Tired of boring and same old Facebook background image? Yes? Even we! At least they should change login page. But its been a long time that we have seen only features being added and there is no graphics update on Facebook.

Well here we found a good Google Chrome extension which gives all authority to user. It’s time to Refresh your Facebook with your own custom homepage design! Something like Twitter background image change.

Facebook Refresh!

Facebook Refresh is a Google Chrome extension which allows you to set a custom image URL as your Facebook homepage wallpaper. Well the great advantage is, you can customize your Facebook login page at anytime and endlessly! Yes, you can change the background how much ever time you like

Follow the steps given to enjoy Facebooking,

Step 1:

Download Facebook Refresh extension here.

Step 2:

Installed? Now type chrome://extensions/ on URL bar.

Step 3:

Click on the Options below to Facebook Refresh extension. It will open a new tab asking for Image URL.

Step 4:

Now goto any website and get the image URL like, http://tech18.com/images/abcd.jpg and click on Save.

Tech Tip: Search for a image of your screen resolution for better usage

Step 5:

You are done! Now goto www.facebook.com and see the change.

Liked it? Hope so.

This extension uses CSS with minimal JavaScript. This means that it is very fast loading. The current default background image is loaded externally from a domain. It may take longer for it to load the first few times.

But the only disadvantage is you can’t use images in your desktop “file://” (image on your hard-drive) is not currently supported by Chrome. However, you can use some free image hosting sites. So as of now please make sure your URL begins with “http://”.

Hope you liked the extension. Please provide your feedback and share your experience with us

Google says get ready to experience the ultimate things with Chrome web browser. We all know, Google is integrating many web based applications into its browser and making users to get everything at one place.

Yes! I agree Chrome users will surely enjoy all this updates. Google is showing the future of browsing.

We have been updating you with every move of Chromium 7 or for simplicity Chrome 7 project. First we noticed 7 changes in Chrome 7 when compared to Chrome 6. Recently we saw integration of Instant search, UI tabs, Remote hosting in Chrome 7.

Now its time to update more and yes, again we got some new features being integrated in Chrome 7 latest build 7.0.548.0. This time Google moves one step ahead and brought something new. Here are the new features integrated in Chrome,

#1. Google Cloud Print

Google Cloud Print enables any application (web, desktop, mobile) on any device to print to any printer.

Applications submit print jobs to the service via the web-based common print dialog or API offered by the service. Google Cloud Print then sends the print job to the selected printer which the user has previously registered with the service. A new class of cloud-aware printers connects directly to the service and offers the best user experience. Legacy printers connect to the service via a proxy.

Tech Tip: Learn more about Google Cloud Print

#2. Background WebApps

Background Web Apps enable a future app to boot in the background at system startup and continue running even if all Windows have been closed. There was no further information and it is unclear if and when this feature will make it into a beta, developer or final version of Chrome.

#3. XSS Auditor

Enables WebKit’s XSS Auditor (cross-site scripting protection). This feature aims to protect you from certain attacks of malicious web sites. It improves your security, but it might not be compatible with all web sites.

Tech Tip: Do you remember the recent bom sobando attack on Orkut.com ? Hackers used XSS to attack the website and spread unwanted messages around, that too without any action from a user.

#4. Disable outdated plug-ins

Automatically disables plug-ins with known security vulnerabilities and offers update links for them. Outdated plugins create another loophole for hackers to gain control of your system. Most of the times plugin authors roll out new updates to fix vulnerabilities.

Tech Tip: This is very true in the case of Flash on browsers. That’s why Flash has been integrated in Chrome 6.

These are the new features which have been added about:lab in Chrome latest build. Still we aren’t clear whether these new features will be integrated upcoming Chrome 7 or it is a preparation for Chrome 8.

As we are getting closer to Chrome 7 release these features are making users go crazy about this web browser. Well these features can put Chrome on upper hand in browsers war as compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer 9.

Again! What you feel? These are the best features which other browsers are missing? Share you thoughts and let others know why Chrome is one of the best browser out there

Do we have to wish Google? Will Google come to our page to crawl if we wish Yes! Let’s wish together with sky touching tone “Happy Birthday Google” Frankly speaking, we are a bit confused from where shall we start explaining about this big boss, Mr. Search Engine Google.

As we all know Google is father of all search engines which has millions of websites indexed in it. Google started it journey with just one popular product search engine and today we can see it has spread its wings to each and every place.

If we start about explaining about Google we may cross the numbers of indexed pages in Google! But on this big occasion we thought everything about Google in 12 points. Hope you will like these 12 points, the life history of Google

1. When “Google Guys” met!

In 1995, Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

Later in March 1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. students at Stanford came together to work on research project in Stanford Digital Library Project. Initially Larry Page started exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web and named it as “BackRub”. Later Brin joined him on this project as they knew each other for sometime. To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm.

Tech tip: A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.

