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If you are using Windows XP and are on a netbook or using a laptop with a small screen, text might seem difficult to read. The fix for this is to download ClearType Tuner from Microsoft’s XP PowerToys website. This is Microsoft’s own tool for using ClearType text on Windows XP. ClearType is a technology that makes text easier to read by using special antialiasing methods on text (just how video games use it to fix jagged edges.

Below are two screenshots of how ClearType works on the Acer Aspire One netbook.

Before:

After:

The difference this makes on an 11.6″ 1366×768 display is huge. And I also recommend to set the slider to the darkest option, otherwise the text looks a bit blue:

Google Chrome was released only a few days ago and it has already gained more than 1% market share. But all this means is that people downloaded it to try it out, not to make it their new browser. This also shows why Chrome took away from Firefox’s market share and not Internet Explorer’s – because only tech-savvy users downloaded it, since Chrome is just a beta, and we all know IE users aren’t as tech-savvy (no offense if you’re using IE because of personal preference).

So the point here is that Chrome was downloaded and used so much in such a short time because people wanted to try it out. It doesn’t mean it’s better than Firefox or any other browser. It’s a beta with almost no features.

Chrome has a very high potential to become a superior browser. It is fast and very lightweight. But this might be because of its lack of features. It doesn’t even have middle click scrolling yet. Chrome is no where near ready for full time use. And by the time it gets features and addons, and goes out of beta, Firefox will probably be on version 4.

Final review – Chrome has lots of potential, but it’s not ready to be your everyday browser. It has gained significant market share because mostly Firefox users wanted to give it a try, since it’s from Google, so it has to be good. I will be trying Chrome again in a few months, after it gets patched and updated more. I don’t expect it to go out of beta for at least two years.

And for most people disliking the blue theme, this is how it looks in Vista:

Today is Download Day 2008 for Firefox 3. So download Firefox 3 today to help try achieve the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours.

A lot of people are praising Firefox 3 and have been using it since the first beta. I recommended not to use it before. But now, the final version of Firefox 3 is only four days away, so the final version will be mostly the same as Release Candidate 3. However, RC 3 is still not ready, and made me go back to Firefox 2.

I installed Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 yesterday, and have been using it most of yesterday and most of today. During these two days, I have found obvious and very annoying bugs that make it impossible for me to use it. Actually come to think of it, I don’t know if they are obvious, because I haven’t seen anyone else report these problems. But I don’t think they’re exclusive to my computer.

My first problem was with Google. Firefox 3 RC 3 didn’t seem to be accepting cookies from Google. How strange, because I haven’t changed absolutely anything on my computer except installing FF3. I checked on my other computer running FF2, and all was fine. The problem was that I had to log in each time I opened Firefox. It wouldn’t keep me logged in, it kept logging me out. And it was forgetting that my home page was set to iGoogle, as it wouldn’t load iGoogle unless I clicked the link from the Google classic home page. Every time I navigated away from Google and then back to it, it logged me out and took me to Google classic.

Another thing was plugins not working. I installed a beta version of FireFTP, but there was no replacement for Fasterfox. Firefox became notably slower without Fasterfox, even after tweaking the about:config settings.

Speaking of speed, it didn’t seem any faster in loading online apps like Gmail. It took the same amount of time to load Gmail, Digg, and other script-heavy sites. Add to this the lack of Fasterfox, and Firefox 3 RC3 became slower than Firefox 2, the opposite of what was supposed to happen.

Continuing on with the problems, when writing the previous post here on Wordplop, I noticed there was no spell check. They certainly didn’t take out the feature, which so many people praise and depend on, so it must be a bug. Once again I don’t know if it’s only happening on my computer or others’ too, but I haven’t seen any other complaints like this. I also found spell check not working on forums and basically anywhere where there is a text box. It was working in all of these places with FF2, so it’s definitely Firefox 3’s problem.

The last bug I took note of before I decided to uninstall RC3 was that pressing the “Enter” (or “Return”) key while in a text field makes the entire page scroll to the top. So when I was making that last post here, every time I hit “Enter” to make a new paragraph, the page jumped up. This was the last straw – I downloaded Firefox 2 and reinstalled it, deleting Firefox 3 RC 3.

These weren’t the only bugs or annoyances I found. There were also problems with history not being saved, toolbar clicks not registering, and toolbar submenus not opening on mouse hover.

I hope it’s not just me having these bugs, because then they will get fixed faster. These problems make it impossible to use Firefox daily. I really hope all of this gets fixed before release date, or I won’t be downloading Firefox 3.

No, this isn’t a program you download that pretends to make your internet faster (and installs some malware as a bonus). I’m talking about using a button on your mouse to make your browsing many times faster.

