The idea of a Chromium based Edge probably came from Mobile

When Microsoft announced a new browser replacing the clunky Internet Explorer with a refreshed, lightweight and modern browser, the industry had a lot of expectation from the new browser, Microsoft Edge. Though, what followed was a release of a half baked browser with the initial version of Windows 10. The blue logo with "e" didn't help with the visual cues for user as well. That combining with the lack of extension and customization, Microsoft had a browser which needed some serious attention.

It's been three plus years since that happened, Microsoft has been refining Edge and adding new features to it but rather slowly as compared to the competition. The updates came with the major Windows 10 updates, that happened at irregular points of time before Microsoft decided to stick to two releases from last year. Extension support came almost after one year and the selection is still limited. Meanwhile, the demise of Windows 10 Mobile relieved the Edge team of updating it's mobile browser but Microsoft knew they had to keep their browser relevant to users, only way to achieve that was to release the browser to other mobile platforms. Hence they released Edge for iOS and Android, only this time, the browser was based on the web engine supported in the platforms, WebKit for iOS and Blink for Android.

How to dowload YouTube videos without extensions or software

So you just bumped up on a YouTube video which you want to download and watch it offline. It can be a cute cat video or the latest trailer of your favorite star's movie, anything literally as long as it is in YouTube, you can download it. But you are not interested in downloading a YouTube video downloader software or adding an extension to your already clumsy list of addons in your browser.

The video can be downloaded easily by using "ClipConverter" website. In addition to the download option, you also get the choice to select the quality of video. Also you get the choice to convert the video into mp4,3GP,avi, mov video formats or mp3,m4a,aac audio formats. Here are the steps which are fairly easy to follow.

The top 3 YouTube apps for Windows 10 devices

"What !? Windows 10 doesn't have a official YouTube app?" This is something I have heard from my friends, specially in the case of Windows 10 Mobile. For the record, Windows (phone) never had a official YouTube app. Thank Google for that. But that doesn't mean that there is no way to access YouTube. You can do so using your web browser to access the mobile site for occasional browsing and watching videos. This won't suffice if you want save videos offline, get notification from your favorite channels and other advanced features which you can find in the official YouTube app in other platforms.

Fortunately, there are several beautiful third party apps that are equivalent to the official apps. Here is a list of such apps.

1) Tubecast

Multitasking : A video running in the bottom left corner while browsing other videos.

Tubecast is one of the finest and full featured YouTube client that you will ever find in Windows. The interface is clean and slick. You can log in using your Google account and bring your favorite channels at the finger tips. You can also comment in a video without leaving the screen and the app supports swipe gestures making navigation a breeze in touch enabled devices. Offline videos (Preload) are supported and you can choose between SQ,HQ or HD for saving that video. It has a live tile and supports push notifications to keep you updated.

Microsoft Edge will become my primary browser but WHY ?

If you have been following me for a long time, you probably know that Chrome has been my browser of choice since I started blogging but that is about to change for several *good* reasons. With the recent tests and improvements made to Edge, it is time to reconsider the options available in the market.

What's wrong with Chrome ?

Chrome once represented what a modern browser should be. Be it the extensions and themes support or the simplicity of it's UI combined with good performance kept me hooked to it for a long time in my desktop. It still has all these features with Sync using Google account being a very useful feature for Android users.

WhatsApp for PC : Hands on and the (im)possibility of UWP app

WhatsApp announced their desktop apps for PC and Mac, which is nothing more than a web wrap of WhatsApp Web but with notifications directly in your computer.

Opening the app presents you with the same UI that you find in WhatsApp Web. The login process is also similar, you open WhatsApp in your phone and scan the QR code, voila ! All your chats are synced to your desktop.

The application has a set of options in the menu bar. Under WhatsApp menu you have "new chat", "new group", "Profile status" and "Log out" which are pretty obvious and useful. The "+" sign also allows you to start a new chat with your contacts.

Microsoft replaces SkyDrive with OneDrive

Microsoft has been in a trademark dispute with BSkyB due to the name of it's cloud storage, SkyDrive. So Microsoft has decided to rename it's cloud storage to OneDrive. It is not just changing the name, there might be new features in OneDrive as the description of the OneDrive preview website reads.

Get ready for an even better place to store and share your favorite things across all your favorite devices.OneDrive is everything you love about SkyDrive and more. And it's coming soon.

Microsoft explains the reason behind the change in name in the OneDrive blog."Of course, changing the name of a product as loved as SkyDrive wasn’t easy. We believe the new OneDrive name conveys the value we can deliver for you and best represents our vision for the future. We are excited about what is to come, and can’t wait to share more." 

Images can do the talking in Gmail !

Gmail is getting a small but a cool feature which will let the images load automatically in mail which will make the mail look more beautiful and interesting. Previously Gmail asked you whether to display images or not. The reason was to provide a secure mail experience but this problem has been overcome by Google by displaying the images via their own secure server so that you can see the images in mails and also have a safe mailing experience. Gmail is getting better and better ! This feature will be rolled out to all the desktop,android,iOS users in early 2014 .

"Have you ever wondered why Gmail asks you before showing images in emails? We did this to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise the security of your computer or mobile device.

