Opera Software, developers of the popular Opera web browser, have released Opera Mini 6.5 for various mobile devices including Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Blackberry devices, Symbian S60 and Java-enabled phones. Opera Mobile 11.5 has been released for Symbian S60 devices in addition to that. Before we look at what’s new, we should take a quick [...]

If you are a heavy user of Google’s Google+ social networking product you are probably keeping the site running in a tab all the time to never miss new messages. But even if you do, you need to switch back to the tab regularly to see if there are any new notifications on Google+. Notifier [...]

Tabbed web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer have specific orders in which tabs are opened and closed. Developers have to configure orders for opening blank pages and links as well as activation rules when users close tabs. The default behavior of most browsers opens blank tabs on the rightmost side of [...]

Did you know that there are actually several reload options available for page reloads in the Firefox web browser (actually those reload options are available in all modern Internet browsers)? When you click the reload button you do a standard reload of the web page which will use the browser’s cache for faster page rendering [...]

Automatic add-on updates can be a fine thing. You save some time and make sure that your add-ons are always up to date. That’s great to resolve security or stability issues as soon as possible. It can however also mean that you get feature additions that you did not want or expect. I just read [...]

One of the biggest usability issues on today’s Internet are scrolling web pages. Browsers automatically add scrollbars to web pages if the contents exceed the vertical or horizontal display limitations of the window or computer screen. This scrolling breaks the readability of a web page significantly. Users who scroll need to locate the text position [...]

It is only a matter of time until software developers find ways to bring features of new or upcoming Microsoft Windows operating systems to previous versions of said systems. One of the first features to get ported to Windows 7 is the new Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 that Microsoft will ship with the [...]

Twitter users do not have a lot of filtering options on the official site. While it is possible to switch from timeline view to mentions or retweets, there are not a whole lot of other filtering options available. Want to filter for media tweets or replies? Then you have to use a third party Twitter [...]

Firefox users have several options at hand to delete private browsing data. This includes running the browser in private browsing mode, configuring it to delete the data on shutdown or running the clear recent history module manually to delete some or all data this way. Veteran users may remember a time when the browser displayed [...]

Question on how to clear individual cookies in the Google Chrome web browser just came up and I thought I write a small guide here on Ghacks about it. Google Chrome, just like any other modern web browser, accepts all cookies by default. Cookies are small data packages that are saved by domains on your [...]

While the Firefox web browser is one of the most versatile when it comes to customizations, there are still a few areas that cannot be changed directly through the web browser’s options or the about:config advanced configuration screen. Mar Mod is a free Firefox add-on that can be described as an advanced tweaker for Firefox. [...]

Sometimes you come upon links that you want to share with someone else. Maybe a rick roll for your online friends, maybe a new photo gallery for your family, or a work related link that you want other employees or your boss to know about. Most users who want to share links open up their [...]

If you have a lot of tabs open in the Chrome web browser, you will notice at one point that you cannot see the favicons (the website specific icons) anymore in the browser’s tab bar. That’s a problem as it is no longer possible to identify the websites that are open in Google Chrome. Take [...]

Coupons are a great way of saving money on the Internet. They obviously work best if you can get a coupon for an online shopping site that you want to make a purchase on (and not the other way round). The Firefox extension CouponsHelper is an unobtrusive add-on that informs you about coupon codes on [...]

Search giant Google lately has added Google +1 buttons to nearly every web property the company owns. Most Google users may notice the +1 buttons on Google search result pages where they are placed next to each site url. In addition, users who are logged in see if they or their Google+ friends have recommended [...]

Browser developers add new features to web browsers all the time. Sometimes those features improve the browser’s usability. This is for instance the case with the native pdf reading capabilities of the Chrome browser. Instead of having to install a third party plugin for that functionality or to download the pdf document first to read [...]

Windows users who have installed Internet Explorer 9 recently on one of the supported versions of Windows, may at one point decide to uninstall Internet Explorer 9 again. A common reason for uninstalling the browser at a later time is if it is acting up and troubleshooting the issue did not resolve it. Most Windows [...]

