There is a battle for the hearts and wallets souls of our young surfing children on the interwebs. Parents are obviously concerned about the appropriateness of the world wide web being a kid's playground, so are looking for suitable controls to help them feel their children are protected online.

We looked at 2 kids browsers, Glubble and Kidzui, and gave them a test spin as well as subjected them to an unscientific kid focus group. Check out our results after the jump.

Install the add-on and you're given FireShot creates a tiny menu on your navigation toolbar that gives quick access to full-page and visible area capture functions. It does a great job at rendering pages, even those with Flash animations. Support for saving as PNG, JPEG, GIF, and BMP is built-in, as well as exporting to just about any editor.

What really sets FireShot apart, though, is the integrated upload feature. Select it, and you can resize your image on-the-fly and post it to FireShot's free image hosting repository with minimal effort. If there's one feature that helps sell a piece of software to us, it's how much time and effort we can save by using. FireShot makes putting browser screencap online so easy we almost feel lazy doing it. Almost.

Read it Later, a bookmarking plugin for Firefox that we first covered last year is now Firefox 3 compatible. The new version also adds a handful of new features that make it even more useful.

What makes Read it Later different from other bookmarking tools like the del.icio.us plugin for Firefox is the fact that Read it Later makes it easy to bookmark pages, but makes it just as easy to delete those bookmarks. While other services let you save pages forever, Read it Later is designed to let you come back to pages you just don't have time to read fully right now.

The latest version features:

• Offline viewing
• An RSS feed so you can subscribe to your bookmarked pages and keep track of them in a reader
• Synchronize your saved pages with other computers

You can also activate a new "click to save" mode by hitting Alt+M. In this mode, any link you click on a web page will automatically be saved to your reading list. Hit Alt+M again to deactivate this feature if you actually want to open up pages by clicking on links.

So you may have heard that Mozilla is hoping to set a world record for the most software downloads in a single day today. The company has been hyping today as "Download Day" for about a week. But a more apt name might be "Down Day." That's because GetFirefox.com is down. As in dead, kaput, service unavailable.

This probably shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but if you encourage millions of users to download your software on the same day, your servers are going to take a hammering. But it appears that even Mozilla had no idea how many people would be trying to download Firefox 3 today.

There's a good chance that you may get through if you keep hitting refresh. And there's a good chance that the company will manage to break the world record if it ever gets the servers back up. But you know what? If you don't really care about setting a world record, Firefox 3 RC 3 is pretty much identical to Firefox 3 final. So if you're already running RC2 or RC3, there's no need to kill yourself trying to update your browser today. Tomorrow, next week, or even next month will probably be soon enough.

In the meantime, if you've got your heart set on downloading a next-generation browser, you can always take Opera 9.5 for a spin. That company's servers are holding up just fine.

Update: Some users are reporting success with these download links. Windows, Mac, Linux

Update 2: It looks like the site is back up, but incredibly slow. Like dialup slow.

The folks behind the PicLens browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer are on a roll. Earlier this year the company rolled out an improved version that lets you view image slideshows from Google, Yahoo!, Flickr, Photobucket, SmugBug, Photobucket, and DeviantArt as a never-ending wall of pictures. Last month, PicLens added support for YouTube videos. And now PicLens 1.7 adds a whole new "Discover" section that lets you browse images and movies in categories such as:

• US News
• International News
  
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Movies/TV
• Fashion/Lifestyle
• Science/Technology
• Business

The content comes from several sources including MSNBC, ESPN, and movie trailer sites. And the content is constantly changing. You can access the Discover tab just by hitting the PicLens icon in your browser and selecting the Discover button on the left hand side of the screen.

PicLens has also added the ability to search Amazon.com from the main search box. And probably one of the most useful new features is a "Return to PicLens" button that pops up in your browser window any time you follow an image from PicLens back to its original source. This lets you go back to your PicLens session without starting over from scratch.

The makers of the Opera web browser don't officially make a portable version of the browser that can be run from a USB stick. But if you want to run the recently released Opera 9.5 browser without installing it or making any changes to your registry, one third party developer has got you covered with Opera 9.5 USB.

All you need to do to run Opera 9.5 USB is unzip the program folder to your hard drive or to a USB stick. You can run the program without affecting your current Opera versions or other web browser settings. And you won't leave any data on the host computer, so if you want to borrow a friend's computer without leaving access to your browser history behind, Opera 9.5 USB cold come in handy.

If you're more of a Firefox person, you can also grab a portable version of Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 RC2. Like Firefox Portable, Opera 9.5 USB is Windows only.

[via CyberNet]

Have you ever accidentally visited MySpace? Yeah, we probably have too, though, it was never a noticeable problem. In fact, we can't even remember it happening, but it seems like it has to have happened... right?

Well, this Firefox add-on promises to detect MySpace in Firefox, and provide a pop-up menu to stop unsuspecting web-browsers from hitting up the social network. The plug-in is obviously a joke, but we found a great use for it anyway -- avoiding phishing.

It's called AmIOnMySpace.com? and it can be used to detect the real MySpace site. If for any reason the message doesn't pop-up upon first visiting the social network, you're not on the real site. The biggest problem with using this as a way of avoiding phishing sites is that it doesn't alert users when leaving MySpace, so it's still possible to get attacked from within.

[via Digg]

It's been a few years since the Opera web browser's interface got a major overhaul. But now the Opera Desktop Team has posted an updated version of Opera 9.5 beta which features a shiny new theme.