But thanks to new improvements in how Gmail handles images, you’ll soon see all images displayed in your messages automatically across desktop, iOS and Android. Instead of serving images directly from their original external host servers, Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers. " reads the official post.

Microsoft pokes fun at Chromebook : Video

Microsoft is now taking Chromebook as it's prey in it's Scroogled campaign. Microsoft in it's new video about Chromebook states that Chromebook is a brick without internet connection which not completely true as Google is trying hard to deliver apps that run offline like Gmail offline.

Microsoft teases the Chromebook by saying that it is not at all a laptop with Office or Windows not installed and they call Chromebook a piece of hardware which tracks all your activity in it which will be used to serve ads to you. This is not completely true, though.A girl wants to sell her Chromebook to a shop but the shop keeper says that it is a useless laptop. And also it's scroogles your data.

Gmail will look better in your iPad

Google have updated Gmail iOS app on iPad which features some new looks for Gmail. The improvements clearly lead to a better user experience and the official blog post shows these changes in action ! So if you are using Gmail app on iPad then consider updating your Gmail app to get the best of Gmail.

Journey through the middle-earth,a new Chrome Experiment

Google has released a new Chrome Experiment which puts the power of Chrome to test . This experiment is directly promoting The Hobbit sequel. The graphics are pretty much impressive and this experiment works best on Chrome in any device. The 3D graphics are well rendered in Chrome with WebGL and HTML 5. It's always nice to see these powerful technology used in eye catching experiments like this.

SkyDrive to NewDrive !

SkyDrive is a very popular cloud storage service developed by Microsoft. SkyDrive is playing a major role in the vision of the Redmond tech giant. But there is one problem with it's name which still hinders the company at several intervals. Back in September, Microsoft settled a trademark dispute with British Sky Broadcasting Group, promising to change the name of its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service in a reasonable time.

This is not the official logo !

So it's a long time since that announcement and the time has arrived for Microsoft to change the name of SkyDrive. It seems that NewDrive will be the new name for SkyDrive and it will come into effect at any time. It's notable that the tech giant has already purchased newdrive.com which currently redirects to skydrive.com. What do you think about this new name " NewDrive" ?

Chats come to life in Facebook

I reported that facebook has added a new feature in chat which shows where your friends are accessing facebook from. This time there is complete refresh of the chat interface with a light blue background. You can see the changes in the picture below.

Facebook is trying to unify the UI across Computer and Mobile devices. This change seems to be part of the transition. It look more like how chat looks in Mobile app.May be facebook is going to get small changes often.

Facebook chat gets minor changes

Facebook has been improving chat over the last couple of years by bringing some drastic changes like the new big and interactive emojis. This time they have introduced a new feature which shows if the user available in chat is using facebook via mobile or web (which means via the facebook website).

This won't change how facebook works but it is just a good addition to fb chat !

Chrome 31 Stable released

Google Chrome has been updated to version 30 with some new features and some background changes which improves the performance and security of the popular browser. The new version includes support for Web payments, portable native code, and 25 security fixes.

Petition launched to bring back the old YouTube comments system

Google wants to integrate all their services with G+ so that they can expand G+ to a bigger and better social network but they are doing this in a undesirable way.

Internet Explorer is on top !

Source :- www.netmarketshare.com

Internet Explorer is the world's most popular browser as of now and this won't change any sooner as the market share of Internet Explorer has shown improvement over the last few months, thanks to IE 10 in Windows 8 and Windows 7. 

Windows 8 goes down as Windows 8.1 grows

Windows 8.1 is already in full phase replacing Windows 8 and this is clearly found in the new reports from netmarketshare .

Learn all the programming languages from a single website !

Welovecoding.com is a website in which you can learn all computer programming languages with YouTube videos from the scratch ! I found this website via their Windows 8 app which also teaches all the languages for FREE !

I am currently studying the C++ from this website and it has helped me a lot to understand the language better. All the tutorials contain Video tutorials which makes understanding easier. If you are seriously in for some learning and coding, then this is the place to go. 

New Bing.com is available for Windows 8.1 users !

Bing has got a new face in Windows 8.1. It has got the new Bing which was announced some time ago. Windows 8.1 is the first OS to get the new Bing and other versions of Windows and other OS'es should wait for some more weeks to get the new design of Bing.

Click to enlarge

Microsoft seems to thank the users who moved to Windows 8.1. Windows 8 will get this update with other older versions of Windows such as Windows 7 and Vista . One more good thing is that the new Bing can be accessed via any browser in Windows 8.1. Good thing that Microsoft did not lock this down to IE 11 users !

HTML 5 test website gets a new update

The website which measures the HTML 5 capability of the browsers is getting ready for a major overhaul. The new site is in beta stage which implements new HTML 5 features for browsers. The total points has been increased to 555 from 500 points in the older site.

This website has been around for years and they have been increasing the support for HTML 5 without any visual overhaul till now. The time has come it seems and they have also taken a modern approach in design of Website as it's in the likes of flat 2D buttons which follows the trend set by Windows 8. You can check the new website here . Don't worry your browser won't crash except it is IE 6.. jokes aside. Even though this site has a beta label, it is not going to do anything bad  to your browser.