There’s a lot of good software out there, and I while I haven’t really had a chance to play with much of it, here’s a bit on what I’ve been playing with lately, and a few recommendations of programs worth checking out.
I just started playing with Mozilla 1.5 yesterday (I know, took me long enough!), and i like it a lot! It has much better functionality than Internet Explorer, runs faster, has a clean design with a sexy feel, and has some of the things that make Opera, my favorite browser, so darned good, like tabbed browsing and a hotlist panel. Not too shabby for a free browser.
Opera, however, still remains king in my mind. (screenshot to the right. and yes, i know i have mac envy.) Although its rendering of some pages is sometimes imperfect, by and large it’s much more pleasant to surf the net and manage a lot of open windows with Opera than IE. Opera’s functionality is better than IEs in leaps and bounds. Search bars are integrated into the browser — there’s no need to go to the Ebay site first to search it; you can do it right from the toolbar. The same goes with Amazon, C|Net, and Google. The Find in Page search is also super handy: typing in a query automatically highlights matches in the page as you type. Additionally, the browser itself is very customizable — the GUI is xml based so it’s easy to move things around to where you like them. Put your buttons and search bars wherever it makes the most sense to you, not just where the browser programmer thought it should be. For instance, I really like having my hotlinks bar on the right hand side rather than the left, and Opera is the only browser i know so far that would let me do that. It’s also very to change the overall look and feel of Opera, as you can skin the browser virtually on the fly (no browser restart required) and further customize each skin with various color themes and special effects. It’s a browser made for the Internet power user, the person who spends ridiculous amounts of time reading stuff online who prefer to get to the content instead of wasting keystrokes typing in unnecessary URLs or using extra clicks to get to where I want to go. That is, it’s perfect for people with short attention spans… like me!
Also trying out Thunderbird, the Mozilla stand-alone mail client, but I think I still like Eudora 6 a little bit better. Maybe some more time with Thunderbird will change my mind.
And as always, i must plug the joy that is Trillian Pro. So I already knew that you can open up multiple screen names in one instance of Trillian and message them with the sn of your choosing, but i didn’t realize there was a way to keep the buddy lists of those screen names separate. I only found this out last month (stupid slow pearl!), and i’ve been playing with it a little bit since then. It’s so cool! the buddy lists of each of my sns don’t have to merge! No more signing on to separate screen names to organize/sort through deleted/lost names! It’s almost enough reason to give up DeadAIM.. but not quite. ;-)
Trillian Pro’s extensibility is also worth mentioning. A host of plugins enable a user to open trillian, check their mail, check RSS feeds, check the weather, check time in other parts of the world, pop up reminders, among a ton of other things in just one simple program. I donated $15 to Cerulean Studios waaaay back when, which turned out to be a good thing, cuz they ended up giving me Trillian Pro, which now costs $25 to buy. If you don’t want to shell out that sort of cash for software you haven’t tried, you can probably find yourself a hacked version somewhere online to try out. And yes, it would be worth the time to look for and play with a program like this. :)
If you find any other useful/handy pieces of software bliss, let me know. :) I’m always on the lookout for good things.
Remaindered links:
:: Starfish – generate abstract patterned backgrounds for your desktop!
:: PuTTY – a good little free telnet client. Too bad UCLA BOL doesn’t offer shell access anymore. :(
:: JetLinks – handy program for managing and synchronizing your bookmarks between browsers.
ah HA! So THAT’s the link to PuTTY… I’ve used it for years, but never did really look for its source…!
I wonder if Mozilla is finally up to snuff as far as rendering goes. I’ve been following Mozilla since it spun off from Netscape, and they’ve never quite felt like “finished” builds.
Also I don’t demand the customizability you do, Pearl. =) XML based GUI in Opera and stuff, I just don’t need it or want it! =)
Never cared for Trillian either, although I stopped at 0.74 or 0.771 or whatever it was. Always seemed like the FEW features I needed were always broken. =P
no, seriously… trillian pro is a million-fold better than standard trillian. I too remember the days when a lot of the standard trillian features were broken, but those days are long gone. try trillian pro now. :) it was worth the wait.
yes, i have also long harbored reservations about netscape (there were a few years where i hated it even more than IE.. designing for it SUCKED — pages wouldn’t display properly, code wouldn’t work right…augh), but Mozilla’s been completely rebuilt into something that (IMHO) renders as elegantly as IE. i’ve had no problems with it so far, which is actually more than I can say for Opera when I first got hooked (at version 6).
And actually, speaking of Opera, what really gets me isn’t just the GUI: it’s how intuitive they made the entire browsing experience. Mouse gestures alone make Opera sing. It’s something you have to play a little with to really understand how it works and how great it is, but once you do, you’ll never be satisfied with IE again.
That’s one of the main reasons why I stick with IE, actually.
I’m in a production envirnoment at work. The machines I spend most of my days on usually have IE as the only browser. =( BTW does Opera predictively guess that you’re looking at a sequence of pictures on my site, and load the next one without having to go back to the index (on the galleries on my website)? THAT kind of predictive linking would be sweet…
Oh goodness… they’ve FINALLY fixed Trillian’s handling of server side contacts!
Actually I may try centericq so I can telnet to ICQ/IM on my home PC from work. (no IM/ICQ allowed at work!)
Yes, Opera does predictively guess that you’re looking at a sequence of pictures and will let you browse them without going back to the index page. In fact, i’m looking at your pics from the auto show right now by doing just that. ;-)
hmm, centericq… i should take a look at it. so far i’ve been using freeshell to telnet to AIM/ICQ when i’m at the CLICC labs cuz jvm doesn’t run properly on every machine there. aaah I love SDF! free webspace, free email, free shell access with lots of handy goodies! hehe.
the link to that is here if you want to check it out: Super Dimensional Fortress: Public Access Unix Shell
Ah ha… niiiiiiice. THAT is a good reason to upgrade. =)
As for SDF I heard of them about 4 or 5 years ago. I just carry PuTTY on a zip disk when I’m at UCLA so I can get my SSH. =)