interface

Sometimes it's the little things that count.

The most prominent feature of Firefox 3.6 is Personas, which let you reskin the browser with thousands of different looks. But my single favorite change is a subtler change to the open-source browser's user interface.

Specifically, when you open a link in a new tab, it appears immediately to the right of the active tab. Before, the new tabs would appear to the far right of the strip of tabs.

Yup, that's it. For those of us who spend hours a day in a browser, though, the new tab … Read more

Advanced CSV Converter is an easy way to convert CSV files into a variety of other formats. Although its basic features are simple enough for anyone to use, it also contains more advanced features for people who are more comfortable working with this type of conversion.

The program's interface is sleek and intuitive, with a wizard-style dialogue that takes people through the process of selecting and converting a file. Users can start with a CSV or text file and convert it to a variety of other formats, including Dbase, HTML, Excel, SQL, and more. Users are able to specify … Read more

We've seen slides and videos of Microsoft's Courier dual-screen booklet in action, but nothing has quite explained how all of these things actually work. This document explains Courier's interface, gestures, and features more in-depth than ever before.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Native Instruments' Traktor DJ software is an industry standard for legions of digital DJs with laptop-based rigs. Unfortunately, as the company's software has grown increasingly sophisticated, the prospect of using your laptop's trackpad to control it becomes a bit ridiculous.

In an effort to make your laptop's trackpad obsolete, Native Instruments is launching a dedicated USB DJ controller named Traktor Kontrol X1. Due to hit shelves in February of 2010, the Kontrol X1 includes every knob, button, and slider a DJ could desire, and touts a retail price of $229.

A stripped-down version of Traktor DJ software (… Read more

Facebook members will start to see a new look for their home page "news feeds" on Friday, with the design now featuring a toggle view between a main view, featuring the top stories from their friends list based on their Facebooking habits, and a "live feed" featuring real-time updates from their whole network.

"When the user wakes up in the morning, you go to Facebook and you see (the) news feed," product manager Peter Deng told CNET News. "You see the stuff that you missed, the best of the previous day, to basically … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Some new fruits of Mozilla's effort to speed Firefox development are about to arrive.

Mozilla plans to release the first beta version of 3.6 this weekend or early next week. But what exactly is coming in the new version and its successors?

Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of product development, and John Lilly, Mozilla's chief executive, detailed some of the browser's future in an interview at the corporation's headquarters here. And the company has an aggressive schedule, with three releases due within about a year.

The present version of Firefox was … Read more

Cocktail is both useful and fun for inveterate Mac tinkerers and would-be power-users (that is, power users who aren't hard-core enough to use the command line). This multipurpose utility can help you keep your computer happy and healthy, giving you access to scores of tweaks and optimizations pulled together from various utilities, preferences, third-party hacks, and command-line tools.

Cocktail can help you with routine maintenance and customization across your disks, system, files, network, and interface. Cocktail is organized around these five areas, with highly customizable options for everything from clearing caches and repairing permissions to changing the appearance and … Read more

I am now a reverse switcher--I switched from a BlackBerry to an iPhone about six months ago, and now am switching back again. Why? Basically it comes down to the fact that the iPhone is really good at the stuff I do 10 percent of the time, but pretty poor at the stuff I do 90 percent of the time.

This is not to bash the iPhone. It has been a transformative device in the wireless industry and forced everyone else to up their game. It has shuffled the power structure among device makers, service providers, developers, and the broader … Read more

MB I Ching Software is an unimaginative twist on using the principles of I Ching divination to answer your questions about life, love, and unhappiness.

The crude interface offers little in the way of guidance, but dedicated users will figure out that after entering their name and a question, they must click on a "toss coin" button six times to create two of the hexagrams from the Chinese classic text "The Book of Changes." The program then interprets the hexagrams to answer the question by providing a "judgment" and an "image." Both … Read more