Another month has passed and it is time to look back at the top stories that we have published here on Ghacks Technology News in November 2011.
A lot has happened in that month. Google has added pages to their social networking service Google+, called Google+ Pages, and Ghacks has its own. Feel free to add add the channel to your circle. Check out how to addprofile banners if you want to create a profile banner for your page on Google+ as well.
Google continued with the redesign of core properties such as Youtube and released a new Google header layout.
The company added a Verbatim Search option to Google Search which ensures that results are returned for the user query and not for Google’s interpretation thereof. Check out the userscript Gooverbatim to access Google Verbatim directly.
Not everything was golden in November in regards to Google. The company continued to retire products like Google Buzz, Google Wave and Gears, and started to display advertisement in the Chrome browser.
Mozilla has released the web browser Firefox 8 and the email client Thunderbird 8, and shortly thereafter an update to Firefox 8.0.1 to fix stability issues in the browser.
The company furthermore released the final version of Mozilla Profile Manager, and revealed intentions to speed up Firefox’s update process and memory efficiency.
Microsoft made available the fourth preview of Internet Explorer 10 to Windows 8 users. The company saw the browser’s market share drop to below 50%.
The Redmond company published the biannual Security Intelligence Report that showed a much higher Windows XP infection rate. A leaked (unconfirmed) roadmap revealed Windows 8 and windows 9 release dates
Adobe discontinued Flash for mobile devices and announced that Flash Player 11.2 would include an automatic update feature.
Software, Tutorials and Misc News
A new version of the Lightning Calendar add-on for Thunderbird was released. Look at this guide if you want to sync Google Calendar with Thunderbird Lightning.
Handy browser add-ons and userscripts have been released or updated in November 2011. Among them ScriptNo and Ghost Incognito for the Google Chrome browser. The first is a NoScript port to Google’s browser, the second offers to run specific websites automatically in the browser’s private browsing mode.
Firefox users can make use of Wallflower to block social media buttons on the web to speed up their web surfing and increase their privacy, and of Low Quality Flash to improve Flash media frames per second on low performance systems.
Sky History manager, TeamViewer 7, Game Downloader, BlueStacks, to run Android apps on Windows and the Last.FM, Aupeo & Vkontakte.ru Downloader were some of the popular new releases or updates for Windows in November.
We have published many tutorials and how to articles in November. This included instructions on how to clear the YouTube viewing history, how to remove What’s hot on Google+, how to restore Firefox bookmarks, turn off automatic add-on updates in Firefox and how to disable caps lock permanently.
Did we miss a story or article that you really liked? Please tell us how you like the new best of article format.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
Ghacks May 2011 Best OfGhacks September 2011 Best Of
Ghacks July 2011 Best Of
Ghacks June 2011 Best Of
Ghacks April 2011 Best Of
Great job you have done, Martin! Congratulations for your efforts!
When I read this recap from the mouth again much news under the sun.
Nice read this overview.
Excellent new format facilitating a fluid reading.
To make one suggestion that applies to all articles
having links open in a new tab assists in reading as well.
Of course the reader can force that himself and I usually do.
Taking the reader off the article page forces an interruption.
Plus opening in a new tab allows for checking those
later after finishing the main article itself.
Beyond that, every day at gHacks
has something of value and picking
best of here is harder than other sites.
Thanks Robert, I keep that in mind. I think we had the discussion in the past about opening pages in the same tab or a new one. The consensus back then was to let the user decided, and that would mean to not use blank target for links on the site.
Regarding Google redesign, don’t forget the scripted scrollers on an increasing number of Google pages when viewed in Chrome.
I first noticed it in GMAIL, but I see that it’s now happening on other Google pages. It’s clearly the direction in which everything is headed.
IE and Firefox users needn’t worry about it. In those two browsers, horizontal and vertical scrollers at the right and bottom edges of the browser window look like they always have. However, in Chrome, the scroller has becom a translucent gray draggable thingy…
…missing, most notably and importantly, the little up/down arrow buttons at the very top/bottom of the vertical scroller, and, whenever a horizontal scroller appears (which is less often, of course, as long as one has one’s browser window pulled-out wide enough) the little left/right arrow buttons at the ends of that scroller are missing, too.
Apparently no one at Google thinks they’re important. But every notbook computer user knows that when, for example, one is reading a page and needs to do downward scrolling as one reads, it’s easiest of all to just put the mouse pointer on the down arrow button at the bottom of the vertical scroller, and then just tap the left mouse button on the touch pad to incrementally scroll as they read.
Of course one can left-single-click anywhere (but on the translucent gray thingy) on the scroller to scroll in bigger chunks… sometimes so big that the line or two of text just out of sight below the very bottom of the window before the big-chunked scroll actually ends-up just out of sight above the very top of the window after it… so that it’s missed altogether. Hence the reason I so like the little incremental scrolls that are possible by clicking on the little up/down arrow buttons at the top/bottom of a normal, traditional scroller, such as what may STILL be seen when using GMAIL in either IE or Firefox. It’s just in Chrome that Google is making ME, at least, insane with its stupidly scripting the scrollers when the old way worked just fine.
Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, as they say.
I even started a thread about it in GMAIL (and I think a couple of other areas of the Google) Help forums…
…not that it’s done a damned bit of good. Google CALLS them the “Help” forums, but most things which get posted in them get summarily ignored by Google. The word “help,” then, is an oxymoron…
…and so only morons should expect to get any help — at least from anyone at Google — in the Google Help forums.
How ’bout this respected web site covers and exposes THAT abomination!?!?
[sigh] Sorry. Needed to vent for a minute. Thanks for liste… er… I mean reading.
Anyway, changes, changes, changes at Google. Some good, much of it, though, bad.
And you know when it all began? When BING started getting popular and it scared Google. Microsoft and its intensive ad campaign touting Bing as a “decision engine” made Google think that that’s what everyone wants. And so Google’s first move, if you recall, was to change the search algorithm to try to make it more intuitive and “smarter,” ala Bing’s “thinks for you” sort of “decision engine.”
The problem was (and remains) that those of us who actually know how to use Google — who understand when to use the plus sign, and the minus sign, and double-quotes, and other operators — to really drill down to exactly what we want don’t NEED (or want) the search engine to be making any decisions for us! That’s in fact, the entire reason we DON’T use Bing… because we don’t want the search engine thinkin’ for us! Unlike most end-users who can’t be bothered with details (and who have apparently fallen on their heads to much or something), we who actually know what we’re doing can think for ourselves, thankyouverymuch.
And I notice that Google has just gone downhill from there… trying to best Bing in everything, instead of standing its ground and pointing-out to the world that it is (or, now, more accurately, was) what it is(was) for a reason; and that its methodology has always been, and remains, superior. Google, with its money, could have matched Microsoft’s ad campaign with one of its own telling the world not to be sucked-in by the Bing hype! Instead, it went on the defensive, which anyone who’s ever read “The Art of War” or Machiavelli will attest is the wrong move.
So NOW look! Oy. Google’s becoming a nightmare.
Makes me so mad that I have to stop typing about it now. (Plus, Mary-Anne just put breakfast on the table… so… gotta’ go!) [grin]
____________________________________
Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
gregg at greggdeselms dot com
Greg I do agree with you that I dislike it when a search engine tries to “interpret” my search query to deliver results it thinks are best for me. More often than not, it is totally wrong and I have to refine the search, use verbatim search (thanks for that Google) or simply use another search engine to find what I’m looking for.
This is awesome, few more things that might add value or major software updates for the month, classification of attacks by attack vectors & breaches.
Thanks for all your efforts, appreciate your daily tips and tricks.