Firefox Takes on Skype With Browser-Based Video Chat

Mozilla is gearing up to take on services like Skype and Viber with a new browser-based video and voice chat feature called Firefox Hello. It’s available for testing inside the latest Firefox beta release, and it’s scheduled to get its public rollout in the coming weeks.
“Firefox Hello provides more value to Firefox users by making it easier to communicate with your friends and family who might not have the same video chat service, software or hardware as you,” Mozilla explains in a post on its blog.
In other words, you can use Hello to connect with loved ones regardless of your setups. Other than the Firefox browser, it requires no additional software or plugins, and you don’t even need to create an account. What’s more, Hello lets you chat to anyone with a WebRTC-enabled browser — including those who use Chrome or Opera instead — and voice and video calling is absolutely free.

To try Hello, simply download the latest Firefox beta and click the chat bubble icon under the customize menu. You can then share a “callback link” with the person you’d like to communicate with, and all they have to do is click the URL to initiate the call.
To make voice and video calling even better inside Firefox, Mozilla has also added contacts management for the first time in this release. You can either add contacts manually, one-by-one — or you can import your entire Google address book in a few clicks.
You’ll find links to the latest Firefox beta for Mac, PC, and Linux via the Mozilla blog link below.

Test the new Firefox Hello WebRTC feature in Firefox Beta

We have some exciting updates to our experimental WebRTC feature in Firefox. We’ve added some new functionality to play with and a new name. Say ‘Hi!’ to Firefox Hello.
Firefox Hello provides more value to Firefox users by making it easier to communicate with your friends and family who might not have the same video chat service, software or hardware as you. It’s free to make voice and video calls and there’s no need to download software, plugins or even create an account. It’s ready to go as soon as you open Firefox Beta by clicking on the ‘chat bubble’ icon under the customize menu. Hello allows you to connect with anyone who has a WebRTC-enabled browser, such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera. We should give a shout out to our friends at TokBox, whose OpenTok platform is used to power this new feature.
The new features we’ve added to Firefox Beta include:

New Call Options
One of the great features of Firefox Hello is that you don’t need to create an account in order to connect with the people that matter to you most. You simply share a callback link with the person you want to connect with and when they click on the link the call begins.

Call Management Panel

But let’s say that you start using Hello all the time with your friends and family. As an added convenience, you should sign up for a Firefox account for even easier one-click calling from Firefox. After signing in, you can initiate or receive direct calls with other Firefox Account users, without having to share a callback link first. You can sign into your Firefox Account on every computer you use, so you can be reached at home or at work.

Contacts Integration
We’ve also added contacts management for the first time in this release. You can add contacts to your address book manually or import contacts from your Google account to Firefox Hello. Simply select ‘Import Contacts’ from the address book and then sign into your Google account to give permission. If your contacts have a Firefox Account and are online, then you can call these contacts directly from Firefox.
These are just some of the main improvements that we will be rolling out over the next few weeks to all Firefox Beta users. So please test them out and let us know what you think at the end of your call. Please remember we’re still in the experimental phases and making a lot of changes behind the scenes.
We look forward to receiving your feedback on these new features, so we can get Firefox Hello ready to share with the world.

More information:

• Download Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux
• Release Notes for Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux
  Here is a demo of an early Firefox build using Hello
  
  
  
  

15 Classic Arcade Games You Should Play in Your Web Browser

October 30, 2014 at 3:45:00 PM by Andrew Moseman | 0 Comments

Behold the Internet Arcade: a web-based collection of hundreds of games that span two decades of the arcade golden age, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Built by Jason Scott, the arcade is an enormous dose of video game nostalgia. The emulators he created even include boot-up sequences in which the games run through a self-analysis.

You could (and maybe should) lose yourself for days in this game collection. If you don't have that kind of free time, then be choosy and play these 15 classics:

• Joust: The protagonist is "knight riding a flying ostrich." Isn't that enough?

