Category: browsers

Google’s brand new operating system

mtadros

chrome_header_full_whiteGoogle announced the impending release of its new OS called Google Chrome which is a natural extension of the Chrome web browser. It is due to be released in the second half of 2010. It is obviously a typically competitive move against Microsoft 7 which is due to be released sometime this year – after the resounding failure of Vista.

What is good about this is that it is open source and set to work with low cost computers. Here is Google’s announcement on the Chrome blog:

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”  [link]

Cross our fingers and see.

putting keyword in firefox’s address bar

mtadros

If you are a Firefox user, you probably already know that you can just type a keyword in the address bar and you will get directed to the page you want.  Also, the default search engine is Google. Sometimes when we download an application like AIM or some toolbar like Ask,com, it suddenly changes our default settings. Here is how you can remedy that:

  1. To change the default search engine: In your address bar, type in:  about:config Approve the button that shows up telling you to be careful about changing settings. Inthe filter type
    browser.search.defaultenginename
    Double click that entry (or right click and choose “Modify”) and then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as the default search engine.
  2. To make the keyword search in the address bar work if it stopped working, do the following: in the address bar type about:config Approve the button that shows up telling you to be careful about changing settings. In the filter type keyword.url then double click it and paste this: http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

Hope this was helpful. It took me a while to figure it out. 🙂

Google Morocco hacked

mtadros

TechCrunch reports that Google Morocco has been hacked today for a few hours before it was discovered and corrected.

Interesting. I wonder who hacked it? and why Morocco’s domain name in particular? or was it just a coincidental act of randomness?

firefox extension

mtadros

textmarker.pngTextMarker is a great Firefox extension. It allows you to highlight text on web pages and has 3 customizable highlighter colours. Fascinating!!

After installation, to highlight text, just select the text then right click and click on Highlight Text. If you want to remove the highlighting, then just right click on the highlighting and choose Erase this Highlighting.

To change the colour:

1- Click on Tools | Add ons [a list of extensions will open depending on how many extensions you downloaded]

2- Click on the TextMarker extension. It will give you three options:  Disable, Uninstall and Options. Click on Options.

3- Choose the highlight colours that you want.

extensionspanel.gif
As you can see from the image, I have several extensions downloaded. The ‘copy plain text extension’ is excellent for the regular user, and the Web Developer Extension is great if you are  working on CSS or Javascript etc.