Browsers and extensions

A company named Wyzo recently released the first public version of its flagship product, the Wyzo browser. Built off the open-source Mozilla Firefox base, Wyzo is notable for incorporating the ability to download torrent files directly from the browser interface without a separate BitTorrent application.

Wyzo offers the ability to download torrent files only because of an extension named FireTorrent that comes pre-installed with the browser. The FireTorrent add-on uses technology such as iP2P, STUNT and unP2P to translate a torrent file into the actual download that the torrent represents. Unfortunately, one big problem I had with Wyzo was that I wasn't able to kill/remove any torrent downloads that stalled because of a lack of peers.… Read more

In the cyberworld, Web customization is king--just as the millions of user-centric YouTube videos and MySpace Web pages attest. It's little wonder, then, that avatars, digital representations of you, are growing in function and form.

This collection of downloadable and Web-based avatar generators ranges from the more cartoon-like engines to three-dimensional architectures where users give life to their pint-size replicates. Be sure to tune into the video and photo gallery on my adventures with avatars, with CNET News.com's Neha Tiwari, for a personal take on the highlights and lowlights of some popular avatar builders.… Read more

In the spirit of my recently sworn allegiance to the powerhouse add-on Tab Mix Plus as the "best Firefox extension ever," I've created a resource guide for all of the features and options available in the Firefox add-on.

In a nutshell, Tab Mix Plus lets you customize nearly every detail of the appearance and behavior of your tabs without having to get into any of the about:config settings in Mozilla Firefox.

One important note: my Tab Mix Plus guide is based on the default Firefox theme. If you use a different theme, some of the Tab Mix Plus options may be affected. Also, this guide was written using Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6, which is important to note because the add-on does update semi-frequently.… Read more

What's the best way to improve mobile browsing? Make it as flexible and powerful as desktop browsing, only lighter. Opera, the Norwegian rival to Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, hopes to replicate the familiarity of the desktop experience with the latest version of its mobile browser, code-named Dimension. So far the response has been positive.… Read more

Nearly every time I meet with a representative from one of the Web browsers, the questions of "Which browser do you use?" and "Why?" inevitably come up. The answer to the first is still Mozilla Firefox, like most people I know. The short answer to the second is "extensions," which is an easier way of saying "more functionality and personal customization."

The follow-up question is invariably, "What's your favorite extension?" and that's much harder, because it's not any one particular extension that makes Firefox great--it's the … Read more

The open-source Mono project will show off an early version of Microsoft's Silverlight browser plug-in running on Linux later this week.

Work on the plug-in, called Moonlight, was started only in May, after Microsoft's Mix conference. Moonlight uses version 1.1 of Silverlight, a browser plug-in for displaying interactive Web applications, which is due in the fall.

Once completed, Moonlight will allow Linux users to see Silverlight content on the Web, such as videos, and run rich Internet applications.

According to Miguel De Icaza, Mono project leader and Novell open-source president, Mono engineers have been working 14-hour days … Read more

Category: Browsing

OpenID is a solution for the log-in problem of having multiple identities online. With OpenID, you create one master identity online at a site that you use a lot and tend to remain logged in to--for instance, a social network site or your personal blog. When you need to identify yourself to another new site, you point that site toward your main identity-providing site where you're already logged in. Your main site sends the new site your log-in credentials, so the new site now knows who you are.

In theory, if OpenID was adopted on every Web … Read more

Category: Browsing

StumbleUpon is a toolbar extension for your browser. Its primary button, labeled "Stumble!," takes you to a site in any of the categories you've told the service you're interested in but that you've probably not been to before. If you like the new site, you press a thumbs-up button. If you don't, thumbs-down. Every time you vote, the system recalibrates its site selections for you using social filtering; it attempts to find sites for you that it thinks you'll like because other users with similar preferences also like them.

The site … Read more

Category: Browsing

Yourminis gives you a page that you can modify with your own mix of widgets--RSS feeds, Flickr images, video feeds, weather and time blocks, and so on. The widgets and the Yourminis container page are all in Flash, and the widgets are very pretty to look at and easy to move around on the page. You can also do things with them--such as rotate them arbitrarily, for a scrapbook effect--that you can't do on Ajax start pages.

Yourminis recently rolled out a technology using Adobe's Apollo framework that lets users take the widgets out of their … Read more