What's New

Mozilla launched a redesign of the official Firefox Add-ons website recently which changed the look and feel, and some functionality of the site.

Firefox Add-ons, or Mozilla AMO, is the central repository for Firefox add-ons. While it is still possible to offer add-ons elsewhere, the vast majority of add-ons is offered on Mozilla's official site.

The first thing you will notice is that the layout and visuals of the site have changed. The "explorer" page, the first that is opened when you open the Add-ons website, lists individual add-ons, topics, and themes.

The computer hardware information and monitoring software HWiNFO32 and HWiNFO64 5.60 has been released on November 2, 2017.

We reviewed the application in 2015 when HWiNFO 5.0 introduced remote sensor monitoring.

HWiNFO is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit program for Microsoft Windows devices. It can be used as a portable application, or installed on devices. There is even a DOS version available but it is no longer updated.

Dashlane 5 is the most recent version of the cross-platform password manager that is available for desktop and mobile operating systems, as well as a web version.

The password manager update is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and the Web. Support for Linux, Chromebook and Microsoft Edge is introduced in the new version so that it is now available on all major platforms.

EZBlocker is a free program for Microsoft Windows devices that blocks ads on Spotify when it is run on machines running Windows.

Spotify is available as a free version and a premium version. The free version includes advertisement and some other limitations such as limited song skipping or the best audio quality the service has to offer.

KB4051613  -- Update for Adobe Flash Player: November 1, 2017 -- is a new Windows Update that resolves Adobe Flash Player issues.

The update is available for all versions of Windows that include Adobe Flash Player natively. What's particularly interesting about that is that Microsoft released the patch not only for Windows versions that it supports, but also for versions of Windows that it no longer supports.

DeviceSwitch is a free portable program for Microsoft Windows devices to toggle (turn on or off) hardware devices with the click of the button.

The Windows operating system comes with built-in options to disable PC hardware. You can use the device manager for that, or the devcon command to turn off computer hardware.

Google Chrome blocks Flash content by default in recent versions of the web browser. Google furthermore removed controls from Chrome in regards to plugins and Flash, and will remove Flash support from the browser in the coming years as Adobe announced the retirement of Flash by the year 2020.

Foxit Software released Foxit Reader 9.0, a new major version of the company's free PDF reading software for Windows, to the public today.

The new version of the program comes with new features and improvements, and security and stability fixes.

Existing users can run a check for updates with a click on Help > Check for updates. You may download the new version from the Foxit Software website as well, and upgrade existing versions of the program or install it anew instead.

Our last review of Foxit Reader dates back to 2013 and Foxit Reader 6.0.

Bandwidth Hero is a free extension for Chrome and Firefox that compresses images before they are sent to the browser that requested them.

Images can make up quite a large chunk of a web page. This depends on a number of factors, for instance the type of site, and whether the webmaster has optimized the images or not.

WhatsApp added a new feature to its messaging applications that you may use to delete messages that you sent already using the client.

Messages that you sent up until now could not not be deleted by you after the fact. There was no grace period to undo the sending, and it seems that users requested such a feature which works similarly to how email providers like Gmail provide undo options for a short period of time after sending messages.

Some users on Twitter report that Google removed some of their documents on Google Docs for Terms of Service violations.

Bhaskar Sunkara for instance wrote that Google removed his document on Eastern European post-socialist parties that he stored on Google Drive.

Tfw your finalizing a piece on E. Europe post-socialist parties in Google Drive and Google removes it because it's in violation of its ToS??

Malwarebytes announced on October 26, 2017 that it will discontinue supporting the company's Junkware Removal Tool in the first quarter of 2018.

Junkware Removal Tool is a free program for Windows designed specifically to remove potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), adware, and other unwanted things from the operating system.

It supports the removal of programs, browser extensions, toolbars, and adware, and supports more than 250 different variants of junkware that it can remove in its latest version.

Mozilla plans to release the first major bits of Project Quantum, the organizations new web engine in Firefox 57 Stable on the desktop.

The new technology makes Firefox two times as fast as Firefox versions that were released in 2017 as well according to Mozilla.

Microsoft introduced Outlook.com Premium in 2016 as a paid upgrade for existing Outlook customers to take advantage of additional functionality.

AIMP is a popular music player that looks and behaves in many regards as Winamp, one of the most popular music players of all times for Windows.

AIMP 4.5 was released on October 30, 2017, and it is a new major update for the music player. The previous stable version, AIMP 4.13 was released in February of 2017, and work began on the new version of the player right after the release of that version in February.