Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3 final will be avaiable next Tuesday, June 17th.

Get ready for the fast Firefox 3. And pledge to download Mozilla Firefox 3 on June 17th , because they are aiming to set a world record.

This came out fast. Just before Mozilla Firefox 3 final is to be released, the Opera team has announced the immediate availability of Opera 9.5 final.

Three of the major changes in Opera 9.5 are :

• It now sports a new modern design with new icons and small changes in the interface.
• Major improvements in rendering engine resulting in better standards compliance.
• Opera M2 client is now much more functional & useful.

Visit Opera Download Page to download Opera 9.5 for your system.

You can find the complete changelog of this release here.

But some things are a bit out of place for me. Unlike other browsers close tab button is on the upper right of the tab. Not in the middle. Also I would have liked system widget integration like Firefox 3 does. The browser should look like a part of the OS you are using.

Anywayz a nice upgrade over Opera 9.25

After much delay, Wordpress 2.5 is now available for everyone to download.

Some of the exciting new features in Wordpress 2.5 are an all new customizable dashboard, support for multi-file upload, one-click plugin upgrades, faster load times, built-in galleries and much more. The Wordpress.org site has also been redesigned and it looks marvellous with the new colors and design.

But before you upgrade, make sure you have the latest back-up of your blog. Also its better if you upgrade all your plugins to make sure you there are no incompatibility problems. Unlike previous releases, this Wordpress upgrade involves some database changes too. So make sure you follow the official Wordpress instructions while upgrading.

I just finished upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 thanks to the Wordpress Instant Upgrade plugin and the screenshot you see above is of my all new dashboard. All my plugins seem to be working fine so far too. Just one gripe though, the new Wordpress dashboard design is not fluid in design and looks out of sorts on my widescreen laptop.

So are you upgrading your Wordpress blog to 2.5 ?

Download Wordpress 2.5

The official announcement

Just noticed this. The latest Firefox 3 Beta ( at present Beta 3 RC ) is now available in the Ubuntu Gutsy Repositories. The Ubuntu guys had not updated the Firefox 3 Alpha in the repositories for a long time, but now it is done.

To install the latest Firefox 3 Beta in Ubuntu Gutsy

1. Go to System —> Administration —> Software Sources
2. Then go to Updates tab, and tick “Unsupported Updates” checkbox.
3. Click Close. Ubuntu will ask you to reload the software list. Click Reload.
4. Then open a Terminal window and type apt-get install firefox-3.0

After installing, goto Applications —> Internet —> Firefox 3 Web Browser.

The Firefox 3 Beta will not replace your existing stable install of Firefox 2. So don’t worry. All your Firefox 2 settings and add-ons will remain intact.

Almost everyone now has a multimedia keyboard. But by default your keyboard’s multimedia keys let you control only Windows Media Player. But what if you use Winamp as your default media player and want to control Winamp using those multimedia keys ?

Winamp 5.5 now has a feature which lets you control Winamp’s playback even when Winamp is minimized to the system tray. To enable the feature:

1. Open Winamp and go to Options —> Preferences.
2. Then under General Preferences, go to Global Hotkeys.
3. Tick the check-box which says “Enable default multimedia key support”
4. Then click on “Close” on the bottom left end.
5. You will now be able to control Winamp using the multimedia keys of your keyboard.

Now you can start enjoying Winamp even more.