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Posts Tagged ‘Tabs’

feature: Platform Preview gives Web developers first taste of IE9

Microsoft today released the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview to the public. The release is meant to demonstrate the capabilities of Internet Explorer 9 to Web developers while at the same time providing feedback to the IE9 team. Microsoft says it is committed to updating the Platform Preview to keep a more effective rhythm for discussion, and it will be updated every eight weeks or so. Microsoft will share feedback with standards-setting bodies in addition to using it for internal development.

The Platform Preview is a minimal wrapper: it’s not a full-fledged browser. It has no tabs. It has no address bar. It has no back button. So what is included? Everything that Web developers need to see: the rendering engine, of course, as well as the new JavaScript engine, hardware acceleration features, and the developer tools. The IE9 team told Ars that each update will use one of the latest internal engineering builds, at which point the feedback loop will start again.

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TUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

While most iPhone and iPod touch users make do with the built-in Mobile Safari web browser, there are a number of alternative browsers that offer features that didn’t make it into Safari. All of these alternative browsers have one thing in common — they are all based on MobileSafari as a result of Apple’s policies. What the other browsers bring to the table are features like full-screen browsing, different ways of organizing tabs, and ad blocking.

Many of the alternative browsers have passed by my iPhone home screen at least once before being summarily dismissed, but there is one that has actually been getting some use lately; bitStorm’s VanillaSurf. The free browser, which is now at version 2.1, offers features that seem more at home on a laptop or desktop machine than on a smartphone.

Launching VanillaSurf for the first time brings up a blank screen with the familiar address bar at the top and an unfamiliar toolbar at the bottom. The toolbar sports eight icons — back, forward, settings, downloads, actions, bookmarks, tabs, and full-screen. The back and forward (or previous and next) icons provide their usual functionality, while the settings icon is a portal into some more useful items.While most iPhone and iPod touch users make do with the built-in Mobile Safari web browser, there are a number of alternative browsers that offer features that didn’t make it into Safari. All of these alternative browsers have one thing in common — they are all based on MobileSafari as a result of Apple’s policies. What the other browsers bring to the table are features like full-screen browsing, different ways of organizing tabs, and ad blocking.

Many of the alternative browsers have passed by my iPhone home screen at least once before being summarily dismissed, but there is one that has actually been getting some use lately; bitStorm’s VanillaSurf. The free browser, which is now at version 2.1, offers features that seem more at home on a laptop or desktop machine than on a smartphone.

Launching VanillaSurf for the first time brings up a blank screen with the familiar address bar at the top and an unfamiliar toolbar at the bottom. The toolbar sports eight icons — back, forward, settings, downloads, actions, bookmarks, tabs, and full-screen. The back and forward (or previous and next) icons provide their usual functionality, while the settings icon is a portal into some more useful items.

TUAWTUAW review: Smoother iPhone browsing with VanillaSurf originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Macworld 2010: Hands-on with the 4iThumbs keyboard for iPhone

Filed under: Macworld, iPhone, iPod touch

I stopped by the 4iThumbs booth to check out their product that would purportedly increase my (admittedly dismal) typing speed on the iPhone/iPod touch. It consists of a plastic overlay that puts small ridges between the letters of the standard iPhone keyboard, available in both portrait and landscape formats. The product comes with some tabs that you affix to the top and bottom of the device, and you can then slip the plastic overlay on and off. You can touch through the overlay and use the phone as usual while it’s attached, although the bumps aren’t terribly comfortable for swiping. There’s a matching set of tabs for the back of the device which can hold the overlay when it’s not in use.

I tested it out, and it works. I never texted much on any device other than the iPhone, so I can’t make a direct comparison of typing speeds between an iPhone and, say, a Blackberry. I do type a lot on my iPhone, though, and I can readily say that my typing speed and accuracy increased dramatically while using the 4iThumbs overlay.

4iThumbs is $19.95US online for 1 set, which includes portrait and landscape versions and the tabs to attach them to your iPhone/iPod touch. At Macworld, you can pick up 2 for $15US, but you’ll have to get there quick to take advantage of the show pricing.

TUAWMacworld 2010: Hands-on with the 4iThumbs keyboard for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Chrome for Mac beta syncs bookmarks, adds extensions

The Google Chrome team has announced another beta release of Chrome for Mac, adding a number of oft-requested features. Chrome for Mac now supports extensions, which allow adding a number of additional browser features as needed. The team also added support for Chrome’s cloud-based bookmark syncing feature, which works across Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux platforms.

In addition to extension support and bookmark sync, Google has created bookmark and cookie managers “that feel completely at home on the Mac,” according to engineer Mark Mentovai. There’s also a new task manager for keeping track of all your open tabs. However, feature additions haven’t taken away focus from providing a “snappy, safe, and simple browsing experience,” Mentovai said.

Google’s browser is generally available in three different versions: stable, beta, and developer preview. The new features have been available in Windows and Linux betas of the browser, and have been incubating in the developer previews for Mac OS X before bubbling up into beta. Google has yet to release an official stable release for Mac OS X.

Our look at the last beta release revealed a fairly stable and fast browsing experience, only hampered by some missing features—namely extensions and bookmark syncing. If you haven’t yet given Chrome a chance, you may want to download the latest beta and give it a try. Current beta users should be automatically updated to version 5.0.307 within the next 24 hours.

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list.it: Post-It Notes for the Twitter Generation

While furiously trying to organize my digital life this past weekend, I found myself as I often do – with an obscene number of tabs open at the same time while hopping from thought to thought. It was in the middle of this confusing mess that I came across list.it, the self-described “simple, free, open-source note-keeping tool to help you manage the tons of little information bits you need to keep track of each day.”

