Save web pages as PDF documents from your browser

Web browsers are becoming so full of features, they can even now create PDF documents from web pages. And this without a 3rd party program. Below are options for both Firefox and Chrome. In Firefox you need to download an add-in (below). For Chrome it is built-in. For Internet Explorer, you can download a free 3rd party utility called CutePDF.

Firefox: Print Pages To PDF

Creates one Pdf from any amount of open Browsertabs,Bookmarks/-folder, Scrapbook(Plus) pages. This document can be archived, sended by e-mail or printed out with any standard Pdf Viewer.




You can get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/print-pages-to-pdf/

Chrome: save web pages as PDF documents natively

By Martin Brinkmann

You can save web pages in any web browser as HTML documents. That's usually all there is to do to archive certain pages that you are interested in. Extensions and scripts are available to help you with that process. Firefox users can for instance install the Mozilla Archive Format extension, while third party services such as Joliprint, to print websites to pdf, are available for all browsers.
If you are using Google Chrome as your web browser of choice, you have had another option for some time now. When you open the browser's print page, you will notice that it includes an option to print the current web page as a pdf document. This is a native feature of the browser that works right out of the box.





What's interesting in this regard is that this feature works even if you do not have a printer installed or connected to your computer. Here is how it works.
When you are on a web page that you want to save as a pdf document, click on the settings icon in the top right corner of the Chrome screen and select Print from the context menu. If you like to speed up that process, hit Ctrl-P instead which takes you to the same print page in the browser.


Here you see a preview of the web page printout on the right, and the printing options on the left. If save as pdf is not selected by default, click on the change button to modify the settings. Make sure you selected pdf as the output format and not a physical printer. You can modify other print settings on the sidebar, for instance to only print select pages or whether you want the layout to be in portrait or landscape format.


A click on save opens a save as window that enables you to save the pdf document to your local computer. Chrome uses the page title as the document name by default, which you can change here before clicking on save to finish the process.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2012/10/10/chrome-save-web-pages-as-pdf-documents-natively/

For Internet Explorer Use the free CutePDF utility

Portable Document Format (PDF) is the de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world.  CutePDF Writer is the free version of commercial PDF converter software. CutePDF Writer installs itself as a "printer subsystem". This enables virtually any Windows applications (must be able to print) to convert to professional quality PDF documents - with just a push of a button!

- Convert to professional quality PDF files easily from almost any printable document.
- Selected as One of the "50 Best free downloads" by Computer Shopper.
- No watermarks! No popup ads!
- Users love it since 2004.
- Windows 8.1 Ready

You can get it here: http://www.cutepdf.com/

The Top Eight Job Search Engines on the Web

By Wendy Boswell, Web Search Expert

If you're in the market for a new job, you'll want to check out this list of the top eight best job search engines on the Web. All of these job search tools offer unique features and can streamline your employment search efforts so your efforts are more productive.

1. Monster.com

Monster.com is one of the oldest job search engines on the Web. While some of its usefulness has been diminished in recent years due to a lack of good filtering and too many posts by spammy recruiters, it's still an important site on which to conduct a job search. You can narrow your search by location, keywords, and employer; plus, Monster has plenty of job search extras: networking boards, job search alerts, and online resume posting. More »

2. Indeed.com

Indeed.com is a very solid job search engine. Unlike other search engines, you cannot submit your resume from within the site, but this job search engine more than makes up for that by being a meta search engine of many of the major job search engines and job search boards out there. I've found that Indeed uncovers a lot of jobs that you wouldn't normally find on most job search sites, and they do a good job of making their job search features as easy to use as possible. You can subscribe to job alerts via email; you can set these up for a certain keyword, geolocation, salary, and much more. More »

3. USA.gov

Think of USA.gov as your gateway into the huge world of US government jobs. Navigate to the USA.gov home page, click on the Jobs and Education section, then Government Jobs. You'll find a wealth of resources here to help you find jobs working for Uncle Sam. More »

4. CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder offers job searchers the ability to find a job, post a resume, create job alerts, get job advice and job resources, look up job fairs, and much more. This is a truly massive job search engine that offers a lot of good resources to the job searcher; I especially appreciate the list of job search communities. More »

5. Dice

Dice.com is a job search engine dedicated to only finding technology jobs. It offers a targeted niche space for finding exactly the technology position you might be looking for. More »

6. SimplyHired

SimplyHired has been one of my favorite job search engines now for a while; mostly because of their SimplyFired contest. SimplyHired also offers a very unique job search experience; the user "trains" the job search engine by rating jobs he or she is interested in. SimplyHired also gives you the ability to research salaries, add jobs to a job map, and view pretty detailed profiles of various companies. I highly recommend SimplyHired. More »

