Recently many users of the new iPad and iPhone 4, are getting really tired. Why you may ask? There has been a constant fight over trying to get Apple to add Adobe Flash Player to their devices. There have been many assumptions based on Apple. Some say it is because of Apple’s corporate fight with Adobe. Others know the real reason. Think of it like this.

You have a small device capable of running apps. Okay, however these devices can crash easily if they are being overwhelmed with memory. This is Adobe Flash Player. Adobe Flash Player has been known to consume a high amount of resources and in some cases can even crash a computer.

Now here’s the real question… Why doesn’t Apple make their own SWF player? Ahh, this is where the key lies. As many of you may or may not know, after you buy an app from the App Store, Apple typically gets 30% of the sale as commission leaving the developer with 70%. So every purchase will have a portion of the money taken away from app developers. In addition, developers need to join the Apple iPhone Developer’s Program, which is $99 annually.

If Apple allows Flash, where is the App Store going to go? You guessed it, down the toilet. They need the App Store. With Flash, there will be a high variety of games available on the Internet that use Flash. Apple wouldn’t be able to control it, therefore won’t be able to make much of a profit from the apps.

So there are two possible opinions you could have. The ones who think Flash should be formatted for Apple products and Apple should let you use it. Then you have the people who believe Flash would overuse the resources and memory and ruin the device.

Honestly, I can say that I’m in the middle. Yes! I would love to have Adobe Flash Player or any SWF player to be on Apple Devices, but is it worth the decrees in speed? So Apple… Flash or No Flash?

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2. Apple iPad Hits U.S. Shelves on April 3
3. How Effective is Mozilla Plugin Check?
4. Upcoming Firefox 3.6.4 More Than a Minor Update with ‘Lorentz’
5. Google Doodle Celebrates 30 Years of Pac-Man

Firefox 4.0 introduces a new UI as well as a line of new features and improvements

Unless you are someone like me who’s been playing around with nightly builds and/or the Strata40 theme, the new theme will take a while to get used to. Tabs are on top in the Windows version, a feature started by Google Chrome, then adapted by Safari 4 beta builds (but removed in the final) and Opera. Mozilla had also followed Opera’s lead by compacting the classic menu bar into a single Firefox button in the top left corner.

The new Firefox button saves space by compacting the classic menu bar into a single button. The classic menu button can still be toggled through the Customize menu or temporarily shown by using the Alt key.

Top tabs will come to Mac and Linux versions when their default themes are updated to support this.

The add-ons interface has received a major overhaul, but according to Mozilla, it will change in the final version, so don’t get too used to it. The final version will integrate the JetPack SDK, which will allow add-ons to be installed without restarting the browser.

The new overhauled Firefox add-ons manager. Mozilla says that the interface is not final.

Of course, Firefox 4 packs in much more than just the obvious visual appearance changes. There are hundreds of under the hood changes, including a new HTML5 parser and support for more HTML5 form controls. Firefox now also natively supports the HTML5 WebM HD video format, therefore allowing Firefox to use YouTube’s new HTML5 on some WebM enabled videos.

This YouTube video ('Parisian Love') is played on Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 without utilizing Flash at all thanks to the new support for WebM.

Other features include improved APIs for WebSockets and HTML history. There is also partial support for CSS transitions.

Windows 7 jumplist support is also included in this release.

Firefox 4.0 includes support for Windows 7 Jump Lists.

Firefox 4.0 also includes a Windows 7 taskbar icon download progress bar overlay, similar to Opera and Internet Explorer.

Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 scores 97/100 on the Acid3 Web Standards test. Almost there Mozilla!

Firefox 4.0 Beta 1's Acid3 test result

As promised, the Out-of-Process Plugin feature is now available to Mac users.

In security so far, Firefox 4 introduces a small but useful change. CSS “.visited” selectors now prevent web sites from checking a user’s browsing history.

Mozilla says to expect updates every two weeks. As part of the beta, an add-on named ‘Feedback’ is installed and adds a Feedback button onto the toolbar which Mozilla uses to conduct optional feedback surveys about the new browser to help development.