2. When Garage became Google Inc.,

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Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 4, 1998 at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.

3. Googol to Google

The name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. But Enid Blyton, best children’s story teller  used the word decades earlier in “Google Bun” – Chapter IX, The Magic Faraway Tree. The verb, “Google,” was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, “To use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.”

4. 26, June 2000!

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We placed apostrophe (!) in the end to signify something about Yahoo! On 26, June 2000, Yahoo! Inc. (called as Nasdaq: YHOO) and Google Inc. announced they have entered into an agreement that makes Google, one of the fastest growing search engines on the Web, Yahoo!’s® default search results provider.

Google announced the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine. In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own. This cost Google some market share, yet Yahoo!’s move highlighted Google’s own distinctiveness.

5. Other than Search Engine

Before speaking about what was the second product by Google after the world’s largest search engine, let’s speak about its brief history.

Google Guys Brin and Page were against using advertising pop-ups in a search engine, or an “advertising funded search engines” model, and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students. However, they soon changed their minds and early on allowed simple text ads.

Got to know which was the second product by Google? Not yet? That’s fine

On October 23, 2000 Google for a first time released something other than search engine. Google launched AdWords with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

In the same year released its third product, Google toolbar to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Google said “It’s a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

Tech link: A to Z Google Products.

6. Eric Schmidt the first successor

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On March 26, 2001 Google Inc. announced that Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 45, has joined Google’s board of directors as chairman. Schmidt succeeds Sergey Brin, Google’s founding chairman and current president. Schmidt’s appointment is effective immediately. Google also announced that Schmidt has made a significant financial investment in the company.

August 6, 2001 Google announced that Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, 46, has been named chief executive officer. Schmidt, who was appointed chairman of Google’s board of directors in March 2001, succeeds Larry Page, Google’s founding chief executive officer. Page was named President, Products and Sergey Brin, the company’s founding president, was named President, Technology.

7. Gmail and its 5 years Beta tag!

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Gmail or Google mail is also one of the best products by Google. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004. Google had provided 50 invitations per users who registered in the beginning. Gmail became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though still in beta status at that time.

Finally the service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009. Gmail would be the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. By the end of December 2009, it has 176 million users monthly.

8. Doodle for Google

The first Google Doodle was in honor of the Burning Man Festival of 1998. The doodle was first designed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to notify users of their absence in case the servers crashed. Subsequent Google Doodles were designed by an outside contractor, until Larry and Sergey asked then-intern Dennis Hwang to design a logo for Bastille Day in 2000. Hwang has been designing the Google Doodles ever since.

On Friday, May 21, 2010, Google created a doodle to celebrate the 30th birthday of Pac-Man. It is their first (possibly the world’s first) playable logo. The logo contains an accurate recreation of the Pac-Man game that can be played in a browser (it contains 255 levels).

9. Google and its Acquisition

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Till 2001, Google was working solely and had got a good reputation in web world. But from February 2001, Google started acquiring other companies to make its share still stronger. Till date, Google has acquired 79 companies! First to acquire was Deja’s Usenet business to implement on Google Groups.

These are the top 12 important companies acquired by Google and integrated in its products,

(Date-Company-Business-Google’s Implementation on)

1. July 13, 2004 – Picasa – Image organizer-Picasa and Blogger
2. August 17, 2005 – Android – Mobile Software – Android
3. December 20, 2005 – AOL – Broadband Internet Access – Search
4. January 17, 2006 – dMarc Broadcasting – Advertising – AdSense
5. October 9, 2006 – YouTube - Video Sharing – YouTube
6. April 13, 2007 – DoubleClick – Online Advertising – AdSense
7. June 3, 2007 - FeedBurner - Web feed – FeedBurner
8. July 9, 2007 – Postini – Communications security – Gmail
9. November 9, 2009 – AdMob – Mobile advertising – Mobile
10. July 1, 2010 – ITA Software – Travel technology – Search
11. August 5, 2010 – Slide.com – Social gaming – Social Networking
12. August 15, 2010 – Like.com – Visual Search Engine – Search

10. Google and its Rivals

It’s obvious that if you start growing you will get many rivals in line. Similarly, after Google has started spreading its wings in many fields other than search engine, they had to face  n-number of rivals.

Here is the list of top 12 big rivals which Google is facing now,

1. Amazon – E-books and Cloud Computing
2. Apple – Smart phones, Online music and Ad-world
3. AT&T – Smart phones
4. Facebook – Social Networking
5. HuLu – Video Streaming
6. IBM - Collaboration tools
7. Microsoft – Search engine, Cloud Computing, browser
8. Nokia – Smart phones
9. Yahoo – Search Engine and email
10. Mozilla – Browser
11. Cisco – collaborative platform, WebEx, and superior VOIP service
12. Twitter - Social Networking and Blogging

11. Chrome – Day before Yesterday

Confused by title? It’s obvious! Day before yesterday just means that, Google Chrome was first released on September 2, 2008 and day before yesterday Google Chrome turned 2 years old. Well similar to Google search engine, Chrome browser also showed great improvement in browsers field.