7. LinkedIn.com

LinkedIn.com combines the best of two worlds: the ability to scour the Internet for jobs with its job search engine, and the opportunity to network with like-minded friends and individuals to deepen your job search. LinkedIn's job postings are of the highest quality, and if you are connected to someone who already knows about that particular job, you've got a way in before you even hand in your resume. If you really want to dive into the inner workings of LinkedIn, check out How to Use LinkedIn, a detailed how-to guide. More »

8. Craigslist

There are all sorts of interesting jobs on Craigslist. Just find your city, look under Jobs, then look under your job category. Non-profit, systems, government, writing, etc. jobs are all represented here. You can also set up various RSS feeds that pertain to whatever job you might be looking for, in whatever location. One Craigslist caveat: because this is a free marketplace, some of the jobs posted at Craigslist are not legitimate (the vast majority are, however). Use caution and common sense when replying to job listings on Craigslist. More »

Related Articles

• SimplyHired.com and Facebook.com
• How to Use Indeed.com to Search for a Job
• Job Search Agent
• SimplyHired Local Job Search
• Job Search Engines

Source: http://websearch.about.com/od/enginesanddirectories/tp/jobsearchengine.htm?nl=1

Browser comparison: How the five leaders stack up in speed, ease of use and more

By Jon L. Jacobi
The best browser for your desktop could be one you’re not using. Whether Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari is your current choice, our tests found distinct differences in speed and ease of use. We also compared how each browser uses system resources, a near-invisible trait that could be discreetly bogging down your PC. For the online lifestyle, the right browser could save you time and frustration.

See how they run

Browsers largely look and act the same: They render HTML in multiple tabs or separate windows, let you bookmark pages, support HTTP and FTP file transfer, or offer private browsing (no data is stored). Deep inside each one, however, are operational differences that may or may not fulfill your needs.
Opera had a long-standing and well-deserved reputation for being fast, but not rendering all pages correctly. A switch from a proprietary HTML layout engine to free and widely-used WebKit (currently version 537 as with Chrome) has made that a thing of the past.
Internet Explorer has a history of being exploited by bad guys, both because of its immense popularity and its ActiveX technology. Give Microsoft credit: It’s doggedly improved the Trident layout engine, adopted standards, and improved security. IE is no longer something I advise users to avoid.
Firefox is a longtime worthy IE competitor, and Chrome’s a strong newcomer. As Safari was installed with iTunes for years, many Windows users have it, but have never tried it—possibly because Apple has never given it a truly Windows-like look.
I’ll be comparing browser performance and resource usage as well as features and ease of use.

 

Chrome 36 (WebKit 537): Stable and speedy

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Google’s Chrome browser has gained traction quickly against longstanding competitors like Internet Explorer.

A lot of people use Google’s Chrome browser, because lots of people use Google’s search engine. Chrome is fast and generally reliable. It was my go-to for a couple of years, partly because of a great text-to-speech add-on called SpeakIt! that I used to proofread articles. Recently, however, it revealed a propensity for playing the video and audio portion of some popup windows without actually showing the popup. This is an interaction with Adobe’s Flash player that also currently affects Firefox.

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Chrome posted the fastest Browsermark score in our browser comparison tests.

There’s no denying that Chrome is fast: It scored 5773 on Browsermark, took 150.4ms to complete Sunspider, and scored 5627 on Peacekeeper. That’s two first places and a third. To achieve those results, however, it uses a lot of memory and separate processes: 775MB and 14 processes in my hands-on, nine tab test. And there was nothing special going on in any of the tabs.

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Chrome is one of the fastest browsers for rendering HTML, but it spawns a lot of processes to achieve that.

Additionally, relatively simple options such as changing your homepage are distinctly unintuitive. You might even get the feeling that Google doesn’t want you to change things. Another issue with Chrome, as well as Opera and IE, is that it spawns a number of processes, making it harder to shut down when things go bad.
Minor issues aside, Chrome is still a top browser option because of its stability and speed.

 

Firefox 31 (Gecko): Looking good, running fast

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Mozilla Firefox just got an interface makeover and offers many useful add-ons.

Firefox is the long-time competitor to IE that staved off a Microsoft browser monopoly for years until Chrome showed up to “help.” It’s fast and very reliable. Despite a longstanding memory leak that forced the occasional restart, it was the browser I recommended for many users to avoid the malware attacks that once plagued IE.
The memory leak in its Gecko rendering engine seems to be gone and Firefox has recently received an upgrade that was radical enough to rile a few longtime users. (There is a way to bring back the old-style menus.)
I prefer the new look and find it the most intuitive of all the browsers for bookmarking and changing options. Firefox also has a vast array of add-ons, including one of the best video downloaders out there, the aptly-named DownloadHelper.

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Firefox was the slowest among the browsers we compared in Browsermark, though its score was still decent.

In our performance texts, Firefox tucked neatly into third place overall: It scored 4540 in BrowserMark; took 134.4ms to complete Sunspider (better than Chrome or Opera); and scored 3956 in Peacekeeper.
The feel is slightly slower than Chrome or Opera, but not enough that it should irritate you. It uses fewer resources than Chrome or Opera, spawning only a single process, and using only 510MB of memory. Only the super-thrifty Safari used less memory.

