Youtube is the 3rd most visited site in the world as per Alexa rankings. YouTube is serves more than 89% of online video views and with other mind-boggling stats, it just keeps getting better. Unless you live a part of the world that still uses dial-up internet, you might be spending atleast a few hours per week to watch Youtube videos.

Today we have something that enhances your video viewing experience – Youtube Enhancer. This userscript does a lot of value addition to Youtube and makes it a perfect application for viewing online videos. Simply install Youtube Enhancer script (Firefox users will need Greasemonkey addon to install this script while Chrome users won’t require anything and get lots of useful options on Youtube.

Some of the nice features of Youtube Enhancer:

• Hover previews: Simply take your mouse over a video thumbnail and it shows more frames from the video.
• Download videos: While viewing a video, a blue download button appears to the top-right.
• Lights-off: Clicking on the small bulb icon in the top-right makes the screen go black Ento give you that ‘theater-feel’.
• More playback options: You will see some more controls like ‘loop the video’, ‘step forward/backward’, ‘kill stream’ and buttons to see videos in all quality and sizes.
• Autoplay on/off
• Better volume control
• Lots of keyboard shortcuts

There’s no reason you shouldn’t be using this free script. Download & install Youtube Enhancer now!

Yes, I was in a hiatus for a few days and I hope you missed our posts. ;) But I am back online to rock n roll. It’s not so surprising that the Google+ fever has not yet subsided. People are actively signing up on the new social network and are having a really positive opinion about it. Google finally did social the right way.

Now the developers at Abelssoft made this nifty little Google+ desktop client for windows. You can easily access Google+ in a slick window that sits on your desktop. The UI is clean and intuitive. You can see your G+ feed, +1 posts, comment and share a new post with your circle of friends. It also provides tray notification. It only lacks the ability to upload pictures and videos. But it’s an app worth trying out. Do check it out.

Download G+ client for Windows

Opera, known for its bold and innovative steps to make browsing a better experience has rolled out exciting new features in the latest release Opera 11.50, the most prominent being live content in Speed Dials.

Essentially, the Speed Dials will now work more like widgets. Dynamic content will be fetched from websites and shown with live updates within the browsers landing page. This makes so much sense as it completely eliminates one user-action. Weather updates, stock trends, live news feeds, etc will replace the generic images in Speed Dials.

Other worth mentionable improvements in Opera 11.50 include password synchronization across Opera installations on multiple computers, integrated Read It Later support, slight changes in GUI, better web standards support, performance boosts, etc. Fan or not, you should try Opera because it just keeps getting better.

Download Opera

Yes, as per the official schedule, Firefox 5 is going to be released on June 21 but it’s ready and you can download it from the ‘warehouse’, I mean, the unofficial repository.

Just so you know, Mozilla, and almost all browser developers, have now started following the ‘release often’ policy whereby you will see newer versions of your browsers every 3 months or so. The versioning numbers will also increment at a faster rate. After Firefox 4, a new version is now due. Firefox 5 brings in lot of bug fixes and new features like Do Not Track Header. Download Firefox 5 here:

Firefox 5 for Windows

Firefox 5 for Linux

Firefox 5 for Mac OSX

The social-savvy browser Rockmelt is now available on the Apple App Store for iOS devices – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

We reviewed Rockmelt’s desktop version back in November when it was released. It’s a god-send for those who wish to stay ahead of the lot in the social-media game. Rockmelt lets you log into an array of different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., save articles for reading later and act as an RSS reader.

The tight integration of various services with a fast and responsive browser is what makes Rockmelt apart. Plus, it also features syncing your browsing data, bookmarks, View later items, etc. with your computer. All of this is now available for your iPhone and iPad, for free. Here’s the Rockmelt for iPhone video:

Get Rockmelt for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

uTorrent, the most light-weight and widely used torrent client, has entered version 3.0 beta with some decent new features apart from the major UI overhaul. Torrents have always been a tricky business for beginners. This major update tries to streamline the torrent-related tasks while adding significantly enhanced features.

Streaming mode: Torrent download is unsequential, unlike normal files. They get downloaded in chunks called ‘pieces’. Unless the first and/or last piece is downloaded, you can’t preview a file. However, uTorrent 3.0 introduces ‘Streaming mode’ which prioritizes the download of first and last few pieces so you can enjoy a video / audio file while it is still downloading.

New Apps: uTorrent 3.0 offers new apps that enhances functionality. There are extensions (apps) like TorrentTweet, uMap, SocialLibrary, content catalogues like Khan Academy, TEDtalks, Zulu Music, etc. that add value to uTorrent. These apps are easily customizable and can be removed.

Sending: You can now send large files to your friends directly from uTorrent. Simply drag the files onto the drop zone and uTorrent will create a web-link which you can then share to your friends. They will be able to download the torrent even if they don’t have uTorrent installed because it will be bundled along.

Comments & Rating: Torrents are vulnerable to phishing. They can be fake and may contain virus. So, uTorrent has now added the ability to rate and comment on a particular torrent from within the client. You can see comments and ratings by others which will help you determine the quality and authenticity of it.

uTorrent 3.0 beta also boasts other important features like remote management and portable view, along with some bug-fixes, improvements and enhanced stability. You can download the 32 bit installer here. A 64 bit version is also available but it’s a lot unstable at the moment.

