Opera today has announced that improvements are also coming to Opera 12.00, the next version of the browser that is currently under development. The old system, according to Daniel Aleksandersen, matched the terms the user entered against the page url, title or page content and ordered them by last visit.

Opera’s new system assigns a score to each suggestion that is based on additional factors like the position of the term in the url, the number of matches or the position or if the match is a bookmark.

The feature is still in development, as Opera is still working on integrating the browser’s Speed Dial feature and improving the scoring algorithm further.

Suggestions seem to favor search heavily in the current build, which has been one of the points of criticism. Another that it is now more difficulty to distinguish between sources, that site identification has become more difficulty as favicons have been removed, and that it sometimes is not clear why a page has been added to the suggestions.

In my own tests, I was unable to get suggestions if the entered phase did not start at the beginning of the url. The term hack for instance did not list lifehacker or ghacks in the suggestions.

It is my opinion a step in the wrong direction. Keep in mind though that this is not final and may see improvements in future builds. You can download the latest Opera Next version from the Opera Desktop Team blog.

The browser should pick up the new version information from the server and display an update window right away. A click on Download and Install updates the browser to the latest version.

Opera 11.61 is a stability and security upgrade, which makes it a recommended update for all Opera users. Two security issues are fixed in the new version, one that allowed manipulation of framed content to allow cross-site scripting, and another were script events “could be used to reveal the presence of local files”.

The change log lists about 50 additional changes and fixes that went into the new version of the browser. This includes several crash related fixes, including the following ones:

• Crash when clicking “Use master password to protect saved passwords” checkbox
• Occasional crash when clicking a link or opening a new tab
• Opera crashes when closing a tab that has the Star Menu opened
• Opera crashes on updating mail from version 9.27
• Crash in host resolver when closing browser after loading large number of tabs simultaneously

Interested users can access all change logs on this page. Opera 11.61 has been released for all supported operating systems. New users and those who do not want to use the internal updater can download the latest version of the browser from the official Opera download page. It is suggested to update as soon as possible to fix the security vulnerabilities in the browser.

You have probably heard about out-of-process plugins before. Chrome and Firefox are using the technology to split the core browser process from installed plugins. This is done to improve the stability and security of the browser. The reasoning behind the move is that plugins can be the cause for browser crashes. Without out-of-process plugins, the whole browser would crash and need to be restarted. With out-of-process plugins, only the plugin crashes and the browser remains open.

This is also important from a security perspective as exploits use crashes sometimes to execute code that they would otherwise not be able to run.

The new opera_plugin_wrapper process is started whenever a plugin needs to be loaded to display web contents. The process is closed automatically when the plugin is no longer needed.

Opera won’t crash if a plugin crashes, and the plugin page will be reloaded to fix the issue.

Opera Linux users have benefited from the browser’s out-of-process architecture for some time now. Windows and Mac users will see out-of-process plugins integrated for their versions of Opera in the future.

The second big change are 64-bit for Windows and Mac systems. According to the announcement, the 64-bit versions of Opera offer “performance improvements in some specific areas and allow Opera to have more freedom in allocating memory”.

Keep in mind that the versions that have been released at Opera’s Dev site are experimental, and not necessarily suitable for work environments. They can be installed next to existing installations of the browser.

How can you find out if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit editions of the Opera browser? Easy. Just enter about:opera in the address bar and hit enter. The platform value indicates if you are running a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Opera.

Downloads are offered at the Dev Labs page linked above. (thanks to Howard for the tip)

The new version of Opera 11.60 is already available on the official Opera website. Existing Opera users can consult the release notes for their operating system to find out what’s new in the release.

When you look at the changes you will notice that Opera has packed a lot of them in the release. Opera Mail users will find that the mail client has received a redesigned interface. New features include automatic mail grouping by date, pinning of messages which corresponds to Imap’s flagged feature and Gmail’s starred message feature, a new settings dialog and two lined message lists.

