If you have poor quality internet you might run into trouble when you attempt to download large files. Almost any time I download a file larger than 50 MB the download will get cut off and tell me the connection to the server has failed. If I click retry it tries to download the entire file again.
I thought everyone knew how to resume a broken download but it amazed my friend when he saw me do it so now I’m sharing this with everyone here.
I find myself using this really simple add-on for Firefox all the time. Basically what it does is when you highlight text in a passage/title/link/whatever, then drag and drop it anywhere, it will search Google in a new tab for the highlighted text. It also works with unlinked URLs – just highlight an unlinked URL such as google.com, drag & drop it and it will automatically go to the URL – and photos – just drag & drop to download the image (you can disable that if you like).
You’ll find yourself using it a lot if you’re a Firefox user, so head over to the QuickDrag add-on page now to download it.
There have been several betas and release candidates, but Firefox 3.6 is now finally ready for the general public to update to. For current users you will be happy to know that 3.6 is 20% faster than 3.5 thanks to better JavaScript performance, start-up times and responsiveness. A new feature called Personas has also been included, which is simple browser theming with a single click and no restart.
To download/upgrade to the latest version of Firefox, head over to the Mozilla website to grab it. The full list of updates can be found below:
Today it appears as if Mozilla has decided to completely change the way they release new versions of Firefox. They have removed Firefox 3.7 from the development schedule and added a completely new process in its place. Updates will be released more frequently which add new features and security; these updates will be released every “four to six weeks” rather than with the bigger updates. Major releases, such as Firefox 4.0 due for release at the end of the year, will be rarer.
Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, thought that the old way of releasing updates was too slow and when many features were released at the same time, show-stopping bugs were more likely to appear. With the new process bugs will be less likely and we will get new features much faster, such as the new updated “Lorentz” which will put add-ons in a separate process to reduce the chance of a crash.
If you’re wondering where the next Firefox disappeared to, Firefox 3.7 will become just another normal update in the new 4-6 week update schedule. Firefox 3.6 is on-schedule and will be released sometime in the next week or so.
We’ve seen a few mockups for the Firefox 4.0 user interface re-vamp before in July, and now we’re getting some more. These latest shots come from Mozilla dev Stephen Horlander’s personal blog where he shares heaps of info regarding the latest changes to the Firefox UI. He does mention, though, that these changes will likely be present in Firefox 4.0 and that no UI re-vamp will occur in Firefox 3.7.
It appears as though Mozilla is taking cues from both the Ribbon interface we see in Windows applications such as Wordpad, Paint and Office 2007/2010 as well as Google’s Chrome browser. One thing does stand out in the new screenshots is the application button, which is said to replace the menu toolbar that fills up space on older Firefox versions. This application button is being tested in many locations (below).
Ah, it’s so nice to see Internet Explorer finally de-crowned as the world’s most popular browser. In the latest statistics provided by StatCounter Global Statistics we are seeing a very slight margin to Firefox 3.5 over Internet Explorer 7, a great milestone for Mozilla. Of course, these stats count each version of the browser separately and when you add all the Microsoft browsers together IE still comes out on top, but hey, it’s still a milestone for Firefox.
It’s been a while since Thunderbird 2 was released; two years to be exact, and now it looks like Mozilla has finally got around to giving the mail client a much need update – Thunderbird 3.0. Thunderbird 3 has gone the way of tabs, similar to Firefox and other web browsers, and includes a much more powerful search feature that will also identify related people to your searched messages and does a fantastic job of narrowing down searches to the most relevant messages. Mozilla have also streamlined the email account setup process to make it much easier to get started.
Thunderbird 3 is also a lot faster than previous versions thanks to optimisations, and with the new search feature and filtering options it should be much easier to use as well. If you feel like switching from another mail client such as Outlook or webmail, Thunderbird is completely free, small to download and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Download it now or check out the release notes.
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