The Firefox add-on and Google Chrome extension ProxMate looks and feels like an advanced copy of the Grooveshark Unlocker, an extension that unblocks access to the Grooveshark site if it is blocked in a country.

The browser add-on adds two features on top of that make it more practicable. It first can unblock blocked videos on YouTube, so that they become accessible again. It detects blocked contents on YouTube Video pages, channels and search, enables the proxy and reloads the page to unblock the contents on the site.

The second new feature allows users to change the proxy server. This can be useful for privacy reasons, and in situations where the default proxy server may have been blocked or is not functioning anymore.

ProxMate works right after you have installed it in the Firefox web browser. Instead of seeing a screen like the following one that is telling you that you cannot watch the video,

you can watch it just fine with ProxMate enabled.

Please note that while this works automatically most of the time, you sometimes may need to reload the page a few times before the video starts to play.

You can change the proxy server in the settings. Here it is also possible to disable the add-ons functionality on select supported sites.

ProxMate is available for Firefox and Google Chrome. The extension can be useful if you like to access the Grooveshark website or encounter videos on YouTube regularly that are blocked in your country.

Update: Grooveshark Updater also came with options to change the proxy server in the add-on’s settings.

This is not the first occurrence that a critical update is released shortly after a major version upgrade of the web browser. Similar updates had to be delivered after the release of Firefox 9 and Firefox 8.

Firefox 10.0.1 fixes critical issues that came to light shortly after Firefox 10 had been released to the public. This includes at least one startup crash when the browser is opened by the user, and one Java related issue that is causing text fields to hang in the browser. Firefox users can resolve that issue manually by minimizing or resizing the browser. The patch released later today will fix the issues permanently though.

The product planning summary lists additional issues that the developers are currently looking into. This includes issues with AVG’s SafeSearch extension that is blocking the enter key from functioning correctly in the browser’s address bar. While it it possible to click on the go button to be taken to the site, it is a issue that the developers want to resolve as quickly as possible.

Other issues mentioned in the summary are additional crashes, and incompatibilities with Norton products and RealPlayer Video Downloader.

The release is already available on the Mozilla release ftp server and on third party download portals such as Softpedia. It is likely that the new version will be pushed to all users later today. At that point it will also be offered for download on the Mozilla website and as an update in the browser.

Please note that both the standard Firefox 10 build and Firefox 10 ESR will receive the update to Firefox 10.0.1.

The new version introduces GPU accelerated 2D Canvas on Mac and Windows versions of the browser, which according to Google should improve the performance of 2D browser apps and games using the HTML5 technology noticeably.

Chrome users can open the internal page chrome://gpu to check their computer’s graphics feature status. The page lists five features and their hardware acceleration status.

The Swiftshader software 3D rendering technology has been licensed by Google and implemented into the Google Chrome Beta browser to improve the performance of 3D contents on older graphics processing units that do not support GPU based hardware acceleration. While not performing as well as GPU based acceleration, it should boost the performance on systems that were unsupported until now.

At the same time, we recognize that many people with older GPUs and graphics drivers have not been able to experience the rich content provided by technologies such as WebGL. Chrome is now able to display 3D content via SwiftShader, a software rasterizer we licensed from TransGaming, Inc. Although SwiftShader won’t perform as well as a real GPU, it will be an improvement for many of our users on older operating systems such as Windows XP.

The Swiftshader software rasterizer will automatically take over on systems that do not support gpu hardware acceleration. Chrome users who would like to see performance information can start the browser with the following two flags:

• –blacklist-accelerated-compositing
• –blacklist-webgl

Chrome will then download Swiftshader components to the computer to make them available. This can take a few minutes. Some users have even reported that the process is stuck on their system, with no option to get the components to download properly. You can remove the flags later on.

Chrome Beta users should have received the update to version 18 by now. Interested users who want to download the beta version can do so at the Beta channel over at the Google website. (via)

Ciuvo identifies items on shopping sites automatically, pulls price and other information from its database, and displays those information in a small toolbar that it attaches to the top of the web page.

