Opera Software is usually pretty quick in releasing the final version of the Opera web browser once they have reached the release candidate stage. This time it took four release candidates before they shipped Opera 11.10 final. Downloads are already available on the main Opera homepage, and Opera 11 stable users should see update notifications [...]

How do you handle new interesting websites if you do not have time to use or access them right away? Some users like to keep the sites open until they do, even if that means that the website will be open in a tab for a day or two. Others use bookmarks to save the [...]

We have already told you how to switch between Firefox update channels to run the new Aurora builds of Firefox for instance, or the more frequently updated beta releases. It was only a logical consequence that the developers made the decision to create a logo and unique about Firefox page for every update channel (with [...]

The topic came up recently on our How To Uninstall Windows Internet Explorer 9 guide: Is it possible to remove or uninstall Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7? The short answer is no, it is not. At least not if you mean to completely remove the web browser from the operating system. Internet Explorer 8 [...]

We have mentioned earlier that the Firefox development team had plans to switch to an accelerated development process. According to those plans, the development process would be divided into four stages that would on average take a new build in 18 weeks from its first appearance to release. Builds would be moved to new channels [...]

For a while now I have been looking for a way to zoom images in the Firefox web browser with minimal effort. Something similar to the excellent Hoover Zoom extension for the Google Chrome browser. And while there have been some extensions and userscripts that supported some sites, there was barely anything that would work [...]

It can sometimes be helpful to schedule downloads, for instance if you need the bandwidth for other work related tasks at the moment to avoid bottlenecks during that time. It is not really possible to schedule downloads in Firefox, at least not without the help of extensions or external programs. Firefox users have basically two [...]

SoundCloud users and visitors can only download some of the music offered at the popular audio hosting service. Just enter a song name or part of a name in the search form on the main SoundCloud page to get a list of results that match the query. All songs can be played right away on [...]

It will never again take more than a year to move from one major version of Firefox to the next, at least not unless Mozilla decides to change the current development specifics again. You may have already heard that you can expect new Firefox releases every three months from now on. The development specifics that [...]

Google introduced the text completion service Google Scribe in September of 2010. Back then it was only available for English texts. The Google labs service Google Scribe analyses the text that has been written by the user to give real-time word and phrase auto-suggestions. Scribe displays suggestions as soon as you start typing the first [...]

Firefox 4 users are not the only ones who under certain circumstances have to cope with blurry fonts in the web browser. Some Internet Explorer 9 users are also left with blurry fonts on their system which can be attributed to Internet Explorer 9′s automatic font smoothing. While I personally like font smoothing in Internet [...]

Chrome users on the developer channel or Canary will see download warnings if they try to download a file on a website that matches the list of malicious websites published by Google’s Safe Browsing Api. The warning reads “This file appears to be malicious. Are you sure you want to continue” with options to discard [...]

Are you using bookmarks to keep track of your reading progress on a specific website? Bookmarks are quite handy to save the current page on a website, so that you can continue your reading at a later time without having to find that specific page again. The only problem is, you can end up with [...]

Add-ons can severely impact the startup time of the Firefox web browser: On average “each add-on you install adds about 10% to Firefox start-up time” notes Mozilla’s Justin Scott in a post at the Mozilla Add-Ons Blog. This means that the startup time of Firefox will on average double if ten add-ons are installed. Mozilla [...]

Firefox by default ships with a spell checking dictionary that matches the language version of the browser. If you download the Firefox US release you end up with the US-English dictionary for instance. This usually works out of the box but may be buggy at times. You can check Fix Firefox Spell Check Not Working [...]

Twitter: Love it, hate it. Even the biggest Twitter critics have to agree that the social messaging service must be doing something right. Yes, there is lots of automatic messaging going on and spam, lots of spam. But underneath that pile of junk, you find valuable information. New product and software releases for instance, or [...]

Microsoft added the feature to pin websites in Internet Explorer 9. Users who run the Windows 7 operating system are currently the only ones who can make use of that option. You may recall that Windows 7 users can pin programs, files and other data to the Windows 7 taskbar for faster access, and a [...]

