Tag: INTERFACE

This time the leaked Internet Explorer 9 image we're looking at is a bit more trustworthy than the mock-up we received back on April 1st. As Mary Jo Foley reports, the image above was posted by Microsoft's Russian PR site, though the post has since been pulled from the server and now returns a 404 error. If this is the new interface, it's certainly been simplified from the IE8 incarnation. A ...

One feature I like being able to toggle in Firefox is tab thumbnails -- not the ones on the Windows 7 taskbar, mind you. I'm talking about in-browser thumbnails which get displayed when switching tabs. Chrome OS has that snazzy, Cover Flow-style switching interface, but that's not part of the Chrome browser on other OSes. There are, of course, options available in the Google Chrome Extensions ...

Proving yet again that Mozilla is a cut above the rest, its Metrics team has just published a fantastic interactive Firefox heat map that illustrates exactly how we interact with the main browser window. The Mozilla Metrics blog has some background info on the project and some basic analysis of the figures. I'm going to try and dig a bit deeper, however. Let's start with Windows versus Mac OS ...

Curious about what the upcoming Meego OS will look like on a smartphone? Well, wonder no more! A handful of images have been posted on the official website for all to see. Above are the home screen, launcher, and task switcher interface (from left to right). I can't help but think that Meego's UI has taken cues from its current mobile OS rivals -- which isn't really a surprise since Intel and ...

HTML5 features are slowly creeping into our favorite Web apps. Recently, Google added drag-and-drop attachment support to Gmail. If you're using an up-to-date browser with built-in HTML5 kung fu, you've got a plug-in free way to upload files from your desktop. Today, Box.net turned on drag-and-drop as well. If you've got an account, just sign in and head to your dashboard. Select a file (or ...

Look, I know this is a beta app and that means it's not feature complete or bug-free, but I had higher hopes for Fizzik's "social web browser." When I first wrote about it, it seemed like an interesting concept -- perhaps this underscores the importance of waiting until you get your hands on a program before making that call. When you launch Fizzik, you see the screen above. I'm no interface ...

I almost cried today, but I'm not ashamed! There's a new viral video in town, you see, and while it's not quite as cute as the 2-year-old using an iPad, it's just as astonishing. Ladies and gentlemen, Virginia's new iPad (video after the break, too). Feast your eyes upon a 99-year-old using her very first computer. Marvel at the similarities between the genius tot and the geriatric grandma. Gawp ...

Ubuntu has been the "Flagship Linux" distro for quite a while now. This is the distro most people judge Linux by (and the only one I personally work with). However, its visual style remained constant for a long time, and has been starting to look a bit stale. It's difficult to convey "innovation" to end users when your product keeps the same look, version to version. There's been a lot of ...

Up until today I've been using a dark Firefox theme. It looked quite pretty, but eventually I got tired of not being able to read the black text on some of the dialogs (yes, I've tried tweaking userchrome.css -- multiple times). So I've set out in search of a lighter theme which would still be nice and minimalistic. Operetta Advance seems to fit the bill perfectly. It's called "Advance" ...

I appreciate the fact that Microsoft is working hard to improve their browser -- there's no denying that Internet Explorer 8 is leaps and bounds better than previous IE versions. IE9? Yeah, I'm excited to see what they have up their sleeve. Thanks to Manan Kakkar's watchful eye, we've got an early look at what Microsoft plans to do to improve user experience in IE9. A recent patent filing ...

It's no secret that Mozilla is working on a fairly major facelift for the next major version of Firefox. We've already seen some early concepts for Linux and Windows and there's even an easy-to-install Strata 4 theme (called Strata40) for current versions of Firefox. On his personal blog Chromatic Pixel, Mozilla contributor Stephen Horlander has shared some more iterations of the Windows ...

Every now and then I have the honor of reinstalling Windows on a customer's system in a language other than English - usually French, since I happen to work in Canada. Trouble is, all my installation media is English which means the resulting OS would sport an English interface. Thankfully, Vistalizator makes switching languages a painless process. Grab the required language pack, fire up ...

App for the Milk is a cross-platform Adobe Air-based desktop client version of the extremely popular online task management application Remember the Milk. One of the unique aspects of Remember the Milk is that it lends itself well to various user interface interpretations. There are already a number of different UIs for RTM, including the classic web interface, the embedded Gmail interface, the ...

Sometimes a really interesting piece of software slips through the cracks here at Download Squad head office, and we miss covering it when it was first released. Sometimes when that happens, it's worth going back and pointing out what we missed. Though it was released back in February, we have somehow up until now neglected to mention the experimental New York Times Article Skimmer, and for that ...

If there's a Gmail equivalent of adding a zillion toolbars to your browser, then I'm the poster boy. I've added so many lab features and gadgets that my Gmail functions rather... differently. But I'm all about simplifying, and the Firefox add-on Integrated Gmail does just that while also giving you a window into more Google services in a top-down view. The pic above shows you "minimalist" mode ...