August 2017

The developer of the popular All-in-One Sidebar extension for the Firefox web browser announced the end of life of the Firefox add-on today.

Mozilla Messaging released Thunderbird 52.3.0 on August 16, 2017 to the release channel and all supported operating systems.

The new version of the popular email client is a bug fix release; means, it fixes issues in the client but does not introduce new features to it or make changes to existing ones. Also, no security updates in the release.

Thunderbird's automatic update feature may not pick up the update right now. You can check for new updates with a click on Help > About Thunderbird.

Captura is a free open source desktop recording program for Microsoft Windows that comes with quite a few extra features on top of the core functionality.

There is really no shortage when it comes to desktop recorders for Windows. Windows users can pick from a wide range of free and commercial applications. 

Screen recorders are used for a variety of usage scenarios: from creating demos and instructional videos to recording chats or webcam sessions.

Waterfox 55.0.1 is out and with it come important announcements about the future of the web browser that is based in large parts on Firefox code.

Probably the most interesting bit of news for users of the browser and Firefox users who need continued support for legacy add-ons is that Waterfox will continue to support legacy add-ons.

Opera VPN Gold is a new upgrade option for Opera's free Opera VPN application for iOS that improves the service for a cost.

Opera Software acquired the VPN provider SurfEasy some years ago, and started to integrate the company's products into the browser some time afterwards.

First, as a promotion but a year later by integrating the VPN client -- more precise browser proxy -- into Opera directly.

The company launched standalone versions of Opera VPN as well which Android and iOS users could install separately from the Opera web browser.

One of the things that I found pretty confusing about GNU/Linux during my transition from using Windows as my primary OS to using GNU/Linux, was how audio worked.

In Windows, you don’t really have to think about anything, or know how to configure any specific utilities for the most part; audio just works. You might need to install a driver for a new headset or soundcard but that’s about as heavy as things get.

Ellp is a free program for Microsoft Windows devices that works similar to the popular If This Then That application.

Basically, what it does is automate certain things for you. It works by selecting cards that you are interested in. A card consists of an event (the "if this" part) and an action (the "then that" part).

To give you some examples:  You can use ellp to display a notification when the battery is fully charged, to open your favorite applications when the PC starts, or to inform you when the International Space Station passes over the location you are at.

If you open multiple websites in the Firefox web browser -- and most Firefox users probably do -- you may run into situations where Firefox slows down at one point or the other.

Firefox handles semi-large numbers of tabs quite well, both when it comes to memory use and CPU utilization, but there is still the chance that a site, or a browser extension, may slow down the browser.

While that is sometimes easy to find out, for instance when you just opened a site and the browser starts to hang or slow down, it may not be as easy at other times.

An index can improve the accessibility of a book or document tremendously, as it lists important words and phrases, and the page numbers they are referenced on.

I'm writing my first book currently -- about Windows 10 Privacy -- and one of the things that I really wanted to add to it is an index of the most important words and phrases so that users could use the index as a reference to look up information quickly.

Microsoft Word 2016 comes with options to create an index; the process itself is not complicated at all, but it still may be confusing how to get started.

WinRAR 5.50 was released on August 14, 2017. The new version comes with important changes that users of the application need to be aware of.

Probably the two biggest changes of WinRAR 5.50 are that the program uses the RAR 5.0 archive format by default when it comes to the creation of archives, and the new master password option to protect saved password records by using encryption.