PCTips Box

The equivalent of Microsoft’s Silverlight but for Linux operating systems is available for download as of May 13, 2008, under the label Moonlight. According to the official description of the technology, Moonlight is nothing more than the open source implementation of Silverlight, tailored for UNIX systems. With this latest step in the evolution of Silverlight, Microsoft can finally claim that the technology is truly cross-platform, because ahead of the May 13 public release of Moonlight, support was available exclusively for Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Moonlight is a project developed in parallel with Microsoft Silverlight, but not by the Redmond company. In fact, Microsoft partnered with Mono, an open source project backed by Novell, in order to port Silverlight to Linux. At this point in time Moonlight is still in development, and as such comes with the inherent problems associated with any Beta. (more…)

Ever have the need to open more than one program or application at the same time?

Say it’s the beginning of the month and time to pay those dreaded bills. You know you need Excel, Windows calculator and Firefox or Internet Explorer open. Instead of opening them up one by one, you can easily create a batch file that will open all three programs at once.

And while your at it, why not have Excel open the spreadsheet file you use for tracking your budget and the browser open to your Bank’s home page. Here’s how to do it…

First let’s take a look at a batch file I created that will just open Excel, Calculator and Firefox: (more…)

Although many people have their favorite web apps setup as their homepage on their browsers, there are times when running a web app inside its own window - in a separate process - could come handy. Think about having your browser clogged up with way above 30-40 tabs open and crashing at random times.

Then, you will just have to open it again and fire up the web interface you were working with at the time of the crash. A desktop web app will automatically eliminate the need of restarting your work flow all over again just because a buggy web browser decided that he had enough.

That’s only a quick example why one would need a web app to run on its desktop. To be able to do it, you will have to use an application developed by Mozilla and named Prism. It enables the end user to easily integrate any type of web application into a friendly desktop environment. (more…)

One of the cool things about Firefox is it’s never ending ways to do things. While this list will not make headlines, any Firefox list I find, always has one or two tips worth saving. Here are five Firefox tips that I like because they are quick and don’t require any extensions or add-ons installation.

Firefox Tip 1 - Bookmarks are great, but sometimes you may want to save a Web site link for the short term. Instead of creating a Bookmark, just click and hold on the Web site favicon in the Address bar, then drag and drop to your Desktop creating an instant shortcut link to the site. Next time you need to visit the site, click on the shortcut and Firefox will open the link in a new tab.

Firefox Tip 2 - Firefox 2.0 provides a few options to customize what sites you want opened when Firefox starts up. By setting the Startup preference in Tools \ Options under the Main tab, I like to have several sites open, by selecting Show My Home Page (next to When Firefox Starts) and adding URL’s in the Home Page field. (more…)

Is Windows Vista Faster Than XP?
Our Windows Vista coverage began with a hands-on diary by MobilityGuru’s Barry Gerber, followed by an assessment of gameplay under Windows Vistaby graphics presidente Darren Polkowski, as well as a complete feature rundown of Vista. Barry took the new operating system and its look & feel with a grain of salt, while Darren was disappointed because OpenGL support was dropped along the way, meaning that Windows Vista currently offers horrible performance for graphics applications utilizing the Open Graphics Library.

We are sure that mainstream users will appreciate the improved usability of Windows Vista, and the average office/multimedia user will likely never notice the lack of OpenGL. However, a chapter on the overall performance of Windows Vista requires more dedication. In particular, two things require an in-depth analysis: (more…)

If you are frequent web browser ,a blogger or a freelancer if you are in any web related profession then you must be spending around at least about 1-2 hours on web.

Why open multiple pages at start in mozilla firefox ?

Now every minute of your’s is important so it’s you to decide how you can optimise and speed up your repeated browser activity in order to make the most efficient use of your time .

Lets assume that you have a medium speed internet connection and you use firefox every time so, if you have to open intial web sites every time before you start work like open email , dash board of your wordpress blog, google reader etc (more…)

You may not have realised this until now but Mozilla Firefox has its own version of the Windows Registry, where all your preferences are stored. In the browser, it can be accessed by typing in the address bar about:config

But what, in the future, if you have to re-install Firefox from scratch? You may have spent a long time tweaking Firefox to get it the way you want it and if you subsequently lose all your preferences, then you would have to start again from the beginning. This would throw me into a fit of rage but I discovered recently there is a way to make a backup of your “about:config” preferences in case anything goes wrong. (more…)

Since ActiveX applies only to the Windows platform, it is unsuitable for Firefox which is available across multiple platforms. Currently, there is no mechanism by which you can use ActiveX controls in Firefox 2.0 or later.

Until recently, a third-party plugin provided ActiveX functionality for Firefox. The Mozilla ActiveX Plug-in provided partial ActiveX support for Firefox 1.5 and earlier versions. By default, these ActiveX plugins were configured to execute only the two Windows Media Player ActiveX controls, which enabled the playback of video content through the Windows controls. There is a configuration file that can be used to enable other ActiveX controls. (more…)

The second beta of Firefox 3.0 is now available for download. In this manner, Mozilla lived up to its promise made earlier in December that it would move Firefox 3.0 out of Beta 1 stage, by December 21st. Having dropped the first Release Candidate for Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 as early as December 11th, it was clear that Mozilla was making headway with the development of its upcoming version of the open source browser. The final availability date for Firefox 3.0 is not set at this point, with more beta milestones expected, but all indications point to early 2008.

“Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download. Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only. Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for download. This is the tenth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3″, Mozilla revealed on its Development Center. (more…)

Andrei provides an excellent tip for Firefox users in Pasting Wrapped URLs:

Here’s another Mozilla/Firefox tip: if you copy a URL wrapped over multiple lines from somewhere and try to paste it into the address bar, you will end up only with the first line of it. To fix it, go to about:config and change editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines setting to 3 or add: (more…)