New HTML5 and CSS technologies have been implemented in the browser. This includes the HTML5 parsing algorithm, HTML5 audio and video attributes such as preload or muted, HTML5 microdata support, HTML5 custom scheme and content handler support, ECMA Script 5.1 support, XMLHttpRequest Level 2 support, full support for radial-gradient and repeated-radial-gradiant as well as support for applying image-rendering properties to HTML contents.

Dozens of bugs and issues have been fixed in Opera 11.60. This includes problems opening the Google Mail inbox, a mouse gestures crash, a 100% cpu usage on subpages of the Cisco domain or an inline find crash.

The security section lists five security related issues that have been fixed in the new version of the web browser.

It is recommended to upgrade Opera stable versions to the latest version as soon as possible.

You can read the announcement over at the Opera Desktop Team blog.

Social Fixer, previously known as better Facebook, introduces dozens of changes and feature additions to the Facebook web page. The majority of changes can be activated individually which leaves it up to the user if a particular feature is changed on or added to Facebook.

When you install Social Fixer in your browser you are asked if you want to start with a minimal version or the complete package. The minimal version makes only slight changes to Facebook and keeps most features deactivated. Users can then open the extension’s options that are displayed directly on the Facebook page to modify Facebook page elements selectively. The program runs a setup wizard after installation which informs the user about the core features that it provides.

The program lists dozens of preferences in the options. Take a look at the following screenshot that is showing the options in the Firefox web browser.

The extension even comes with a search to find options quickly. Options are displayed in groups like layout, display, chat or theme that all display multiple preferences.

Here is a list of some of the options that the extension offers:

• Show full image previews when hovering your mouse over pictures
• Disable the “Lightbox” (aka “Theater”) photo viewer popup
• Change font size to px for posts and px for comments
• Fix “Enter” key behavior to be a newline when adding comments, rather than submit
• Lock the blue header bar at the top even if the screen is small
• Reorder posts to be chronological and hide “Top Stories”
• Add “Reply” links to comments and float the reply box up to the comment
• Show “Friend Tracker” to get Unfriend notifications
• Display the “Control Panel” at the top. It can be used to mark messages read, reload or mute all.
• Hide the Ticker Feed of friend activities (Hide Facebeook Ticker)
• Hide friends’ real-time Game activity
• Hide the “Top Story” triangle indicators in the upper left of posts
• Fix timestamps to show actual date/time (“one hour ago” becomes “12:34am (one hour ago)”)
• Automatically mark a post as “read” after commenting on it
• Auto-expand comments on Questions post pages
• Left align the page rather than center
• Show old stories as grayed out rather than hiding them completely
• Turn off the chat sidebar on the far right (if it exists) and go back to popup chat list
• Group friends by online status (active on top, idle below)
• Install themes or skins on Facebook
• Enable Filters to hide specific post types in the news feed
• Add custom CSS styles

Those options are just the top of the iceberg. Social Fixer is a handy extension for Facebook users who want to modify the Facebook page to their liking. It is particularly effective in removing annoying page elements like the Facebook Ticker.

Social Fixer is available on the project website for all supported browser versions. It is also directly available on the respective add-on repositories.

An alternative is the userscript Facebook Fixer.

NotScripts is available for Opera 11.10 or newer. the installation process is a bit on the complicated side. Here are the instructions on how to install NotScripts correctly.

• Install the extension. You can install the latest NotScripts version right from the Opera Extensions repository.
• Close the Opera window and re-open Opera.
• Click the NotScripts button in the Opera toolbar.
  It would show you a message saying you to set User JS Storage Quota to 5000. Click the message and it will take you to the ‘User JS Storage Quota’ setting.
• Change the value of the setting from 0 to 5000.
• Click the Save button. You might need to scroll down to find the Save button.
• You may need to restart the Opera browser before the changes take effect.

Opera’s Notscript, unlike NoScript comes with three different script blocking mode. The default mode is whitelist which blocks all scripts except those that are run from whitelisted domains. Blacklist, the other option allows all scripts by default and blocks only scripts on a user maintained blacklist (much like the Firefox add-on YesScript). The last mode Whitelist + Same Origin uses the whitelist approach to block all scripts but allows scripts running on the same domain the user is on automatically.