 

Internet Explorer 11 (Trident)

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Internet Explorer remains the most widely distributed browser, and the one most targeted by malware.

IE remains extremely popular and useful—if for nothing else that downloading your browser of choice with a fresh install of Windows. It’s decently fast with HTML, exceptionally fast with Javascript, and renders pages reliably.
Also, because of its ActiveX technology, IE is sometimes easier to use with business-related sites such as Webex and HTML IT consoles such as Kaseya. These sites can seamlessly integrate their functionality into IE. With other browsers you must sometimes download and install an extension or background app. Windows User Account Control can prolong that process, so in a pinch I often simply switch to IE.

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Internet Explorer 11 can be easier to use with business sites because of its ActiveX technology.

IE was unable to complete BrowserMark, a problem noted only after a recent update, but it did score 3670 on Peacekeeper. More notably, it took a mere 74.1ms to complete Sunspider, making it easily the fastest browser for running Javascript.
Sadly, it’s every bit the memory hog that Chrome and Opera are, using 714MB in my nine-tab test. On the other hand, it used “only” 7 processes, half that of the WebKit-based Chrome and Opera.

 

Opera 23 (WebKit 537)

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Among the browsers we compared, Opera is worth a look for its easy configuration.

After a long, dark age of badly rendered pages, Opera’s now near-perfect in that regard. I say this even after uninstalling it just a few months ago due to its incompatibility with PCWorld's own web tools. Updates have smoothed out those kinks, and it's only a hair slower than Chrome.
Unlike Chrome and Firefox, Opera 23 doesn’t suffer invisible popups. It does use the same Webkit engine and run as multiple processes, and it's more difficult to shut down. It also lacks a home button, instead relying solely on a launch page of oft-used sites (Speed Dial).

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

In our browser comparison running Browsermark, Opera was nearly as fast as Chrome.

Speed Dial is great if you work off of multiple sites, but it adds another step for those who work from a single page. My minor complaint: There’s no native feature for emailing a link to a page. You must install an extension for this functionality.
For HTML rendering, Opera was only a hair slower than first-place Chrome, scoring 5625 on BrowserMark and 5447 in Peacekeeper. It was a hair faster with Javascript, completing the Sunspider test in 150.1ms. Overall, you’d be hard-pressed to notice the difference between the two WekKit 537-based browsers in a hands-on.
Despite the list of minor complaints, Opera is currently my main work browser because it’s nearly as fast as Chrome, but easier to configure.

 

Safari 5.1.17 (WebKit 534)

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Among the browsers we compared, Safari is easy to use and runs with very low processing overhead.

Though king on the Mac, Safari is probably the least popular of the top browsers under Windows—a bit sad as it’s competent, easy to use, and light on the memory profile. Apple apparently ceased supporting Windows as of version 5.1.17, but we tested it anyway because of its thrifty use of memory.
And 'thrifty' is understating the case. It spawns only a single process and in my nine-tab hands-on test, required only 115MB of memory to display it. What happened between the WebKit 534 that Safari uses, and WebKit 537, the current choice of Chrome and Opera is quite amazing. The latter offers way more speed but sucks up a lot of resources.

Image: Jon L. Jacobi

Safari posted a slower score in Browsermark than most of the competition, but it's still reasonably peppy.

Safari could be very handy on older systems with only 512MB or 1GB of memory. It has all the standard features found in the others, so you’re not giving away anything.
Performance in BrowserMark and Peacekeeper was decent: 4831 and 3062, respectively. It lagged in the Sunspider Javascript test, with a score of 179.9ms.

In our browser comparison, the Browsermark test showed pretty close performance by all products (except IE, which Browsermark could not run).

 

Test Results

To gauge each browser's rendering performance, we ran Rightware’s Browsermark and FutureMark’s Peacekeeper HTML5 tests, as well as the Sunspider Javascript benchmark.
If you want the fastest browser for rendering HTML—by far the majority of the actions that a browser performs—you have a choice between Chrome and Opera. They both spawn a lot of processes and memory to accomplish it. Of the two, I’d pick Opera for overall easier configuration.

In our browser roundup, Chrome 36 posted the fastest time on Peacekeeper, while Safari was almost twice as slow.

If Javascript is a priority, Internet Explorer is easily the fastest running it. IE uses a lot of memory as well, if about half the processes of Chrome and Opera.
A big shout-out to Safari which used by far the least amount of memory to present the same nine tabs. If you’re working on a computer with only 512MB or 1GB of system memory, its spend-thrift ways might come in handy.

However, if I had to pick just one to keep on my system, it would be Firefox. It's fast enough, it has the slickest interface, it uses considerably less memory than Chrome, IE, and Opera, and it's just generally the easiest to use.

 Internet Explorer emerged as the fastest browsers running the Sunspider Javascript test, with Safari limping in at more than twice as slow.