The first feedback survey message

Want to try Firefox 4.0 Beta for yourself? Please note that this is a beta release and features are subject to change and may not work properly.

Firefox 4.0 Beta
Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 Release Notes
Firefox 4.0 Beta Features

What do you think of this first public beta of the next generation of Firefox? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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WOT for Safari

Due to the gray color scheme of the Safari toolbars, the extension is slightly different than it is on other browsers.

The colored icon fades after a few seconds.

When you visit a website, the WOT add-on looks up the rating as usual. But instead of showing the colored rating on the toolbar, the rating color shows up on a small box in the corner and fades away after a few seconds. The toolbar button has a check mark for green, and exclamation for red.

The colorblind version, however continues to use its regular colorblind shutter icons on the toolbar.

WOT Colorblind Version

Everything else works the same as browsers, including the search result rating icons, rating scorecards, and warning screens. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a block feature, which goes beyond just warning the user but rather blocks dangerous pages from loading entirely.

Safari WOT Warning

What do you think of the new Safari version of the WOT extension? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Attention Safari users! WOT is available for you too!

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The 3G model would be released in late April 2010.

The pricing of the iPad are as follows:

Wi-Fi Models:

• 16 GB: $499
• 32 GB: $599
• 64 GB: $699

Wi-Fi + 3G Models (does not include 3G plan which is sold separately):

• 16 GB: $629
• 32 GB: $729
• 64 GB: $829

Do you plan on ordering the iPad? Vote in the poll below and leave your thoughts about it in the comments.

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Opera 10.50 introduces many new features including a simpler interface getting rid of the menu bar, like other browsers are doing, private browsing mode, Windows 7 integration features such as Jump Lists and Tab Taskbar Thumbnails (with Aero Peek), and of course, a Javascript engine that is supposed to be 8 times faster than Opera 10.10.

Opera 10.50 Beta features new Windows 7 integration features

Jump List options include Speed Dial pages and a link to open a new tab and new private tab.

Opera 10.50 supports Windows 7 Jump Lists

The main menu bar has been compressed into the Opera button on the corner.

Opera Menu Button and Private Browsing Options

Unlike other browsers, Opera introduces both Private Tab and Private Window.

Opera Private Browsing Notice

Opera also supports the audio and video HTML 5 tags. Similar to Firefox 3.5, it supports Ogg Vorbis open standards.

But how fast does it compare? Is it really the fastest browser on earth? Let’s test it with the Sunspider Javascript test.

Sunspider Benchmark Results for Opera, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Lower is better.

As you can see from the results, Opera 10.50 scored the best on the benchmark. I ran the test multiple times, and Opera was always the fastest of them all. Let’s remove the slower 3 and see a chart comparing just Opera and Chrome.

Opera 10.50 vs Chrome 5.0 (both in beta). Lower is better.

Google Chrome currently has the title for being the fastest browser on earth. But has Opera come to steal that title away? After all, the current beta of Opera is tested to be faster than the current beta of Chrome.

Opera 10.50 is the next major release from Opera and is currently in beta. It’s filled with new features and a very impressive Javascript engine.

Want to give Opera 10.50 a try for yourself? Please keep in mind that this is beta software and there may be bugs, though the Windows version was surprisingly stable during my testing.

Opera 10.50 Beta

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5. How to Truly Browse Without Leaving a Trace

First Class Flyer is a weekly series published every Friday comparing two or more free software products of the same category. This week, we’re taking a look at several multi-protocol instant messenger clients, Trillian, Digsby, Pidgin, and Miranda IM.

About This First Class Flyer Issue

There are many multi-protocol clients out there, however the most popular ones would be Trillian, Digsby, Pidgin, and Miranda IM. Trillian and Digsby data is fully stored online on their secure servers while Pidgin and Miranda IM data are stored locally.

Trillian is not fully free, and therefore for anything that is a Pro only feature, its score in that category is 2.5 points lower than it would originally be.