On August, 2009, Google Chrome overtook Apple Inc., Safari browser for a first time to claim third place in worldwide market share. By then Chrome never stopped growing and we never saw the market share coming down as well.

There are many reasons for Chrome to grow like this. Firstly the newly planned strategy to release all new version of Chrome in every six weeks which give Chrome 7 and 8 by this year end. Secondly the ultimate features in Chrome 6 and awesome improvements in upcoming Chrome 7(which is in Build phase now). Thirdly, like Firefox, Google includes of extensions / add-ons for Chrome which are worth trying and increases the productivity.

12. Finally Google!

Finally we reached our goal of 12 points about Google history This point is totally dedicated to Google. We saw there are many number of products by Google. But does anyone know how many products Google has produced from its birth? Answer is Google has given 45+ products.

But out of these 45+ products, many products like Google Wave have been shut down by Google due to some reasons. Still Google is got lot of changes in 2010. We saw for a first time Google removed shadow from its logo. Its Android phone new features made people to shift from iPhone. New search button was added, fastest Chrome Browsers, acquired many companies to setup new Social Networking site to compete Facebook.

Well there are lots of things happening in Google Inc., and we can expect more from it.

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Here we end our brief and 12 points of  Google’s life. As we said before we can’t explain whole Google in just a single page and in single article. Maybe even we wont be knowing many things. Still we tried our best to explain.

Please wish our Birthday boy Mr. Search Engine “Google“. Do you think we have to say Google to keep growing? Share what you feel about Google. Let others also gain more knowledge as Google does

Well we all know that, Google is already in development phase of Chrome / Chromium 7. As we wrote in our article, Google Chrome has adapted new release strategy to release new versions of Chrome in every six month. Which blindly tells that, by this year end we may see Chrome 7 and 8!

Before the stable release of Chrome 6, Google had started developing Chrome 7. And the good news is newly adapted webkit Flock web browser has released its latest version on Chromium 7. And now users are able to feel the latest and fastest Chromium version.

Tech Tip: Flock was previously running on Firefox codebase. Recently they shifted to new Chromium codebase. An another Chrome like browser

Google has now officially confirmed that “there’s been a lot of work going on to overhaul Chromium’s graphics system” and that the browser will “begin to take advantage of the GPU to speed up its entire drawing model.”

Below are the top 7 notable changes we have got from Chromium 7,

1. Faster

The current version of Chromium project promises for improved speed. Accessing new tab and other options inside Chromium has been improved.

2. Side Tabs

Google has added vertically organizable tabs on the left side of the screen, which resembles the navigation structure of a website. It’s an interesting concept if you have a widescreen monitor that can accommodate side tabs, but it may be a rather useless feature on smartphones or even netbooks. We personally like Mozilla’s Tab Candy (Panorama) approach to organize tabs much better.

3. Reduced Shortcuts

Google has reduced the much appreciated feature in Chrome 6. Chrome 6 was having many shortcuts like history, downloads, help etc. But these shortcuts were found missing and users has to go back to use Ctrl + H for browsing through history of website opened and Ctrl + J for download history.

4. GPU Acceleration

It is the feature that Microsoft has been promoting for several months for its upcoming IE9 beta and a feature that is about to be activated in Firefox 4 Beta 5 early next month. Browser’s are beginning to take advantage of the multithreading capabilities of graphics processors to speed up their 2D and 3D performance. Google said that the functionality has been integrated in the “tip-of-tree Chromium” lately and the team “figured it was time for a primer”. Google says that it will be using the GPU to “speed up its entire drawing model, including many common 2D operations such as compositing and image scaling”.

Google said that it plans on offloading more and more work onto the GPU to “achieve impressive speedups”. Details are provided in a separate document on Google’s site.

Tech Tip: Many users found that GPU acceleration can already be manually activated in Chrome.

5. Application Tab

Google has added the shortcut to application tabs / extensions to access at the tip of the fingers. Below video explains everything about the apps tab.

Tech link: Download best Google Chrome add-ons / extensions.

6. HTML5

Chrome 7 or Chromium 7 has topped the list in HTML5 test. We found that Chrome 6 had got total of 232 points ( 222 + 10 bonus) out of 337. But the current version of chrome has hit 241 points ( 233 + 8 bonus). Before Chrome 7 we had thought that Firefox 4 beta 4 is inching closer with 212 points (203 + 9 bonus).

7. Labs

The latest Nightly Builds of Chrome (Chromium) have also been equipped with a new “labs” feature that is apparently designed to deliver experimental features. It can be accessed via an about:labs command in the URL bar and shows, in this latest version (Chromium 7.0.509.0 Build 57783).

