TechBlog

Firefox is the most popular open source web browser. The latest release is version 3.6. It is available in more than 70 languages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Features that made Firefox popular
Some of the new features in the latest version include: personas, or themes that help users to personalize the appearance of Firefox; a plug-in updater that will detect out-of-date plug-ins; stability improvements and performance tuning. Now, we will see some features that made the user prefer Firefox over other browsers.

Fine Tunings in Tabbed browsing
Firefox supports tabbed browsing. This allows users to open multiple pages in the same window. There has been lot of fine tuning in this feature. You can rearrange your tags by dragging them. When you open a new tab in Firefox 3.5, the existing ones slide to the left. Firefox also permits multiple homepages. It may be your current pages, or a group of Bookmarks. They are automatically opened in separate tabs. You can drag a tab into a new Firefox window by dragging it to the desktop—or drag a window back into the open browser to make it a tab. Firefox offer a blank white page on new tabs. If you have multiple tabs opened and you are attempting to close the browser, it will ask whether you want to save the open tabs for your next session or just quit. If you save them, you will get all your tabs and sites when you reopen Firefox next time. Firefox had an “Open recently closed tabs” and reopen recently closed windows option. So even if you’ve closed a tab or a whole browser window unintentionally you won’t lose them.

Awesome Bar
One of the special features of Firefox is the address bar. The address bar is officially called the location bar. When you start typing in it, it suggests a list of Web destinations based on your browsing history. The search bar is resizable now. You can divide the space between the location and search bars to your taste.

There is a star in the right side of the Location bar. It gives you a simple way to mark a page as a favorite, the difference between starring and bookmarking is this. Firefox’s star saves the page as a bookmark. That means the page doesn’t show up in the top-menu Bookmarks item, but it does show up in Recently Bookmarked.

Download manager
The download manager in the Firefox has the ability to pause and resume downloads and you can search the previous downloads. Once the Download is completed it is automatically scanned for viruses. You can change the default location where downloads are saved.

Some more features of firefox on later posts. Stay close.

As the webmaster or blogger, we are so familiar with the imaging tools. If you feel that the Adobe Photoshop was too expensive to buy then this kinds of tools could be the good alternative. This good tools called Paint.NET and popular as the photo and image manipulating software for computers or laptop that run Windows platform, you can get it at no cost a.k.a free. Even it was freeware and shareware, this tools has great features that intuitive and innovative user interface with support for many layers, unlimited undo editing, special effects added, and a various variety of useful and powerful tools. But, the best part of this tools is it has an active with members growing online community. They work together and provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins for the users in the world at no cost.

Actually, this useful tools was develop at the first time by the undergraduate college of senior design project that tech and mentored by Microsoft, and now it was already maintained by some of the alumni of the college of senior design that originally worked on it. For your information, this tools was intended for the free replacement of the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows right now. So, you will get it as the free package when you install the Microsoft Windows at your computer. This tools was begun and grown into the powerful, affordable but yet simple image and photo editor tool for the users. Now this tools was already compared to the other paid or non paid digital photo editing software packages in the world such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

So, here this the simple introduction for this useful imaging tools. You can simply download it at no cost through their site at Paint.Net or through this direct Paint.NET download link. At the articles we will post about the features and the performance test for this tools. So, enjoy your weekend buddy,

If you are like the average computer user, you will have very limited idea about Linux. For most average computer users, a computer is all about the various flavors of  Windows. However, there is more to computers than Windows alone. If you are curious, Linux may just be the operating system for you to tinker, play and learn with. However, Linux is a bit difficult to use at first. And this is what stops most people from opting for this free, versatile and flexible operating system.

Linux (pronounced LI-nuks or LI-nooks) is a free computer operating system. Actually, Linux is just the kernel i.e. the core of the operating system. Most Linux distros contain thousands of free software applications. Linux is open source software. This means that the underlying code is freely available for everyone to view, modify and distribute (even sell!). You may be aware that computer applications are developed using a programming language. Operating systems are no exceptions.

Migrating from Windows to Linux can be a bit daunting. If you are used to the user interface provided by Windows, you will have to put in some effort to get used to the new interface. Linux distributions commonly contain more than one user interface. For example, you can install KDE, GNOME, FluxBox, XFCE, etc. on most Linux distributions. Some of these look similar to Windows. However, some can be quite different and you may find them a bit difficult to use.

Most software that is available for Windows has open source alternatives on Linux. For example, for Internet Explorer, you have Mozilla Firefox, Photoshop has GIMP and so on. However, the main issue here is that in some cases, the free software do tend to lag behind. For example, there is no real alternative to Photoshop. GIMP works but it lags behind Photoshop in many features.

When it comes to Linux, it is not all about money. It is about a unique intellectual culture. And this culture relies on sharing on information and helping others. You can readily get a taste of this by posting your doubts and queries to Linux forums such as http://www.linuxquestions.org. There are always people to help and you will find help. However, you have to try to find your own answers first. Remember, there is no guru elsewhere! You have to find your own guru inside you!

To get started with Linux, check out www.Ubuntu.com. Ubuntu is one of the most popular distributions today. It is also very user friendly. See www.distrowatch.com for more Linux distros.

VLC 1.0.3 is available now. It was released on 31-10-2009. It is one of the best players available for free to play audio and video files.

It supports many file formats, wide range of video and audio formats. This means it will not say sorry cannot play this file please download and install necessary codecs. You may have been experiencing this type of frustration with some well known media players. Formats supported by the latest player include OGG, MP2, MP3, MP4, and DivX.

The interface of VLC looks very simple. You may easily underestimate its power by its look. The specialty of VLC player is its versatility. It supports subtitles. Most video players do not have that capacity. It can play FLV files down loaded from web. Some famous users of FLV video format are Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and You Tube. High definition codecs like AES3, Raw Dirac and various streaming protocols have been added in the latest version.

It is very compact despite having all the codecs in its package. The download file size of the windows version of VLC 1.0.3 is just 17.19 MB.

The latest version supports Windows 2000 and later only. That means if you are using Windows 95, 98, and ME you have to be contend with VLC 0.8.6.

It has a portable version also. (You can play the video files without installing the software.)

Now VLC is compatible with Windows 7. This is an important improvement in the latest version. There have been problems in the video quality in the previous version (1.0.2) when it was used in Windows 7.

Another specialty of VLC is it is a multi platform player. Latest version is available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS, Syllable, BSD, Solaris and Sharp Zaurus.

You can download the precompiled version or source code for your OS from this page http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC has few drawbacks also.
Some say you have a lot of options. Yes at first it looks very complex. Play list management is not intuitive.
Finally the interface is not attractive.

If you are the one who appreciate performance not the looks then try VLC.

You will start loving its simplicity.