Coincidence? Ghacks reader Paulus reported troubles with his version of Firefox, which basically showed a loading add-on manager screen whenever it was started, with no options to close that screen other than to shut down the whole browser. I suggested starting Firefox in Safe Mode and he discovered that the Firefox add-on Add-on Compatibility Reporter [...]

We all have our favorite search engine that we use predominantly, and an assortment of secondary specialized search engines for specific tasks. A common example are general web searches on search engines such as Google Search, Bing or Yahoo, and shopping related searches on Amazon, eBay and other shopping sites. There is however a gap [...]

With Firefox downloads in the millions on launch day, it is now time for Mozilla to look at user feedback and make preparations for the next big iteration of the web browser: Firefox 5. With rapid release in mind, Firefox 5 may be just around the corner. In Life After Firefox 4, What’s Next we [...]

Firefox and web forms; Maybe you have experienced the following situation in the Firefox web browser. You have entered data into a form, sign up form for instance or a comment form and clicked on the submit button afterwards to send the data to the web server. The page reloads and you either get an [...]

Probably one of the most annoying features of Firefox 4 is url trimming. The web address of a link is displayed in the bottom left corner of the browser when you hover over it with the mouse. The problem here is that the Mozilla’s developers decided to trim that address when it reaches a certain [...]

Mozilla has changed the add-on manager in Firefox 4. The reworked add-on control panel is now opening in its own tab, listing the available add-on related entries on the left, and the actual add-ons, plugins, userscripts and themes on the right. The add-on listing uses quite a bit of space, which should not be a [...]

So, language learning. It can either be a pretty boring task, especially if you are in school and have to do it, or exciting, if you want to learn a language, for instance to read Goethe’s Faust in German or Tolkins’ Lord of the Rings in English. But even with all the excitement, a large [...]

Web video is still largely powered by Adobe’s Flash technology. Sure, some sites like Youtube begin to offer videos in different formats like WebM, but Adobe Flash is still the dominant format, even on Youtube. That’s a problem if Flash is not working properly on your system. If you experience lags, endless buffering or other [...]

I’m not a huge fan of emoticons or animated gifs, but I know a lot of users who are. Just head over to your favorite forum or social messaging site and look at the posts on your wall, it is likely that you will see at least some emoticons or images posted on that wall. [...]

Four different builds, or channels if you use Google’s terminology, of the Google Chrome browser are currently available, five if you add the Open Source browser Chromium to the list. Google Chrome Stable, Beta, Dev and Canary all reflect a certain stage of the web browser’s development. Canary builds are the cutting edge builds, followed [...]

Google yesterday released a security update for the Google Chrome web browser that brings the version of the browser to 10.0.648.204. The update is as usually installed via automatic updates on most Google Chrome installations. Chrome users who have automatic updates disabled can check for new updates under the Tools icon > About Google Chrome [...]

CCleaner is without doubt one of the most popular Windows system maintenance tools. It is not just one single feature that makes the application that popular, more a combination of several features. It is effective when it comes to cleaning temporary files, updated regularly to support new applications or software versions, and offered as a [...]

Where can I download Firefox? If you here that question once, you point the user to the Mozilla website. If you hear that question multiple times throughout the day, you start to think that a Firefox downloading guide may be a more appropriate option to tell users how to download the web browser. So, Firefox [...]

Several Firefox 4 users, especially those on Windows, have noticed that some, and sometimes even all, fonts are blurry in the browser. Many users have identified the built-in hardware acceleration as the main culprit for blurry fonts, and noticed that the fonts render fine again if hardware acceleration is disabled. You need to do the [...]

With all eyes on the Firefox 4 launch yesterday, updates for Firefox 3 have slipped by almost unnoticed. Mozilla yesterday made available updates for both active branches of the Firefox 3 web browser. Firefox users who are running Firefox 3.6.15 or Firefox 3.5.18 have the option to upgrade their browser to the latest Firefox 3 [...]

We all know that the Firefox web browser has a full screen mode that can be activated by pressing F11. That mode hides all interface elements except the scrollbar when activated, which is great if you need more space to display the website or if you are working on low resolution monitors. Especially netbook owners [...]

