The Mozilla Corporation has released an advance testing version of its popular Firefox Web browser, just days after Google revealed its competing Chrome software.

The second alpha of Firefox 3.1 was made available overnight. The software, code-named Shiretoko, is at this stage intended for software developers and testers only, with the stable and recommended version of Firefox being 3.0.1.

In a statement, Mozilla said the testing version of Firefox introduced several new features, including the browser's highly anticipated support for a new video tag element introduced with the HTML 5 standard to provide more functionality around the amount of video that is increasingly being delivered through Web browsers.

Auslogics says it will fully support the new web browser Google Chrome poised to become a powerful Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox rival.

The users of Auslogics BoostSpeed may be the first to experience the full Google Chrome support. This computer performance optimization software will protect the privacy of Google Chrome users, as well as optimize the new browser speed, all by the end of September 2008.

Microsoft Corp. moved a step closer to releasing an update of its Internet Explorer Web browser with the introduction Wednesday of its preliminary IE8 Beta 2 version .

Depending on the success of the beta version, Explorer 8 could be finished by the end of the year, although a firm release date has not been announced.

Privacy and security enhancements are key elements of Explorer 8. The latest version incorporates a number of new tools, including one that some have dubbed "porn mode." Using InPrivate Browsing, Web surfers can begin a private browsing session from a new tab button. In this mode, evidence of any visited Web sites, browsing history and Web "cookies" disappear when the user closes the tab.

Citrix Systems yesterday announced the imminent release of XenApp 5, in its latest attempt to strengthen its hold on the data centre and desktop virtualisation market.

XenApp 5, XenServer and XenDesktop will all be slotted into what the company has dubbed the Citrix Delivery Centre product line to create an “end-to-end virtualisation solution that spans servers, applications and desktop”.

The general availability release of XenApp 5 on 10 September will mean local applications start-up 10 times faster as well as a reduction in application management costs, the firm claimed.

Mozilla is accelerating JavaScript functions in pre-release versions of Firefox 3.1. Using the TraceMonkey just-in-time compiler the execution time for some functions is reduced to as little as five percent of previous version's execution time – the developers give some examples in the JavaScript Roadmap Blog.

In their blog, developers Andreas Gal and Michael Franz explain how the tracing mechanism in TraceMonkey works. One of the main tricks performed by Tracemonkey is that, where branching occurs, it generates not only the required code, but also considers and compiles the other branches and saves the code for subsequent use. The just-in-time compiler can generate code for x86 and ARM systems, which should also be a boost for the in-development Mobile Firefox.

Adobe Systems is revamping its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements software this fall with two major upgrades, in addition to the introduction of the new Photoshop.com membership, which inspires users to be more creative and always stay connected. Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Adobe Premiere Elements 7 will be available either as stand alone products, or as a single retail bundle package.

Photoshop Elements 7 comes with a new Smart Brush that helps users get incredible effects exactly how they want it, with one single stroke. In addition to that, the Scene Cleaner, which is based on Adobe’s Photomerge technology, allows users to modify a photo as they please, by removing unwanted objects from that photo.

This section describes the most user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 6.0-RELEASE. In general, changes described here are unique to the 7-STABLE branch unless specifically marked as [MERGED] features.

Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 6.0-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.

View: FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE  | Release Notes

Nokia PC Suite is a package of Windows-based PC applications developed especially for use with Nokia phones. Depending on your phone model, Nokia PC Suite lets you edit, synchronize and back up many of your phone's files on a compatible PC through a cable or wireless connection.

The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera's groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse. 

Barely two and a half months have passed, and yet another new eMule version is on the horizont. 0.49b continues to complete the agenda of its predecessor in the 0.49 series. This means further optimizations for Kad and more important immunity against recently researched routing attacks, several improvements of the GUI for Vista users, a new UPnP implementation, easier connecting to Kad for new users and fixing of an important bug which slipped into the last version.