One of the stories that dominated tech news yesterday was that Mozilla started shipping a version of the Firefox browser with Microsoft’s Bing search engine as the default search engine instead of Google Search. Some news sites made it look like as if Mozilla dropped Google as the browser’s search provider in favor of Microsoft’s [...]

I recently discovered that I had two explorer.exe processes running. Odio posted a comment under that article where he mentioned that on his PC 2 plugin-container.exe processes were running instead. If you do not know anything about plugin-container.exe you can check out the informational article about it that I wrote in 2010. Plugin-container.exe basically is [...]

One of the features of the Google Chrome web browser that I really like is the option to translate foreign web pages automatically using Google’s Translate service. Firefox users can either use an Internet translation service manually or install an extension to add a similar functionality to the browser. One of the extensions is Translate [...]

Ghacks readers know that the chrome://flags page leads to a list of experimental features in the Chrome browser. These features are not yet ready for prime time. Adventurous Chrome users can enable select features to change the behavior of the web browser in core areas. A big warning paragraph warns users that these “experimental features [...]

I reviewed the Personal Blocklist extension for the Chrome web browser back in February of this year. The extension offered to block specific domains from appearing in Google’s search results. Blocked domains and sites would simple be removed from results pages. One of the issues I had with the extension was that alternatives were not [...]

Most users of the Google Chrome web browser know that Google has integrated Adobe’s Flash Player in cooperation with Adobe into the web browser. The core advantage here is that Google can update the Flash plugin in the browser for its users. That’s a stark contrast to other web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or [...]

The autocomplete feature can be pretty handy at times. It helps you log in on your favorite website faster or load a website in your browser without having to enter the full web address. Researchers from Minded Security Labs have released a proof of concept that demonstrates how a third party website can get access [...]

If you have visited the Google Chrome Web Store today you may have noticed that Google redesigned the store completely. The layout of the page has been streamlined into a minimalistic listing of apps, extensions and themes. The page has three core elements. First the sidebar menu linking to application categories and extensions and themes [...]

All modern web browsers come with options to search the active web page for specific words or phrases. None as far as I know support wildcard searches or the inclusion of inflections. The Google Chrome extension efTwo Advanced Find on Page adds support for the latter to the Chrome web browser. Sometimes when I search [...]

Have you ever had a software modify your Firefox settings? It is for instance relatively common that software installations try to modify the homepage and search provider in the web browser. A core issue here from a security point of view is that Firefox – and other browsers as well – do not offer mechanisms [...]

Back in 2007 I looked at two Firefox add-ons to prepare websites before printing them. Preparing in this case meant to remove unnecessary elements like advertisement, chat boxes or sidebar links from the page to save printer ink and get only the relevant information on a printed page (see best way to print websites). At [...]

YouTube videos can be posted as links or as embedded media contents on websites. It depends largely on the technology powering the website if it is possible to embed videos directly. If you look at sites like Facebook or Google Plus for instance, you will notice that they convert YouTube links directly to embedded videos. [...]

The Firefox web browser is still perceived by many as a RAM eater and a program that pushes RAM usage on many configurations to the limit. When you analyze that you may come to a different conclusion though. Lifehacker recently ran some – limited and non scientific – tests with the result that Chrome and [...]

Firefox, like other browsers, saves a profile which contains user preferences, passwords and bookmarks. Browsing history is also saved in this profile. This is useful for finding web pages that you have lost track of or did not bookmark and also for monitoring browser usage history. It is convenient to have your passwords saved, but [...]

For the last days I have been receiving lags and issues both in the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client. With Thunderbird I’m experiencing lags where the window is not responding for some time. I just have to wait and the window becomes accessible again. With Firefox it is another issue. The browser [...]

If you look at the different versions of Firefox from say Firefox 2 to the very latest versions released recently, you will notice lots of changes. Not only design changes but also changes that removed or replaced specific features of the web browser. FeatureFix is a Firefox add-on that tries to resolve several issues that [...]