This toolbar highlights the cheapest price it found in its database, the number of total sites carrying the item, and links to additional information like product videos.

You can use the information to compare the price on the site you are currently on to the cheapest price that Ciuvo found in its product database. This can be reassuring if the site you are on has the cheapest price, or a money saver if it does not. Details about each offer are displayed in the menu that opens up when you move the mouse cursor over offers in the toolbar.

Here you see the price and shipping information, whether the product is available, the store’s rating and a short description of the product.

A click opens the item’s page on the shopping site in a new browser tab. It is still important to compare the product details on all shipping pages to make sure that the same product is offered on both. The add-on had for instance issues identifying different product versions on a single Amazon item page. It always compared the price of the default product with its database.

Ciuvo checks YouTube for product videos which can be viewed directly on the shopping site. Just hover with your mouse over the video menu and select one of the videos to watch it directly in an overlay on the page.

Here is a short add-on demonstration video.

Ciuvo is only compatible with select online shops in the US, UK, Austria, Germany, France and Poland. Firefox users interested in an unobtrusive price comparison add-on should check it out.

Omnibox Prerendering basically preloads some of the pages that are presented to you in the browser’s address bar. This reduces the time between hitting the Enter key on the keyboard and seeing the page fully rendered in the browser window. It is not clear how Chrome selects those pages, but it is likely that your previous browsing history and bookmarks may have something to do with it. This does create some overhead though, especially if the browser does not select the right pages that often.

Chrome users who do not want or need the prerendering feature can disable it in the following way:

• Open chrome://flags/ in the Chrome address bar and hit enter.
• Locate the flag Prerender from omnibox and change the feature’s state to disabled.



The second new feature is the automatic scanning of executable files like exe or msi in Chrome to warn you if you are downloading a malicious file or a file from a host that is know to host a high percentage of malicious downloads.

Google maintains a whitelist of files that are not checked. All other files are checked with Google to retrieve more information. While not a fail safe approach, it can warn users if they are about to download known malicious files. The concept looks similar to Microsoft’s SmartScreen Filter. It does not seem possible to disable the feature right now in the browser.

In addition, a total of 20 security vulnerabilities were closed in Chrome 17 of which one received the highest possible severity rating of critical.

You can read up on the changes at the official Chrome Release blog. Chrome updates should already been applied to existing Chrome Stable installations. You can verify the version with a click on Wrench > About Google Chrome. There you can also download and apply the update if the browser has not been updated yet.

The browser add-on, available for both the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browser, monitors all browser tabs automatically from the moment it has been installed. It cannot notify you of updates if a website is closed though, which means that it is best for users who have their messaging and social sites up whenever the browser is up and running.

Tab Notifier can display notifications even if the browser is minimized or not visible on the screen.

The extension watches all open tabs but the active tab by default. This behavior can be modified in the extension options to a more stricter policy. Instead of watching all sites, it is possible to configure the add-on to watch only sites listed in the settings window.

Notifications furthermore can be configured to close automatically after a set amount of seconds, which may be useful for users who receive many throughout the day.

A right-click on a web page and the selection of the configure tab notifier for site context menu option displays a site specific configuration menu. This overrides the global extension settings so that it either offers to run a whitelist or blacklist of sites.

Advanced users can use regular expressions to fine tune title matches for specific sites. This can be useful if a site uses different page titles instead of just one (or to be only notified if the notification count reaches ten or more messages).

Notifications are displayed in the lower right corner of the screen, and not in the browser window. Firefox users can download Tab Notifier from the Mozilla Add-ons repository, Chrome users from the developer’s website. Apple Macintosh users need to have Growl installed to use the extension.

Android users can download Chrome Beta from Android Market, where it is available for download. A version of the browser has also been downloaded and made available again by members of the XDA-Developer forum.