In addition, because of the numerous features of each client, comparing each one is unreasonable. Features included in this First Class Flyer are standard features and some features they share.

With this many contenders, scoring is a bit different in some categories.

Download Size

The size of the installer should be as small as possible. Even in today’s world, there are still users with suffering network connections including dial-up.

Trillian: 15.3 MB
Digsby: 17.8 MB
Pidgin: 13.5 MB
Miranda: 1.65 MB

Miranda takes the crown here for having a very small download compared to the other 3. Because of the wide variations in this round, the scoring will be a bit different. First place gets 4 and last gets 1.

Trillian: 2
Digsby: 1
Pidgin: 3
Miranda: 4

Number of Available IM Protocols

It’s called multi-protocol, but how ‘multi’ is it? The most popular IM protocols are AIM, Yahoo!, Windows Live, and Google Talk.

This category applies to built in IM protocols only without any plugins. Note that Google Talk, Jabber, and XMPP are basically the same thing and are counted as one as well as AIM and ICQ.

Trillian supports the following (items 6-9 are on the Windows client only):

1. AIM/ICQ
2. Yahoo!
3. Windows Live/MSN
4. MySpace IM
5. Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk
6. Facebook Chat
7. Skype
8. IRC
9. Bonjour

Digsby supports the following:

1. AIM/ICQ
2. Yahoo!
3. Windows Live/MSN
4. Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk
5. Facebook Chat
6. Myspace IM

Pidgin Supports the following:

1. AIM/ICQ
2. Bonjour
3. Gadu-Gadu
4. Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk
5. Groupwise
6. IRC
7. Windows Live/MSN
8. MySpaceIM
9. QQ
10. SILC
11. SIMPLE
12. Sametime
13. Yahoo!
14. Zephyr

Miranda supports the following:

1. AIM/ICQ
2. Gadu-Gadu
3. Jabber/XMPP/Google Talk
4. IRC
5. Yahoo!
6. Windows Live/MSN

To calculate the score in this round, we take the total number of unique protocols each client supports and divide it by two.

Trillian: 4.5 (6.5 total)
Digsby: 3 (4 total)
Pidgin: 7 (10 total)
Miranda: 3 (7 total)

User Profiles

Trillian Astra (4.0) stores account data online with an Astra account. Multiple Astra accounts can be saved locally for easier login. Users can also register for an Astra account right from Trillian.

Trillian Login Window

Digsby also stores data online with a Digsby account, however only 1 account can have the login details saved on the system.

Digsby Login Window

Pidgin does not feature profiles by default. Each computer has one set of instant messenger accounts.

Miranda IM includes a feature known as Profiles where you can store accounts. Each system can have multiple profiles. Profiles are useful if multiple people use the computer and each user has their own set of accounts. To create additional user profiles, press Ctrl when clicking the Miranda icon to start up. Multiple profiles can run at once by simply running another instance of Miranda.

Miranda Profile Manager

Trillian: 4 (10.5 total)
Digsby: 3 (7 total)
Pidgin: 1 (11 total)
Miranda: 5 (12 total)

Buddy List Appearance

With so many accounts being bunched up into one buddy list, how well does each client organize everything? And how pleasing does the default interface look?

Trillian provides a sleek buddy list with alpha transparency. The buddy list is organized into 3 groups: Web (Social Networks), Email, and Contacts. The Contacts group is further grouped into the regular IM account groups. Organization for IM is standard however Twitter and Facebook could use a bit more organization.

Digsby’s interface uses a Windows 7 like skin by default and features a status box on the top, followed by contacts, easy buttons to sign in and out of accounts, and finally email accounts and social networking accounts on the bottom all in an organized easy to use interface.

Pidgin uses a clean and simple interface with the status bar on the bottom.

Miranda has an incredibly simple interface display nothing but names. The user status can be changed by clicking on the status icon on the bottom or the status menu.

Trillian: 5 (15.5 total)
Digsby: 4 (11 total)
Pidgin: 4 (15 total)
Miranda: 2 (14 total)

Conversation Window Features and Appearance

This is where the actual talking happens. So you’ll probably want it to be easy to use with a pleasing interface also.

