Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Firefox - 1.5 A new phase in the revolution

It's here, folks. And you should get it. Stuck with IE, switch to Firefox. Already got Firefox 1.0? Upgrade today.

It's faster, stronger, and more secure.
The award-winning Web browser is better than ever. Browse the Web with confidence - Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups. Enjoy improvements to performance, ease of use and privacy. It's easy to import your favorites and settings and get started. Download Firefox now and get the most out of the Web.
Some of your old extensions might not work right away, but most will. You may have to "Check for Upgrades" and restart Firefox once or twice, but it's more than worth it.

First OpenOffice.org 2.0, and now this! ;-)

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.5:

  • Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
  • Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
  • Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
  • Improvements to popup blocking.
  • Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
  • Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
  • Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and "Safe Mode" experience.
  • Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
  • Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
  • Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
  • New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
  • Many security enhancements.



Wednesday, November 16, 2005

GIMP and GIMPShop Reunite Families

How do I make a family photo when one of the people was asleep when it was taken? Simple! I use GIMP or GIMPShop to put that person in the pic with everybody else!

Read this story from The Sydney Morning Hearld.

read more | digg story



Monday, November 14, 2005

Some Examples of the power of GIMP and GIMPShop

Recently, I asked for submissions from users of GIMPShop of examples of their work. So far, I haven't received any, (but feel free to send them if you've got them). But, one visitor, Donncha O Caoimh, asked if GIMP submissions would work. And I happily agreed.

For those who may be asking "What is the GIMP?" or even "What is GIMPShop?" please visit the respective links. Suffice to say, GIMPShop is the GIMP with different clothes on. Whatever the GIMP can do, GIMPShop can do too.


All the pictures on inphotos.org are modified and enhanced using the GIMP. These are just some examples on what the GIMP, (and therefore GIMPShop) are capable of.



GIMPShop Tutorial


Here is a tutorial from Andy Atkinson on how to make rounded corners using GIMPShop.



Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Alpha GIMPShop 2.3.4 at lacksadaisical alacrity

John, one of the compilers of GIMPShop for Windows, has released an alpha of GIMPShop based on The GIMP 2.3.4.

This is a *developers test release* which means, it's likely to have a lot of bugs. You should not use this as your only image editor, but if you'd like to test it out, and see where GIMPShop is headed, then feel free. Just don't delete your old version.

For any developers, or aspiring coders out there, John has the source, so you can compile this for other platforms, or tweak the code yourself.

You can download the Windows version here.

And the GIMP source here - and John's GIMPShop patch here.



Monday, November 07, 2005

Photoshop-ish Keyboard Shortcuts for The Gimp 2.2

If you want to make GIMPShop even more Photoshop like. You can download this file - ps-menurc, rename it to menurc, and put it in your GIMPShop system folder.

For Windows users, that folder is C:\Documents and Settings\*Your User Name*\.gimp-2.2

For Linux and Mac users that folder is ~/.gimp-2.2

Here is the homepage to the creator of the file, and also a complete list of what the shortcuts do.

From the author:
Most of the matches are essentially identical features found in both programs, and the rest are the closest match I could find.
Please let me know if you have any problems.

Photoshop Shortcuts are included in the Windows version, however, they must be enabled. On the Windows version, just double-click the file called "Enable Photoshop Shortcuts" in the GIMPshop folder on your Program Files menu before opening GIMPShop.

Just a reminder, you can download GIMPShop here:

For Windows

For Mac OS X

For Linux

For Solaris

The Source

New to GIMPShop? Wondering what it is? Find out here: What is GIMPShop?



Thursday, November 03, 2005

Firefox Breaks 10% Worldwide

From the article:

Mozilla's Firefox has broken the 10 percent barrier, a Dutch Web metrics firm claimed Wednesday, and now is used by 11.5 percent of the world's surfers.


This is not something most people thought possible - to unseat Microsoft's Internet Explorer from it's world dominating 90%+ perch, but it has been done, and the trend will only continue. More to come...



Tuesday, November 01, 2005

The Power of Firefox and OpenOffice.org on Windows

GIMPShop is one of many free, open source, cross-platform programs developed by volunteers around the world. Two of the other most famous, useful, and successful projects are Firefox and OpenOffice.org. Sam Hiser recently wrote a LinuxWorld article about these important programs.

From the article:

In 2010, when the desktop standards war is winding down, we'll look back and say what a very, very good year 2002 was for open source software applications. It was in 2002 that both the Mozilla and the OpenOffice.org development projects delivered their 1.0 releases to the public. Having a Free (and free) and open source browser and office suite running on both the Windows and GNU/Linux operating systems is a milestone worth rejoicing at any time. Its significance in 2002 can be measured by the emergence the following year (2003) of viable desktop Linux solutions. In hindsight, that impact seems even greater today, when the mature enterprise GNU/Linux desktop system is something that's taken for granted.