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June 2016

YouTube Plus for Firefox and Chrome

YouTube Plus is a free add-on for the Firefox and Google Chrome web browser that provides you with dozens of configuration options to improve your YouTube experience.

Additionally, it is also available as a userscript for you to install in other web browsers that support these scripts.

If you spend enough time on YouTube watching videos, you may have encountered your fair share of issues on the site.

Chrome Font Rendering: Google removes DirectWrite flag

Google dropped Chrome support for several older operating systems, including Windows XP and Vista, in April 2016.

The company started to remove code from Chromium, the open source foundation of the Chrome browser, to reflect the change in support and to simply the browser's code base by concentrating solely on Windows 7 and newer versions of Windows.

Firefox 49: set default HTML5 video volume

Mozilla has added a new feature to Firefox 49 -- currently available if you run Firefox Nightly -- that allows you to set a default HTML5 video volume in the browser.

While it is usually possible to change the volume of audio or video content using an interface that is provided on sites, browsers usually don't provide you with options to change the default volume.

Other options may be available, for instance on Windows where you can change the volume of Firefox or whichever browser you are using to adjust the volume of audio this way.

Windows Automatic Startup Locations

The Windows operating system ships with options to run custom files or programs on startup.

That's good on the one hand as it enables users of the operating system to select programs that they want to start with Windows. It is also required for some programs, for instance security software as it is usually necessary that these programs start as early as possible.

But it is also a big nuisance as programs can be added to the startup during installations or even on start.

Vivaldi Themes got a whole lot better

Vivaldi launched version 1.2 of the web browser just yesterday but it seems that the team did not waste any time celebrating the new version as the first Vivaldi 1.3 snapshot was just released.

One would not necessarily expect a major feature to ship with the first snapshot released a day after a major release, but it happens occasionally and it definitely happened here.

You better disable update checks in KeePass 2

A security vulnerability in the popular password manager KeePass 2 was disclosed recently affecting all versions of the password manager but only if automatic update checks are enabled.

KeePass 2 ships with an option to check periodically for program updates. While update checks are performed if the feature is enabled, automatic downloads and installations of updates is not supported.

WizTree 2.0 update brings support for all drives

WizTree 2.0 is a new version of the popular storage analysis program for Windows that analyzes drives to display the largest folders and files on those drives.

WizTree has been designed to quickly display which files take up the most storage space on a drive. The initial version of the program, reviewed us back in 2012, was one of the quickest programs when it came to scanning a drive.

The new update, the first in almost three years, improves the program significantly but without removing any of the features or functions that made it great in first place.