So more choice in this regard which is really nice. When you visit a site you need to click on the NotScript icon to display the list of blocked scripts. There is no indicator that scripts where blocked which is probably the biggest usability issue. A click on the icon displays the scripts which options to allow, block or temporarily allow them individually.

If you run the blacklist mode (allow all scripts except selected ones) then you see a script listing similar to that on the screenshot above. The blue action is the current one for that script on that particular site. Just like with NoScript you can allow all scripts, globally allow all temporarily until revoked or temporarily allow the shown scripts.

NotScript seems to work considerably well. I have two big gripes with it. First the missing notification as it is a guess game if a script has been blocked or not and second that the developer has not updated the script in a while (the last update dates back to April 2011).

The extension itself works and that’s the most important aspect obviously. It is not a 100% port of NoScript but a port that brings the most important feature of the Firefox security extension to Opera. For that, it is highly recommended to be installed.

An alternative to that is the Opera NoScript Alternative BlockIt which I have reviewed in the linked article.

With the rise came add-ons and userscripts to improve various aspects of the Reddit site and user experience. The Reddit Enhancement Suite has been recently updated to version 4 for all supported browsers. It adds a custom dashboard to Reddit that adds features to the popular site.

When you first install the add-on you will probably not notice a big difference to the way the Reddit web page looked before. What you will see on the other hand is a new button at the top right corner of the screen (next to the user information) that opens the dashboard, settings console and night or day mode (the latter turns the white background into black and changes various other styles on the page).

The Settings Console is where all the new features and changes can be activated and configured.

Buttons at the top lead to configuration menus to configure accounts, comments, filters, the user interface and users. Lets take a look at each menu:

• Accounts: Option to enable the account switcher which stores Reddit usernames and password pairs to switch between accounts effortlessly. Also configured to show comment karma next to link karma.
• Comments: Adds a comment navigator to easily find comments, options to hide all child comments, live comment previews, keeping track of the comments count, option to save comments and to display parent comments when hovering over the parent link of a comment.
• Filters: Filter out not safe for work contents, add keywords to filter out, ignore subreddits and domains. Add a spam button on Reddit for easy post reporting.
• User interface: The biggest section offers a lot of different tweaks and changes. This includes adding keyboard navigation to Reddit, auto-loading new posts at the end of each page automatically for an neverending stream of posts, an inline image viewer or showing an unread message count.
• Users: Options to highlight users in comment threads, ignore users and tag users.

The Reddit Enhancement suite is available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari. It can be downloaded directly from the official project website.

Show Anchors makes use of page anchors to allow in-page linking to contents. It is necessary that the page supports and uses the HTML anchor tag. Most WordPress blogs and many other sites do that.

The program is available as a bookmarklet which should work in most modern web browsers and as a Firefox add-on.

Just drag and drop the Show Anchors bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar or the browser’s bookmarks. Click on the link when you are on a page where you want to create an in-page link for bookmarking or distribution. This displays all anchors available on that particular page giving you the option to right-click an anchor to copy the link or add the link to the browser’s bookmarks.

The copied links work in all modern browsers and do not require installation of the bookmarklet or Firefox add-on.

The firefox add-on Show Anchors works pretty much the same way. It adds an option to the Firefox right-click menu to show all anchors. Once selected all anchors on the page are displayed again. The program will display an on-mouse-over context menu with options to copy, bookmark or send the anchor or switch to the next anchor on the page.

The Firefox version of Show Anchors will display anchors on all pages of the domain once selected. Users who do not need the anchors anymore need to select the option again from the browser’s context menu to disable the showing of anchor tags.

Firefox users can download the Show Anchors add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. The bookmarklet which is compatible with all modern browsers is available on this page.

Mail improvements and changes have been implemented into the latest snapshot build of Opera 11.60. Snapshot builds are Opera versions released for testing and bug finding. While they usually work fine they are not suitable for productive environments.