In the process of streamlining the developer versions and regular versions of Firefox, Mozilla has decided to bifurcate them in 4 channels and release them often in an organized pattern. These channels are: Nightly, Aurora, Beta and Release. This is the ‘rapid iteration’ process that almost all browsers have adopted recently.

Nightly (previously known as ‘Minefield‘) is the most volatile version of Firefox. It is not even a pre-release. However, it incorporates the newest innovations and gets updated on a daily basis. It is not officially recommended but if you are inclined, http://nightly.mozilla.org/.

Aurora, which is a new addition to the group, is a relatively safer version than the Nightlies but not as much as the Betas. It can be called the pre-release version of the next iteration of Firefox. Aurora channel just went online and it’s already offering Firefox 5 Alpha 2. Although Mozilla does say ‘proceed with caution’, Aurora is stable enough for the developers to work on. You can download it from here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/channel/

Beta is for general audiences to get the taste of what’s coming. Almost devoid of bugs, it lets users experience the new version of Firefox and provide feedback.

Final Release is the most stable release. Millions use it and so will you, if you hate mess ups of all kinds.

The channel structure for Firefox existed since a long time but it wasn’t particularly well-maintained. With Mozilla’s dedicated efforts to renovate the channels and release iterations on a timely basis, Firefox 6 and even Firefox 7 may get released by the end of this year.

Phew! After a seemingly never ending development cycle, a dozen beta releases, 2 RC versions and a lot of bug fixes, Mozilla has unveiled the final version of Firefox 4 on March 22, as promised.

This is a great news for Firefox fans as their favorite browser is now revamped to the state of awesomeness with literally hundreds of optimizations, enhancements, features and better security. Those using Firefox 3.6 can now safely move on to Firefox 4 because it is much stable and offers great value.

We have covered a lot about Firefox 4 but I would still like to summarize some of its striking new features.

• App Tabs: Sites that you visit the most, you can give them a permanent spot in your tab bar by pinning them as App Tabs.
• Better Addon Manager: The new addon manager comes packed with a great UI and some subtle but really useful features. Addons are better manageable and can be set to auto-update. Some of the recently released addons now don’t require browser restart.
• Tab Grouping: Reduce clutter by organizing tabs into groups.
• Inbuilt Firefox Sync: Take your personalized settings to multiple devices by synchronizing settings, passwords, bookmarks, history and open tabs.
• Latest Web Standards compliance: Whether it be WebM, multi-touch, 3D graphics, HD video, SVG images, full hardware acceleration, HTML5 or CSS3, Firefox 4 does it all.
• Faster performance & security: With the new JägerMonkey Javascript engine, Firefox 4 offers faster start up, enhanced graphics rendering and improved page load speeds.

These are just prominently advertised features. You download it and feel the difference yourself. I have been using the betas and the RC for quite a time and I can safely say that Firefox 4 is truly fast, responsive and offers a great browsing experience. And did I mention, hardly any crashes?

Download Firefox 4. If the link still shows Firefox 3.6, download FF4 from here: (1) Windows: Firefox Setup 4.0.exe (2) Linux: Firefox-4.0.tar.bz2 (3) Mac: Firefox 4.0.dmg.

Before I conclude, here’s the official video from Mozilla describing the new features of Firefox 4.

Microsoft has just released the 9th incarnation of most widely used browser in the world – Internet Explorer 9. After over a year of developmentand a few pre-release versions and betas, the final product went live on March 14, 9pm PT.

Thankfully, IE9 is the most standards compliant browser in its lineage which is a great relief to web-designers and of course to users, too. It has been developed from scratch and has far better features and enhancements than its predecessor IE8. With speedy performance, hardware accelerated graphic improvements, compliance to HTML5/CSS3 standards, better UI and touch support, enhanced security and strong integration with Windows 7, IE9 emerges as a powerful competitor to Firefox 4 and Chrome.

If you are using IE8 or, god forbid, IE7 or IE6, it is very strongly recommended that you upgrade to IE9.

Download Internet Explorer 9 (Final version)

After a really long development cycle, Firefox 4 is ready to be unveiled. Mozilla has released the RC1 version aimed at developers to perform last minute testing and report bugs if any. On the other hand, Google has steadily progressed towards developing and delivering Google Chrome version 10.

Firefox RC1 can be downloaded from Mozilla’s FTP servers as they still haven’t updated the official download page. Download Firefox RC1 here. Here’s Mac version and Linux version.  We have covered Firefox 4 extensively so please check out these popular posts:

• How to: Remove Firefox 4 title bar and modify addon-bar’s background color
• Feature: App tabs in Firefox 4 Beta 2 [VIDEO]
• Feature: Inroducing Firefox Tab Candy; manage large number of tabs easily
• How to: Enable ‘All Tabs Preview’ in Firefox 4

Coming back to Chrome, version 10 (build v10.0.648.127 has hit the stable channel, which, as Google claims, is much faster and optimized to use less resources. Google Chrome 10 is now available for download here. This version has some great enhancements:

• 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.
• GPU Accelerated Video
• ‘Settings’ now open in a tab instead of a window.
• Password Sync now enabled by default
• Background Web apps.
• Speedier browsing experience.

The following videos explain the new features in Google Chrome 10.

To make things a little funny, Interner Explorer 9, too, is just around the corner.