It's finally official! Mere days after it hit Release Candidate 2, the finished version of Firefox 3.6 comes out tomorrow. It's been confirmed over at Mozilla's official blog, where there's also an intro video from Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox. (Or, you can watch the video after the jump.)
Beltzner runs through all the new features in 3.6, including quick theming with Personas - which is up to a whopping 35 THOUSAND themes now. Firefox now also scans for plugins that need to be updated, for extra stability and security. Beltzner also focuses on designer features like CSS gradients, accelerometer support and web standards support.
The timing of this release is perfect, since IE is currently shedding users thanks to its role in China's attack on Google. If Firefox is going to take a bite out of IE and hold off the WebKit contenders like Chrome and Safari, now's the time to do it. So, along comes Firefox 3.6, marketing itself as the best choice for security and stability ... looks like a good sales pitch to me, even if you're not in love with add-ons.
Comments (0) 20.01.2010. 05:06
Extensions in the wild may be a little slow in appearing, but themes for Google Chrome? They've just gotten a lot easier to install and there may be a flood of them available very shortly...
Right now, there are only two demo themes available -- Snowflake (screenshot) and Camo. Based on the thumbnail in Chrome's new tab, Google has a whole lot more that are nearly ready for public consumption. The actual link returns a 404 error, and then, of course, the thumbnail breaks accordingly.
Once the link goes live, you'll have easy access through Options -> Personal stuff. Buttons have been added to reset Chrome to its default theme or download something new.
It's a huge step forward from the old method - renaming and replacing a .dll in your application data folder. CNet's Stephen Shankland reports that this is working on Mac OS X as well.
To try it out, you'll need to update your dev channel build or download it from Google.
30.07.2009. 15:46
Songbird, the open-source, Mozilla-based music player, has a bunch of new features in version 1.2 that make it worth taking a look at. The most important addition is 2-way iTunes syncing, so you can import and export songs and playlists back and forth between Songbird and iTunes. If you thought the whole point of Songbird was to keep you from having to use iTunes, this feature won't make you happy, but if you have an iPod or iPhone that you want to put music on, this is the closest Songbird gets to letting you do that.
The other new features include an integrated Last.fm radio add-on. Songbird already supported Last.fm scrobbling, but now it supports Last.fm listening, too, so you may be able ditch your existing Last.fm client and just go with this. There's also automatic library organization, which is something you might be familiar with in iTunes. It can move all your music files to one location and sort them based on artist and album metadata. Last, but not least if you're an audiophile, is a 10-band equalizer.
22.06.2009. 03:00