Please note that the released snapshot build will upgrade existing Opera stable builds by default. Users who want to install the snapshot for testing purposes should click on Options and select a different home directory to avoid this. (One option would be to select the Stand-aline installation in the advanced options).

Probably the biggest change in this release apart from the cleaned up look is the new two-lined message list.

The new layout displays three mail columns when Opera Mail is opened. First the Opera Mail message, feeds and attachment listing on the left, then the actual messages from the selected mail folder and after that the selected message.

Users who do not like the change can switch back to list only or list and message below views easily.

Mails are now also automatically grouped by date. This can be switched as well to status, label, size or subject sorting, and grouping by read status, flag or date.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to pin important messages in Opera Mail. That’s handy if you need to reply to an important message but cannot do so right away, or if you need to access contents of a mail regularly. The pin message button appears in the message’s header and as a small dot next to the message listing.

Interested computer users can download the latest Opera 11.60 snapshot with improved mail module from the announcement over at the Opera Desktop team blog. Downloads are provided for all supported operating systems (which means Windows, Mac and Linux).

The core difference between two mobile browser versions is how Opera Turbo is handled in the browser. Opera Turbo is Opera’s compression service that reduces the size of web pages by sending the data through an Opera server where they are compressed before they are send to the user’s mobile device.

Smaller data packages means faster page loading times and a reduced bandwidth bill for users who pay by the Megabyte.

Opera Mini 6.5 is now available for new devices (The Android version has been out for a few weeks) including Apple iOS, Symbian, Blackberry and J2ME devices. The big new feature in Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 is a new data counter that allows mobile users to keep tabs on their bandwidth usage. While that may not be exciting for users with flatrates, it may very well make a big difference for consumers who pay by the Megabyte (or capped data plans).

Other improvements include stability and performance fixes, better text selection and auto-correct and spell-check support for iOS devices. Interested users can read up on all the changes at the official Opera Mini blog post.

A blog post over at the Opera Mobile blog informs users about the changes in the release (please note that Opera Mobile 11.5 has been available for some time for Android based devices on the Android Market)

Opera Mobile 11.5 introduces the data usage view on Symbian devices. The new version benefits from an Opera Presto rendering engine upgrade as well.

Opera Mobile users on Symbian devices can access the changelog here. Symbian users can point their browsers to m.opera.com to download the latest version of the Opera Mobile or Opera Mini browser. Browsers may also be available in the Apple App Store and on Android Market.

Opera Reader is an experimental Opera version that does away with all the scrolling on the Internet. It’s premise is to display all contents of a website directly on the screen. It basically breaks down a website into pages that are displayed just like the pages of a book. The developers have used a scroll and book comparison to highlight the differences. Scrolls are like standard websites that go on and on until the content ends, while books use pages that offer several advantages over scrolls.

Opera Reader turns scrolls (aka scrolling web pages) into books (aka paged web pages). Whenever you open a compatible web page in Opera Reader, you will notice that all of its contents are displayed on the screen without horizontal or vertical scrollbars. Here is how a compatible page looks in the standard Opera browser and in Opera Reader.

The core difference is the missing scrollbar. Opera Reader users can use the mouse to flip pages. Alternatives including using the keyboard (left and right) or gestures on touch enabled devices.

Separating a website into pages does not reduce the browser’s functionality at all. It is still possible to search, print or work with the whole web page like it would be in a standard version of Opera.

The Opera team has published a few examples on the Opera Reader website. This includes a basic newspaper, the novels Oliver Twist and Alice in Wonderland and a sample Wikipedia page.

The biggest issue with Opera Reader in its current form is that websites need to add specific CSS3 code to support the feature. Opera needs to come up with a way to automate the processing of web pages in Opera Reader. If the company manages to do that, it could change the way we read contents on the web forever.

Opera Reader is currently available as a preview version for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android devices. Interested users can download the preview release from the official project website over at Opera. (via)

The second o-day security issue has received a critical severance rating as it can be used to crash the web browser and execute arbitrary code on the system.

Users running the latest stable version of the Opera web browser, which is 11.51 at the time of writing, should receive automatic updates right away.

