beta – Blogvaria

Opera 10 Beta 3 is out

Thomas — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:56:07 +0000

I’ve just updated to the latest Opera 10 Beta. I must say I’m very impressed. Loads quick, both start-up and page loading times. Looks nice and adding widgets (like the FF plugins) is straightforward and quick.

Just have in mind that, like Opera states:

This is a beta version of Opera. Please use it only on properly backed-up computers. It is a stability release and records additions, fixes, and improvements made to Opera 10.0 beta 2. For your reference, please see the previous Opera 10.0 beta 2 for Windows changelog which was released on July 16, 2009.

I haven’t had any issues but others definitely had (thus the stability update). To try it on yourself simply visit their “next” download section.

Happy surfing!

Opera 10 looks promising

Thomas — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:10:07 +0000

Opera released the first beta of Opera 10 a few days ago, the newest version of the company’s industry-defining Web browser. Opera 10 beta sports a surprising array of new features, a fresh look and feel, and enhanced speed and performance. It is completely free for Windows, Mac and Linux users from www.opera.com/next.

Visit the news room to read the full press release.

I’ve only tested it for a few days but must admit it looks nice. Also I believe it is slightly faster than previous versions. Start-up time also appears to be quicker.

If you’ve tested it let me know which of the new features you like the most.

New Beta’s from Windows Live

Wennichen — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:18:59 +0000

Most of the Microsoft Live products, including Live Messenger, are now available in new Beta versions.

Windows Live is Microsoft’s collection of applications and services that according to them will help the user to gain information and keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues he/she cares about.

Windows Live was launched back in 2006 with Live releases of existing products like Messenger, Hotmail and Spaces. However, more than 40 Live products was announced at the time but only a few has seen the day of light so far and some will probably never surface at all.

In 2007 Microsoft released a second “Live wave”, this time including brand new products like Mail, Photo Gallery, the blogging tool Writer, and several services like Events, SkyDrive, Calendar and Family Safety.

Now Microsoft are building up the release of the third “Live wave” of products. First round includes new beta releases of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar and Family Safety.

Microsoft has not made a complete list of all the updates so far but among the news released so far it’s clear that Live Messenger 2009 amongst others have been given a new design which according to Microsoft will make it easier to configure for each individual user. A screenshot is shown below:

All beta versions are available in multiple languages on this page.

To be totally honest I’ll probably stick to Digsby for for now… However, if you have any thoughts or first impressions with the new Beta series please feel free to share

What do you think about Google Chrome?

Thomas — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:35:59 +0000

As meny of you already know I’m sure Google has joined the browser market when introducing Chrome just a few days ago. The interest has been overwhelming, but then again Google has the oportunity to market the browser through their own search portal (that every Internet user visits more or less daily…).

ReadWriteWeb claims Chrome already got 1,5% of the market share, running up behind IE, FF and Opera but in front of all the rest. I assume the numbers are a bit high as most of the registered traffic probably comes from users just testing it out. Then again, if they like what they see they just might stick with it.

I for one am quite happy with FF and all its add-ons, but would really like to hear from the rest of you should you have good (or bad) experience with the newcomer.

Also, do we really need yet another browser? From a designers point of view this seams like more work as we now have to make even more browser specific rules to get the pages right Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if Microsoft, Yahoo and Google joined forces even though that would mean monopoly yet again…

Update: There seams to be at least one good reason NOT to start using Chrome…

Help test OpenOffice.org 3.0

Thomas — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:10:10 +0000

The public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now ready for testing. This beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage. If you are a regular user of OpenOffice.org, here’s a great opportunity to help make the next release the best ever.

What’s new in OpenOffice.org 3.0?

The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new “Start Centre”, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress.

Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).

OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.

More info here: http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/featurelistbeta.html