Chrome for Android Beta ships with some Chrome desktop features, including the browser’s omnibox to search and navigate directly from the browser’s address bar, a tab driven interface, and the private browsing mode (incognito mode). Other features of the desktop version, like themes and extensions support are currently not available in the beta client.

Chrome for Android furthermore synchronizes bookmarks and open tabs with desktop versions.For synchronization to work, you need to sign in to Chrome on all devices that you want to synchronize.

The mobile version of Chrome introduces several device specific features. This includes options to flip through all open tabs with a swipe, or the new link zooming feature that makes the selection of links more comfortable in the mobile browser.

Google has released a video that introduces the Chrome for Android beta version. The video demonstrates the tab swiping capabilities of the browser among other things.

Most user comments on Android Market, Google Plus and other announcement locations are quite positive. The average rating currently on Android market is 4.3. Critics have pointed out that Chrome for Android does not support Flash, and that it is not possible to switch to the desktop version of a site if available. Positive aspects are speed mainly and the synchronization of tabs and bookmarks.

Google plans to release the mobile browser in other countries in the near future. It is not clear at this point in time if pre-Android 4.0 devices will also be able to download and install the browser. (via Caschy)

Have you played around with Chrome for Android yet? Let me know what you think of this initial release in the comments.

Changes have been introduced, but only in select browsers at this point of time. Google Chrome for instance uses sandboxing technology and automatic updates to keep users secure. The global updater that other web browsers use on the other hand is not nearly as thorough when it comes to downloading and applying updates as soon as they get released.

Adobe today has released a new Flash preview version for the Windows operating system that contains a new feature for the Firefox web browser.

Flash Player Protected Mode aims to limit the impact of Flash based attacks in Firefox on Windows systems. The new Flash Player feature is compatible with Firefox 4.0+ on Windows Vista or higher. Only a 32-bit version of the Flash Player release is available for download.

The security mode is automatically enabled when users view Flash Player files in the Firefox web browser. Flash contents are executed in a restricted environment that prevents attacks from reaching the operating system or other applications. It is basically a sandbox comparable with Google Chrome’s sandboxing technology, Protected Mode in Adobe Reader, and Protected View in Office 2010.

Firefox users running the new version will notice that two processes are started whenever Flash contents are accessed in the web browser with Protected Mode enabled.

Adobe notes that these are the “broker and sandbox” processes which only run if Protected Mode is enabled. These are child processes of the plugin-container.exe process if enabled in the browser. Plugin-Container adds crash protection to the browser.

The Flash Player Protected Mode version for the Firefox browser has known issues. On 64-bit Windows systems for instance, a right-click on Flash contents causes Firefox to hang. Here is the list of known issues.

• Flash Access support is not enabled in this build.
• Secure Sockets are not working in this build. (3101130)
  Open and Save dialogs can hang in Windowless Mode (3096944)
• Camera streams fail to play back when encoded with the H.264/AVC codecs (3096918)
• On 64-bit Windows, Right-Clicking Flash Content cases Firefox to hang (3096953)
• Custom context menus and clipboard copy does not work (3096977)
• Local Security Dialogs are not displayed (3096714)
  When printing to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer”, the “Save File As” dialog is always minimized (3096958)
  Some Stage3D content may cause Adobe Flash Player to exit silently (#3049089)
• Closing a SecureSocket connection may block Adobe Flash Player execution and result in timeout (#3045631)
• Camera fails to play back when camera stream is being encoded with H264/AVC codec (#3049298)
• IME may not be active in Windows Vista at times between browser sessions (#3055127)
• In SandBox Stand-Alone Player, some menu items in the Microsoft IME language bar do not respond to mouse clicks (2947549)
• Some Windows function keys such as F5 may prevent the Japanese IME candidate box to pop up (#3055096

Adventurous Firefox users find the Flash Player Incubator preview release over at Adobe Labs.

A final release version of the new Flash plugin version moves the Firefox browser security wise closer to Google Chrome.