All (I hope) computer mice these days come with a scroll wheel. Of course that scroll wheel is also a button. If you installed mouse drivers, this middle button can be configured to do anything you want, almost. So if you do have drivers installed, set the middle click to the “middle click” or “standard” (it will be different for different mice) option. If you don’t have drivers installed, you don’t need to change this.

So what is this all about? If you’re doing heavy web browsing, you can set your middle mouse button to open links in a background tab. How does this help with speed? The new pages you open load in the background, so when you’re done reading a page, you can just switch to the next tab and continue reading whatever you clicked on, without having to wait for it to load. Genius? I think so.

To do this in Firefox, simply click Tools > Options, click on the Tabs tab, and uncheck When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.

This will make new links open in background tabs, which also means they’re loading in the background. As for your middle mouse button, the default action for Firefox to take when you click a link with the middle mouse button is to open it in a new tab.

So now when you click a link with your middle mouse button, it will load in the background. This comes in really handy when browsing sites like Digg or just browsing forums. New pages or threads will load in the background as you are uninterruptedly browsing the home page, looking for more stuff to open.

Be sure to comment with any other quick and easy browsing tips.

Mozilla has just released Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3, available here. It looks like Firefox 3 is nearing completion and will be released very soon. There were predictions that Release Candidate 2 would be the last one before the final version, but it turns out it isn’t.

Seems that Mozilla is ironing out each and every single bug, meaning the final release of Firefox 3 will be stable and bug-free. Don’t forget to download the final version of Firefox 3 when it comes out on Firefox Download Day 2008.

Net Applications says that Firefox can have 20% of the browser market share as early as next month. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer’s market share continues to drop steadily.

This will be a major milestone for Firefox. If this 20% takeover will happen soon, it might as well happen on Download Day for Firefox. If Download Day succeeds, Firefox will also grab the world record for most software downloads in 24 hours.

Here at Wordplop, 49% of visitors use Firefox, 35% use Internet Explorer, 5% use Opera, and the remaining 11% use a variety of other browsers. These statistics are from the previous 16,000 unique visitors.

This will be good news for web developers as well. Firefox is much more standards compliant than Internet Explorer. Some standard code that works in all browsers just will not work in Internet Explorer. Most web developers hate Internet Explorer for that reason, so the more people that use Firefox, the better.

The only downside to this milestone might be that hackers will try harder to write malicious code that works with Firefox. Right now Firefox is much safer than Internet Explorer, but as it gains market share, it might become more vulnerable as more malicious code will be written for it. However, this is inevitable with all software, so it shouldn’t be worried about.

Congratulations to Mozilla and all Firefox developers for this soon-to-be milestone.

Mozilla has just released Firefox 3 RC 2 today. This will supposedly be the last version of Release Candidates for Firefox 3 that will be released before the final version.

Release Candidate 2 has fixed the major bugs that were seen in RC1. If no major bugs are found in Firefox 3 RC2, it will become Firefox 3.0 (final).

It is good to see that Mozilla won’t be rushing the release of Firefox 3, and will take the time it needs to iron out the bugs in the release candidates. This should make the final version of Firefox 3 as bug-free as possible.

Now all that’s left for me to make the switch to Firefox 3 is plugin compatibility. That’s the plugin creators’ problem. So a word to any plugin creators – update your plugins to work with Firefox 3 so everyone can download Firefox when it’s released.

Mozilla wants to break the Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 hours. You can help by downloading Firefox 3 on the Firefox Download Day of 2008.

You can make a pledge to download Firefox 3 on the Download Day if you wish to help Firefox achieve this record. The official release date of Firefox 3 will also be posted on that page.

Firefox 3 is the latest installment of the Firefox browser from Mozilla. Firefox 3 will have more than 14,000 improvements.

When Adobe Photoshop CS4 comes out this October, it will feature GPU and Physics acceleration, as well as 64 bit processing.

This means Photoshop CS4 will not only be the first version of Photoshop to come in a 64 bit version, but also the first version to feature graphics and physics processor acceleration. This will make Photoshop CS4 faster than any previous versions, and it will let you manipulate 3D graphics. The physics acceleration might be able to generate particle and lighting effects dynamically and in 3D.

The GPU acceleration alone will increase the speed of Photoshop CS4 in certain tasks up to 100 times. At a recent Nvidia demo, “the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly.”

There is no word yet on whether CS4 will only take advantage of workstation GPU’s such as the Nvidia Quadro series. I am hoping that it will be able to use any GPU for an extra speed and power boost.

More information should be available as the October 1st release date approaches.