IBM's free, cross-platform Lotus Symphony now MS Office 2007 compatible
You may not have read much about Lotus Symphony - OpenOffice.Org casts a pretty big shadow over other free Office competitors. Like OpenOffice, IBM's cross-platform office suite is based on the Open Document format and is a very capable alternative to Micorosoft Office.
Symphony doesn't provide the same number of tools as Office or OpenOffice, but it does handle word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tasks. The latest release adds a much needed piece of functionality to Symphony - the ability to open files created using Microsoft Office 2007 (though files can only be saved in 2003 or 2000 formats). A Flash-based presentation of Symphony's features is available for viewing, and there's also a transcript available if you would rather read them yourself.
One I particularly like is the tabbed interface. As with the tabs in my browser, it keeps my workspace just as tidy whether I've got a single document or dozens open at the same time.
The suite is roughly a 200Mb download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and is available from the IBM web site. There's also a large, online library of clipart for you to utilize in your documents.
[by Lee Mathews]Firefox 3.5 beta 99 is out
Mozilla has just pushed out a new version of Firefox 3.5 beta, which it's dubbing beta 99. Now, the last public beta was Firefox 3.5 beta 4, so either Mozilla went through 94 builds that they didn't feel like telling you about, or this is pretty close to the final product.
There's not a lot of information about the changes between 3.5b4 and 3.5b99. But several users have reported problems displaying some web content including errors with Wordpress 2.7.1's admin pages and problems displaying some elements of web forum pages.
You might want to hold off on upgrading until the kinks have been worked out. But if you just can't resist, you can upgrade from Firefox 3.5 beta 4 to beta 99 by clicking the Help button in the menu bar and then selecting "check for updates." You can also download Firefox 3.5 beta 99 from Filehippo and several other file download sites, although it's not yet available from Mozilla's Firefox beta download page.
Update: It looks like the preview release includes bug fixes, JavScript engine updates, and improved support for OGG based audio and video playback.
[by Brad Linder]Chrome alpha finally ready for Mac, Linux users to download!
Non-Windows users have been poking and prodding Google for quite some time now, wondering when they would be able to get their hands on an actual Google-branded browser for their operating systems.
Google has taken the wraps off the alpha versions for Mac and Linux! In the official blog post, however, Google advises that you don't download the alpha unless you have a browser deathwish. Which you do, so the download links are at the bottom of this page.
I'm wondering what took so long, especially on Linux where the coders behind the PPA for Ubuntu Chromium have been hard at work. The open source project has been usable for quite some time, and I've been running it in Crunchbang and Ubuntu for almost two months. Considering its supposed alpha state, the core of the browser is very stable and feels just as fast as its Windows cousin.
Sandboxing has caused a bit of a hangup on Linux, plugins are not yet supported, and the options screen is MIA as well. Ok, so there's plenty of work to be done, but it's serviceable, and has been fun to use for weeks.
Those same features won't be working in Chrome, either, so don't expect to be able to do all your typical web browsing. No plugin support means no Flash, so YouTube and most of our addictive Time Wasters are all out of the question. Update: the options page is there in Chrome, and it's (partially) working!
It's a start at least, and shows that Google is, in fact, going to deliver a finished browser at some point.
Hey, they only promised "sometime in the middle of 2009," after all, and we're not quite there yet.
[via CNet]