BlogAllAlong

It’s not sci-fi, it’s not just talk. Google did release the O3D API to bring the power of 3D Accelerated graphics to the web through Javascript to all major browsers, namely Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, and it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

You can see below a sample real time demonstration of what this API can do. Quite promising.

If you wanna get into it, go to the O3D API Page.

Popularity: 20% [?]

For Chrome users, you may really like this tool to backup your Chrome profile, settings, bookmarks, and history, easily restorable then. Also useful if you use Chrome over multiple PCs.

PS: If you have Google Chrome, play with this neat Gravity Experiment.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The number of times a day I find my self going to Google Translate or Googling for define: <word> is really amazing, and opening the page over and over is tedious as well. Leaving the tab open is a good way, but hey it will get lost soon in the middle of all the other tabs. One good practice is to memorize and maintain it’s order in each Firefox window, say you place it in second tab. Then you could simply go Ctrl+2 and Firefox will take you to that tab, and you can do your translation. I like the faster way however, using the Keyword for search feature in Firefox bookmarks. Before going into the steps, I think it’s worthy to take a look at the main parameters of the url:

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en&sl=en&tl=ar#en|ar|test

Now to break it all into peaces, this is my URL which lands a default English to Arabic translation in an English interface, and the parts of the URL taken apart are:

- hl=en: The default interface language. You can change this to hl=ar for instance to get an Arabic version of it.

- sl=en: Default selected source or starting language to translate from in the drop down list. In my case I usually want to translate from English.

- tl=ar: Default selected terminating language in the drop down list to which the source language will get translated, Arabic in this case.

- en|ar|test: The text after the Hash (#) sign is basically the query being sent, and it corresponds accordingly to the source language (en), destination or terminating language (ar), and the text to translate (test), with the vertical bar (”|”) character separating them.

Note: sl & tl are not really so important when you create a keyword shortcut since they only represent the default selected language in the drop down list. They’re just presented here for explanation.

Now to the quick few steps:

1. Go to Organize Bookmarks in Firefox.

2. Right-Click Bookmarks Menu and select New Bookmark.

3. Fill in the parameters as needed, using the below as example (or exactly if what you need is English to Arabic translation):

Name: Google En/Ar Translate

Location: http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=en#en|ar|%s

Make sure you change the en & ar to your desired from and to languages.

Keyword: Make it short and meaningful, like “ea” without the double quotes for English-to-Arabic.

Description: This is optional and just for your reference.

That’s it. By now you should be able to translate from English to Arabic (or your choice) from your Firefox Address bar like this:

For vicevers, add another Keyword bookmark. At all rates, once you have it and wanna translate a word, just do Ctrl+L to move to the address bar, write your letters, e.g. “ea Arsenal”, and Alt+Click to open the result in new tab and preserve current one.

NOTE: For Chrome users, there is a way to do just that, but last time I tried the bookmarks manager was still so amature. If you can’t find an easy way to fill in such keywords, do this stupid trick. Add it in Firefox, import it and export it to Chrome ;). Worked for my other bookmarks.

Popularity: 23% [?]

One day into the Pwn2Own hacking competition, and all 3 major browsers (IE, Firefox and Safari) have fallen down, leaving Google Chrome, with predicted 2% market share), standing on its own. Interesting notes are that Opera was not part of the competition, and the first one falling was, you bet, Safari! Later, the winning hacker “Nils” managed to gain control of the Safari, and hacked the other two browsers as well.

So is Google Chrome more secured, or less known to hackers? Well either way, it means it’s more secured for the time being at least.

Popularity: 14% [?]

So Fennec 1.0 Beta 1 is finally released for the Maemo OS running on Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. The Firefox browser for mobiles brings I’m happy to same the same general features (and another hot logo) and concepts of a regular Firefox browser, with search engine plugins, awesome bar, and tabs and controls bar that shows by left and right tapping the screen.

Fennec Beta 1 walkthrough from Madhava Enros on Vimeo.

This is only for the Internet Tablet of N810 however, and I sure do hope they keep it as good for regular mobile and smart phones. Also, I think what’s more important and useful than a search plugin, is the add Keyword for search bookmark which is extremely helpful to minimize clicks if your search plugins grow large.

[via pavlov]

NOTE: As of now, your Google Image searches for fennec returns the Fennec animal. Give it a little while and see how we geeks mess up with everybody’s lives. Soon scientists are gonna have to include -browser in their search queries by default to get what they want :).

Popularity: 10% [?]

One of the main downsides of Chrome compared to Firefox is the lack of extensions feature and ability to do customization. TechRadar is giving however 10 ways you can customize and improve Google Chrome to your likings, including a link to how you can customize or make your own Google Chrome theme. I didn’t know that exist, although I still prefer the current one.

On a side note, if you love Flock for all the social features it has, you gotta start loving Chrome, as Flock is abandoning Firefox.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Last time I read about a new browser I was like “Ohh God, not another browser!”. It was called Chrome and one day after it’s release it became my default one. Not that I’m at all enthusiastic about this now, but history has taught lessons. GreenBrowser is not something that takes the path of simplicity, but rather complexity in features, with rich tab management capabilities, allowing password-locking to the level of a tab, and closing of tab groups with shared base URL.

I don’t have a Windows machine nearby to try it, but it does have a Japanese thumbnail so some people might have faith in it. For full review, read the PC World article.

Popularity: 10% [?]