Job’s dominance in the market stretched out well beyond that of Apple. He owned considerable shares in Disney after it’s acquisition of Pixar for which we can thank for making digital animation what it is today. With over 100 million people owning an iPhone and numerous other gadgets such as the iMac, iPod, AppleTV or the MacBook his legacy can be found world wide, piece by piece in everyone’s homes.

But what will become of what he has left behind? Will Apple continue to push forward with new technologies that continue to redefine the market? Will Tim Cook be able to develop the same cult like following in America’s youth? Or will Apple once again fade away into just a memory? Although I have never been the biggest fan of Apple, and can often quite vocal about my distaste for some of their practices, I hope that Cook does manage to do what Jobs has done, and hopefully even more. The more super powers we have in the tech industry the more competition there is, the more growth there is, and the more fun gadgets and services there are for all of us peons out there to play with.

Currently Apple’s site is quite displaying a picture of Jobs with the years 1955-2011 written next to it. After clicking the image one is presented with the following text:

These are the words of his successor, Tim Cook, who now holds the reins in his hands.

First open up your sources file in your favourite editor:

sudo pico /etc/apt/sources.list

Then add the following source:

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free

Next you’ll need to add the GPG Key:

wget -O - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key
sudo apt-key add -

Now you can install Opera using apt:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opera

In the event that you get The following packages cannot be authenticated as a warning, you will also need to run this command:

sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

From there just run the install command again, and you should have Opera up and running in a few minutes.

If you run into any issues, or need help installing any plugins, I would recommend checking out the Community Documentation.

Internet Explorer 6

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

• Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs
• Cick Add/Remove Windows Components
• Locate Internet Explorer and uncheck it
• Click Next and continue to follow the prompts

Note: Although this will remove all the links to Internet Explorer on your system it will not actually delete IE completely, as it is integrated with the Windows Shell it will still exist on your computer and be used for browsing files.

Chrome Frame
Our friends at Google have offered us another solution for those who cannot uninstall Internet Explorer 6. If you are not an Administrator on your system and cannot remove IE or install an alternate browser then Chrome Frame is the solution you’re looking for. After installing the plugin your browser will be able to render websites using Chrome’s engine, meaning your old and dusty copy of IE6 will be able to run HTML5 and not mangle every other site out there. How do you get this plugin? Just grab it at Google Code.

Internet Explorer 7

Windows XP and Windows Server 2000/2003

• Start->Control Panel->Add or Remove Programs
• Locate Internet Explorer 7 and click Remove

Note: Uninstalling Internet Explorer 7 will result in Internet Explorer 6 being restored

Windows Vista

• Start->Control Panel->Programs and Features
• Click View Installed Updates
• Locate Internet Explorer 7 and click Uninstall

Note: If the above method does not work for you try following these steps instead:

• Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\ie7\spuninst\
• Run spuninst.exe

Internet Explorer 8

Windows Vista

• Start->Control Panel->Programs and Features
• Click View Installed Updates
• Locate Internet Explorer 8 and click Uninstall
• Cick OK
• Click Yes when prompted

Windows 7

• Start->Control Panel->Programs and Features
• Click Turn Windows Features On or Off
• Locate Internet Explorer 8 and uncheck it
• Cick OK
• Click Yes when prompted

Note: If the above method does not work for you try following these steps instead:

• Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\ie8\spuninst\
• Run spuninst.exe

Stopping Automatic Updates from Installing Internet Explorer 7/8

• Open Internet Explorer
• Click Tools then Windows Update
• Select Custom
• Uncheck the box beside Windows Internet Explorer 7/8 for Windows XP
• Check the box beside “Don’t show this update again”

Windows will no longer try to install the newer Internet Explorer versions when doing its automatic updates.

A simple but incredibly useful plug-in for Firefox.  Colorzilla provides a small eye dropper in the status bar of your browser which can be used to determine the color of any DOM element.   But it does more than this, it can also generate a palette based on your selection, allowing you to develop websites with matching colour palettes.

MeasureIt

Another simple but essential plug-in.  How many times have you found yourself wondering if a set of elements line up properly, or wondering just how far apart they are.  MeasureIt allows you to draw a box on the your browser providing you with the exact dimensions in pixels.  It couldn’t get much more simple than that.

Firebug

Quite possibly the most powerful utility in any developer’s tool-belt.  It allows you to inspect the HTML and CSS and even tweak them on the fly.  You can easily identify JavaScript errors with Firebug, something that is almost impossible to do in Internet Explorer.  One of the most interesting things about Firebug, and one of the things that makes it most powerful, is that it has plug-ins of its own.  Some examples of such plug-ins are FireCookie, FirePHP and newest to the scene Google Page Speed.

