Leslie Franke

This site has finally gotten a makeover that I’ve been thinking about doing for quite some time. The intention of the new design is to keep the site clean and uncluttered while adding a little bit more of color and spice than existed before. Things have been tweaked here and there, everything from headlines to page layouts. Let me know in the comments or by email if you find any bugs. I have attempted to map any old URLs to new URLs, but I am bound to have missed one. The two paintings you see at the top of the page are the ‘The Son of Man’ (in the foreground) and ‘Man in the Bowler Hat’ (in the background) by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.
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WordPress 2.1 as been recently released. Useful new additions include being able to set a page as private and the ability to set any page has your home page. Download the latest version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/download.

On the heels of Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla has released the newest version of their Firefox browser. Since the first release of Firefox the browser landscape has changed dramatically, with new versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera resulting in a new sense of competition and browser improvements. Firefox 2.0 continues this trend with several new features and performance enhancements to help it stay at the front of pack.
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Microsoft has just released the long awaited version of their Internet Explorer 7 browser for Windows XP SP2. IE7 is available as a free download and will also be offered as a high priority update via Microsoft’s Automatic Updates service on November 1st. Initially, it is only available in English but will be available in other languages in the coming weeks.

The most noticeable change to IE7 is the completely redesigned user interface. Microsoft has gone for a clean look. They have moved the Back and Forward buttons, merged the Stop and Refresh buttons, and changed the menus replacing them with six little buttons that reveal some of the most used features. Finding much of the browsers functionality is now not particularly intuitive. Thus, while the new look is an improvement, there is a learning curve involved with using the new browser.

Some of the other new features available in IE7 include better add-ons support, built-in support for RSS feeds, improved security, improved printing capabilities, and tabbed browsing.

Tabbed Browsing

This is one of the main improvements in IE7. Tabbed browsing allows the user to open up multiple web pages and instead of every one of them being in separate windows, each page is shown across the top, in tabs, to allow for easy switching between pages. In addition, IE7 offers the concept of “Quick tabs”. Clicking on the Quick tabs icon, to the left of the tab bar, will bring up a set of small images to browse through and to then click on the page you want to view. Finally, IE7 also introduces the concept of a session-saver. When you close IE you can click a box to have IE remember your current tabs. When the browser is reopened; you browser session will load the same tabs and pages the browser was closed with before.

Printing

This is one of the most important but least talked about improvements to IE7. Printing in IE 7 is now more inline with the printing ability of other major browsers. Some of the improvements include: the ability to adjust margins within the print-preview, the ability to easily hide/customize the header and footer, and shrink to fit – actually fitting the web page onto the paper that is being printed.

RSS Feeds

IE 7 adds a number of RSS features that may be of interest to new users of RSS. Theses features are very basic. They include the RSS toolbar icon lights up when an RSS feed is available, clicking on the icon allows for viewing the feed within the browser, and the reader view allows for basic searching and filtering capabilities. The RSS support in IE7 is much less then what is provided on RSS websites like Bloglines, Google Newsreader and NewsGator.

Search

One of the biggest differences with Internet Explorer 7 is that a search box has been built into the upper-right corner of the browser window. From here you can do a search from a search engine just like if you were at the search engine’s web page itself. Enter some words, press return or click the magnifying glass icon and IE7 will bring back results from your chosen search engine. The search box also allows you to temporarily or permanently change your search engine provider.

Security

Internet Explorer 7 uses an almost entirely new code-base and the security in the browser is much improved. The new isolation of ActiveX controls helps to shield Internet Explorer 7 from what was one of its biggest security threats: the instant integration of plugins and modules. While this feature made IE easy to use it also caused security headaches. Fortunately the new ActiveX model still allows this feature to work but requires the plug-in to be activated by clicking on it.

IE7 also comes with anti-phishing & popup blocking features. The anti-phishing features are meant to protect against malicious and/or fake web sites that attempt to trick users into divulging their log-ins and/or other personal information. IE7 includes site analysis that warns about a suspicious site even if it’s not yet on a blacklist by scanning a page for phishing signs in the URL or page content.

Add-Ons

IE 7 had added a new add-on manager as well as a web site to promote and distribute these add-ons. While a good start, Microsoft has a way to go in this regard as the whole add-on system is not very user-friendly. Additionally most of the add-ons you’ll find aren’t free and many off these add-ons are not designed to work directly inside IE and integrate with the browser to give you a better browsing experience. They are nothing like the extensions that integrate into Firefox to extend that browser’s functionality.

IE7 is also bad news for power users as they will be disappointed by IE7. Security settings are not easy to change and the toolbar can no longer be customized. Those who want themes or skins to change the look of IE7 will be disappointed as well. Overall there is little a user can do to tweak or customize IE7.