Performance and memory usage may be moot if your needs extend beyond the ordinary, in which case the browser you choose as your mainstay may come down to add-ons.
Fortunately, as all the browsers we tested are competent, free and export and import bookmarks, you can use any, or all of them. Yes, life is good in the browser world.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2605933/browser-comparison-how-the-five-leaders-stack-up-in-speed-ease-of-use-and-more.html

Reports Say Internet Explorer 12 Looks Like A ‘Blend of Chrome and Firefox’

Sunday, September 14, 2014 - by Paul Lilly

The next version of Internet Explorer might look more like the competition rather than a retooled version of itself. Scheduled to debut in Windows 9 (codenamed Threshold), Internet Explorer 12 (IE12) is said to look like a "cross between Chrome and Firefox" as part of a massive overhaul to the user interface that will give it a flatter appearance.

According to Neowin, the tabs for each page are rectangles at the top and start at the left of the Windows, similar to both Chrome and Firefox. They also appear above the URL bar, unlike in Internet Explorer 11, in which tabs populate the area to the right of the URL bar.

"It really looks a lot like Chrome but with Microsoft's flat lipstick applied," Neowin observed. "It's still early in the UI phase but it does look quite a bit different from what we see now with Internet Explorer 11."

The back, forward, and refresh buttons all appear below the URL bar in IE12, whereas the back and forward buttons are to the left of the URL bar in IE11, with the refresh button plopped inside and over to the right of the URL bar.

What's interesting about the new build is how secret Microsoft is keeping it. There have been several leaked screenshots of Windows 9, but so far none of them feature IE12. That could be due to the fact that the leaked screenies show very early builds of the Windows 9 Technical Preview, at which point IE12 may not have been cooked enough to serve up.

Read more: http://hothardware.com/News/Reports-Say-Internet-Explorer-12-Looks-Like-A-Blend-of-Chrome-and-Firefox/#ixzz3DUUrUs9R

Information regarding Internet Explorer 12 supporting extensions begin to leak

Written by

Joseph Finney

on Monday, Sep 15th, 2014 at 11:15AM @TheJoeFin

New reports are coming out which shed more light on the next version if Internet Explorer. This new version of IE12 is rumored to be codename Spartan and has been spotted in recent leaked builds of Windows 9. Neowin has rumored that the UI of IE12 will be improved and re worked, but the new leaks deal with something more technical, extensions.
With IE11 Microsoft has been touting a fast and fluid 'plug-in free' experience. Websites should be coded with cross-platform standards such as HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL. If a websites uses these technologies then IE11 will run the site fast and render it properly (is the theory). This is a different from requiring users to download third party plug-ins, such as flash, Quicktime, or Silverlight, in order to view video or interactive content.

However a new report from Mary-Jo Foley says that IE12 may be bringing back the ability to run extensions. Since little is know about this project, information comes from job postings and research projects. From job postings, Microsoft seems to be working on a project Spartan within the context of users have a rich interaction with websites above what standard (plug-in free) websites can offer. There is also talk of taking the experience for people using their mobile devices to accomplish tasks such as calling a taxi or getting reservations. Some how Microsoft is planning on improving these experiences via the browser.

In addition to job postings, Microsoft Research has had some very interesting projects dealing with running legacy code in the browser via micro-virtualizations. This enables the browser to run existing legacy code in an isolated application-like' environment. This could mean IE12 will be able to run extensions to enable more powerful web experiences. This could also be an enterprise tool used to help companies run existing code in new browsers without having to worry about compatibility. Microsoft creating the ability to run x86 code via the browser could mean a feature rich browser for the consumer and a completely compatible browser for the enterprise, win win.

What do you think will be in IE12? What do you want out of a new web browser? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: http://www.winbeta.org/news/information-regarding-internet-explorer-12-supporting-extensions-begin-leak

Windows 9 Threshold Video And Screen Shot Leak Shows Start Menu, Task Bar And More

Friday, September 12, 2014 - by Sean Knight

Windows 8 hasn’t been doing as well as Microsoft has liked, prompting the company to announce the next OS quickly. To that end, there are rumors that the company is planning a Windows 9 preview on September 30. However, screenshots and even a video have been leaked showing Windows 9’s layout and how it works.

German website WinFuture has posted a plethora of screenshots showing the Windows 9 desktop and a two-minute video of how the Start menu works. Yes, the Start menu is back. As can be seen, the Account User information is at the top of the Start menu which would give users the ability to log in and out quickly while, right next to it, is the option to shutdown or restart the PC.

There are two sections to the Start menu. While the first section consists of the traditional-style apps, the right is dedicated to the Live Tiles that are prevalent in Windows 8. Users will be able to pin apps from the left section into the right section of the Start menu. As more apps are pinned to the right side of the Start menu, the window will expand automatically. There is also the option to resize the apps and users will be able to collapse the right section when they need to use the File Explorer app.

