Leslie Franke

PicLens is a newly released plug-in for the Mozilla Firefox browser (Windows only), by Cooliris, that lets the user launch a full-screen slideshow while browsing photos on sites such as Flickr. It was first released last year for the Safari browser and can best be described as something similar to the slideshow feature in Picasa. Support for PicLens is currently provided for Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Picasa, and image search results from Google and Yahoo. In addition, web sites can add support for PicLens to their site by including support for Media RSS.

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While attempting to implement a Suckerfish dropdown recently I ran across a problem that causes the menu do not function properly in IE 7. Basically, if you change focus within the browser then move back across the dropdowns, the menus stick in place on the screen. Fortunately, ‘Built from Source’ has posted a simple solution to this problem.

Like Mozilla Firefox, much of the genius in Mozilla Thunderbird is in its extensibility. While the wide range of excellent extensions for Firefox usually receive all of the attention, Thunderbird has many excellent extensions to bring additional features to the email client. The extensions that you will find most useful depend largely on your needs but, in honor of Thunderbird 2 being released (see my review in this post), here are some of the more useful ones.

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Mozilla has just released version 2.0 of their Thunderbird email client. Thunderbird is a free, desktop email program that features a small footprint, customization, and some smart ways to stop junk mail. New features include an new look & feel, message tagging, improved and savable searches, and easy integration with web based email accounts such as Gmail.

You can read my review of Thunderbird 2 here. (more…)

Recently Mozilla released of a release candidate of their Thunderbird 2.0 email client. Thunderbird is a free, desktop email program that features a small footprint, customization, and some smart ways to stop junk mail. Several improvements and changes have been made to the latest version of Thunderbird that are worth mentioning including folder views, message tagging, and message alerts. (more…)

Wired has an interesting interview with Mozilla Thunderbird lead engineer Scott MacGregor discussing the continued relevance of desktop email clients. I would like to have heard more about where Thunderbird is headed in areas such as with Penelope, the Eudora replacement version of Thunderbird, but nevertheless it is a good article about how Mozilla plans on dealing with the threat of web based email applications like Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

One of the primary reason why Mozilla Firefox has grown in popularity is the extensibility it provides through the means of add-ons (extensions). With Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), Microsoft has provided the ability to create and use IE specific add-ons to enhance the browser’s functionality. Unlike almost all of Firefox’s add-ons, many IE7 add-ons, though, are not free. That being said, there are numerous free IE7 add-ons that can increase productivity and make the IE7 browsing experience more pleasurable. (more…)