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But bad news is current version of Chromium is still having lots of problems and crashes now and then. Bug reporting has been improved with lesser fields to fill. Still Chrome / Chromium 7 has showed lot of changes in GPU acceleration and ready to take on Microsoft’s IE 9 and Mozilla’s Firefox 4.

What do you think about Chromium 7? Do you agree with us, Chrome 7 will be the fastest browser when compared to Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4? Share what you feel and let others know

Finally Microsoft ready to halt the world’s most popular operating system Windows XP. This time Microsoft is not joking and very serious about the move. Microsoft has officially announced that, Windows XP OEM and retails sales will be ended on October 22, 2010.

Following are the final words about the Windows XP sales by Microsoft,

We know you love Windows XP, and you’re in good company. Millions of Windows XP users are fans of the operating system, and many depend on Windows XP to run earlier applications and hardware that is not compatible with Windows 7. Windows 7 is designed to be compatible with the most popular hardware and software products you use every day and even though we are ending the sale of Windows XP on October 22, 2010.

The future is here, and it’s better than ever with Windows 7, the latest Microsoft operating system. Windows 7 has proven benefits over earlier versions of Windows. It combines the latest in reliability, security, and responsiveness with the familiarity and compatibility of Windows XP, so you’ll feel right at home, right away.

Tech Tip => 7 reasons to use Windows 7

If you still want a retail or OEM version of Windows XP, you may have to get that Operating system rather soon, as Microsoft said that it will remove the operating system from retail on October 22. By then, no wonder that the operating system will have been on sale for a record 9 years and 2 months – or a total of 104 months (the software was launched in August 2001.)

If you are still running the Windows XP on your system, Microsoft says that it will provide support until April 8, 2014, provided you run the latest service pack SP3 or any future releases and keep the software up to date as far as those updates are available.

Windows XP was originally supposed to be removed in late 2007, but due to failure of Windows Vista in the market, Microsoft decided to continue XP sales. This time , Microsoft is serious that October 22 will be the final date.

Tech Tip: Final date for Windows Vista OEM sales is also April 2014.

Well we all know that, Windows 7 is now installed on more than 80% of netbooks, which means there is no need for XP anymore. Microsoft has already  stopped supporting Windows XP with  its new product  Internet Explorer 9. But still Windows XP holds most popular operating system in world and has more than 55% market share(according to StatCounter).

Is this a smart move by Microsoft to promote Windows 7 and move users from XP to 7? What do you think? Raise your voice now!

We all know that whatever we tweet on twitter will get indexed and is displayed in Google search engine results pages. The individual tweets can now be viewed as a unique listing in Google search engine which can affect your rankings by sending visitors to your website.

The outbound tweets to be promoted must be SEO optimized by adding niche keywords to these tweets. These tweets can be crafted to be unique until and unless it is not considered as spam from other users. If you are able to get visitors to your blog from Twitter which is indeed an SEO advantage that you cannot afford to miss.

Tech Link: Top 40+ Twitterrific Google Chrome Extensions

Twitter adds many advantages to your blog if you use in right way and proper manner. Well here are the few killer tips which can make your Tweets popular and SEO friendly.

1. User Name / ID

While choosing a twitter username, make sure it is relevant to your blog or website and  easy to remember as it is the part of the SEO title for the tweets appearing in Google search engine. You should handle Twitter name strategically. This is the first and most important step to make your tweets SEO friendly.

Tech Tip: For example, Our blog is Tech18 so the twitter name is @Tech18Blog . What if we had some asdf as twitter ID? Will it make sense?

2. Twitter Bio

Your Twitter “bio”, is actually your meta description. Make sure to include keywords as compared to meta description of your website/blog. Twitter bio acts as best source for SEO.

3. Show URL

Do not forget to display URL of your blog /website prominently on your twitter profile page. This will eventually increase the organic traffic as people often click the URL for seeking more information. It is important to note that this link does not provide any SEO link juice due to a “No follow” attribute in twitter.

4. Twitter Page Description

Use target keywords on your profile page and make sure to use keywords in your Tweets. Do not forget to use “#” key in front of the important keywords in your tweets as it acts as a SEO keyword in Twitter.

5. Inbound Links

Just post articles with an anchor text link to your Twitter profile on article syndication sites. This strategy helps in boosting your profile’s page rank.

Tech Tip: Increase in your profile page rank will indirectly have a effect on your blog ranking as your profile linked to it

6. Followers

If you have lots of quality or loyal followers you will be popular among the twitter users, which will eventually boost page rank of your profile page.

Tech Tip: More the number of  quality users, the more RT’s

7. Twitter Link in your site

Place Twitter profile Link in footer or sidebar, which is accessible via every page. If any of your blog visitor likes your blog, they may like to follow you on twitter as well. This will increase your online identity and hence increases number of followers on Twitter.

