Apple Safari - Is it the fastest browser?

I don't know if its too late, but let me say this, “Apple Safari 4 is cool”. I recently downloaded it when I discovered my recent love for everything and anything from Apple. But since I am in no condition of buying any Apple product, I thought of why not to get your hands on something which is free and at the same time Apple (rare combination!)

Apple Safari has a very distinct feel compared to other browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or 
Opera. Apple is known for its superior design and appearance in all of their products, and this one's up the mark too. The way your web pages load and appear is quite different from other browsers and it is simply a refreshing experience. Even the thumbnail preview of history pages is neatly stacked pretty much in the iPhone style. Just like the 'Speed Dial' in Opera, Safari too has got 'Top Sites' which lets you keep a collection of your favorite pages neatly arranged with their thumbnails. As you go on using Safari, it automatically identifies the websites most frequently visited by you and puts them in the Top sites list. You can of course manually put other sites in it too.

It supports tabbed browsing, which has now become a standard feature almost all major browsers. Tabs tend to reduce a little portion of the viewable area, but still Safari manages to provide a larger viewable area thanks to the absence of those space eating menu bars, title bars and what-not-bar! I agree that Safari may seem a little weird to those who are accustomed to using Internet Explorer. But with time, they get used to it, and probably do not think of returning back to Internet Explorer.

There are however some problems which prevent me from using Safari as my default browser. Opera is still my favorite browser. The first reason is that while browsing, it takes a considerable time to return to the previously viewed page. That is, you have to wait for some time for the page to load after you hit the back button of the browser. Opera does not make you wait too long to view the previous page. In fact it shows the page instantly as you click the Back button. Maybe this is because it caches the content of the web pages in some different way, I don't know, it is an altogether different topic. I don't know if I can call this a problem but every browser that I have used other than Opera suffers from this wait-to-view-the-previous-page disease. Users with fast Internet connections do not complain about this, but for us dialup folks(Yeah, I am still on dialup!) hitting the back button in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and even Chrome is a painful affair.

The other reason being the slightly longer time it takes to get started. But it does not matter much because you don't start a browser too often, you just do it once and then you browse with it. 

And yes, Apple calls it the world's fastest browser, but I found Opera faster than Safari.

Prevent Firefox from saving url in history

Firefox places a list of your visited urls in the history menu by default. You can prevent Firefox from saving your visited websites' names in the history drop down box by following these steps:

Go to the partition where Firefox is installed (e.g. Local Disk C or Local Disk D). Browse to Document and Settings \ !user name! \ Application Data \ Mozilla \ Firefox \ Profiles \ 0e0oiola.default. There should be a file named History.dat. All you have to do is right click on it, select Properties and check the read only check box. If done flawlessly, this will enable you to surf the net without leaving behind any tracks!

Make free calls anywhere in the world

So you thought nothing in this world is free? Wrong! You can actually make free calls or send free text anywhere in the world by registering a free account at tabrio.com. You are allowed to call for free for some initial 30 minutes (depending upon your location) until your balance runs out. After that you have to recharge your account to continue using the service. When you create an account at tabrio.com you get a balance of $0.33. You can view the calling rates for the for and from the location you are calling on the site itself. There are some other features also such as 

Tabrio Mobile which lets you start calls and send international texts to anyone at low costs without being near a computer.

Tabrio Desktop allows you to add, edit and delete contacts, add more calling locations, make calls, and send and receive text messages!

Tabrio Outlook Sync to Sync all your MS Outlook 2007 contacts to Tabrio in one easy step. Have the numbers that you need, when and where you 
need them.

Search lyrics of any song quickly

You don’t need to go to any specific lyric site and then search for your favorite song’s lyrics there. There is a quicker method you can use. 

To search any songs lyrics just type the songs name followed by : (colon)
e.g. to search for the lyrics of the song ‘In The End’ just type, in the end: lyrics

How to use proxy in Internet Explorer

Click tools > internet options

Select the connections tab and click on LAN settings

Check the checkbox for ‘use a proxy server for your LAN’ and enter the proxy and the port in the next box.

How to change your IP quickly

Here is a guide if you want to change your IP address easily. But remember that it changes your dynamic IP only, not the static IP. To do this,

Go to Start menu > run.
Type command and hit enter. A DOS window opens up.
Type "ipconfig /release" and hit enter
Type exit to close the window

Now go to control panel > Network Connections
Right click on Local Area Connection and click on properties.
Double click on the internet protocol (TCP/IP) from the general tab.
Type any random ip and press tab, then ok

Press ok again

Go back to the local area connections once again
Go back to the properties and double click the internet protocol (TCP/IP) from the generals tab once again.
This time, select the ‘Obtain an IP address automatically’ option
Hit ok

Hit ok again

Free dictionary in Google

If you want to find the meaning of a particular word you can do so easily by using google. Type ‘define:’ followed by the the word whose meaning you want to find. Google returns a list of meanings and definitions of the particular word in different contexts. e.g. define:exotic

Speed up Firefox browsing

If you use a broadband connection to connect to the internet then these tweaks will surely speed up your firefox browser. But if you use a dial up connection, I don’t think you will notice any change.

Open Firefox and type about:config in the address bar. This will bring up a menu with a large number of parameters having their preset values. You are supposed to change the following parameters and their corresponding values as shown.

network.http.max-connections – 48

network.http.max-connections-per-server – 16

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy – 8

network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server – 4

network.http.pipelining – true

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 100

network.http.proxy.pipelining – true

network.http.request.timeout – 300

another nifty tweak – right click anywhere on the screen and add a new > integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” without quotes. Set its value as 0.

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. As you are using a broadband connection, your browser does need to wait unnecessarily.