Day: May 28, 2013

I have Opera installed because I need to test web pages on every modern browser. It is nice, but I still use Chrome for most everything!

Opera Launches Chromium-Based ‘Next’ Browser for Windows, Mac

“Opera has totally revamped the desktop version of its browser, which is now available for trial on Windows and Mac.

The all-new browser, dubbed Opera Next 15, was built from scratch with a refreshed design and a slew of new features for a better browsing experience. Opera Next releases, formally known as beta versions, are updated every few weeks, and let you check out the latest enhancements to the browser.

Under the hood, Opera swapped out its own Presto rendering engine for the Chromium engine from Google, which should help webpages load faster ‘even in the toughest of network conditions,’ the Oslo, Norway-based browser maker said in a statement.

‘Completely rethinking a browser in today’s competitive market is a big thing,’ said Krystian Kolondra, Opera’s senior vice president of desktop products. ‘Our new browser is more beautiful and allows users to harness the massive amount of web content they are faced with today.’

Many of the new changes are in line with the browser’s recently released Android version.

For starters, the browser has a new user interface, which gives it a more sleek and modern look. In addition, you can now search directly from a newly combined address and search bar. Simply start typing a webpage address to go directly to a site, or enter a search term to look for suggestions.

The browser also boasts a new Discover feature, which serves up articles from around the Web based on categories you’re interested in — like news, food, and technology.

There’s another new feature called Stash, which lets you mark websites using a heart icon in the address bar. You can use this feature to easily compare items while shopping online, or keep travel research on hotels and flights handy, Opera said.

The popular shortcuts feature Speed Dial has also been revamped, and now allows bookmarks to be gathered in folders and easily filtered. Simply drag and drop one Speed Dial entry on top of another to create a folder, or use the new search field to find a specific webpage you saved.

Meanwhile, based on user feedback, Opera made its mail client a standalone offering so it takes up less memory and space in the browser itself. The company launched a new Opera Mail rerelease candidate, which brings changes to labeling, filtering, threads, and tabs for a ‘faster and sleeker than ever mail experience.'”

Happy Birthday to the Wordpres blogging platform! It is what all my blogs are based on!

WordPress Is Now 10 Years Old

“Ten years ago today, the first public release of WordPress became available. Initially started as a fork of the little-known blogging platform b2/Cafelog, WordPress has grown to be the largest CMS in the world, powering an astounding 18% of the web.

Nearly 70 million websites run WordPress and it’s hard to understate the impact that the software has had on the world of digital publishing. Hundreds of high-profile websites, including blogs from CNN, The New York Times and Reuters, all use WordPress. Mashable isn’t a pure WordPress site anymore, but we do use it as a place to enter content. Since 2004, I personally have published millions of words using WordPress, most of those on Mashable.

WordPress was started by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little and the open-source software has grown to include thousands of contributors. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and one of the biggest stewards in the development of the platform as a whole, announced last week that it had raised $50 million in a secondary stock transaction.

WordPress started as an easy, free way for users to publish their own content. If you had a web host that supported PHP and MySQL and you knew how to use FTP, getting WordPress installed took, famously, under five minutes. Today, most web hosts have one-click install buttons so that users don’t even have to bother with FTP. Hosted offerings from WordPress.com and others are also abundantly available.

Moreover, WordPress is no longer just about blogging or personal publishing. As recently as 2010, I was reticent to call WordPress a true CMS but that’s clearly no longer true. Full web applications are run on WordPress. Shopping cart systems, Twitter analytics services and even robust WordPress site management solutions can all be built on WordPress.

Plus, the larger ecosystem around WordPress — including plugins, themes, specialized hosting providers and custom solutions builders — is mammoth and still growing. Mullenweg told me earlier this year that his goal for WordPress is for it to be the “platform or operating system” for the web. That goal is coming closer to fruition with every passing month.”