Browsers and extensions

I am one of the 15 percent. Or maybe it's 11.6 percent.

Whatever metrics company you swear by, Mozilla Firefox is the go-to browser for a growing but statistically small percentage of Web surfers. I go to great lengths to avoid using Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer, but I still like to see improvements made to any program, so I was glad to discover a tool that made using IE more bearable.

"Bayden IE Toys" isn't a name that sings, but it does add more power and flexibility to IE with 13 useful browser tools. Weighing in at a tiny 175kb, it didn't slow down IE in the slightest, even with every one of its tools installed.

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On Tuesday, without fanfare, Mozilla quietly released the final alpha for its new Firefox 3, codenamed Gran Paradiso. Alpha 6 doesn't add much to Firefox in terms of new features; we expect that to happen with the first betas. As with previous Alphas, most of the tweaks are internal. See our slide show of Alpha 5 to see what changes are currently visible within Firefox 3.

According to the Alpha 6 release notes this version includes: Updated SQLite engine to version 3.3.17; support for site-specific preferences--text size; a new Quit dialog box that resolves termination errors; added … Read more

Just in time for the iPhoneDevCamp this weekend (where Web developers will gather for a no-holds-barred effort to develop iPhone apps), Apple has released a Web development guide for the iPhone. The guide provides useful hints about the iPhone's abilities, how to integrate your app with the iPhone's phone, mail, and maps, the kinds of media types that the Safari browser supports, and more. Of course, there's also a link to the Safari for Windows beta, plus additional information about the Safari Webkit. If you're a potential iPhone developer, the guide is worth checking out. As … Read more

It stands to reason some of the first people to own the iPhone will be those in the tech community or at least interested in Mac technology. For all the latest tech news, grab this app for your iPhone that combs all the most popular Mac sites for news stories and information. It offers a great list of headlines along with short summaries so you know what you're getting before you jump to the Web site.

iPhone link: http://www.mactech.com/commapplenewsforiphone.php

Web site link: http://www.mactech.com/

Want to take a vacation? Several popular travel sites make it possible to look for great airfares online. But with this little iPhone app, you'll be able to search for hotels, flights, rental cars, and cruises right from your phone. A tabbed interface makes it easy to quickly get the information you want.

iPhone link: http://hotelwidgets.com/iphonetravel/

Web site link: http://hotelwidgets.com/

This newsreader for iPhone uses a different method to find news stories than most newsreaders we've seen for the device. Instead of letting you add feeds to a list, you simply use a search term and iPhone News grabs stories from Yahoo and Google news sites, complete with headlines and summaries.

iPhone link: http://news-widget.com/iphone

Web site link: http://news-widget.com/iphone/iphone/

Galleries of images set off against a black background have become common as software and Web sites try to help people show off their photos better. Cooliris' PicLens offers a clever way to do set up such galleries from many Web sites on the fly.

The PicLens browser extension can convert a bunch of images from Google and Yahoo image search, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook and RSS Media-based sites and other locations into a full-screen gallery of pictures. The photos slide by at a stately pace or advance when the user clicks the keyboard's arrow key, and a handy filmstrip … Read more

Be sure to hook your Wii up to the Internet and download the Internet Channel soon. That's the deadline for downloading it for free.

So, what exactly is the Internet Channel? It's the feature that lets you use your Wii to browse the Internet from your television with the Opera Web browser.

Right now, the download for using the Internet-surfing feature is free for the life of the machine. But Opera released a "final" version of the feature in April, and soon you'll have to pay for it. As of July 1, anyone wishing to … Read more

At Apple's WWDC a few weeks ago, the crowd was oohing and aahing when Steve Jobs showed off one of Leopard's new features called Web Clip. Web Clip is a feature built into the Leopard version of Apple's Safari browser that lets you take a section of any Web site and turn it into a widget for OS X's Dashboard. WWDC 2007 wasn't the first time Apple had shown off Web Clip. In fact, the feature had been demonstrated at last year's WWDC conference in August, although not during the high-profile keynote.

For Mac … Read more