Page Snooze for the Google Chrome web browser adds another option to the Internet browser. The extension hides inactive tabs for a certain amount of time on a special page, before it pushes them again to the tabbar of the browser.

Chrome users have two options to work with the extension after installation. They can first and foremost right-click on any page to select the new Page Snooze option in the context menu, or click on the extension’s address bar icon instead.

The context menu displays different inactivity periods, from 5 seconds to up to two weeks. The tab is automatically removed from the tabbar once a selection has been made.

The address bar icon on the other hand will always hide a tab for one week. The tab is automatically added to the tabbar again after the selected time period.

The icon furthermore indicates the number of tabs that are currently hidden in the browser. A right-click and the selection of options displays the list of tabs that are currently hidden in the browser.

Each entry displays the website’s favicon, page title and the date and time it will be moved to the tabbar again.

Google Chrome users who would like to try Page Snooze can install it from the official Chrome Web Store. It could prove useful to Chrome users who know that they do not need to access specific tabs for a specific amount of time.

RequestPolicy for the Firefox web browser has been designed to put you back in control over the connections the browser makes. It works in this regard similar to the popular NoScript add-on, but with the difference that it does not prevent onsite scripts from running.

When you first install the add-on, you can add sites to the whitelist. The developer has prepared international and location specific lists.

The majority of suggestions allow connections between sites by the same company. Examples are to allow google.com connections when you are on gmail, or fbcdn.net connections when you are on Facebook. These can significantly reduce issues that users encounter after enabling the add-on in the browser. It is however not necessary to add any site combination to the whitelist.

This whitelist approach is different from NoScripts whitelisting approach, as NoScript allows connections from that domain on all websites, whereas RequestPolicy only allows them on one specific site.

RequestPolicy adds an icon to the Firefox status bar that acts as a control panel and indicator at the same time. A red flag indicates that connections have been blocked on a website. A click on the flag displays information about those connections, and options to temporarily or permanently allow those connections to be made on the current site.

The page is automatically reloaded if you allow connections to be made.

The preferences let you manage the whitelist, export or import settings, and modify the strictness of the add-on. The add-on by default uses base domains, e.g. ghacks.net to allow same-site requests. You can change that to full domain names, e.g. www.ghacks.net, or full addresses instead.

What I personally like most about RequestPolicy is the granular whitelisting which allows you to run the same scripts on some sites but not on others (for instance to show Adsense ads on Ghacks, but not on other sites). It is also less intrusive than NoScript if the whitelisting suggestions are added during setup.

Google recently made changes to the location of the cached links on the search results pages. One of the issues that you may have is that you can only open the Google search results link in the cache. All other links on the site do not link to the cached version. That’s a problem if the entire site is down and you need to open multiple pages on it to retrieve the information you are looking for.

This leaves you with two options. You can copy the original link, paste it into Google Search and open the cached page this way, or modify the webcache url manually. Both options are not really that comfortable, especially if you need to open several pages and not only one.

The free userscript Google Cache Browser automates the process by converting all links on a cached page automatically. This happens behind the scenes and should not have a visual impact on the page rendering time or performance.

When you hover your mouse over a link on a Google cached page, you will notice that it too links to Google Cache and not the original website it was posted on.

The userscript modifies both internal and external links so that they are pointing to their Google Cache location instead.

The userscript can be useful in a number of ways. It first and foremost provides better and direct access to all cached pages of a website. It can also be helpful if you are experiencing connection issues or slow loading pages on a particular website. Connecting to the cached page instead may speed up access significantly.

Google Cache Browser is available on the userscripts website. It has been tested in Firefox with the Scriptish add-on installed. It is likely also compatible with Greasemonkey and Google Chrome, and maybe other browsers like Opera as well.

The Classicish Add-on Manager add-on for the Firefox web browser restyles the current add-on manager to look and feel more like the classic one. The most notable change is that it moves the add-on manager from the browser tab into its own window, making it completely independent from the browser window it was opened in.

