Harsh J

Last time I’d used Flock browser was back when it was 1.0 or something above it. It worked nice then too, and the not-so-recent version maintains that with even more features.

Around 15 minutes of starting the browser, I had over 8 services integrated with Flock with just simple logins on the sites of each, ranging from this Blog (This’s posted by Flock) to Facebook (A service I’ve just started to use).

Twitter works well with it and so does the Flickr and YouTube media browser implementations. Things I miss are very few actually, one being Google Reader integration. Mozilla’s feed-reader Liferea was supposed to have gotten that by now (GSOC), so I’ll check that soon.

But what overshadows all its feature and gloss is its ability to work smooth even when its all loaded up with services and other enable-able things. Its clearly built for this, one can have no doubts. Firefox loaded with a couple of extensions on the other hand works much slower and the drastically long close-times proves that well. The optimizations are well seen in Flock.

Currently am using it without any of the Flock branding, thus named ‘Minefield’ like my Firefox is named ‘Gran Paradiso’. Managing so many Web-2.0 accounts can’t get easier than this over a browser!

Check this news piece:

Opera files EU antitrust suit against Micrsoft

Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows, the Norwegian company said Thursday.

The complaint, which was filed with the European Commission on Wednesday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.

Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser.

The issue of standards is seen as important because if all Web browsers do not use the same standards, Web site developers are likely to design their Web sites to work with the most widely-used browser, which is Internet Explorer. That gives people a disincentive to use other browsers.

Microsoft’s spokesman in Brussels did not immediately have a comment on the lawsuit. The company has argued in the past that consumers benefit from its tight integration of IE and Windows.

Opera said it filed the complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them.

PC World

Have the Opera people gone out of their minds? I’m not an Opera hater. I do detest Internet Explorer (IE) but asking an OS to omit out the browser from its bundle is something no one would approve. And what about Apple’s OS X? They too bundle Safari together with it, lets sue them too!

My point is, an OS without a browser in it is suicide. No one would want that to happen. In fact people would love to use the bundled IE on-install than to be presented with a dozen of browsers to choose from.

This is no way to improve a browser’s rank in the market, its pure stupidity. Instead, do something the more smoother way like advertise it on TV a few times, or a board, stickers, and stuff like what the community driven Mozilla Firefox does. That is slow, but it works. This is just screaming out for attention like a 13 year old kid!

But there’s no telling I won’t be happy to see IE in flames. But that would be another blog post, if it happens.

Don’t worry, both of these are just minor UI improving Mozilla Firefox extensions and not one of those heavy-weight resource hoggers. And you’d probably need the first one installed, its like a bug-fix. Read on …

First one would be the Long Titles extension.

As you’d have noticed on Firefox at times that the title attributes (tooltips/titles) in various pages are never displayed fully and always end abruptly with a “…”.

Like this image below:

This is cause of certain bug in Mozilla Firefox. Though this has been fixed in the upcoming Firefox version 3.0, you can fix this partial-showing in Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 with this extension - Long Titles.

After fixing they’d look like below: (To get what am talking about)

The second extension is a rather personal pick of mine. Its called Hide Menubar.

Does what its named as, hides the menu bar (File, Edit, Favorites, History, Tools, etc …) and shows them only when you hit your ALT key.

Before:

And, after installing the extension:

Just like IE 7 does, perhaps. I use this to get more viewing space since I don’t really use my menu bar that much.For bookmarks, I use the Ctrl + B sidebar feature instead, when required. (This plugin also auto hides your menu after a certain amount of time, neat!)

I don’t remember reading any news about the restart of GMail’s storage counter post April 1st when it stopped counting anymore. But now, surprisingly (Logging out from my account for the first time was the surprising part, to myself) I noticed that its yet counting! Or maybe that’s just my -Never-Sign-Out- ignorance that made me notice it now ..

Anyway, head to GMail’s site to learn counting with Google.

Google Adsense seems to have started displaying a small icon next to ads from websites which support Google Checkout services.

IMHO, Adsense ads are getting too cramped up with the link + description + title and now this too. Instead, they can try putting the description as a tool-tip box on hover and make space for more variety in a box instead.