In later 2008, Firefox-maker Mozilla hatched a brand-new add-on from its Labs division. Referred to as Weave Sync, the file format, like the popular Xmarks (referred to afterward as Foxmarks), would synchronize open web browser dividers, bookmarks, record, and tastes across all Firefox browsers--including portable versions like Firefox for Nokia's Maemo program and in-development types for other mobile phone platforms. Since then, the beta variant of Weave Sync possesses received a stream of changes. The most recent variation gets a new id, Firefox Sync. The merchandise name modification signifies that although the syncing add-on is always in beta, Mozilla's fitters feel that its program is finally very good more than enough to end up being utilized into the Firefox family members name. Even more noteworthy, we anticipate to observe edition 2.0 of Firefox Sync flattened into the next important type of the Firefox web browser. Firefox 4.0 could pop up simply because before long as November this season. You can try out the experimental version of Firefox Sync 1.3 beta 5 (at your personal risk, of study course) and examine additional about the alterations here.

It's hard not to be a big fan of Notepad alternatives. Just a little extra effort brings some useful tools to that utility exceptionally, and what NoteTab Light and others do for Notepad, freeware Jarte does for WordPad. Jarte's atypical interface is joined by some cool features, like a scalable screen-capture function. Pronounced "JAR-tay", the first thing users shall notice about it is the unusual interface. I liked it, although if I go the rest of my life without seeing a brushed-metal skin again, I'd somehow manage to live. Otherwise, it's a simple layout, and too minimalist for some perhaps. Where the Toolbar and Menubar would live usually, there's only the aforementioned circular icons. The icons are a little small, and there's a fair bit of empty space around them so they look somewhat bereft of context. Push your mouse over one, and a standard drop-down menu appears. It sounds somewhat hokey, but in practice it works well and makes most tasks accessible by a single click. There are eight major icon options, which contain actions that range from the basic--like saving your document--to the more advanced, such as re-opening previously in-use documents when you start the program. Those eight are split by four more ancillary choices. One, for example, is a mouse-over chart icon that gives you word, character, page, and line counts. It turns out Jarte has two other interface schemes. One is an expanded "classic" layout that offers Menubar choices, like File, separated out into bubbles. The newer and now default skin feels more cohesive and looks better. The other UI is more minimalist than the default even, and basically strips away all the pretensions to give users a Menubar--basically Notepad's UI on WordPad's engine. The guts of the program are identical to WordPad, but Jarte expands on that feature set. Table, special character, and equation support make Jarte a good, lightweight editor. There's a built-in, scalable screen-capping utility that pushes Jarte closer to greatness. The rolled-in spell-checker was adequate, but not great. It held its own against some pesky typos, but struggled with "sentce," which should be "sentence." To be fair, it did call that out as a error--it just didn't know what to advise for it. Jarte includes tabs for managing multiple documents, and support for Microsoft's new DOCX. Interestingly, Jarte integrates with WordWeb, my favored desktop-dictionary app. It's a small, small freeware world.