Another benefit of that approach is that you can change the add-ons manager’s window size without changing the size of the browser window itself. The interface lists all installed add-ons on startup. Add-ons are listed with a black font color on white background for better readability.

Each add-on listing takes up the same screen estate in the window, and displays the extension’s icon, name, description and an options button.

Everything else has been moved into the right-click context menu. This includes options to disable listed add-ons, to remove them or to check for updates.

The options button opens the add-on’s options menu. Depending on the add-on, it may either open in a new window or on the same page. The back and forward buttons, and the sidebar can be used to navigate back to the listing afterwards.

The sidebar lists add-ons, plugins, themes and userscripts, but no option to install add-ons from the window. Most Firefox users install add-ons directly on the Mozilla site anyway and not in the Add-ons Manager.

Classicish Add-on Manager is a useful add-on for Firefox users who prefer to open the add-ons manager in an extra window instead of the browser tab.

Firefox users can download the add-on from the official Mozilla website.

Some add-ons on the other hand do not show a remove option at all in the addons manager. Most of the add-ons that you cannot uninstall from within the browser are called global extensions. They are installed from third party sources, for instance when you install or update security software or another application on your system. The Babylon Toolbar is an example extension as it is often attached to software installations.

The majority of extensions are installed in the extensions directory of the Firefox profile folder. I’d suggest you start there to see if the extension that you want to remove from Firefox is listed there.

You may run into two issues here. First that extensions sometimes install with cryptic names so that it may be difficulty to identify them, and second that you may not find the extension that you want to uninstall listed here.

The easiest way to identify add-ons here is to load them into archiving software like 7-zip. Double-click on the install.rdf afterwards and look for name there.

Some extensions are already unpacked in a folder. Just open the folder of the extension in that case and double-click on the install.rdf file in there to identify its name.

It is however likely that you do not see the extension in the directory.

Global extensions

Global extensions can be installed into any directory. The most likely folder is the extensions folder in the Firefox installation folder. This is usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 64-bit Windows operating systems, and C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions for 32-bit systems. Keep in mind though that you can install Firefox into any directory. Portable Firefox users need to open the extensions folder under the portable path.

Repeat the steps outlined above to identify all extensions listed here.

The third and final option is the Windows Registry. You may find extension information under the following two Registry keys:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions\

Use the shortcut Windows-r to bring up the run box. Enter regedit in there and hit enter. Navigate to the keys in the Windows Registry and check if extensions are listed there.

Information that you will find there includes the extension path.

Backup the Registry key first by selecting File > Export. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the directory of the extension. Backup that directory as well, before you delete both the directory and the Registry key that links to it. Repeat the step for all extensions that you want to delete.

Please note that you need to close Firefox before you start deleting extensions on the system this way.

If you follow the method, you should be able to delete any extension that you cannot uninstall from within the browser interface.

The release notes, as usual, list only a handful of changes that have made it into the new version of the browser. At the top of the list is an improvement for Windows users who can now update Firefox easier thanks to one less User Account Control prompt during installation of the update.

The second new feature in this version of the browser is the new line numbering of the page source code. This is actually a pretty useful features for developers as it improves the source code’s accessibility significantly.

Developers can now also use the column-fill and text-align-last CSS properties which the Mozilla developers have implemented in the browser. In addition, experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects have been implemented.

Firefox 12 comes with smooth scrolling enabled by default. The feature aims to improve the scrolling experience in the browser. Firefox users who experience issues with smooth scrolling or who prefer to work without the feature can disable it under Firefox > Options > Advanced > General > Use Smooth Scrolling.

Aurora users should pay attention to the known issues listing as well. Some Gmail users may for instance experience scrolling issues in the main Gmail window under this particular release.

Developers should take a look at the Mozilla Hacks article on the new release which highlights development related changes in Firefox 12.

The Firefox add-on NOverflow takes the concept a step further by dynamically changing the tab width values. The add-on, instead of letting Firefox hide tabs in the tabbar, reduces the minimum tab width whenever necessary to keep all tabs visible on the screen. And when you start closing tabs, the width of the remaining tabs is adjusted again to use the freed room on the tabbar.

