New version of Mihov Blank Screen released
Today I have released a new version of Mihov Blank Screen, a free software from Miha’s utilities that can help you with adjusting (or buying) your monitor screen. The program is really simple and easy to use. Its features are basic – you can fill the whole screen with one color and evaluate how the monitor reacts. This is more appropriate for non-LCD screens, but it can be useful even when evaluating LCD’s. I use the program every time when buying a used screen – it can help you see really fast if the screen is ok or not.
This has been a program release after four years. The special thing is that new features were requested by a user one week ago and they’re already live now.
The program is freeware and it should be in your Swiss-army-knife software collection.
Another interesting thing is that I have many channels to let the users know about the new release and promote the software on-line:
- I have updated the program web site in three languages plus several more Google-translated
- I have written a short news on Miha’s utilities site
- I have updated the Miha’s utilities update page
- I have posted this new about the program to Miha’s utilities forum
- I have sent a notification to a mailing list to registered users through Google Gropus
- I have posted to newsgroups alt.comp.freeware and alt.comp.shareware
- I have posted on the wall of Miha’s utilities group on Facebook
- I have written this post on Best resizer blog
- I have written a short post on my Slovenian blog
- I have published PAD file for this software (a structured XML file that contains the information about the program), so that software directories will be notified of the update and will be able to automatically update the data they have.
Now that I’ve written all ten channels I see why my programs are that popular. They have been downloaded more than 4 million times and the number is still rocketing up.
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Firefox 4.0 beta 11 pre-relase
Firefox 4.0 beta11 pre-release (b11pre) is rolling out. According to the Mozilla roadmap the final beta11 will be released this week. Note that this will be the last beta – from here on there will be one or more release candidate (RC) versions, followed by final Firefox 4.0. Can’t wait to start using it, or better, to start tweaking it by my preferences.
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Considering Firefox 4.0b10pre as my primary browser
Today I have again updated to the latest preview release of Firefox4.0b9. It’s dated January 20th, 2011 and it seems pretty stable and fast. I have played a little more with it and its new features and a thought has gone through my mind: Am I ready to switch to Firefox 4.0 now?
The question is more complex as it looks. I am testing beta and preview releases of Firefox for almost seven months, starting with Firefox 3.7a6pre, which was later renamed to Firefox 4 Alpha 6 (preview). I was always looking forward to switch to the new, faster and feature richer version, but there were always some open questions. With Firefox 4, the questions were so big that my answer to the question of switch was always NO. Until now, maybe.
Here are the things I consider when switching to a new (even untested, beta or preview version) of a browser:
- Does it work?
- Is it stable?
- Is it faster?
- Does it still looks useful or has the UI changed to much in the direction that I don’t like?
- Do the add-ons work?
- Are there enough new features to make a switch?
The main downside of all the new versions was that there were not enough add-ons released, so I was missing several important ones (at least for me). Actually, they were so important, that I didn’t want to switch.
Today I have made a test again and have seen that some of the add-ons were updated and were available. Some of them were available on the developers’ sites but not on the Mozilla site. Others are usable as they are (with the manual version change). Some of them are not available yet. I have managed to install Mouse Gestures Redox, which is an absolute must, and I’m happy for that. The new development nightly version was released on Jan 3rd and is available on the developers site. I am slowly adding other add-ons to my installation, but I’m thinking of duplicating my primary profile and see what else is not available.
With features like Mozilla Panorama (previously Eye Candy), where I can group tabs into topics, the new Firefox seems really usable (note that the keyboard short cut has changed from CTRL-Space to CTRL-E). With ‘missing’ status bar, however, it’s not really user friendly. You can, however, install Status-4-Evar add-on and get the status bar back.
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