Trillian windows share the theme and color of the buddy list. There are 3 conversation styles: Simple, which is just a line of messages (similar to Google Talk Gmail), Playscript, which is similar to Simple except names have an arrow background, and Bubbles, which has bubbles coming out of avatars with the message. Configurable Web Clips are shown on the top, similar to Gmail Web Clips.

Trillian Conversation Window using the Bubble style and the Halloween theme

Digsby features a separate skin for conversation window (more on skins below). Within this window, users can view Info, chat, and even send a quick email to the other user. Conversation styles are based on the skin.

Pidgin windows are plain with no additional features.

Miranda windows are even simpler. Unlike the other two, Miranda does not feature chat tabs unfortunately.

Trillian: 5 (20.5 total)
Digsby: 5 (16 total)
Pidgin: 3 (18 total)
Miranda: 2 (16 total)

Chat Logs and History

Ever want to look back at an old conversation. Thanks to chat logs, you can. All 4 clients feature chat logs and a log viewer.

Pro Only: Trillian features a very detailed log viewer complete with an activity chart and calendar as well as a detailed Advanced Search. With the Free version, Trillian does not have a log viewer and opens logs in the program set to open text files (like Notepad)

Digsby features a detailed log viewer with a calendar similar to Trillian’s and a basic search bar. Logs are stored in HTML format.

Pidgin features a basic log viewer with dates in a tree format and a basic search box. Logs are stored in HTML format.

Miranda features a very simple log viewer that logs every single action, which I found a bit ridiculous.

Trillian has the best log viewer of all but unfortunately, it’s a Pro only feature.

Trillian: 2.5 [after 2.5 Pro feature penalty] (23 total)
Digsby: 4.5 (20.5 total)
Pidgin: 3.5 (21.5 total)
Miranda: 2 (18 total)

Plugins

Plugins extend functionality of programs and can do anything a developer thinks of and plugin API can handle including the ability to connect to more IM services.

Formerly a Pro only feature, Trillian offers a wide selection of plugins at the official website from news readers to spell checkers. Plugins can be installed with one click and a client restart.

Digsby does not support plugins at all. It only supports additional smileys and sounds can be changed.

Pidgin is open source and has a large collection of third party plugins such as Facebook Chat. Installation varies from plugin to plugin but mostly involves moving a file into the Pidgin plugins directory. Pidgin also comes with numerous official plugins such as chat window opacity.

Miranda is also open source and has a very large collection of addons from the official gallery. Installation usually involves moving a file into the Miranda addons directory.

Trillian: 5 (28 total)
Digsby: 1.5 (22 total)
Pidgin: 5 (26.5 total)
Miranda: 5 (23 total)

Themes/Skins

Themes can change how the application looks and can range from a very clean and simple one to a wacky complex one.

Trillian supports both skins and skin variations (Pro). By default, Trillian has two skins, Cobalt (clean and simple) and Cordonata. Additional skins can be downloaded online. At the time of writing, there doesn’t seem to be any skins for Trillian Astra. Users can also customize the emoticons and sounds of the theme (if available). While skins are a free feature, skin variations are Pro only.

Digsby comes with 3 skins (and many variations) and numerous conversation themes as well as many emoticon packs. Additional skins can be downloaded from the unofficial user created site, Digsbies. Conversation themes are Adium themes therefore users can download conversation themes from the Adium Theme Site. To install a theme, copy the folder into the respective folder in the Digsby directory.

Pidgin’s theme can be altered slightly through the Gtk+ Theme Selector, though they’re technically not themes nor skins.

Miranda supports skins from the online gallery. There are hundreds available however skins require a certain add-on to work. Learn more on the download page. The “Recommended Add-ons” are needed to use skins.

Trillian: 3 (31 total)
Digsby: 4 (26 total)
Pidgin: 1.5 (28 total)
Miranda: 4 (27 total)

You Know What Time It Is… Bonus Points!

Email Services

Having email notifications is quite handy.