• Defender: Inspired by Space Invaders and Asteroids, this 2D classic will have you saving the planet from waves of hostile aliens.

• Food Fight: Find your inner Belushi and gobble up all the ice cream before the four malicious chefs—Oscar, Angela, Jacques, and Zorba—can catch you.

• Frogger: One of the simplest, most frustrating, and most famous games of all time.

• Galaga: No explanation needed.

• Outrun: Maybe the driving physics left a little to be desired, but the shifting behind-the-car third-person view became the template for many driving games to come.

• Pitfall II: I played the hell out of the Atari original, and II (Lost Caverns) is great, too.

• Street Fighter II: Hadouken!

• Return of the Jedi: Fly a speeder bike through the forest, pilot the Millennium Falcon, and take on a Star Destroyer.

• Tron: Because there's no racing like light-cycle racing.

• Zaxxon: Want to fly a fighter aircraft though an enemy fortress and blast everything in sight? Of course you do.

• Track & Field: Sure, it's basically button-mashing, but seeing your little guy sprint down the lane will get your real heart pumping.

• Qbert: The 1982 pseudo-3D classic is a must-play.

• Centipede: One of the great vertical shooters of the early 80s, and this one had horrifying bugs bearing down on you.

• Bionic Commando: The 1987 sequel to the classic Commando (also on the Internet Arcade).

The keyboard controls aren't exactly intuitive. Once you launch a game, hit Tab to see what button does what. You'll need to push a button to "insert a coin" in true arcade fashion, and the control buttons are set as the default main gaming buttons.

But one you get the hang of it, you'll be wasting your afternoon in no time. Now if you'll excuse me, I must run another heat in the 100-yard dash.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tech-news/15-classic-arcade-games-you-should-play-in-your-web-browser-17370532

How To Make Free Calls From Your Computer With Google Voice

by David Pierce on July 24, 2009 in Google - Last Update: July 25, 2014
About three weeks ago, I finally got an invite for Google Voice, the new phone-managing service from Google that I’d been itching to try out since before it was even called Google Voice (back then, it was called GrandCentral, and I still wanted it really, really badly).

Google Voice has a ton of great features, and in a lot of ways fundamentally changes the way you’ll use your phone. A lot of things suddenly become easier with Google Voice – checking your voicemail, sending text messages, and more – and they’re all best dealt with through your computer.

But, as of now, Google Voice doesn’t inherently let you make calls from your computer. I mean, I’ve got a microphone and speakers on my computer, as well as a fast Internet connection – why shouldn’t I be able to make calls, ideally for free?

Well, as it turns out, I can – with a little legwork. Here’s how to set it up (I did this on a Mac, so PC directions might be slightly different – the same rules will apply, though).

Disclaimer: This is all assuming you’ve already got a Google Voice account. They’re sending out invites at lightning-speed, so if you don’t have one, go get on the list!

1. Download and Install Gizmo5 (create a free account, with no call credits – you won’t need them!).
2. Open Gizmo. In the “Home” tab of the application, click “Edit My Profile.”
3. In the tab that pops up, you’ll see, filled in, a number for “SIP number.” Copy that number (everything before the @ sign).
4. In Google Voice, click “Settings”, and then “Phones.”
5. Click “Add Another phone” and paste the SIP number from Gizmo (again, only what’s before the @ Sign) into the box.
6. Name the number “Gizmo” or whatever you want, and then Save it.

Now, to make calls:

1. Open Google Voice, and click “Call”
2. Enter the number you want to call
3. Make sure the Gizmo phone (whatever you called it) is selected as the “Phone to Ring”
4. Click “Connect”
5. You’ll get a pop-up from Gizmo, with your Google Voice number on the caller ID. Answer it!
6. Google Voice will automatically dial and connect the other person, and you’ll be chatting from your computer!