Conclusion

Microsoft hopes that IE7 major improvements and tweaks will slow or even halt the slow but steady IE user flight toward Firefox. If you are a satisfied user of Opera or Mozilla Firefox this release of IE7 will probably not make you switch back to IE. For satisfied Firefox users, Mozilla’s upcoming upgrade to version 2 should keep you continuing to use the browser as you will get new features and will not have to deal with the major user interface changes. Current IE users have a choice to make. IE 7′s features make it a much better browser than early versions of IE. Its security enhancements and tabbed browsing alone make it a must upgrade. Alternatively, current IE users could make the switch to Firefox. Firefox currently has most of the updates that IE7 possess and you will not have to deal with the changes with the new layout and interface. While IE7 is a welcome improvement and upgrade, Mozilla Firefox remains the better browser of the two.

For more information and a review of IE7 see Alex Iskold’s excellent article at Read/Write Web.

Blueorganizer is a Mozilla Firefox extension, currently in beta, that is designed to help organize and bookmark content found on the web. It allows for the personalization of content found on sites such as Amazon and eBay, tracking and managing books, movies, music and anything else on the web.

A sort of ‘smart bookmarking tool’, Blueorganizer reads information about the item on a page, storing the item’s image along with several other details. Basically, it does the mundane things for you, such as entering the description, title and adding some tags for the item you are bookmarking (called a bluemark). You can easily override the default selections, for example, by adding and deleting tags. When set up correctly, the tagging system is very helpful when searching your bookmarks. Another neat feature of Blueorganizer is that on the top-right hand corner of every bluemark is a wrench. Called a ‘context action’ tool, this wrench allows you to instantly find, shop, and compare items on the web. You can easily find similar items, compare prices on the item at different places, and search for the item on the web.

The collection of products in your Blueorganizer can be saved locally to a PC or online, if you sign up for an adaptiveblue account. Saving your data online gives you the ability to publish your bluemarks as an RSS feed and provides access to your collection from anywhere. In addition, Blueorganizer gives you the ability to add widgets to a website to allow anyone to view your bluemarks.

BlueOrganizer is one of the most impressive Firefox extensions I have used so far, but clearly it is not for everyone. It is somewhat of a niche tool appealing more toward the user who likes to organize their books, music, movies, etc., than the average web surfer. There is really no major drawbacks to using the tool, if you do not mind that the service makes money by inserting affiliate codes into your bluemark links and you do not mind having to remove the preset bluemarks.

I have not made up by mind on whether I will continue using the tool in the future but see the potential in Blueorganizer and am going to give it a whirl. This is of no fault of the tool, but a reflection on how organized (or lack thereof) of a person I am. I probably have not even begun to scratch the surface of everything Blueorgainzer has to offer. Give Blueorganizer and try and see if it is something that appeals to you.

Note: Take some time to read Alex Iskold’s article entitled “Smart Browser, Where Art Thou?” (PDF) in which he explains his reasoning behind creating such an extension. It is well worth reading.

Mozilla has released a new Firefox build that includes the much anticpated Firefox 2.0 visual refresh designed by Radiant Core. The new theme uses more glossy buttons, the address bar now has “clickable” buttons, and the search area has been redesigned.

Though, it is early, I am really ambivalent about the new theme. It is not nearly as major of a change as some had hyped and I am not sure if it is better than the old one anyway. Some of the changes are nice but I do care for the new icons. They look out of place on my setup of Windows XP. If you would rather stick with the old theme there is hope. A Firefox theme of the classic version has been created for Firefox 2.0b1 and greater. Kevin Gerich has packaged the Pinstripe on Mac and Winstripe on Windows which you can install as a stand-alone theme.

You can find out more about the Firefox visual refresh from Screwedbydesign and the Mozilla wiki. Download the lastest nightly build from here. Work is still being done of the theme so I am looking forward to having my initial impressions changed.

Mozilla has recently released a preview of its 2.0 Thunderbird email client. Like the upcoming new version of Mozilla Firefox, the changes in this Thunderbird release are not revolutionary but welcome improvements.

The first change revolves around a new tagging system to mark messages. This feature replaces Thunderbird’s current concept of labels. Thunderbird 2.0 allows you to mark messages with user-definable tags, the current rage on the web. You can define as many tags has you want and apply as many tags as you want to each message. A second new feature is several new folder views. Thunderbird 2.0 will add three new views: a view that only shows folders with unread messages, a view that shows recently accessed folders, and a view that shows your favorite folders.

Two changes were also made to Thunderbird that resemble features found in Firefox. Thunderbird now has a find-as-you-type search feature, though it only works on the contents of the currently displayed folder. Secondly, extensions and themes are now managed through one window called Add-ons.

One thing missing from this release of Thunderbird is tabbed browsing. I, at one time, tried a modified build of Thunderbird that included tabbed browsing. Like with Firefox, once you use tabbed browsing there is no going back. Hopefully we will see this soon in Thunderbird likewise.

Users have reported that Thunderbird runs faster both in startup and when retrieving messages. Additionally, it appears to be very stable. Remember though, this is pre-release software and you should make a backup of Thunderbird before installing this new version. Secondly, remember that most extensions built for Thunderbird 1.5 will not work in 2.0 preview releases without modifications.