If there is one Firefox add-on that I don’t want to live without it is the NoScript extension. It is a security add-on that will block all scripts by default which are one of the main attack vectors on today’s Internet. Users can whitelist scripts on specific domains temporarily, e.g. for a browsing session, or [...]

The Opera desktop team has released an Opera web browser update that resolves two security issue. The update fixes a non-exploitable security issue that “allowed injection of untrusted markup into the X-Frame-Options error page” and a “issue where manipulating fonts in SVG could allow execution of arbitrary code”. The second o-day security issue has received [...]

For the last two days I have been receiving popup messages when running Firefox. They stated that “Update Failed. Something is trying to trick Firefox into accepting an insecure update. Please contact your network provider and seek help”. Since I have not changed a thing in that time that would affect Firefox’s update mechanism I [...]

Google Chrome has just fronted a new extension called Chrome Speak; a text reader for web content on the Google Chrome search engine. This will read highlighted text out loud. Whether from sheer laziness, bad eyesight, or just a desire to have a text reader on your browser, it is an interestingly accurate feature. You [...]

Back in 2007 I reviewed the Firefox extension Hyperwords which gave you access to a research context menu after selecting text on a website. You could use it to search in various search engines, encyclopedias or news sites. While I’m not 100% sure, I believe that the Liquid Information add-on is the successor of the [...]

Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus, was recently founded by Wladimir Palant, the technologies lead developer, and Till Faida. The move from a community driven part-time project to a company backed project (still community driven) is certainly something that existing and future Adblock Plus users would like to know more about, hence the article. [...]

If you are a new Chrome user, or an old one who is now used to working with the browser in a certain way, you may be interested in tips to get the most out of the web browser. Maybe it is basic tips that can really help you improve your workflow, for instance by [...]

One of the few Firefox extensions that I have been using constantly for a very long time is Multi Links (formerly Snap Links) which allows me to open multiple links directly by drawing a rectangle with the mouse around them. That’s handy for instance if you are on a page with multiple files that you [...]

This is one of the things that makes you go uh if you read about it or find out about it on your own. I know many computer users who run multiple web browsers on the same PC. On my PC I have Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer installed. And while that may be [...]

When you open the music section over at the video hosting site YouTube you get a list of popular music videos that are currently hosted on the site. You can play individual videos or all of them at once, and while that works nicely in most countries, you may live or be in one that [...]

Just a day after posting the first look at Opera 12 on Ghacks the Opera team decided to release the alpha version of the browser publicly. The review the other day was based on the latest snapshot release, and while changes between that latest snapshot of Opera and the alpha are scarce it justifies a [...]

Security researchers Nicholas Carlini, Adrienne Porter Felt, and Prateek Saxena reviewed 50 popular and 50 random Chrome extensions from the official Chrome Web Store for security vulnerabilities and discovered that 27 of the 100 extensions “leak all of their privileges to a web or WiFi attacker”. These 27 extensions account for a total of 51 [...]

We have all been in the situation where something on the Internet is not working out as it should. Maybe it is that captcha that you read wrong for the fifth time, the long comment that you wrote that would not post or that darn website that just won’t open at all. While some may [...]

The last Opera release dates back to the end of August, which seems like ages in times when browser developers push out new versions of their browser in weeks instead of months or even years. News about the next Opera browser version and Opera Software in general have almost come to an halt in that [...]

Some websites display links – usually those entered by users – as plain text links instead of clickable HTML links. This may be by choice, for instance to avoid sending the site as a referrer to the linked website, or by accident if the scripts running on the website are configured improperly. Plain text links [...]

I install a lot of Firefox add-ons every week. First add-ons that I may use personally and then add-ons for review here on Ghacks or other sites. One of the things that bothered me for some time now is the artificial delay that Mozilla added to the installation process of extensions in the web browser. [...]

If you are using the built-in Firefox download manager to download files from the Internet and have configured the browser to remember the browsing history, you may have noticed the absence of a delete button in the download window. While it is possible to remove individual files from the listing by selecting them first and [...]