Mozilla has released the third version of Firefox, and is aiming to set a world record for the most number of downloads in a 24-hour period.

Being my browser of choice, I am as keen as anyone to see what Firefox 3 brings to the table.

Many new features have been added, but my favourite so far is definitely the location bar.  It makes it so much easier to go back to websites you visit a lot, speeding up your browsing experience.  After I have used it for a bit longer, I will write a longer post about what I like and dislike about the latest incarnation of Firefox.

So, if you want to help Mozilla enter the Guinness Book of Records, or just fancy a more secure browser, download Firefox 3 today.

The second beta of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is due to be released before the end of October, said a manager in Microsoft’s technical support group, who also warned web designers to start adding a new tag to their sites or risk those sites “breaking” when the new browser launches.

“We are encouraging site administrators to get their sites ready now for broad adoption of Internet Explorer 8, as there will be a beta release in the third quarter of this year targeted for all consumers,” said Nick MacKechnie, a senior manager for Microsoft’s New Zealand operations, in a blog entry earlier this week. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you using a BT Home Hub wireless router, you should be aware of a pretty big security hole discovered of late.

Up until a few weeks ago, the default password being used on the router was “admin”. This is a major security hole in itself. If you are using any wireless router, the first thing you should do is change the default administrator password (if you are unsure how to do this, contact us). Recently, BT changed the default password to use the device’s serial number - a unique string - which seems like a really good idea. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t want to buy the expensive Microsoft Office suite? A nice alternative is OpenOffice, but what is even nicer is version 3 which is due to come out in the very near future.

Currently, version 2.4 is out now, but the new version of OpenOffice has been released for evaluation by the general public. The latest release 3.0 supports the OpenDocument format as standard and will work with files from the most relevant applications. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten high priority bugs have been discovered within Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1, three of them labelled “critical”, but it won’t be decided until next week whether to release the browser anyway or restart the final stretch by issuing a second release candidate (RC2).

Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 launched on May 16th, but Mozilla has not yet committed to RC2. Previously, Mozilla said it is targeting June as the release window for the final version. Read the rest of this entry »

I am trying to update my definition files for Ad-Aware SE 1.05 so that I am safer from adware. When I try to download the updates from within the software, I get the following message: Error retrieving update. How do I fix this?

Ordinarily, I would suggest checking to make sure your Internet connection works, making sure the connection is not being blocked by a firewall, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

Firefox 3 is one step closer to being launched; On Friday, Mozilla rolled out Release Candidate 1 of the revamped browser for developer and open-source communities to test.

The latest version is based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering platform; Mozilla says the new browser will be more secure, easier to use, more personal and faster.

Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is now available for download from Mozilla’s website for testing purposes in order to collect feedback from developers and the Firefox testing community. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday brought the unveiling of the latest version of Adobe’s Flash Player browser plug-in, further advancing its series of latest graphical features such as 3-D animated effects with a beta version of Flash player 10 in an attempt to stay the best in its field.

With no set final release date, the new Flash player has several new features in aid of maintaining the plug-ins dominance (its penetration is over 98%) during a time of ever expanding Internet application platforms and development methodologies, including Microsoft Silverlight, JavaFX and Ajax. Read the rest of this entry »

News around the Web indicates that some PCs are experiencing an endless reboot cycle after installing Windows XP SP3.

It appears that it mainly affects a small amount of AMD-based PCs, although I have seen reports that Intel-based PCs have some issues too. Do not do anything hasty! It is probably going to be relatively painless to fix the issue - so don’t go formatting your hard drive just yet (unless you fancy a clean install).

If this has happened to you, Jesper Johansson’s blog has a great write-up on some troubleshooting steps.

He also points out the Microsoft is offering free installation and troubleshooting support for SP3.

I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 on my laptop. When I save files from Word, I can’t open them on my PC, which has Office 2003. So, why can’t Microsoft Office 2007 files be opened in Office 2003?

The reason is due to Microsoft creating a new file format called Office Open XML. There are numerous advantages to this, one being smaller file sizes compared to the older version of office. By default, all Office 2007 files now have an x added to the end; .doc is now .docx, .xls is now .xlsx and so on. Therefore previous versions of Office cannot open these new files natively.

Read the rest of this entry »