It is alternatively possible to check for updates manually by clicking on Opera > Help > Check for Updates. The new version is also available for download at the official Opera website.

The new Opera version comes with stability enhancements as well. Opera 11.52 fixes a issue on YouTube where adjusting the volume on playing HTML5 videos could freeze the web browser. It furthermore fixes a issue where BitTorrent downloads would lead to a crash of the web browser.

It is likely that Opera 11.52 is the last 11.xx version of the browser. The development team has recently released Opera 12 alpha which showed improvements all over the board. The new version introduces new technology support. This includes support for WebGL and full hardware acceleration.

Tech enthusiasts interested in this development version of the browser can download it directly from the Opera desktop team blog.

Most users who have that I know do the following when they want to open a link or a website that is displayed in one browser in another: They click in the address bar field of the browser and mark all of the address. Advanced users may use the shortcut Ctrl-a after clicking for the same effect. They then right-click and select Copy (or press Ctrl-c) to copy the website address to the clipboard. Then they open a new tab in the second web browser and paste the url into the address field there. In the final step they click the load button or press enter.

That’s a lot of work for a very simple operation. If you have enough screen estate you may be able to run both Internet browsers on the screen at the same time. If you do, you can use simple drag and drop operations to open a link or open website in one web browser in another.

This works with all browsers that I have tested. You can drag and drop from and to Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer.

To drag you move the mouse over the favicon of the website or the link in question, click and hold the left-mouse button and drag the address into the other web browser. You can drop it anywhere there and the website will be loaded in the active or the selected tab.

It is such a simple thing that can make such a big difference in day to day work. Did you know about this method? Or do you know of other (browser) related tips that optimized your workflow significantly?

I ran Opera 12 Alpha through a series of tests and boy did the new version manage to impress. Opera 12 Alpha scored 336 points and 9 bonus points in the HTML5 test, that’s more than Firefox’s 314+9 and a lot more than Microsoft Internet Explorer 9′s 141+5. Only Google Chrome Dev managed to beat Opera by 8 standard points and 6 bonus points.

Opera still trails behind in the Peacekeeper benchmark when compared to the most recent Chrome Dev version, at least on a fairly standard Intel Core i7 system running Windows 7 Professional (Ghacks reader Matthew mailed me on the other hand stating that Opera beat Chromes run by nearly a factor of 2. Then again, he failed to mention the Chrome version tested).

This version of Opera has full hardware acceleration support. The browser is set to auto detect hardware acceleration capabilities of the graphics card. Opera notes that support works best if graphics card drivers are the most recent and that users may experience bugs in the alpha release.

Users who want to disable – or force – full hardware acceleration support in the browser need to open opera:config in the browser and filter for EnableHardwareAcceleration to disable (0), auto-detect (1) or force (2) hardware acceleration in the browser. Similar settings are available for the WebGL. Users need to filter for EnableWebGL to turn it off (0), auto-detect (1) or force on (2) the technology.

You can check if hardware acceleration is enabled in your version of Opera by loading the opera:gpu page in the web browser. If you see Vega backend: Software it is not enabled. Hardware acceleration uses a OpenGL backend currently. Opera has announced that support for DirectX will be implemented at a later time in the browser.

The developers have added new personalization features to the browser. Skins have been renamed as themes, and you can download and install a few on the official Opera themes page.

Interested users can download Opera 12 Alpha for all supported operating systems from the Opera Desktop Team blog.

News about the next Opera browser version and Opera Software in general have almost come to an halt in that time. Users interested in the browser may have picked up some news over at the Desktop team blog which is more or less the official place to go for Opera development information.

Opera 11.51 has been out for some time and the next version of Opera that the developers are currently working on will be Opera 12.00, codenamed Wahoo. Here is a screenshot of the latest snapshot of the upcoming web browser.

One of the first things that users will notice is the new skin that Opera is currently working on. The Featherweight skin modernizes the browser interface in several aspects including updated and polished icons, blending of panels and better colorization.