8. Follow Related Theme Profiles Only

Search engines increases your twitter profile link juice when you are able to get followers from good PR twitter profiles. Make sure that you add only those twitter users that are related to your blog content or  tweets on similar interest. This will increase number of RT’s and thereby traffic of your blog.

Tech Tip: Try to RT the tweets related to your theme. This may force your followers to RT your own post

9. URL Shortening

TinyURL, bit.ly, tr.im, su.pr are some of the popular URL shortening services that redirect users to the real URL via 301 (permanent redirect) and provide backlinks to your content. Search engines do not index these url shorteners, but index and pass PageRank to the actual URL’s instead.

10. Tweet Title

The most important SEO aspect  of your post for consideration is the first 27 characters. It’s this first part that becomes part of the <TITLE> on your Twitter static pages. Twitter uses the following <TITLE> format:

Twitter / Your Username: 27 Characters..

Tech Example: Google Chrome version 6, 7 and 8 by this year end! http://su.pr/24kdMC

In the above example, the main SEO keywords are “Google”, “Chrome” and “Version”. If you count the letters, all these three words comes within 27 characters.

The same SEO rules that you apply to write optimized titles for the post must be used for twitter tweets as well. The only difference is that you have a restriction of 27 Characters as compared to 65 Characters in Blog Posts. For optimized tweets use keyword rich Titles within first 27 characters.

11. Keywords in Tweet content

Twitter does not allow you to tweet for more than 140 characters. Instead of automatically shortening the links on twitter.com, it is strongly advised to use URL shortening service like bit.ly (as said in above point). Once your URL is shortened, you have much more space to include more target keyword into twitter content.

Tech Tip: again! DO NOT forget to use “#” key in-front of the important keywords.

12. Hashtags

Hashtags are similar to keyword meta-data. Basically, these are tags that  help those who seek similar content and  discover your Tweets. They’re like tags on Blog, only added inline to your post. Hashtags are created by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. This will help the visitors to view your tweet around a particular topic.

13. Re-Tweet strategy

An indexed tweet provides 27 characters or so for title post excluding twitter username. Make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for optimal re-tweets. It is important to keep the tweet under 100 characters, allowing your followers to add “RT @Tech18Blog” in front of the tweet.

14. RT username deletion

If your post starts getting many number RT’s in chain, it may exceed twitter rule(140 characters). Many a times link will only get deleted. To show link some of us delete all the “RT @Tech18Blog”  text before re-tweeting into the Twitter Network. But it is not advisable, as the strategy could have adverse impact on your twitter profile pagerank. Instead you can add the RT @Tech18Blog at the end of the Retweeted content.

15. RT others posts

This is the most important part for getting huge twitter traffic. In order to get more traffic and relevance to your tweet make sure that you re-tweet other blog articles and encourage your followers to share (re-tweet) your Twitter content. Keep in mind the Re-tweet strategy discussed above.

16. Direct Messages

Many of your followers may not be subscribed for RSS feeds in your blog. So they may not be knowing whether you published any new post. So its advised to send DM’s / Direct Messages to your loyal followers, which can get more views and RT’s of your post.

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These are the best tips which each and every twitter user as well as blog owners should follow to SEO optimize your tweet. Personally we advice everyone to follow these tips.

Are you following all these tips? What you feel? Anything missing here? Please let us and everyone know about it. Have a tweeting day ahead

Before starting with article first Tech18 would like to wish “Many Many Happy Returns” of the day to “Internet Explorer”. Internet Explorer from its birth has changed the web world in many ways with every release of new versions. It is one of the best product by Microsoft and still having a strong share in world.

Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer; abbreviated to MSIE or more commonly, IE), is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995.

The journey of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer started on August 16th, 1995 with its first version. Internet Explorer has gone through very difficult phases in its journey. It has got lot of rivalry browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome. As we explained in previous article, Firefox is giving tough competition to IE in Europe. But still IE is having great share in whole world and comfortably sitting on top.

On this occasion we would like to give a brief note about the birthday product Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 1

Debut date: August 16, 1995

Internet Explorer 1 is a graphical web browser debuted from Microsoft. It was a reworked version of Spyglass Mosaic which Microsoft had licensed, like many other companies initiating browser development, from Spyglass Inc.

Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT and added support for basic table rendering.

Tech Tip: Mosaic was developed by a team led by Marc Andreesen, who would go on to found Netscape.

Internet Explorer 2

Debut date: November 22, 1995

Internet Explorer 2.0 version supported double-byte character-set. It lacked many features that became common in later IE versions, including the Blue ‘e’ logo, integration with Windows Explorer, and bundled programs. Its market share was also much lower than later versions.

Internet Explorer 3

Debut date: August 13, 1996

Internet Explorer 3 was the first commercial browser with Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) support. It also introduced support for ActiveX controls, Java applets, inline multimedia, and the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) system for content metadata. Version 3 also came bundled with Internet Mail and News and NetMeeting.