Digsby provides not only email notifications but you can perform actions to the email (Spam, Delete, Archive, etc…) and even compose an email within the chat window (it leaves a Digsby ad as a signature).

Trillian provides email notifications but without any special actions like Digsby has.

Pidgin also provides email notifications, however, it only works if there is exactly 1 new email.

Trillian: +2 bonus points (33 total)
Digsby: +4 bonus points (30 total)
Pidgin: +0.5 bonus points (27.5 total)

Social Networking

Trillian supports Facebook and Twitter. Digsby supports Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn with special features for Facebook and Twitter.

Digsby’s Twitter client uses a unique approach placing newer tweets on the bottom and having everything in a conversation like format.

Digsby lets you Comment and Like items in the Facebook newsfeed. In the upcoming release, users can also unofficially dislike items with data stored on Digsby servers.

Trillian: +3 bonus points (36 total)
Digsby: +4 bonus points (34 total)

Junkware Alert!

Many software bundle junkware with their installation causing the download size to go up and the useless product(s), usually toolbars are usually opt-out, meaning the box to install is checked by default.

Trillian offers Ask Toolbar as an opt-out during installation.

Digsby offers Digsby Toolbar (a branded version of Ask Toolbar)as well as a research module in addition to two search plugins, all of which are opt-out.

Trillian: -1 bonus points (35 total)
Digsby: -5 bonus points (29 total)

That’s right, negative bonus points. Bonus isn’t always good.

Password Security

Pidgin stores passwords in cleartext. Anyone with access to the physical computer can see them clearly. They explain encryption gives users a false sense a security since that file can be copied to another system and used, but when its in cleartext, that’s even less secure.

Pidgin: -1 bonus point (27 total)

Website Widgets

Want to add something to your website like a status widget or chat widget? Digsby provides a live chat widget where website visitors (and Facebook profile viewers) can start a live chat session with you. Trillian provides Trillian Mini with customizable information like mood and status.

Digsby Live Chat Widget on Facebook Profile

Trillian: +1 bonus point (36 total)
Digsby: +1 bonus point (30 total)

Multi-Platform

Digsby and Miranda are Windows only (Mac/Linux in development for Digsby). Pidgin supports Windows, Mac, and Linux while Trillian supports Windows and iPhone currently (Mac coming soon) and there’s a web version (like Meebo) for Pro users.

Trillian: +1 bonus points (37 total)
Pidgin: +2 bonus points (29 total)

Let’s tally up all the points.

Trillian: 37
Digsby: 30
Pidgin: 29
Miranda: 27

And the Winner Is…

Trillian!

With a score of 37 (compared to 30, 29, and 27), Trillian takes the crown for being the best instant messenger client and this First Class Flyer edition.

Do you use multiple chat networks? Which client do you prefer to use? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Trillian
Supports Windows, Mac (alpha testing), and iPhone

Digsby
Supports Windows

Pidgin
Supports Windows, Mac, and Linux

Miranda IM
Supports Windows

Be sure to join us next Friday for the next edition of First Class Flyer!

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So “private” mode isn’t really “private”? Well, in a way, no, it’s not. Even in Private Mode, you’re still leaving traces behind.

Isn’t Clearing the Browser ‘Private Data’ Enough?

Modern browsers contain a feature known as ‘Clear Private Data’, which will delete all history, cookies, and cache or does it? While it does delete your browser history, cookies, and cache, there are still DNS Cache entries and the far worse, flash cookies, sitting around on your system.

When you browser in Private Browsing Mode, the browser might not be saving history or cookies after the session closes, but your system is still holding onto the DNS Cache and Flash Player still holds the flash cookies.

DNS Cache Entires

Whenever you visit a website URL, your browser looks up the IP Address of that URL and then connects you to that IP Address. To speed up the process, these entries, known as Domain Name System (DNS), are cached for future reference so if you ever visit that same URL again, looking up the site is not necessary. Unfortunately, this can actually serve as a web history of sites you visited.