I have reviewed several Firefox extension that improve the image saving capabilities of the web browser in past weeks. Among them the incredible Image Download II and Bazzacuda Image Saver. Image Picker is another, albeit more simplistic, extension for Firefox. Its core feature is the ability to download multiple images from a web page at [...]

Firefox 4 has finally been released. I do not really want to rehash all that’s been said in the past twelve months or so ever since the first beta releases appeared on the Mozilla servers. Only that much: Firefox 4 is faster and really not that much different from Firefox 3.6. Here are a few [...]

March seems to be the month of the big web browser releases. Microsoft started the fray with Internet Explorer 9, followed by the final version of Firefox 4 yesterday. Now it is Opera with new versions of the Opera Mobile and Opera Mini browser. First of, what’s the difference between Opera Mobile and Opera Mini? [...]

Google recently changed the header on many of their pages, from more or less static links leading to often used features, the account, settings and sign out to a menu like interface that opens up when the user clicks on it. The menu should pop up on a left click, but this has not happened [...]

Mozilla will release the final version of the long awaited web browser Firefox 4 tomorrow. This ends an odyssey full of delays that began about nine months ago with the first beta release of Firefox 4. Nine months, that is the projected time that Mozilla will need for the next three major Firefox releases. I [...]

Focus Keyboard is an experimental Firefox add-on that help you improve your workflow in many ways. How do you handle the following situations? You want to copy a web address and load it in Firefox. You want to change the current web address. You want to load your favorite search engine and enter a search [...]

Microsoft has released the long awaited new version of Internet Explorer a few days ago. Internet Explorer 9 is currently only available via direct download, and not via Windows Update or another updating mechanism. That limits the reach of the browser considerably for now. This will change on March 21 when Internet Explorer 9 will [...]

We know that Firefox 4 will be released in just a few days time. It looks like the release candidate build will also be the final build of the browser, if nothing unforeseen happens during the last days before release. The long awaited and several times delayed next iteration of the popular web browser marks [...]

Have you ever noticed web history suggestions in Internet Explorer 8 or IE9 even though you have deleted the history and the index.dat file in Windows previously? This is caused by the integration of Internet Explorer’s history in Windows Search. Internet Explorer 8′s and Internet Explorer 9′s web addresses are automatically indexed by Windows Search, [...]

Sebastian Anthony over at the Download Squad today looked at the total number of downloads of Internet Explorer 9 in the first 24 hours of release. He mentioned that the 2.3 million figure looked impressive at first, but not so much anymore when it is compared to the Firefox 3.5 release which managed to break [...]

Well we’ve only just had Internet Explorer 9 out of the door on Monday but coming up straight behind it will be Mozilla’s new Firefox 4 just next week. More’s the point, the company is so confident that people will want to grab the browser as early as possible they’ve given a release time of [...]

I compared web browser benchmark results back in 2008. Illustrious browsers such as Google Chrome 1, Firefox 3.1, Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 or Opera 10 alpha were tested and compared. The results from back then are history, with the majority of tested web browser versions no longer available. Google for instance has recently released [...]

Opera Software has just released the first beta version of Opera 11.10 Barracuda. Users who have followed the development on the Opera Desktop team blog know that Barracuda introduces several new features. The feature that has been talked about the most is the new and improved Speed Dial display on new tab pages. Opera has [...]

A website’s layout and formatting may improve or reduce its readability. Black text on a dark background or distracting menus are just two of the elements that reduce the readability of a textual information. The Firefox add-on Readable, a direct port of the bookmarklet Readable, falls into the same category of tools such as TidyRead, [...]

Microsoft for some unknown reason has made the decision to hide the menubar in Internet Explorer 9 by default. Some users are apparently able to display the menubar permanently by right-clicking on free space in one of the toolbars and selecting the menu bar from the available options. Others do not see the menu bar [...]

Instant seems to be a new buzzword. It began with the release of Google Instant which added automatically updating search results pages to the Google Search engine. InstantFox brings the concept to the Firefox web browser, albeit with some differences and interesting prospects for the future. The extension configures several search engines and options with [...]

When you look at HTML5 video support of the five most popular web browsers, you notice that there is not a single browser supporting the two formats WebM and H.264. Depending on your browser choice, you end up either with one or the other, but not both. Problems will arise for Internet users once the [...]