The real changes however are under the hood. Opera 12 ships with an updated core rendering engine and the HTMl5 parsing algorithm Ragnarök (which is more or less the Norse mythology version of the Apocalypse with the difference that the world will be reborn after this).

The developers have furthermore added full EXMAScript (JavaScript) 5.1 support. You will notice that the current Opera 12 snapshot fails some of the tests of the test run at the ECMAscript homepage. All other web browsers tested, including Firefox 9, Chrome 16 and Internet Explorer 9 fail tests as well.

If you look at all the changelogs posted you will notice that the developers are working hard on fixing bugs and other issues in the browser. It is not clear when Opera decides to release the next version of Opera to the public. The development team usually posts a few release candidate builds before they release the final version.

With the planned design, rendering speed and compatibility changes Opera 12 will seamlessly follow in the footsteps of previous Opera releases. You can download the latest snapshot release over at the Opera desktop team blog.

That’s usually the end of the story. Once you switch the default browser you are all set up to work with that Internet browser on the system. There may be situations on the other hand where you need to switch the default browser multiple times.

This can be in a development environment where you have installed multiple browsers. To make the testing easier, you switch default browsers. But it can also have technical reasons. Say you do not get the prompt to make your favorite browser the default browser on the system. While you could edit the Windows Registry manually for this or try to uninstall and re-install your favorite browser, you might also use a program like Change Default Browser for the job.

The program supports the four web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. It detects the installed browsers automatically and displays them in the interface. You can use the browse button to select a different browser, for instance if you have multiple versions of a browser installed on the system. You can even select other programs or executable in case you want to make a different browse the default on the system.

To make a browser the default, simply select it in the program interface and click on the Set Default Browser to make it the default system browser.

If there is something to complain about it is the need to install the application before you can change the default browser on the system. Other than that it is a solid program with no downsides.

You can download the program that is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows from the official program homepage. Please note that you need to run the program with elevated rights as it needs to make modifications to the Windows system registry.

Still, Mac users that run the Mac Os 10.7 Lion operating system get support for the new full screen application mode introduced in the OS by Apple.

The changelog lists several crash and stability related fixes. This includes a fix that drops the cpu utilization of Opera’s extension manager and several Speed Dial related crashes on some user systems.

The new version furthermore fixes several usability issues, like toolbar buttons that were no longer showing up in Opera’s user interface.

Opera 11.51 fixes two security issues. First an issue “that could allow unsecured web content to appear secure” and second an undisclosed low severity issue.

The new version of the Opera web browser is already available via the browser’s internal updating mechanism. Users can check for new updates via Opera > Help > Check for Updates. The browser should however pick up the new version automatically by the time of writing.

New users and users who do not want to update the browser via its updating tool can download the latest version from the official Opera website.

The next release as it stands now will be Opera 12.00, a new version that is likely to ship with new features and improvements. This includes speed improvements and better network latency. Opera confirmed that users might see page loading in half the time as before, especially on poor network connections or when connecting to web servers hosted on a different continent.

Opera Software regardless of that is about to release an update for the latest stable version of the Internet browser. You may recall that Opera is currently working on two different versions of the browser: First on Opera 12 the next big release and then on the maintenance release Opera 11.51 which all stable users can update to.

Opera 11.51 will be a maintenance release that improves the browser’s stability on all supported platforms. Opera’s plan is to release Opera 11.51 before the next big version Opera 12.00.

The developers right now have released the release candidate of Opera 11.51 on the official Opera Desktop Team blog. This indicates that a release of the final version of Opera 11.51 is imminent.

The change log lists several crash fixes, for instance a crash on Macs when opening Opera Dragonfly, or a crash on all systems when marking e-mail messages as “not spam”.

Opera users should not expect new features from the release, as it is only being pushed out to resolve issues that users have under Opera 11.50.

It needs to be noted that Opera 11.51 will upgrade Opera 11.50 on the system when installed. The release won’t touch a Opera Next version that is installed on the system.

Most users should probably wait for the final release before they update their web browser. That is, unless they work with Opera and experience one of the issues that version 11.51 fixes.

