Windows only: Lots of folks rave about Microsoft Office 2007′s ribbon interface, but now you can have it for free in Microsoft Word’s younger sibling, WordPad. A developer over at deviantART—not Microsoft, mind you—has released “Wordpad 2009,” which offers multiple documents in tabs, Windows 7 icons, and yes, the ribbon interface. While this is yet another way you can get Windows 7 features for free right now, Wordpad 2009 doesn’t look exactly like Windows 7′s WordPad. Check out the difference.
Windows only: Free application WinFlog Extreme adds several handy shortcuts to your right-click context menus with a Vista-specific twist. For example, with WinFlog you can toggle Aero with a quick couple of clicks, turn on Flip 3D, or perform more basic operations like turning off your monitor or ejecting your disc tray. Although the app is very Vista-specific, it does work on XP—but it’s not like you’ve got any Aero interface to toggle in the first place. For Vista users, the option to quickly toggle Aero is a great feature when you’re looking to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your PC. WinFlog Extreme is a free download, Windows only.
WinFlog Extreme [via Download Squad]Google Reader has just had a major interface update, ditching rounded corners in favour of a squared-off look, incorporating expandable menus for its major sections, and adding the ability to switch off unread counts. There’s also new ‘feed bundles’ of feeds on related topics (which I fear will prove to be uncomofrtably US-centric) As with most things Google, this will probably take some time to roll out across all accounts — it hasn’t shown up in mine at this writing.
Square is the new round [Official Google Reader Blog]One of the major changes in Internet Explorer 8 is that it adheres much more strictly to web standards than past IE releases. That’s a welcome and sensible move, but it has resulted in many sites not rendering well, since they have been built to work with the slightly skewed design principles of earlier IE releases. The second beta of IE8 handled this with a ‘Compatibility View’ button, but Microsoft’s internal research suggested that this wasn’t quite enough, as a post on its IEBlog explains:
We saw from the telemetry data that IE8 Beta 2 users still have to use Compatibility View a lot. Looking at our instrumentation, there were high-volume sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, bbc.co.uk, and cnn.com with pages that weren’t working for end-users with IE’s new standards compliant default. We could also see from our instrumentation that not all IE8 visitors to those sites were clicking the Compatibility View button. So, large groups of people were having a less than great experience because they weren’t aware of the manual steps required to make certain sites work.
Microsoft’s latest solution is to allow users to opt-in to an automatically updated list of popular sites that need compatibility view and have those sites rendered using the older IE7 approach without requiring manual intervention. That feature will be added to the next beta of IE8, due early in 2009 (there’s a similar feature already in Opera). This seems like a pretty good interim solution to me; share your take in the comments.
Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8 [IEBlog]One way you can use your 25GB of free Skydrive space courtesy of Microsoft Windows Live is share your photos online Flickr-style at the newly-revamped Windows Live Photos site. Create albums (folders) in Windows Live Photos, set permissions on who can see your photos, comment on others’ photos, and play your photos back slideshow-style. While Windows Live Photos slideshow is inferior to Flickr’s full-screen option, the webapp does set itself apart from Flickr a few ways. Overall it’s more customisable, with your choice of themes for your photo pages, and while it doesn’t offer free-form photo tags like Flickr, you can identify particular people within a given photo (like Facebook). You’ll need a Windows Live ID to sign in and try out Live Photos. Windows Live Photo [via CNET]
Photo-sharing site Flickr’s mobile interface (m.flickr.com) got a facelift and a few upgrades today, notably the ability to play back video clips. Right now the Flickr folks say video playback is limited to the iPhone and iPod touch, but despite several tries on my iPhone, I never did see any video movement. (Update: Video playback’s rolling out to iPhone/iPod touch users over the next few weeks.) Once it’s available to all, mobile Flickrinos will love this upgrade. [via Tech Crunch]
Expect to see a whole lot more of Google and Facebook sign-in boxes on sites all over the web from today going forward: in what you’d think was a planned parallel announcement, Google and Facebook just launched their Friend Connect and Facebook Connect products today, which allow web site owners to set up sign-in and other social features to their web sites. All your online identity are belong to Google or Facebook? Tell us in the comments, and see a video demo of Google’s Friend Connect here.
Picasa Web Albums has added new privacy options to your web-based digital photo album properties, allowing users to list albums as Public, Unlisted, or Sign-in required to view. In the latter you choose exactly who is allowed to view your albums. The only catch is that people you share with will need a Google account, but who doesn’t have one these days. Either way, it’s a nice update. [via Google Operating System]
Windows/Mac/Linux: Opera released an alpha version of Opera 10 today, a first step toward the next major release of the popular cross-platform web browser. First and foremost, Opera 10 is looking to offer stiff competition with the blazing rendering engines in the upcoming Firefox release (Tracemonkey) and Google Chrome (V8) with an update to its rendering engine, Presto—which Opera claims offers a 30% speed boost over the previous version of the engine. But that’s not all.
Mozilla opens the doors to their new Community Store, a partnership with t-shirt making company Zazzle, which lets you design and buy your own Firefox-themed shirt or grab one of the more popular designs from other users. Check out the gallery of featured designs here.