However, for those who like the Start Screen from Windows 8, the leaked video shows that users will have the option to switch from the Start Menu to the Start Screen. The video also demonstrated floating modern apps. It looks as if the modern apps will no longer have to be snapped into position or run fullscreen. They will now work like traditional Windows apps giving users the ability to resize them.
As for the taskbar it is there and adorned with some new icons such as a search icon, virtual desktops icon, Windows Store, icon, and, obviously, the Internet Explorer icon.
What do you think of how the new Windows OS is shaping up?

Read more: http://hothardware.com/News/Windows-9-Threshold-Video-And-Screen-Shot-Leak-Shows-Start-Menu-Task-Bar-And-More/#ixzz3DUUzhOnZ

How to ditch Google for more privacy and fewer ads (PCWORLD)

Derek Walter @derekwalter,

Google's search engine, browser, and other products present a Faustian bargain: In exchange for excellent, free Google services your data is used for advertising. And for some it's getting to be too much.
If you've decided that keeping all your eggs in one online basket is unwise, there are viable alternatives. Some are arguably not as full-featured as what Google has. But using your email without ads or knowing that performing a web search won't result in a ton of related advertisements may be enough to encourage you to go on a Google-free diet.

Replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo

The first step is often the hardest, and such is the case with ditching Google search. The number two search engine in the United States is Bing, but if you're concerned about privacy, jumping from Google to Microsoft may not get you far. Fortunately there is DuckDuckGo, whose privacy policy is simple: it does not collect or share any private information.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that does not track user data.

Much of the way DuckDuckGo looks and functions reminds me of the early days of Google search, when the startup from Mountain View was cutting through the clutter of sites like AltaVista. It recently underwent a redesign and now has search for specific categories like images, local, weather, recipes, and others. It also now performs an autosuggest.
Whereas Google will adjust what you see based on location and various other factors, The DuckDuckGo search results you get from California are supposed to be the same as someone searching from New Jersey. It's interesting to see how the results turn out when not tied to a specific account. You can also use a "bang" command to search a specific site. For example, if you wanted to find a particular image on Pinterest you would type, "!Pinterest" in the search bar, along with what you're trying to find. 
DuckDuckGo's search results come from its own crawler (named DuckDuckBot, of course) and over 100 different sources, such as Yandex, Wolfram Alpha, and Bing. You can also take the search engine mobile with its apps for iOS and Android.

Replace Chrome with Firefox

For the best browser alternative, go with Mozilla's Firefox. The non-profit company is a pretty strong advocate for user privacy. 

Greenbot

Firefox is a very capable web browser with a greater focus on user privacy.

Firefox has led much of the innovation around the web, such as tabbed browsing and extensions. Its interface is very minimalistic, and it's borrowed the concept of putting the tabs on top of the address bar from Chrome, so it should feel familiar.
Google is the default search engine in Firefox, but you can easily change it to DuckDuckGo. Just head to the search home page, and you'll be prompted to add it to the search bar with one click. 
Another strength of Firefox is its mobile browser on Android (there's even a beta version if you want to try out new features before they go mainstream). Firefox Sync enables you to keep your bookmarks, browsing history, passwords, and other data across desktop and mobile versions. 

Replace Gmail with FastMail

FastMail is a great-looking and fast-performing alternative to Gmail. If you are concerned about the NSA or law enforcement snooping on your correspondence, take solace in the fact FastMail is located in Australia and has a fairly stringent privacy policy.

FastMail

FastMail offers a clean, minimalist inbox with several tiers of storage offerings.

FastMail has many of the same features as Gmail, including conversation view and message archiving. There's a dedicated support page for importing messages from your old email provider. This can take awhile if you have multiple gigabytes of old messages, but the payoff is having all your email in one place that's free of Google's advertising software.
Of course, this ad-free perk comes with a price. The Enhanced plan—$40 per year for 15GB of storage across mail, contacts, and calendars—probably meets most needs, but pricing ranges from 250MB for $10 per year up to $120 per year for 60GB of email storage.
FastMail has a ridiculously large number of domains, so the odds are pretty high you can score firstnamelastname@domain.com. Such is no longer the case with Gmail, as such combinations were taken by those who scored a beta invite when Gmail launched or were just faster to jump on board (I'm looking at you, owner of derekwalter@gmail.com).
For mobile support FastMail uses IMAP, so it'll work fine with the stock mail app on iOS,  Android, and various third-party clients. 

Replace Google Drive with Zoho Docs

Zoho Docs is Zoho.com's online office suite, which includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs. Like Google Drive, this collaboration tool makes it easy to share files and folders, track document changes, and get feedback in real time.There are also desktop apps for Windows and Mac, so you can sync your content to the desktop and work offline. 

Zoho Docs

Write inside your web browser—just like with Google Docs.