In 1996 Microsoft said of its new browser “Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 adds many new features which are great for HTML authors and demonstrates our accelerating commitment to W3C HTML standards.”

Internet Explorer 4

Debut date: September 1997

Internet Explorer 4 deepened the level of integration between the web browser and the underlying operating system. Internet Explorer 4 introduced support for Group Policy, allowing companies to configure and lock down many aspects of the browser’s configuration. Internet Mail and News was replaced with Outlook Express, and Microsoft Chat and an improved NetMeeting were also included. This version also was included with Windows 98.

Tech tip: With IE4, Microsoft established the concept of given beta software :) The Internet Explorer 4 Beta was released in April 1997.

Internet Explorer 5

Debut date: March 18, 1999

Internet Explorer 5 bundled with Office 2000, was another significant release that supported bi-directional text, ruby characters, XML, XSLT, and the ability to save web pages in MHTML format. IE5 was bundled with Outlook Express 5.

Internet Explorer 5.01, a bug fix version, was released in December 1999. Windows 2000 includes this version. Internet Explorer 5.5 followed in July 2000, improving its print preview capabilities, CSS and HTML standards support, and developer APIs.

IE5 was one of the main participants of the first Browser war. Internet Explorer 5 attained over 50% market share by early 2000, taking the lead over other browser versions including IE4 and Netscape.

Tech Tip: Microsoft spent over 100 million dollars a year in the late 1990s, with over 1000 people working on IE by 1999 during the development of IE5.

Internet Explorer 6

Debut date: August 27, 2001

Internet Explorer 6 included DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of CSS level 1, DOM level 1, and SMIL 2.0. The MSXML engine was also updated to version 3.0. Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK), Media bar, Windows Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P, and a new look-and-feel that was in line with the Luna visual style of Windows XP, when used in Windows XP.

Internet Explorer 6 was released a few months before Windows XP. There was little change in IE’s market share for several years, until Mozilla Firefox was released and gradually began to gain popularity.

Tech tip: At its peak in 2002 and 2003, IE6 attained a total market share of nearly 90%, with all versions of IE combined reaching 95%.

Internet Explorer 7

Debut date: October 18, 2006

Internet Explorer 7 included bug fixes, enhancements to its support for web standards, tabbed browsing with tab preview and management, a multiple-engine search box, a web feeds reader, Internationalized Domain Name support (IDN), Extended Validation Certificate support, and anti-phishing filter.

Tech tip: by mid-2008, Internet Explorer 7 market share exceeded that of Internet Explorer 6 in a number of regions.

Internet Explorer 8

Debut date: March 19, 2009

Internet Explorer 8 spent more than one year in beta phase only. On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the general public. On August 27, 2008, the second public beta (Beta 2) was released.

Security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are Microsoft’s priorities for IE8. It includes much stricter compliance with web standards, including a planned full Cascading Style Sheets 2.1 compliance for the release version. All these changes allow Internet Explorer 8 to pass the Acid2 test. However, to prevent compatibility issues, IE8 also includes the IE7 rendering behavior.

Tech tip: right after IE8 release, it took over huge market share from predecessors. Currently the market share of IE8 is 30% compared to IE7′s 14%.

Internet Explorer 9

Debut date: September 15, 2010 (proposed date)

Microsoft is all set to release its best ever browser which includes all the features exactly after one month. From past 6 months Microsoft released 4 platform preview versions to test IE9.

IE9 will have complete or nearly complete support for all CSS 3 selectors, border-radius CSS 3 property, faster JavaScript. IE9 will feature hardware-accelerated graphics rendering using Direct2D, hardware accelerated text rendering using DirectWrite, hardware accelerated video rendering using Media Foundation, imaging support provided by Windows Imaging Component, and high fidelity printing powered by the XPS print pipeline.

Tech tip: Unfortunately IE9 is not supportable to Windows XP, as Microsoft decided to stop supporting XP.

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In its journey of 15 years, Microsoft has released 8 versions of Internet Explorer and and the latest version is ready to come out in beta version soon. The current big release is ready to acquire the market share again.

Keeping all the rival browsers in mind, that too most importantly Firefox 4 and Chrome 6, Microsoft changed many things in IE9.

Current Status:

1. Google Chrome 6 beta released on 12th August
2. Firefox 4 beta 3 released on 12th August

Chrome 6 final, Firefox 4 beta 4,5 and IE9 first beta are ready to release next month.

Well this is all we have got for now Finally, Happy Birthday Internet Explorer. May you have a great year ahead Time to hit comment box now and express what you feel about IE Cheers

Twitter, a Social Networking and micro-blogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., has finally taken one more step ahead by introducing its new feature. Twitter introduced much awaited official Tweet button earlier today and almost all famous bloggers have added. We can say “a 5 year old Twitter gave birth to Tweet button today”:-P

Earlier today readwriteweb wrote “The button has gone live on a number of major websites, including entire the entire WordPress blogging network, sharing widget ShareThis and YouTube, and the company expects that “more than a few sites will join the above in the hours to come.”

