April 2016

Active Hours is a new update-related feature of the upcoming Anniversary Update for Windows 10 that is already available in the latest Insider Build.

The main idea behind the feature is to make operating system updates less annoying by preventing automatic restarts of the system during active hours.

The Internet is filled with user reports that Windows restarted their system automatically after downloading Windows Updates, and that they lost work in the process or suddenly found themselves with a new version of Windows without them having a say in the matter.

If you are running Chrome on a Windows XP or Vista machine, you will have received a notification by now on the browser's new tab page that informs you that support for that browser will end soon.

The message reads "This computer will soon stop receiving Google Chrome updates because Windows XP and Windows vista will no longer be supported".

DP4 Font Viewer is a portable program for the Windows operating system that you can use to preview fonts in any folder on the system.

The program is provided as a 32-bit and 64-bit version for Windows, and compatible with all recent and not so recent versions of the operating system.

While you may not need to go through a list of fonts every day or even regularly, you sometimes may want to preview fonts in an easy to use yet powerful application.

Smart Defrag is a free defragmentation program for all versions of the Windows operating system starting with Windows XP.

File fragmentation can cause a number of issues on systems running Windows, but the most common one is that the loading of files takes longer than it should.

Microsoft pushed out a new Windows 10 Insider build to the Fast Ring channel that upgrades systems to version 14316.

The Fast Ring is the cutting edge channel when it comes to pre-release builds for Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.

As promised during the company's build conference, some of the new features announced during the developer conference are already included for testing.

Cliget is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that improves the downloading of protected files on remote machines you have control over.

The main idea behind the extension for Firefox is to grab all important download parameters to turn them into a wget, curl or aria2 command.

Maybe you have experienced the following situation before: you checked your web email account, say Gmail, and found an attachment in one of the emails that you want to load on another system (a server for instance or another computer).

If you’ve been reading much online, you’ve seen at least a few stories about businesses or people getting hacked. You may even have an acquaintance who has described one of their accounts or services as “getting hacked.”

The first stable version of Vivaldi, a new web browser by Vivaldi Technologies, has been released on April 6, 2016 to the public.

The web browser, launched by Opera co-founder John von Tetzchner's new company Vivaldi Technologies back in January 2015, swims against the trend of streamlining modern web browsers by giving users choice, features and customization options.

Nine of the ten most popular Firefox add-ons, based on users, are vulnerable to extension reuse vulnerabilities that allow malicious extensions to leverage these vulnerabilities.

Add-ons are one of the hallmarks of the Firefox web browser. The most popular Firefox add-ons are used by millions of users, and since the extension system in place does not limit add-on developers as much as on other platforms, some add miraculous things to the browser that are not possible elsewhere.

Microsoft may use the Windows 10 lock screen to display promotions to you at times.

The first, and only as far as I know, promotion that Microsoft ran on the lock screen was a beautiful Rise of the Tomb Raider wallpaper.

Coincidentally, Rise of the Tomb Raider was the first triple AAA title that was offered on Microsoft's Windows Store as an UWP application.

Anyway, while beautiful and something that gamers might have added to their desktop background freely, it is undeniably a promotional image.