If you’re interested in viewing your DNS cache, use the following command on Windows: ipconfig /displaydns. There might be more entries than the command prompt can hold in one view. Want proof that private browsing still caches your websites here? Open up a new private browsing window and visit a site that you normally don’t visit. There’s a good chance that the new website will end up on the DNS cache list.

To clean the DNS Cache, run the command:

Windows: ipconfig /flushdns
Mac OS X Leopard or later: dscacheutil -flushcache
Mac OS X 10.5.1 or earlier: lookupd -flushcache
GNU-Linux: sudo /etc/init.d/nscd

Additional details on flushing DNS cache can be found here.

Get Rid of the Flash Cookies

Here’s the big one. That’s right. Flash. Flash Cookies are stored in these locations:

Windows: %AppData%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects and %AppData%\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\
Mac OS X Websites: ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player
Mac OS X Adobe AIR Apps: ~/Library/Preferences/[package name (ID) of your AIR app]
GNU-Linux: ~/.macromedia

You can have some fun viewing all the flash cookies that were stored. When you’re done, you can delete any or all of them. Alternatively, users can visit the Adobe Flash Player Settings manager to delete cookies.

CCleaner for Windows

A useful and free utility known as CCleaner can handle all the cleaning for you, including DNS Cache Entries and Flash Cookies. Be sure to select ‘DNS Cache’ (under System) and ‘Adobe Flash Player’ (under Multimedia).

Additional Notes

In addition, keep in mind that sites like Google collect data of search results you visit. Most sites also contain server logs. If you’re not leaving a trace on your own computer, you probably left a trace on a server that you have no control over.

Of course, if there happens to be a security camera near you or someone is just peering over your shoulder, then well, your browsing session isn’t very private regardless of how you clean up afterward.

So next time you try to visit a website without anyone knowing, think twice before simply using Private Browsing.

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When you browse the internet, your internet browser looks up the DNS Records of each website you visit in order to connect to the website’s server. To save time when you revisit the website, the DNS Entry is cached on your computer. However, your browser may cache a bad entry, such as when the server really is down or during DNS Propagation time. If this is the case, users should clear their system’s DNS Cache.

Microsoft Windows

1. Open up Command Prompt (cmd.exe). If possible, run with administrative privileges.
2. Run the following command to clear your DNS Cache:

   ipconfig /flushdns

   

3. This usually fixes any browsing problems, however you may choose to restart the DNS Service. Note that some browsers like Firefox have their own DNS Cache, so you may need to restart the browser.
4. Run the following commands to restart the DNS Service:

net stop dnscache
net start dnscache

5. Try browsing with your favorite web browser.

Mac OS X

1. Open up your terminal.
2. If you are running OS X Leopard (or later), type the following command to clear the DNS Cache:

   dscacheutil -flushcache

3. If you running OS X 10.5.1 or earlier, type the following command to clear the DNS Cache:

   lookupd -flushcache

Linux

By default, Linux does not have DNS Caching, however you can enable it by installing nscd. If you have already installed this, skip step 2.

1. Open up your terminal.
2. Run the following command to install nscd for DNS Caching:

   sudo aptitude install nscd

3. Run the following command to restart nscd daemon which will clear the DNS Cache:

   sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart

   

If you’re a Windows user, you could also try CCleaner which now has a DNS Cache Cleaning Function.

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Well look no further. MacHeist is offering a bundle of six applications: ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, Tinygrab, Hordes of Orcs, and Mariner Write. Except for Mariner Write, they are free from the start. Mariner Write will only be unlocked when there are 500,000 participants in this giveaway. At the time of writing, there are 202 thousand participants and counting.

To get your free bundle, simply click on the “Get it for Free” button, register (or login if you are already registered), and you are done. The order will process and on the next page, you will have a list of serials to use to activate the applications.

If you are not a Mac user, you could still get the bundle and save it on your computer until you do become a Mac user.

If you purchase each product regularly, the total price would be $154. This special giveaway ends in 4 days and head on over to MacHeist to claim yours.

MacHeist nanBundle

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