Web Developer

The oldest and most heavily used tool hanging from my belt.  I can’t even begin to detail all of the features this plug-in offers.  Some examples include outlining table cells, resizing the browser’s view port, showing comments or hidden elements, validation tools, etc.  Even after using this tool for many years I am still discovering new features, and I sometimes find myself wonder if they just recently added it or if it’s been there for years and I’ve never noticed it.

UrlParams

Far too often I see developers printing out their GET and POST variables using a print_r or similar method. Little do they know how much more simple they can make their lives by adding this handy plug-in to their arsenal. UrlParams not only allows you to view your GET and POST variables but it allows you to tweak them on the fly.

I’m sure all of you have your own personal favourites, there are many I considered listing but decided to limit it to my five most treasured plug-ins. If there are any you feel should be on this list, by all means please share them in the comments.

Opera, on the other hand, I have always used for looking at “adult content.”  It keeps my history and recent searches free of questionable material, which is important in the event that a friend or family uses my computer to check their email or something. So with that being said, I use Opera a fair bit… Despite it’s quirks.

Every time I open Opera 9.62 I get this lovely error.  I use Opera in both Ubuntu Linux and Windows and usually I don’t have it install for a week before that error starts appearing. I’ve managed to fix it before, but it always comes back. But I’ve gotten into the habbit of just clicking Ok to continue doing my “work.”

So today when I heard that Opera 10 Beta was released to the public I was eager to give it a chance to see if it not only fixed this problem but created a better user experience.

Despite being a robust and versitle browser I never truely enjoyed the previous versions of Opera. I didn’t like the way it progressed through a stack of tabs.  In most browsers if you open 10 new tabs in the background, then click the last one, you can work your way back by closing each tab and getting the next newest tab.  Opera does this differently, it takes you right back to the tab that last had focus.  Although this makes sense, it creates a very broken experience which I have never been able to get used to.

Another thing that has always drove me crazy about Opera is the way it randomly changes tabs on me when I right click.  I doesn’t happen consistantly but it has hapen more times than I can remember.  I’ll go to right click a link to open it in a new tab, or to save an images, and it randomly jumps to another open tab.  It doesn’t appear to be something I’m accidentally clicking, rather just a random quirk.

The third and final quirk of Opera that keeps me from enjoying the experience is quite often when I double click some text, or select a block of text, it will randomly open my right click menu. Once it happens, it keeps happening whenever I click anything. It reminds me very much of an old Windows 95 bug, as they can both be fixed by actually right clicking, which seems to remind it which is the right click button and which is the left.  But enough about Opera 9.62, time to install Opera 10 Beta.

The installation was pleasent experience.  It was very quick, and it didn’t try to ask me to install any toolbars, set a specific home page or force me to set it as my default (though it did offer the option).  Within a minute I had it installed and was launching it for the first time.

Upon launching it was happy to see it started without the usual error I had come accustomed to.  But as I’ve said before, that usually doesn’t start up for a few weeks so I’ll wait and see if that has been fixed or not.  I was also very please with it’s new look and feel.  The tab bar has a much more sleek look to it, it reminds me somewhat of the new tab bars seen in Chrome and Safari.  The difference being that it doesn’t run along the top most part of the browser, which is good because that’s the one thing I don’t like about Chrome.  Other than that, not much has changed to the UI other than its slightly more modern look.

So the big question is, how does it perform?  According to my sources it has passed the Acid 3 test with flying colours.  Scoring an astonishing 100 out of 100.  Compare that to WebKit (Safari/Chrome) which also scored 100/100, or Firefox 3 with 91.  As for Internet Explorer 7, well lets just say that no one was surprised it only scored 14.  Here’s the official scores I was able to gather for a good comparison:

On top of the Acid tests, I also gave it my own barrage of tests. Overall, it did quite well. I visited every site I have ever designed, only to see it break one layout. A site which also breaks with WebKits Browsers, so that wasn’t much of a surprise.

New Features:

• New Rendering Engine (Presto 2.2)
• Inline Spell Check
• Auto Updates
• HTML Authoring (Opera Mail)
• Improved CSS 3 support
• HTML 5 Support
• Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Support
• Speed Dial Configuration
• Tab Bar Thumbnails

Overall I am quite happy with the new release of Opera.  It shows a great deal of promise and makes a great competitor in the browser wars.    Although it wont be my primary browser it will still get a good deal of use on my computer and still recieves a solid two thumbs up from me.

To implement this idea, all you have to do is add this JavaScript snippet to your page:

<!--[if IE 6]>
<script type="text/javascript">
/*Load jQuery if not already loaded*/ if(typeof jQuery == 'undefined'){ document.write("<script type="text/javascript"   src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></"+"script>"); var __noconflict = true; }
var IE6UPDATE_OPTIONS = {
icons_path: "http://static.ie6update.com/hosted/ie6update/images/"
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.ie6update.com/hosted/ie6update/ie6update.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

Or if you have a WordPress blog, you can install the WP-IE6Update WordPress plugin.