The whole process only takes about five minutes, and doesn’t cost a nickel. Because you're using a SIP number, all the data is transmitted over your cable connection rather than your phone network. That means you'll need fast Internet to really make this work, but also means it doesn't cost a thing!

I’m not sure how long this will be around (I’m sure carriers won’t be fans), but for now it’s a fantastic solution for making calls directly from your computer.

Related Articles

• Google Voice Number Not Reachable
• Google Voice Extension For Google Chrome
• Play Google Voice Messages In Gmail

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2009/07/24/make-free-calls-from-your-computer-with-google-voice/

How to change the default fonts in Google Chrome

For anyone looking to change or override the fonts rendered on a web page in Google Chrome, "Font Changer" is a Google Chrome Extension that can do it.

Change the font on Facebook, Twitter, Google, Youtube or any other site. Test Google Web Fonts™. Tired of the old font on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail or any other site? Try changing the font with this chrome extension. Over 500 fonts to choose from. Uses Google Web Fonts for a great selection. You can set a font for all sites, or just specific sites.

Now Select a Custom Font! Upload any .ttf, .otf or .woff file and use it on any website.

Change Log:
v3.0:
- Use Custom Fonts ( Upload any font file and use it )
- New Google Fonts
- Enable options by clicking dropdown (don't have to click the checkbox)

You can get it here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/font-changer-with-google/jgjhhoglgjdklldfgoffdiaceffijeke

Don’t Like Font On A Website? Change It Using This Chrome Extension

 

Since we’ve got a plethora of information on various websites on the Internet, it is essential that the information is presented in a clean and clear way. But some websites out there present the information in such a way that it becomes hard to read it. Either the fonts are too small or too large, or not readable because of style or the page’s background.

Those who have weak vision or want to zoom-in and zoom-out, can always zoom-in to the webpage by pressing Ctrl and +, and zoom-out using Ctrl and -, but doing this on every site won’t be that convenient.

Wouldn’t it be great if we can change the font size and font style for some sites or every site easily? Fortunately, if you’re using the Chrome browser then you can do this easily using an extension.

Change fonts and font styles in Chrome

Enter Font Changer with Google Web Fonts, an extension for Chrome that allows you to change fonts on just any website. You can either apply a global style that would apply to all websites or simply select some particular sites where you want to apply the font style.

When you install the Chrome extension, it adds an icon to the browser’s address bar. Click on it and then start configuring the settings. You can define where you want to apply the selected font styles from the “Use” menu at the top. If you set “Global settings” then all websites will have that font style applied, and if you set “Custom settings” then your selected settings are applied only to the currently open website. Select No settings to revert back the site to use its default fonts.

The extension allows you to configure font name, style, weight and size. This extension is really very easy to use and works great. If you ever wanted to change the fonts on your favorite sites like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Wikipedia, Reddit or other, then this is the extension that you should try out.

Source: http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/08/font-on-a-website/

Firefox 33 Find out what is new

By Martin Brinkmann on October 14, 2014 in Firefox - Last Update: October 14, 2014 20

 

All versions of the Firefox web browser will be updated to the next major version in the coming 24 hour period. This means that the stable version of the browser, currently at version 32.0.3, will be updated to version 33.
In addition, Firefox Beta, Aurora and Nightly versions will be updated to version 34, 35 and 36 respectively.
It is interesting to note that this Firefox ESR 24.x reaches end of support and that Firefox ESR 31.x will take over from this point onwards.
It is expected that Mozilla will publish all updates on October 14, 2014. The update announcement will be published on the same date and users with automatic updates enabled will receive the new version automatically.
Tip: You can find out which version of the browser you are running by loading about:support in the address bar. There you find the current version listed under Application Basics.