Put out by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, the browser extention is a “tool to help people cope with information overload and to stay organized” that has since helped me keep track of the common threads of an often multi-threaded day.

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What It Is

The best part of list.it is its simplicity. It doesn’t do much more than keep a list but it does that very well. List.it exists as a sort of frame on your browser that you can hide or show with a hotkey. Even it’s design is perfectly simple, with a text entry box at the top, a search bar in the middle and the individual list items below.

Big Features for a Little App

List.it has all of those things I always find myself wishing an app would do.

There are just four hotkeys to remember: One opens and closes the frame, one searches through your notes, one pops up a quick entry bar at the bottom of your browser and one adds the current URL.

The list items are kept in little boxes, which can be rearranged simply by clicking and dragging. A click on the main area of a note opens it for editing and directly clicking on a URL will open that website in a new tab. A click on the “x” deletes the item.

Information for a Twitter Generation

Now, this isn’t the type of app where you’re going to keep large chunks of text, so the search can serve a slightly different purpose. For techies like us, members of the Twitter generation, the idea of hashtags has become common sense. They work as a great way to keep your information organized, as whenever you do a search, you can click the “+” next to the search box to save that search. Instead of working in a directory structure, you create the structure on the fly.

This might be one of our favorite parts of this little app. While we can use the browser’s bookmarks or services like del.icio.us, we don’t have to spend time keeping our list organized in the same way. There’s no complicated and powerful bookmark organizer. List.it is for parceling off your information into little bites, manipulating them and working with them along the way. As long as you tag your notes along the way, these saved searches act as filters. If that hashtag appears anywhere in the note’s text, it will be displayed when you click on that search button, which is kept just below the search bar.

List.it also allows for synchronization between different browsers by saving your list on a central server, that way you can take your list with you on your netbook or your iPhone. One caveat – we ran into some difficulty while trying to create a user name and password. After installing list.it, there will be an orange triangle next to the text entry box at the top. Clicking on that will bring you to the proper location. Aside from that, we’ve had no other problems, which is always nice to see with an open-source, always in development type of app.

We’d recommend going and taking a look at the extension for yourself. It’s available for Firefox version 3.0 or greater and for iPhone and Android. The video included below gives a quick preview off the extension, but we think using it will really prove it’s usefulness.

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Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home

As if you needed any more evidence of the tech supremacy of your Nokia N900 or N810, here’s Firefox making its official mobile debut on the most righteous Maemo OS. Available for download right now, version 1.0 will come with a pretty sweet feature named Weave Sync, which harmonizes your bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords across devices, making for a seamless transition between your desktop computer and your mobile one. We reckon we could get used to that. Alas, Flash support is still somewhat shaky, and does not come enabled by default, though you’re free to flip the switch and ride the lightning as it were. We’re sure Mozilla will appreciate any crash reports you might want to throw its way as well. So come on already, download the darn thing and let us know if it improves on the already spectacular browsing experience of the N900.

[Thanks, Ross M.]

Firefox for Mobile makes Maemo its first home originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Aerotel GeoSKeeper hits Finland, keeps mummi from wandering too far away

Have a grandmother or grandfather who tends to go for afternoon walks and somehow winds up on the other side of town? Does that town happen to be in Finland? Aerotel GeoSKeeper system could be your saving grace, a wrist-worn cellphone and GPS combo device that allows for others to keep tabs on the location of the wearer. It was announced back in 2008 and is now going live in Finland courtesy of EcoTec, where families can set up safe zones and receive alerts whenever the wearer decides to wander outside of them, which is reassuring — so long as you’re not the one wearing the thing. Calls can be made to doctors or family with the press of a button should something go wrong, and apparently you can even receive text messages somehow. The one thing it can’t do? Tell time. If you’re going to make someone wear something like this, the least you could do is build a watch into the thing!

Continue reading Aerotel GeoSKeeper hits Finland, keeps mummi from wandering too far away

Aerotel GeoSKeeper hits Finland, keeps mummi from wandering too far away originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TotalFinder beefs up Finder

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Snow Leopard

A new “hack” for Finder is in the works, and it’s pretty darn cool. TotalFinder adds tabs, Visor-like functionality and a few other goodies (with more on the way) to your plain, vanilla Finder setup. If you’re skittish, though, don’t jump just yet. TotalFinder is alpha, and not in that way that developers label software just to be safe. It’s really, really alpha. TotalFinder runs as a SIMBL plugin, too, which can (in some cases) cause some system instability in and of itself. However, if you’ve got the apples for it, it’s a very cool new way to soup up your Finder.

In its current state, it does a few simple — yet amazingly useful — things, starting with adding tabs to Finder. Honestly, we got tabs in Terminal before Finder? This catches us up a little bit. The Visor feature (which is optional), assigns a hotkey that makes your tabbed Finder window slide onto the screen and disappear when you’re not using it. It’s take-or-leave for me at this point; it’s cool, but it takes a lot of getting used to, especially for window-to-window file dragging within Finder. You can’t currently drop files onto other tabs, so some problems arise in that situation. The other features include preventing .DS_Store file creation and sorting file listings with folders grouped on top.

For now, I’m sticking with Path Finder for my souped-up Finder needs, but TotalFinder has the potential to bring Finder into its own after years of relatively few improvements. You can grab a copy to try out (for free) at BinaryAge, and note that it comes with an uninstall script that will wipe it clean off your system if you don’t like it.

[via Smoking Apples]

TUAWTotalFinder beefs up Finder originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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