This works well for a medium amount of open tabs. Once you reach an upper limit, scrolling buttons are displayed again to scroll to the left or right. A quick test revealed that about twice the number of tabs were displayed at the same time with the extension installed. It should be noted though that this is only valid if the minimum width has not been altered previously.

The core benefit of the extension over adjusting the width of the tabs in the stylesheet is accessibility. All it takes is to install the add-on to get the tabs width adjusted automatically from that moment on. Tech savvy users may prefer to edit the stylesheet directly instead, as it will free up some ram and maybe even cpu that the add-on requires when running.

You can change the minimum width in the add-on’s options. It is set to 54 pixels which is nearly half of Firefox’s default value of 100 pixels. You can reduce the size to 36 pixels which would nearly triple the maximum number of visible tabs in the browser, or increase it to 72 pixels.

The remaining options let you hide blank favicons from tabs, the close button from the active tab and to use slimmer pinned tabs.

Firefox users who want to give it a try can download and install NOverflow from the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.

Mozilla with Firefox 10 introduced the compatibility by default feature which enforces compatibility natively for the majority of add-ons.

As a consequence, the compatibility enforcing capabilities have been removed from Add-on Compatibility Reporter. The add-on is now only a reporting tool that provides Mozilla and add-on developers with compatibility information about their add-ons.

Firefox users who have installed the extension solely for the reason of enforcing add-on compatibility, can remove it from the browser as it is no longer offering that functionality.

The compatible by default feature does not enable all add-ons by default. Brian King lists the following exemptions from the rule:

• Add-ons marked to work with a Firefox version less than 4.0
• Add-ons with binary components
• Add-ons explicitly marked by the author as incompatible, i.e. opt-out of Compatible By Default
• Add-ons tested and determined to not be compatible with a given version of Firefox, and marked as incompatible by Mozilla
• Themes

Most add-ons currently installed in Firefox 10 or higher should be automatically enabled by the new compatible by default feature. Users who are still running pre-Firefox 4 add-ons on the other hand that they now are working in Firefox 10 and higher are left standing in the rain.

One option for them to make their add-ons compatibility would be to install the Nightly Tester Tools to force add-on compatibility. Another option would be to edit the Firefox add-on file directly. Check out Three Methods To Force Add-On Compatibility In Firefox for information on how to do that.

Please note that this affects Thunderbird and SeaMonkey as well.

The Firefox add-on Status-bar Scientific Calculator offers another option. It adds a single icon to the status bar of the web browser that expands to a form on click. Here it is then possible to make basic and advanced calculations without ever leaving the browser window.

Just type in the values like you would in a normal calculator, and keep in mind that you need to use brackets to change the processing order. The calculator supports all basic operations plus a lot of advanced operations that involve complex numbers. Among those are switching from decimal and hexadecimal to all other bases from 2 to 24.

Some options can be switched with a left-click on the icon and the selection in the context menu. Others are only available in the calculator’s options.

Here it is for instance possible to define constants and functions. Constants like pi, e or the Boltzmann constant are already available, with options to add more constants easily. These constants can simple be added to the calculation to make use of them.

It is the same for functions, even though it appears to be slightly more complicated to create new ones as basic programming skills are required. The add-on ships with three functions.

You last not but not least can configure operators of which three are available as well.

The add-on supports up to ten digits after the decimal point, with options to increase or decrease that number in the settings.

Firefox users who would like to give a built-in calculator a try can download and install the extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

One of the issues that you may experience on today’s Internet are sites which change the visited link color via CSS so that it looks like to the normal link color on the site.

Visited is a Firefox add-on that paints all visited links in a color of your choosing. It overrides the defined link colors on all websites, so that visited links can be distinguished from unvisited ones.

