launch Gmail for mailto links.
Firefox 3 has stronger filters and protection against malware, phishing sites, cookies, and other tools that compromise privacy and security. A malware warning shows up when you visit sites known to install malicious software, Firefox 3 doesn’t show the content of knock-off sites (like PayPal ‘Update Your Account’ phishing scams) by default, and Firefox 3 checks against Google’s ever-growing blacklist of phishing sites. Now you can feel even better switching your less tech-aware relatives over to the open-source browser.
Never wonder where a download came from, or went to, again. Gran Paradiso’s download manager lets you search through recent files, resume big downloads after a crash or restart, and lets you keep an eye on your transfers in the status bar.
Your browser is a serious part of your computer time, so having it look like nothing else on your system can be seriously annoying. Firefox’s designers made system integration a priority with this release, and it shows—even Windows XP’s and Vista’s button layouts have subtle differences in color and shading. There’s differences at deeper levels, too, with Cover Flow-type styling in the add-ons manager for OS X, transparencies in key places in Vista and OS X, and other tweaks that make your browser feel like a natural extension of your system.
No more guessing whether you’re saving the right password or clicking ‘Cancel’ on unnecessary pop-up requests. Gran Paradiso only asks you to utilize its password-saving function once you’re already in and sure everything worked, and it won’t block you from seeing the logged-out version of a page if you don’t want to sign in.
Much like iTunes’ Smart Playlists, Firefox 3′s new Smart Bookmarks function can analyze your browsing habits and create lists of links based on it. The default bookmark toolbar only comes with three standards, ‘Most Visited,’ ‘Recently Bookmarked,’ and ‘Recent Tags’ (more on that later), but it’s none too hard to make your own.
Previous versions of Firefox’s bookmark organizer have been pretty utilitarian affairs that make you drag and drop your links around nested folders. With Firefox 3′s new Places Organizer, those with reams of URLs can find them using boolean rule searches and multi-column results, as well as keep them better organized with a tagging system. Better still, you can save those smart searches for when you next need them.
Like a personal assistant who telepathically knows when you’re going to need just the right phone number (or Starbucks fix), Firefox 3′s address bar, now dubbed the Smart Location Bar, helps you get to your frequently visited, or recently discovered, sites in super-quick fashion. That application you just read about on Lifehacker, but can’t remember the name? Type ‘li’ into your address bar, and Firefox instantly pulls the relevant sites from your history. The bar also learns through repetition, so the next time you start searching with ‘li,’ it knows you’re looking for Lifehacker, not Linux.
It’s not flashy, and it doesn’t have any social networking features, but Firefox 3′s actual performance is the best reason anyone should consider upgrading, or making the switch to the ‘fox. Firefox’s engineers claim that their third major release is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 in JavaScript performance, and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2. This means snappier browser performance when you’re using webapps like Gmail, Remember the Milk, and more. Even more important, especially for Mac users, is the improved memory usage and more than 15,000 improvements that make for a less crash-prone browser. I’ve seen noticeable speed-ups in page loading in Linux, XP, and Vista, but the real reason I’ve switched over to using Release Candidate 1 is that I haven’t had to cross my fingers every time a Flash-based video loads. Graphed comparison of memory use amongst browsers in Vista courtesy of John Resig.
As you can tell, we’re completely geeked out about the upcoming Firefox 3 release. For more about the new version of the browser, check out our continuing coverage:
What features or changes have made you a true believer in Firefox 3? What upgrades are you still waiting to see added to the mix? Let’s hear your take in the comments.
(Via Lifehacker.)
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