Tech Tip: Twitter is in partnership with Tweetmeme, the company responsible for the majority of retweet buttons on the Web for the past year and a half.

Today I am going to tell you how to add Twitter’s official Tweet button on WordPress . WordPress, a major blogging platform has two kinds of blogs:

1. Self-Hosted blogs : These are the blogs which must be installed and maintained separately in your own server through your Web Hosting.
2. Free-Hosted blogs: These blogs are hosted and maintained by WordPress itself and can be created at WordPress.com

So here are the steps to be followed to add Twitter’s Tweet Button to your self hosted WordPress blogs :

1. Browse to Twitter’s Tweet button page

2. There are 3 display options among which you have to chose one as shown below

3. After choosing the preferred button , move to the next option that is the “Recommended people to Follow“

As you can see above there are two fields and surprisingly  both should be filled with twitter user id’s.

The 1st field must have twitter id which will be mentioned in the tweet and the 2nd field needs to be filled with another twitter id of whom you would recommend  to twitter users to follow after they have share the tweet with few words of description.

To understand this much better have a look at below image :

4. After filling the twitter id fields , now move towards the next option where we can see the preview of the button and the code as well.

5. Copy the code which is shown in the previous image.

6. Now go to your WordPress Dashboard->Appearance->Editor-> Select single.php file and paste the below code as shown below :

• Search for “<div class=”entry content>” [without quotes] within the single.php file and paste the copied code

7. Finally you could see a Tweet Share button exactly below the Post-title and above the post content.

Add Twitter’s Tweet Button on WordPress.com Free Blogs

One of our techie friend “Harsh Agarwal” has explained how to add Twitter Share Button to free WordPress Blogs.

Have a check here =>Free WordPress.com blogs added Tweet Button

You can also have a look at this below by Twitter which demonstrates the use of Twitter’s Tweet Button

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So friends how did you like our tutorial ? Share it with others if you like it and do comment If you get stuck anywhere

Happy Blogging Thanks for reading

]]> http://tech18.com/add-twitter-official-tweet-button-wordpress-blogs.html/feed 25 http://tech18.com/tab-candy-firefox-next-big-innovation.html http://tech18.com/tab-candy-firefox-next-big-innovation.html#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:19:35 +0000 Vinay Gowda http://tech18.com/?p=3521

We all know that, 2010 has seen lot of changes in web-world. All web browsers released their new versions to support HTML 5 features. Many new browsers came into picture like Epic browser from India. There are lot of happenings in web technology around us in this year.

We saw the shares of IE and Firefox dropped down due to the latest version of Chrome browser by Google. In many places Firefox tried to copy few things from Chrome and started imitating to attract users from Chrome and few they tried their own as well. However, a new Firefox innovation called Tab Candy will make Firefox act more like a operating system, with much-improved multitasking and sharing capabilities.

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Aza Raskin the head of Tab Candy team said, How many of us keep tabs open as reminders of something we want to do or read later? We’re all suffering from info guilt. We need a way to organize browsing, to see all of our tabs at once, and focus on the task at hand.

Tech Tip: Aza Raskin is the Head of UX at Mozilla Labs and he is the son of Macintosh creator Jef Raskin. He joined Mozilla in 2008.

What is Tab Candy?

Tab Candy is an experimental project to help organize your browsing. With one keystroke Tab Candy shows an overview of all tabs to allow you to quickly locate and switch between them. Tab Candy also lets you group tabs to organize your work flow.

Features of Tab Candy

Tab Candy will be one of the great innovation by Firefox team as they are trying to a OS like interface inside the browser. Following are the features we got about the Tab Candy,

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1. Organize tabs into groups that you can be named and placed on the browser as desktop-like view.
2. Save tab groups to look at later
3. When you switch to a grouped tab only the relevant tabs are shown in the tab bar, which helps you focus on what you want. That means you can focus on the task you are doing. Blogging tabs stay separate from Social media tabs. Clean tab bar, clean mind.
4. Search through your tabs
5. Tap Option-Space on the Mac or Control-Space on Windows to zoom out and see thumbnails of all open tabs
6. Have multiple profiles so that you can sign into the same site with different logins in two different tab groups
7. Share tabs or tab groups between different computers and devices
8. Share tabs or tab groups with other users
9. Set up a shared tab group where several users can co-browse and see what each other is looking at on the screen
10. Choose colors or image backgrounds to distinguish different tab groups
11. Move groups so that they fit your needs
12. Rearrange tabs and drag them anywhere inside a group or between groups

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Video Demo of Tab Candy by Raskin

When will Tab Candy be a part of Firefox?

