Software, Note From The Editor | featured news

In my previous article, I mention how the latest version of Firefox has a nearly identical look to Google’s Chrome web browser. When I’m working on new features for my sites, I use Firefox for testing and Chrome to see what the results look like to the users.

I knew one of these days, because both browsers look the same now, I would confuse one for the other and put up untested programming code that would cause havoc on my sites.

That happened yesterday, a lot sooner than I had expected.

I was looking for a Chrome app that would allow me to resize images and came upon Pixlr’s online image editor. Open up their website on any browser (I’ve only used it on Firefox and Chrome), and you get a fast simpler version of Photoshop online. I only use it to resize images, but a lot of the common features on Photoshop are here - like layers, history, filters, and much more. It’s pretty cool.

I was reading an article on BBC about Facebook’s future and came upon the reason why the social network got into the mobile market so late. BBC has the answer from Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg:

Yesterday, Microsoft showed off their tablet computer Surface. According to the New York Times, it “has the same weight and thickness as an iPad, with a 10.6-inch screen.” According to PC Magazine, it weighs 1.49 pounds, which is about the same as Apple’s iPad. However, it still feels bulky.

It used to be that other browsers like Internet Explorer and Google Chrome would copy Firefox. Now, Firefox is copying Chrome. The latest release of Mozilla’s web browser, Firefox 13, has the handy new tab speed dial feature that shows thumbnails of your most visited sites - a feature that already exist with Chrome. I love that simple feature.

Seesmic, an app on Android that aggregates your activity from social networks, has started to play around with ads on their FREE app. I started seeing them at the top. I didn’t mind them at first because they gotta make money, and I understand that.

Yesterday, I had database issues. Today, I have computer issues. I started my morning off early today, and was ready to catch up with stuff that I placed on the backburner yesterday while trying to repair a corrupted MySQL table.

That didn’t go according to plan. I was about to start work, notice ASUS and Windows decided to do updates. I let them, and before I know it my mouse stopped working. Shortly afterwards, my touchpad stopped working too.

I’ve installed the All-in-One Sidebar add-on for Firefox for a while now. When I’m updating news in the mornings for Wopular, I open up over twenty tabs and Firefox has been corporative. A couple days ago, I’ve noticed that after opening a handful of tabs, the browser became unresponsive.

When Google first launched Google Chrome, I installed it and give it a test drive. I was fairly impressed. It had a super clean interface and was really fast. Pages rendered noticeably faster than Firefox.

Back then, even though I wanted to take the Chrome plunge, I couldn’t. It didn’t have all, or even half, of the apps I needed for web development and maintaining the content on Wopular.

I had resisted upgrading Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 because I wasn't sure if all of my add-ons were available for the then newest release. Fast forward a year or two, and I'm five versions behind.

I finally took the plunge when Firefox 8 was released last week because I didn't want to fall too far behind. 3.6 was getting a little sluggish and was no longer the most widely used version of Firefox.