Firefox 33 Download
It is recommended to download Firefox 33 directly from Mozilla, either by using the browser's update feature or by downloading it directly from the Mozilla website or FTP server.
Many third-party download sites host Firefox 33 before releases and while it may be tempting to download it from those sources, it is possible that this is not the final version of the web browser after all.
There have been incidents in the past where last minute changes resulted in a different build being picked as the official release build.
We have published a download guide for Firefox that explains everything there is to know about that process. Check it out if you are stuck or want direct download links.

Firefox 33 Changes

Firefox 33 introduces several changes to the browser. Some of the changes are visible on the frontend while others improve the browser in the backend.
Windows Off Main Thread Compositing (OMTC)





This new feature provides a smoother browsing experience while consuming less resources. It would get too technical to get into details only this much: Mozilla moved compositing to a second thread to make the main thread loop more responsive.
You find all details on Benoit Girard's blog post about the new feature.


OpenH264 Support



When you open Firefox 33 for the first time after upgrading the browser or installing it anew, you will notice that the OpenH264 plugin is now included under plugins automatically.
This can be used by the browser to decode and encode H.264 video so that these videos play in the browser now. If you check the HTML5 page on YouTube for instance you will notice that Firefox supports H.264 now which it did not before.
Search Suggestions on about:home and about:newtab





Firefox displays a Google search form on the new tab page and the home page by default (click here for instructions to remove it).
The search has been improved so that it displays suggestions now when you use it on the page.
Location bar search improvements





Mozilla has improved how single-word queries and local query searches are handled in the browser. If you search for a number such as 8676586 for instance, you were previously taken to the .com domain regardless of whether it existed or not.
While you could prevent that by adding a ? in front of the query, this is no longer necessary in Firefox 33 as the browser will search automatically by default and without delay.
A prompt is displayed however that you can use to go to the domain instead if that is where you wanted to go in first place. The result is that single-word queries are displayed much faster now by the browser.
Session restore reliability improvements
Mozilla improved the backup process of Firefox sessions in Firefox 33. The new process introduces new files and locations for session restore data.
In the end, it should make the feature more robust so that it is less likely that session restore won't work (for instance because of corruption or after an upgrade).
You can read about the new session restore in Firefox 33 here.
Enhanced Tiles did not land in Firefox 33. The feature that populates the new tab page with tiles will land in Firefox 34 instead.
Other Changes

• Slimmer and faster JavaScript strings in Firefox. Mozilla has optimized how Latin1 strings are stored in Firefox bringing the requirements down from two bytes to 1 byte. This can save memory on websites as Jan de Mooij points out.
• Support for connecting to HTTP proxy over HTTPS added. Check out the bug on Bugzilla for additional details.
• New Content Security Policy backend. You can read more about that on Bugzilla.
• Azerbaijani [az] locale added

Developer Changes

• DOMMatrix interface implemented
• WebCrypto: RSA-OAEP, PBKDF2 and AES-KW support, wrapKey and unwrapKey implemented, Import/export of JWK-formatted keys
• Event listeners popup. Ev icons show up in Inspector which you can click on to display a list of event listeners attached to the element.
• New @media sidebar which displays all @media rules and shortcuts to them in the stylesheet.
• Right-click to add new rules in the Inspector.
• @keyframes rules are now displayed in the Rules section of the Inspector.
• Cubic Bezier Editor added.
• You can hover over any transform CSS property in Inspector to display its original position and see how it transformed.
• You can disable cache in the settings tab and the selection persists now.
• Three new commands have been added to the Developer Toolbar: inject, highlight and folder. Inject to inject jQuery or JavaScript libraries into a page, highlight to highlight all nodes matching a selector, and folder to open a directory on the system.
• WebIDE has landed but it is not enabled by default. To enable it toggle devtools.webide.enabled on about:config.

Unresolved issues

• When you are using pdf.js, Firefox's built-in pdf reader, you may get wrong colors on some images.

Firefox 33 for Android

Some features that landed in the desktop version of Firefox landed in the Android version as well. This includes JavaScript string improvements and the new CSP backend.