The default link color has been set to gold, which should highlights visited links clearly on most pages, but not all. It is possible to change the color in the advanced Firefox preferences (and unfortunately not in an options menu via the about:addons page).

To change the link color, you need to enter about:config in the Firefox address bar to open the advanced configuration of the browser. Filter for the parameter extensions.visited.color.visited and change the value with a double-click. You can enter a color name or color code beginning with # in the value field. You can for instance change it to #800080 to turn the visited link color to purple.

The feature can be activated or deactivated with the shortcut code Alt-v for text links, or Alt-Shift-v for image links. It is unfortunately not possible to disable the painting of links on selected sites (it is for instance irritating in admin consoles and interfaces).

Firefox users can download and install the add-on at the official Mozilla Add-ons repository.

The ESR release has been designed for companies, organizations and users who cannot keep up with deploying new Firefox versions every six weeks. Firefox ESR releases will follow the rapid release process, but increase only by a minor version whenever the standard version increases by a major version. Regular Firefox 10 users will be moved to Firefox 11 in six weeks time, while Firefox 10 ESR users will be moved to Firefox 10.1 instead.

The ESR release will be offered separately from the regular version of Firefox. Another important change in Firefox 10 is that add-ons are now automatically set to be compatible if they have also been compatible with Firefox 4. This ends the majority of the add-on compatibility issues that Firefox users experienced whenever a new major version of the browser was released.

The beta changelog lists the features one expects from a six week release cycle with the new hidden forward button the most notable change. Firefox 10 furthermore adds support for CSS3 3D-Transforms, anti-aliasing for WebGL, full screen APIs that can be used to build web apps that run full screen and support for the bdi element for bi-directional text isolation.

Developers can make use of the new CSS Style Inspector and IndexedDB APIs that match the specifications more closely

The previously announced silent update option has not made it into this version of Firefox. Mozilla aims to release the new feature with Firefox 13, which is expected to launch in the beginning of June.

Firefox users can expect to see update notifications later today. Please check out our Firefox 10 What’s New guide which looked at the changes in the Firefox 10 Aurora version.

Update: Firefox 10 Stable (here) is now available at the official Mozilla website.

Update 2: Firefox 10 ESR download links are now also available. Click here to go the page.

I usually use desktop media players like AIMP3 to listen to Internet Radio stations, as it is a lot more comfortable than having to keep a streaming page open all the time in the web browser. That’s especially true if you have to restart the browser every now and then.

Radio Player Live is an excellent Chrome extension that offers a great radio listening experience for Chrome users. First time users need to add at least one station to the extension before they start accessing the selected stations via the extension’s Chrome address bar button.

This is done on the extension’s page. A click on Add radio stations lists all the available options. Users can add a station from the gallery listing maintained by the extension developers, add stations from popular sites such as the Shoutcast directory or Digitally Imported, or add stations manually.

All stations from the gallery can be added with a single click of the mouse button. They list many terrestrial stations, like RTL and RTL2, Virgin Radio, BBC 1 to BBC 6 or .977.

Third party stations lead to websites from where the stations need to be added. The extension adds buttons next to each station on those sites which can be used to add the selected radio station to the extension.

A click on the Radio Player Live button loads an overlay prompt to add the selected station to the radio player. The station’s name, website, logo and category can be customized here.

The station can then be selected via the extension’s button in the Chrome interface. Stations can be sorted into categories for easier identification. You can do that when you add a station, or later on under Manage my stations in the program options.

Users who do not like the theme can modify it extensively in the options. From background and header text colors to borders, category names and srollbars. Nearly every visual aspect can be modified.

The player window itself displays a list of radio stations, the currently playing station, the volume, and pause and stop options. You can switch to another radio station with a click.

The program supports VLC and Windows Media Player plugins, but I was not able to get those to work in the Chrome browser. It is not clear from the description whether they are used to play the radio stations in the browser, or if the music is redirected to the desktop player from where they are then played.

Google Chrome users who like to listen to Internet radio while surfing should take a closer look at Radio Player Live.