venturebeat.com reported that facebook is now starting a push to get users to make it their default homepage. In fact, that’s exactly what they are doing with a new “Make Facebook Home” button that is beginning to appear on the top of user’s profiles.
They reported:
Users logging in may be prompted by several pictures of their friends and a customized sentence reading, “See what’s happening with Stephanie, Kim and the rest of your friends the moment you open your browser.” At the end of the sentence is a large blue button that reads “Make Facebook Home.” Upon clicking (which I didn’t want to do) the user has a choice of either making the page their homepage or adding to their homepage tabs.
One can’t help but wonder if this is an attempt to compete with Google and its seeming dominance as a homepage. While Facebook users may be spending more and more time on the service, I can’t imagine people seeing it as beneficial as Google and it’s powerful search capabilities.
We’ve asked Facebook how widely the new feature is being rolled out and when we get a response we will let you know. The company is probably testing the service now to see the adoption rate and whether people see Facebook as a homepage. My bet, is that they click “cancel.”
The latest version of Opera Browser comes with a bundle of nice features. Well private browsing is nothing new as almost all well known browsers are having this feature. But windows7 Integration, i have to tell you, its awesome. Its like this version of opera have integrated to windows7 better than Internet explorer 8.
The interface has been completely re-done with Aero Glass for Windows 7 or Vista users. The menu bar has been rolled up into a single button similar to the way Office 2007 works, with easy access to all common functions all from one place.
Windows 7 users can hover their mouse over the taskbar Opera button to see previews of each of the open tabs, and moving your mouse over a specific tab will enable the Aero Peek effect and show the Opera window with the contents of that particular tab. Well this is how Internet Explorer 8 works right? And thats not all. You can even middle-click on the thumbnail preview to close a tab.
If you have created a shortcut of opera on your taksbar, then you can simply right click it and it gives you options for selecting items from your Speed Dial, opening a new tab, or starting a new private browsing session in a separate tab.
Download
This build still represents early work in progress; as before many things are known not to work. It can still crash, cause you to swear and speak badly of you behind your back. You have been warned!
Known issues (will be fixed in the next snapshot)
- 99% score on Acid3
- Regression in DOM performance
Opera 10.5 Beta [Opera Desktop Team] via – LifeHacker
Firefox 3.6 beta released recently and it is offering a plenty of new features.
The sluggish start up problem was there for firefox for all the recent versions. Developers are saying,in this version it is fixed and now this time it has an improved start up time.
The planned release date is somewhere near to the end of this year. This delayed release date is because they are working harder like never before to speed p the java script engine. At least theregister thinks so.
The new version supports the latest web formats (such as HTML5) and introduces support for the the WOFF font format.
Also a new feature which will enable users to just drag and drop files to the browser windows, will be there. This feature is developed with developers in mind.
Firefox 3.6 also features technology that will alert users about out-of-date plugins, a potential security and performance headache.
Google released a new beta version of their browser Google Chrome 3 beta. Not only is it speedier than ever, but they’ve also given the browser a little bit of design whimsy that we hope will bring some color and delight to your day.
According to Google:
“This new beta is fitted with a customizable New Tab page, an improved Omnibox and a few basic themes that allow you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns and images. We’ve also built HTML5 capabilities into this release, as well as a few other nifty technical improvements that will help Google Chrome make the most of your network connection.”
This beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release.
These are the latest themes available in google directory for Chrome. Currently themes are supported by only this beta version.
You can get this latest beta version from here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/
Mozilla has announced they will be releasing the final version of Firefox 3.5, the very last day of the self imposed deadline. The download will be available on their website.
New Features:
- Faster javascript engine called TraceMonkey.
- A Privacy mode, just like IE8 & Google Chrome.
- Location aware browsing.
- Enhanced Scripting Features.
- HTML 5 support.
