Cool new features in Camino and Firefox
Camino 2 is still in the alpha stage, but the list of upcoming features makes this browser one to keep an eye on. Among them is tab overview, which displays thumbnail pictures of all the websites you have open in your tabs. A similar feature can be found in Opera. Also in the works is full zoom. This means that when you hit Command-plus, the entire web page gets bigger — not just the text. You can still just increase text size, but you’ll have to hold down the option key as well. I can see where this could take some getting used to.
Meanwhile, Firefox hasn’t been standing still, with version 3.1 now in beta. One overlooked feature is support for text shadows. Once Firefox 3.1 becomes widespread, I predict we’ll a lot more drop shadows on headings and text. Used judiciously, they can add a touch of elegance to web design. Text shadows are already supported by the latest versions of Safari and Opera. Users of Internet Explorer, though, will have to be content with the Plain Jane text they’ve had all along. Not even IE8 will support it — at least that’s what the Microsoft Developer Network says.
Oh, and one more thing . . . a special experimental version of Firefox has been released that supports multi-touch on the latest MacBooks. For example, you can swipe left to go back, swipe up to go to the top of a page, pinch apart to zoom in, and twist right to go to the next tab. Very cool. It’s iffy, though, as to whether multi-touch will make it into version 2.1.
Posted Wednesday, October 22, 2008 in Web-browsers
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