July 2015

Microsoft Windows 10 will be released in two week's time to Windows Insiders and users who have accepted the free upgrade promotion that Microsoft ran on Windows 7 and Windows 8 devices.

While Microsoft revealed a lot about the upcoming operating system, the company has been tight-lipped about some important aspects of it.

In addition to that, a few PR and announcement blunders along the way caused extra confusion that Microsoft has not yet addressed fully either.

Norwegian company Opera Software acquired the virtual private network service (VPN) SurfEasy back in March 2015.

We expected Opera to integrate the service in the browser at one point in time, and it looks as if the company has started to do just that.

For now though, it is merely a promotion of the service in the browser and not a native integration of it in it.

Mozilla has added all versions of Adobe Flash up to the most recent version 18.0.0.203 to the Firefox blocklist.

Security researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in recent versions of Adobe Flash that have not been patched yet by Adobe but are exploited in the wild. In particular, several exploit kits are already making use of it to serve crypto-ransomware to systems running Adobe Flash.

KeePass is my password manager of choice as it ships with everything I require and uses a local database to store passwords instead of an online one.

The program is regularly updated and can be extended through plugins, for instance to improve web browser integration or the importing of passwords from files.

You need to enter a master password or use other authentication means to access the database which protects it from unauthorized access.

TaskSchedulerView is a new application by Nirsoft that allows you to manage all Windows tasks in an easy to use interface.

Programs may not only start during system start but also on schedule, and that is handled by the Task Scheduler of the Windows operating system.

Several Chromium-based browsers, Google Chrome and Opera for instance, use the Task Scheduler for update checks.

Nirsoft's TaskSchedulerView program for Windows displays all existing tasks of the system it is executed on in its interface.

Microsoft modified how system tray controls such as Volume work in recent builds of Windows 10.

While the company is not finished yet with the update, the design itself is final which means that Windows 10 will ship with those new controls and not the old ones.

While it is possible to access and restore the old controls currently, it is possible that Microsoft will remove that option from Windows 10 before the final version of the operating system ships.

A recent Chromium bug listing indicates that Google is considering removing built-in ftp support in the Chrome web browser.

According to the listing, only 0.1% to 0.2% of Chrome users access ftp urls in any given seven day period and that's the main reason for the consideration.

The thread starter suggests to move support to an application instead that users of Chromium and Google Chrome can use instead to add the functionality again to the browser.

Sometimes, there is disparity between what designers and developers think is best or clear, and what users who use the product believe.

The inner workings of photo and video synchronization on Android devices running Google's new Photos application makes a good example of that disparity.

As you may know, you may use the Photos application to synchronize videos and images automatically between devices and the cloud.

The Firefox web browser is configured to check for and install updates automatically by default. It offers configuration switches to change that to give users of the browser control over the updating functionality.

This can be useful if updates need to be tested before they are deployed on machines for instance, or if users don't want to update because of broken add-ons or other incompatibilities.

Whenever you install a program on Windows or update one, there is a chance that you end up with one or even multiple startup entries.

While some programs displays prompts or options to put you in control of that, it is quite common that others do so without even informing you about it.

That's a huge problem and without doubt one of the reasons why programs like WinPatrol exist.

Windows ships with options to manage startup items and while you can theoretically control all startup items this way, it is everything but comfortable.