1. Firefox supports sending videos to Chromecast or Roku devices now.
2. A new option has been added to clear browsing data when the browser is closed. To enable it tap on the menu icon in the top right corner and select settings from the context menu that opens up. Select privacy in the settings window and check the option "always clear when quitting". This opens a customization menu to select the items that you want deleted on exit.
3. Tab management improvements: list recently closed tabs, close all tabs at once, tab quick switching and undo closed tabs.
4. Locales added: Aragonese [an], Frisian [fy-NL], Kazakh [kk] and Khmer [km]

Security updates / fixes
Security updates are published after the release of Firefox. We will add those once they become available.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/10/14/firefox-33-find-out-what-is-new/

This is Firefox’s new Privacy Button (Firefox 33)

By Martin Brinkmann on September 27, 2014 in Firefox - Last Update: September 27, 2014 14

Firefox is probably the number one browser when it comes to putting users in charge. It is for instance possible to customize the user interface to your liking or disable or change most features that you don't like.
Firefox turns 10 years in November 2014 and Mozilla plans to celebrate that in several ways.

The organization plans to release a new Privacy Button in Firefox 33 and newer as part of that month's focus on privacy in the browser.
The button, displayed in the interface, provides Firefox users with options to perform the following operation:

• Forget the last five minutes, two hours or all day of browsing.

Once selected, Firefox will delete cookies and the browsing history that fall into the selected range, close all tabs and windows, and open a new window in the end.


It should be clear from the description that the button is not useful to all users of the browser. If you still require access to open tabs or browser windows you cannot really make use of it at all.

I cannot say yet if Firefox will honor the startup setting or not. If it does, it may load the open tabs again if session restore has been enabled.
Firefox already ships with privacy options to clear browsing data. Hit Ctrl-Shift-Del for example to open the clear all history button.



While it does not offer 5 minute cleaning and no tab or window closing, it is without doubt the advanced option when it comes to deleting browsing data in Firefox.

It seems that the new Privacy Button has been designed to give users of the browser who don't know about the clear all history feature with an option to delete data in Firefox.
As is the case with the majority of feature additions, it is possible to remove the button from the interface so that it does not take up space.
The clear all history button is not the only option that Firefox users have. It is furthermore possible to open a new private browsing window for example to avoid that data gets recorded during that session.
This separates the core browser window from it so that users can return to it once they have closed the private browsing window in Firefox.

 

Closing Words

 

The new Privacy Button may help inexperienced users who don't know enough about the browser's private browsing mode or clear history feature as it highlights a privacy related option to users.
With that said, advanced users won't have any need for that feature. (via Sören).

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2014/09/27/this-is-firefoxs-new-privacy-button/

How to do a Google Hangout

This is Google's answer to Facebook. Very interesting. Enjoy.

Mozilla's 64-bit Firefox browser will touch down in Spring 2015

By Michael Rougeau  October 3rd

Mozilla has been toying with a 64-bit Firefox browser for years, and now it's finally resolved to make it official.
64-bit Firefox will arrive with Firefox 37, which is scheduled to launch on March 31 2015, according to Mozilla's wiki.
Two of Mozilla's main competitors, Chrome and Internet Explorer, already offer 64-bit versions.
However it's actually Windows 10 that deserves partial for this news, as Mozilla apparently believes Microsoft may drop x86 support entirely with its next OS version.

Face your fears

That would leave Mozilla in hot water without a 64-bit browser, though the company's fear of a 64-bit-only Windows 10 is just that - an unsubstantiated fear.
We've reached out to Microsoft to see if they want to address this question, and we'll update if they do.

Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/mozilla-s-64-bit-firefox-browser-will-touch-down-in-spring-2015-1267857?src=rss&attr=all#null

Note: Cyberfox is a 64-bit Firefox build that has been available for some time.
You can get the latest build here:  https://8pecxstudios.com/cyberfox-web-browser