Opera 11.50 users can download Opera 11.51 Release Candidate from the Opera website.

The research “measuring the effects of cognitive ability on the choice of web browser” was apparently conducted on 100,000 people who went looking for an IQ test.  As I pointed out at the time the data from this research would have been utterly meaningless, as it completely failed to take into account people using web browsers both at home and at work where they would have had no control over the browser they used.

Now it has emerged that the entire thing was a hoax with the BBC reporting that not just they, but other big media organisations including CNN and Forbes were taken in (not gHacks though I’m happy to say!).

It has emerged that the company website for AptiQuant was only set up recently and that all the staff images had come from a perfectly legitimate, and unconnected, business website for a company in Paris.

The BBC contacted the French firm, Central Test, who confirmed that they’d been made aware that AptiQuant has been using its images with the staff names changed.

It was quite an elaborate hoax with an extensive research document (containing grammar errors) and a very convincing website to back it up.  There is no clue at this stage who was behind the hoax.  In the study AptiQuant said…

The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser.  From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers. This hypothesis can be extended to any software in general, however more research is needed for that, which is a potential future work as an extension to this report.

gHacks readers too it seems are a savvy bunch with Jakin posting “This is a stupid study.   Intelligent people can choose to use IE or use another browser”  though Betttie said “IMHO, the study is among the most robust I’ve come across.”

It can be argued that the reason the hoax was so successful worldwide is because of the venom many people have towards Internet Explorer and the knowledge that some users of Microsoft’s browser can be less likely to know about, or know how to find, download and install other browsers.  With the exception of businesses still using Internet Explorer 6, it can be argued that it’s these people who are unlikely to even have Windows Update switched on, let alone download a new version of the browser whenever the update service tells them that one is available.

This is not proof of people having a low IQ however, far from it.  Instead this is merely proof that technology is very confusing and difficult to use for many people.  That these people should be considered “dumb” was something that gHacks users seemed particularly keen to attack, and good on you for it.

The BBC sought an alternative view to the research and asked Professor David Speigelhalter of Cambridge University’s Statistical Laboratory, he said “I believe these figures are implausibly low – and an insult to IE users.”  When the BBC tried to contact AptiQuant on the number provided on their website nobody was available for comment.

Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos commented that “It’s obviously very easy to create a bogus site like this – as all phishers know it’s easy to rip-off someone else’s webpages and pictures.”  He went on to add that this is exactly the type of behaviour exhibited by phishers and malware writers.  Though he added that the PDF file from the website containing the research appeared to be free of any malware.

So what is the alternative then? A third party bookmarks manager of course. Linkman Lite is a free Windows program that allows users to manage their bookmarks. It supports a variety of web browsers, including the top four Windows browsers Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera.

It appears that only one set of bookmarks can be open at the same time in the free light version of the bookmarks manager. There are a few workarounds though to overcome this issue. It is for instance possible to merge the open set of bookmarks with Internet Explorer Favorites. That’s likely the best option before managing and exporting those bookmarks again. The pro version supports appending bookmarks or synchronizing bookmarks.

Bookmarks are opened via the File menu. Internet Explorer favorites can be opened via File > Open IE Favorites, other bookmarks via File > Import.

All bookmarks are then displayed in the lower half of the program window. All bookmark folders are displayed on the left side, the bookmarks on the right. Searching and sorting options are available to filter the contents in real-time. A double-click on a bookmark loads the site in the default web browser, a right-click options to manage the bookmarks. This includes editing and deleting options, options to add the currently opened site in the default browser to the set of bookmarks or to add the selected bookmark to the default browser.

New folders can be created and managed as well. Bookmarks can be moved to another folder.

The free version is limited in most regards. This can be confusing, considering that the pro version’s options are displayed in the lite version as well. A “not available” message is returned whenever a pro version is selected.

It is possible to work around the limitations, even though it is not possible to configure automatic synchronization. Linkman Lite is a nice program to merge bookmarks from multiple browsers. The program is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.