As with Google's productivity apps, you can export documents to Microsoft Office and other formats. You can also import Dropbox files into Zoho Docs. 
You get 1GB of storage for free, though that may not last long if it becomes your core productivity suite. The standard plan of 250GB of storage is $5 per month ($48 per year if you pay it at once). Tiered plans go all the way up to 2TB for those with larger storage needs.  
Like the other companies on this list, Zoho has spelled out its privacy policy, so you can be assured it plays nice with your data.

The cost of switching

Despite Google's broad reach, you really can get away from its services, but it will cost you—some of these, and most other, replacement services require you to pony up some cash. But the upside is you can be sure your user data isn't being mishandled, and if you care about your privacy, that's a better bargain.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2601364/how-to-ditch-google-for-more-privacy-and-fewer-ads.html#tk.nl_pwr

MSN Relaunch: Microsoft's Content Brand Enters the Mobile First, Cloud First Era

By Paul Thurrott
The news that Microsoft would be rename its Bing content apps with the MSN brand was met immediately with the resistance I expected from the Windows community. But if you step back and think about it for a moment, this rebranding—and the resultant relaunch of MSN as a web-based portal for all of the information that backs these wonderful apps—actually makes sense. MSN, after all, is Microsoft's online content brand, and Bing is about search. Put another way, MSN is Microsoft's Yahoo, and Bing is Microsoft's Google.

And no offense, folks, but one of the weird bits of commentary I wrestle with regularly all over the Internet is the perception that, if you don't see something it's not popular. If you live in San Francisco, for example, you may believe that the tech world is dominated by Macs and iPhones. But step outside that bubble and things can change pretty dramatically.
And so it is with MSN. Here in the United States, Microsoft made several stabs over the years at making—and then remaking—MSN as a brand, often one that has been content-focused. Often, but not always: MSN was the original brand for Microsoft's web services and services-connected apps like Messenger, though these products and services eventually were rebranded as Windows Live. Through it all, however, MSN has been a place where for consumers to go online and get content. A web portal, essentially. (You can learn more about the history of MSN in my article, MSN: A Look Back.)

On today's mobile devices, users get content—news, sports, weather, whatever—mostly from mobile apps. But that fact doesn't dismiss the popularity of the web, especially on PCs and devices with larger screens. And MSN, in particular, has over 430 million active users, according to Microsoft. Maybe not where you live. But they're out there.
If you look at today's MSN web site, you see a traditional web portal. What's changed over the years is that the content long ago changed from being in-house (often via partners, as with MSNBC) to being curated from trusted external sources. The news stories you see on MSN.com today are from the Associated Press, Reuters, FOX Sports, Motor Trend and other experts, and Microsoft is aggregating it in a way that is hopefully useful and attractive.

But that sounds a lot like the Bing apps which debuted first in Windows 8 and then were improved and expanded with additional apps and syncing capabilities in Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone. Why Microsoft branded these apps with Bing at the time is unclear—in a January 2013 blog post, the firm noted that the apps were "powered" by Bing and provided "content from multiple sources"—but given the divergent aims of Bing and MSN, they really do make more sense as MSN apps.

And it's not just that they're content apps—featuring content aggregated from multiple sources in each case, over 1300 of them overall—but rather that giving them a web-based home, and iOS and Android clients—really completes the picture. Microsoft's other consumer services—Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox Music, and so on—all follow a common cloud-based structure in which the data is stored in the cloud and delivered to web and mobile clients. By moving these apps to MSN, this is now possible. (Bing.com just never made sense as a content destination, though you can see they tried this.)

Put another way, MSN.com was already aggregating news, sports, weather, and other information into a web portal. And the Bing apps were separately providing some of the same functionality in mobile app form, while providing that crucial cross-device syncing capability. You can custom-tailor the News app with news sources, for example, and track your heath in Health & Fitness. Now you can do so on the web as well. And soon you'll be able to do so via Android devices, iPhones and iPads. This makes plenty of sense.
When you look at the new MSN.com, you see a web portal that makes more sense, especially if you've experienced the Bing apps on Window and/or Windows Phone.

The new site provides a top-level toolbar for Microsoft's other consumer experiences—Outlook.com, Office, OneNote, OneDrive, Bing Maps, Xbox Music, and Skype, plus a few integrated experiences like Facebook and Twitter. Better still, it's connected: The link for Outlook.com isn't just a link, it can tell you how many unread emails you have. And many of the links have pop-down menus with even more choices.

Below that, you'll see familiar links from the Bing apps—Weather, News, Sports, Money (formerly Finance), Health & Fitness, Food & Drink and Travel, plus a few new ones that will likely continue to be served by the News app on mobile platforms: Entertainment, Lifestyle and Autos. Each of these provides a curated section of content aggregated from multiple sources, just like MSN today, and just like the Bing apps. And you can customize this list so that you only see what you want. You can even add choices like Movies, TV, Music, Tech & Science and Politics. It's your portal.