Well that is a obvious question which each reader get whenever we try to tell something.

During the announcement of Firefox 4 in May, the Firefox team had Tab Candy listed in light gray at the bottom of its list of new features (giving no indication of its importance).

Raskin said “The reason why Tab Candy was listed in grey in the product plan is that there are still some implementation challenges to be solved and a couple user experience questions to be answered for us to be able to commit to TabCandy being in Firefox 4.”

If the Firefox team can pull off all of the features of Tab Candy that it recently demonstrated, it would leapfrog Chrome in functionality. Make no mistake, this is Firefox’s best shot at competing with Google Chrome, especially since the rest of Firefox 4 feels a lot like a copy of Chrome. Launching Firefox 4 with Tab Candy should be Mozilla’s top priority which at least can make some difference with Chrome.

Lets wait and watch when the Tab Candy will be part of Firefox. Have any thoughts on Tab Candy? Please do share with us and let us also know more

As we all know Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUI). And we know MS-DOS was totally working on commands.

Microsoft released many versions of windows after the MS-DOS operating system. But it never stopped supporting DOS features in any of these versions, as MS-DOS is the fastest way of performing tasks.

Tech tip: Learn how to shutdown your PC using CMD’s “Shutdown” Command

Well here are few commands a must know for windows user that we came across. These commands are simple and very useful.

1. gpupdate

The gpupdate command provided by Microsoft for MS-DOS is very helpful when you need to refresh your system and client policies. This command also is useful to reload pages that are having load issues.

SYNTAX : gpupdate  [/Target:{Computer | User}] [/Force] [/Wait:<value>] [/Logoff] [/Boot] [/Sync]

Steps to execute:

Step 1: Click start -> run -> type cmd (for vista users press Ctrl + r and type cmd)

Step 2 : Type the command along with one of the attributes .

E.g. Type gpupdate /force on your system command-prompt and see the result as below,

Tech tip: If you are using a official system, then you will get a prompt asking for asking log off (Y/N). Just type N and continue, this command is also useful for speeding the system a little if system condition is slow. I tried and it worked for me in my office

2. chkdsk

The chkdsk is a well known command for most of the users. Its useful to check the disk performance and status report e.g d:/ etc. This is the command that normally executes during boot whenever there is an improper shutdown; you might have seen a blue screen appearing checking for disk fragments and indexes during system boot.

SYNTAX : CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]

Steps to execute:

Step 1: Click start -> run -> type cmd (for vista users press Ctrl + r and type cmd)

Step 2: Type the command along with one of the attributes.

E.g. Type chkdsk on your system command-prompt and see the result as below,

3. Tracert

Tracert command is helpful in trace routing the particular dns or ip. This command shows the list of ip’s that are accessing the particular domain and also the ip address of the domain.

SYNTAX: tracert [-d] [-h maximum_hops] [-j host-list] [-w timeout] target_name

Steps to execute:

Step 1: Click start -> run -> type cmd (for vista users press Ctrl + r and type cmd)

Step 2: Type the command along with one of the attributes.

E.g. Type tracert www.gmail.com on your system command-prompt and see the result as below,

Tech Tip: If you are accessing google.com or tech18 you can use traceert command to check the ip’s accessing and Dns response. A maximum of 30 hops will give you the detail description of the particular ip’s accessing the desired DNS. You can also see the domain ip address.

4. pathping

The pathping command is combination of traceroute command and ping command but only disadvantage is it takes more than two minutes to get the result. Result consists of the stats of packet loss along with the routes.

SYNTAX: pathping [-g host-list] [-h maximum_hops] [-i address] [-n] [-p period] [-q num_queries] [-w timeout] [-P] [-R] [-T] [-4] [-6] target_name

Steps to execute:

Step 1: Click start -> run -> type cmd (for vista users press Ctrl + r and type cmd)

Step 2: Type the command along with one of the attributes.

E.g: Type pathping -h 20 www.google.co.in and see the result as below,

5. robocopy

Robocopy also known as “Robust File Copy”, which is a commadn-line directory replication command which is used to copy huge files which is not possible with windows xcopy command. Robocopy has many advantages like tolerate network interruptions, copy huge files, support multithread copying etc.

SYNTAX: robocopy <Source> <Destination> [<File>[ ...]] [<Options>]

Steps to execute:

Step 1: Click start -> run -> type cmd (for vista users press Ctrl + r and type cmd)

Step 2: Type the command along with the desired source and destination.

The robocopy command only works on Windows NT, windows vista, windows 7 and windows server 2008. Robocopy command is not available on windows xp.  To copy in windows xp you can use Xcopy command.

Tech Tip: Multi threading concept in Robocopy is supported only in windows 7.

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These are few best commands to be known by every windows user

Hope you liked our post and like to have a hands-on with these commands If you have anything to share then please use our comment box. Cheers!