The new theme is a bit closer to what you'll find on Opera's non-desktop browsers, including Opera 9.5 for Windows Mobile and Opera for the Nintendo Wii. Aside from a darker look, there are a few nice features, like an animated stop/refresh button that turns red when a page is loading, and green when it's finished.

There's also a new settings icon in the main toolbar that lets you open the side panel to launch the Opera Widget engine, bookmark sidebar and other tools.

The updated version of Opera 9.5 beta is a development snapshot, so there are some known issues. But there's an option to install this version side by side with an existing version of Opera so you don't lose your settings.

Like all modern web browsers, Firefox has a little search bar that lets you quickly access popular sites including Google, Yahoo!, Dictionary.com or Wikipedia. But the search bar is still a two-click solution. You enter your query and then visit another web site with a page of results before clicking through to your final destination.

Peers is a Firefox extension that saves you one click by showing search results as you type. Just select your search engine of choice and Peers will provide a drop-down list with clickable search results as you enter your query.

The browser plugin does for Firefox much of what Inquisitor does or Safari.

If you want to install peers on Firefox 3, you'll need to disable extension compatibility checking, which is easy to do, but can cause some problems if you're not careful. We can confirm that Peers works fine with Firefox 3 RC 1. But trying other extensions that are not designed for your version of Firefox can break your browser.

[via CyberNet and Mozilla Links]

For a long time, NetFront was the reigning champ of Windows Mobile and PocketPC web browsers. While Pocket Internet Explorer comes standard with most Windows Mobile phones and PDAs, the browser renders pages slowly, lacks support for tabs, and doesn't handle AJAX very well. NetFront does all of those things and more. And if it weren't for the introduction of Opera Mobile a few years ago, which has the same features plus speedier page rendering, we would still heartily be recommending NetFront.

But ACCESS, the company behind the NetFront browser is working hard to keep up with Opera. This week ACCESS released the second concept version (or beta) of NetFront 3.5 for Windows Mobile. When the final version is released you'll have to pay for this browser, but while it's in beta, it's free and definitely worth checking out. Here's a short list of updates in the latest version:

• Improved CPU usage
• AutoCruise function has been removed
• Faster page rendering
• Faster page zooming
• Faster scrolling
• Faster switching between rendering modes (landscape or portrait, single column or desktop style)

The beta will expire on August 31, 2008. Note that you should install NetFront to your device's main memory, not to a storage card or you may experience some stability issues.

The add-on manager in Firefox 3 adds a couple of nifty new features, including a recommended add-ons section. When you click the Tools menu and select Add-ons, the first thing you should see is a list of 5 recommended add-ons. This list will change regularly, and there's a link you can click to go to the add-ons web site to find more Firefox extentions.

But what if you want to see more than 5 items? Easy, jsut change hte default number using the about:config screen.

1. Type "about:config" (without quotes) into your address bar and agree to any warnings you may see about voiding your warranty or being attacked by dragons
2. Type "extensions.getAddons.maxResults" into the filter field
3. Change the number from 5 to something higher (or lower)

For some reason, Firefox 3 won't return more than 8 results no matter what number you put in the box. Go ahead and try 112, it won't break Firefox, because your browser will still only show you 8.

[via Daily Gyan]

Want to tweak the heck out of your Gmail interface, but don't want to install dozens of Greasemonkey scripts one at a time? Lifehacker's Gina Trapani has whipped up an updated version of her awesome Better Gmail 2 extension for Firefox. The latest version adds support for Firefox 3, plus a few other nifty features. Here are a few of our favorites:

• HTML signatures
• Gmail Redesigned skin, which makes Gmail look more like a desktop app. An awesome desktop app.
• A few other slightly less awesome skins
• Hide Spam count
• Include icons for file attachments

Once you install Better Gmail 2, you can find the options dialog in the Firefox Tools menu. Just check the boxes next to the features you want to enable and refresh your Gmail window.

Don't want to download a massive ZIP or RAR file just so you can extract one tiny file contained in the archive? ArchView is a Firefox add-on that will let you preview the contents of ZIP and RAR files posted online before you download them. And you can even download individual files from within the archive.

Archview hangs out in your status bar where you can click on it to enable or disable the plugin or change its settings. Future versions will add support for additional archive formats including ISO and 7z. Archview supports Firefox 2 and Firefox 3, but the version available at the official Firefox add-ons page claims that it isn't compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5 r Firefox 3 RC1. This isn't true, but you'll have to install the plugin from the developer's page if you're using anything newer than Firefox 3 beta 4.

[via gHacks]

IE7Pro is a plugin for Internet Explorer 7 and 8 that brings some of the best features of Firefox and other web browsers to Microsoft's browser. Yes, we know many folks would suggest just using Firefox or Opera, but if you need to use IE for one reason or another (perhaps there are some web sites you visit regularly which aren't rendered properly by other browsers), IE7Pro can make your browsing experience much more pleasant.

IE7Pro 2.3 was released today, with a handful of bug fixes and new features, including:

• FasterIE module with support for prefetching, which should speed up your browsing experience
• Session Manager which allows you to save open tabs when closing your browser and reopen those tabs next time you login.
• The MiniDM download manager now supports drag & drop and multiple links

You can check out a complete list of updates in the IE7Pro 2.3 changelog.

[via CyberNet]