Each section likewise has sub-sections of its own. In News, you will see Headlines, US, World, Local, Technology and others, and in Health & Fitness, you will see Strength, Cardio, Nutrition, Symptom Checker, and more.

This is all good stuff. But the biggest change here is the web-based implementation of some of the former Bing app's greatest device-to-device synchronization features. For example, in Health & Fitness, you can access your diet tracker, cardio tracker, workouts, and exercises from the web. This means you might login some breakfast foods in the morning from your Windows Phone (or in the future, your iPhone or Android phone) and then add lunch on the web from a web browser on your work PC. MSN is (or soon will be) everywhere.

Each of the now-MSN-branded experiences offers some functionality like this. As I documented in Windows 8.1 Field Guide, some of the best features in these apps—and now on the web—are as follows:

Food & Drink: Collections of favorite recipes, wines and cocktails; and cooking tools like weight conversions, linear measures, roasting meat charts, oven temperature conversion, and more.
Health & Fitness: An online health profile with height, weight, daily calorie target, fitness preferences and optional HealthVault integration; a symptom checker; exercise, food intake and overall health tracking; and a 3D human body tool.
Money (formerly finance): A watchlist with favorite stocks and stock market indices, personal financial tracking with brokerage and personal investment account (E-Trade, Fidelity, etc.) integration, and useful financial tools like a retirement planner, mortgage, rent and auto payment calculators, currency conversions and more.
News: News story tracking, access to subscription news services, and news source editing.
Sports: You can follow your favorite teams and sports.
Travel: Collect favorite destinations, research and book flights and hotel, and get flight status and schedules.
Weather: Get the local weather forecast, of course, but also save favorite locations, and get conditions and forecasts for ski resorts.


In the coming weeks, Microsoft will ship versions of the Bing apps for Windows and Windows Phone in which the Bing brand is removed and the MSN brand is moved in. The new MSN is available now on the web in preview form and this new version of the site will eventually go live at MSN.com of course. And then the Android and iOS versions of these most excellent apps will arrive, sometime before the end of 2014.
Put simply, there is nothing about the move to MSN branding that undercuts anything Microsoft previously accomplished with the Bing content apps. And the move to the web, and to successful mobile platforms like Android and iOS, is good news for everyone.

Source: http://winsupersite.com/cloud/msn-relaunch-microsofts-content-brand-enters-mobile-first-cloud-first-era

Firefox: Neutrality Theme - Apple OSX

In celebration for the new from Apple today, below is a great theme for Firefox called Neutrality. It works with Firefox v32 and is part of the personas collection. Below is a link where you can get it. Enjoy.

You can get the personas theme here:

http://eluvehnan.deviantart.com/art/Firefox-Neutrality-457630461

Firefox 32 arrives with new HTTP cache, public key pinning support, and seamless language switching on Android

Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 32 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include a new HTTP cache for improved performance, public key pinning support, and easy language switching on Android.
Firefox 32 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.
Here is how Mozilla described the new HTTP cache back-end when it arrived in the Nightly channel back in May:

The new HTTP cache back end has many improvements like request prioritization optimized for first-paint time, ahead of read data preloading to speed up large content load, delayed writes to not block first paint time, pool of most recently used response headers to allow 0ms decisions on reuse or re-validation of a cached payload, 0ms miss-time look-up via an index, smarter eviction policies using frecency algorithm, resilience to crashes and zero main thread hangs or jank. Also it eats less memory, but this may be subject to change based on my manual measurements with my favorite microSD card which shows that keeping at least data of html, css and js files critical for rendering in memory may be wise.

This is probably the biggest addition, since it brings improved performance and crash recovery to all platforms.

Desktop

The biggest addition for the desktop platforms is public key pinning, a security feature that helps ensure that people are connecting to the sites they intend. Pinning allows webmasters to specify which certificate authorities (CAs) issue valid certificates for their sites, rather than accepting any one of the hundreds of built-in root certificates that ship with Firefox.
This means pinning can be used to protect Firefox users from man-in-the-middle-attacks and rogue certificate authorities. Whether a CA mis-issues a certificate, or when the root cert for a pinned site does not match one of the known good CAs, Firefox will reject the connection.
Pinned domains include addons.mozilla.org and Twitter in Firefox 32. Google domains will be added in Firefox 33, with more domains to come.
Cache and pinning aside, the new desktop version has a sizeable list of changes. Here’s the full changelog for Firefox 32:

• New: New HTTP cache provides improved performance including crash recovery.
• New: Integration of generational garbage collection.
• New: Public key pinning support enabled.
• New: Display the number of found items in the find toolbar.
• New: Easier back, forward, reload, and bookmarking through the context menu.
• New: View historical use information for logins stored in password manager.
• New: Lower Sorbian [dsb] locale added.
• Changed: Removed and turned off trust bit for some 1024-bit root certificates.
• Changed: Performance improvements to Password Manager and Add-on Manager.
• HTML5: drawFocusIfNeeded enabled by default.
• HTML5: CSS position:sticky enabled by default.
• HTML5: mix-blend-mode enabled by default.
• HTML5: Vibration API updated to latest W3C spec.
• HTML5: box-decoration-break enabled by default.
• HTML5: ECMAScript 6 built-in method Array#copyWithin implemented.
• HTML5: New Array built-in: Array.from().
• HTML5: navigator.languages property and languagechange event implemented.
• HTML5: CSS box-decoration-break replaces -moz-background-inline-policy.
• Developer: HiDPI support in Developer Tools UI.
• Developer: Inspector button moved to the top left.
• Developer: Hidden nodes displayed differently in the markup-view.
• Developer: New Web Audio Editor.
• Developer: Code completion and inline documentation added to Scratchpad.
• Fixed: Mac OS X: cmd-L does not open a new window when no window is available.
• Fixed: Text Rendering Issues on Windows 7 with Platform Update KB2670838 (MSIE 10 Prerequisite) or on Windows 8.1.

There are a lot of HTML5 additions in this release. If you’re a Web developer, you should probably check out Firefox 32 for developers.

Android

Firefox for Android now lets you switch between any of 55 languages, regardless of the language you originally download the browser and of the locales supported by your device, without restarting the app. Mozilla also added six more languages in this release: Armenian, Basque, Fulah, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.
Next up, you can now customize Firefox for Android with home screen pages for accessing content directly from a variety of websites, feeds and services (like Instagram, Pocket, Vimeo and Wikipedia). You can also easily clear your history at the end of every browsing session by tapping the new option at the bottom of your History home screen page.
Version 32 adds a lot more on Android than on the desktop. Here’s the full Firefox 32 for Android changelog:

• New: Switch between any of Firefox for Android’s 55 supported languages without leaving the browser.
• New: Clear History control added to the history panel.
• New: Gamepad API finalized and enabled.
• New: New HTTP cache provides improved performance including crash recovery.
• New: Integration of generational garbage collection.
• New: Support URI autocomplete on Swype (and other composition focused) keyboards.
• New: Locales added: Armenian [hy-AM], Basque [eu], Fulah [ff], Icelandic [is], Scottish Gaelic [gd], Welsh [cy].
• Changed: Android 2.2 and ARMv6 processor chipset no longer supported.
• Changed: Removed and turned off trust bit for some 1024-bit root certificates.
• Changed: Set up Sync from the tabs tray.
• Changed: Top Sites has a cleaner, fresher looking first-run appearance.
• HTML5: CSS position:sticky enabled by default.
• HTML5: mix-blend-mode enabled by default.
• HTML5: Vibration API updated to latest W3C spec.
• HTML5: box-decoration-break enabled by default.
• HTML5: New Array built-in: Array.from().
• HTML5: navigator.languages property and languagechange event implemented.
• HTML5: CSS box-decoration-break replaces -moz-background-inline-policy.
• Developer: Improvements to home panel add-on API.

New versions of Firefox are released approximately every six weeks. Firefox 33 will be out in mid-October.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/09/02/firefox-32-arrives-new-http-cache-public-key-pinning-support-easy-language-switching-android/

Google Chrome VS Mozilla Firefox

08-29-14 - The Google Chrome VS Mozilla Firefox battle lives on and it seems that they constantly take turns in claiming the number 1 spot. But this time, one salutes the other for a particular aspect!

A month ago, an authority on tech The Web Browser Grand Prix tallied up eight categories of testing, divided into performance and non-performance breakdown; and Mozilla Firefox won.


It was a close fight between Firefox and Chrome when it comes to Wait Times, JavaScript/DOM, HTML5/CSS3, and Hardware Acceleration. In fact it would have been a tie as they easily surpassed Opera Next, IE 10, and Opera.

However, Firefox took the crown with the nonperformance categories including Memory Efficiency, Reliability, Security, and Standards Conformance.

But with the recent release of Firefox 31, which highlights a search box on the new tab page and a Google-provided technology that prevents users from downloading malicious files, Mozilla has been transparent with the fact that Chrome's Safe Browsing feature always had a huge advantage.

This is due to the fact that Google has never documented the application programming interface for outsiders, hence efficiently blocking untrusted sites and incipient downloads. With this, Mozilla remarked "Google has offered an application reputation feature to detect malicious downloads as part of Google Safe Browsing since 2012,"

"Of the 327 URLs that the release version of [Firefox 31] did not catch, Chrome caught 286 of them."

On the other hand, Chrome 37 in beta was recently released as well, demonstrating the shift from GDI to DirectWrite API.

"Chrome 37 adds support for DirectWrite, an API on Windows for clear, high-quality text rendering even on high-DPI displays," The Chronium Blog notes.

You can download the updated versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome from their respective sites.

Which browser seems more secure and reliable for you? Sound off in the comments section below!

Source: http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/35207/20140829/google-chrome-vs-mozilla-firefox.htm