PCTips Box

While Microsoft is still hammering away at Internet Explore 8 in order to produce the second Beta, currently planned for August 2008, Mozilla is gearing up to release the first update to Firefox 3.0. The successor of Firefox 2.0 was released to the general public on June 17, 2008, and climbed to a record 8 million downloads in just the first day. Firefox 3.0.1 is the first security and stability update for Firefox 3.0, and Mozilla is targeting July 16 for the release date. Firefox 3.0.1 code freeze status was available at the end of June, and the Beta versions of the first update to version 3.0 are already live and up for grabs.

“Candidate builds of Firefox 3.0.1 are now available for testing. You can get the builds here. If you have previously downloaded a beta version of Firefox 3.0 or have manually set your copy to be using the ‘beta’ release channel for updates, you can update yourself to Firefox 3.0.1 by selecting ‘Help > Check for Updates’,” revealed Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance Engineer at Mozilla. (more…)

This is it! The wait is now over! Firefox 3.0 Final is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Mozilla announced since last week, following the release of the Release Candidate 3 Build, that the gold bits for Firefox 3.0 would be made available on June 17, 2008, and managed to meet the deadline. Although the official release of Firefox 3.0 is still a few hours away, the downloads for the next iteration of the Firefox open source browser are live. So, make sure that you grab your copy; the links for the English binaries of Firefox 3.0 Final for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are also at the bottom of this article.

The Gecko 1.9 web rendering platform is the foundation for Firefox 3.0. Mozilla spent the last 34 months hammering away at Gecko 1.9. With the next version of Firefox, Mozilla will in fact move onward with the evolution of Gecko. But for now, Firefox 3.0 users will be able to enjoy the benefits of in excess of 15,000 updates introduced to the rendering engine. In this context, Firefox 3.0 delivers “improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability,” according to Mozilla. (more…)

AutoPlay or AutoRun dialog window will pop up when an removable drive, portable device such as digital camera and media player or CD/DVD disc been inserted into computer or placed into optical drive, with plenty of action choices in a list of options for users to choose to perform on the just connected drive and drive contents. Each item in the AutoPlay list is a handler installed by various applications to show as an option for a particular events or content types such as Pictures, Videos, and Mixed.

Windows by default has several AutoPlay handlers, and other third-party programs, especially media player such as MusicMatch Jukebox and RealPlayer, and image burning software such as Nero will add their own AutoPlay handlers and shortcuts into the list. Over the time, the AutoPlay list can get longer and longer, and some entries can become invalid or orphaned when the program has been uninstalled by the AutoPlay handlers are not removed. (more…)

Microsoft is offering Windows Vista users the means to take Windows Vista compatibility, reliability and stability up a notch ahead of the release of the first service pack for the operating system. In this context, the Redmond company has been hammering away at Vista, since the client hot the shelves in January 2007 with constant refreshes served through the Windows Update infrastructure. Although Windows Update is not yet a fully fledged substitute for the service pack release practice, Microsoft has hinted that small and incremental updates are the way of the future, in contrast to large and bloated refreshes.

Starting with its debut on the market, Vista has had quite a rough ride, experiencing a plethora of issues, mostly centered around software and hardware incompatibilities, as well as performance. (more…)