I have found the perfect browser! Well, it's perfect for ME anyway. I finally found a browser that has all the really nice features of Netscape and Firefox but actually runs like Explorer so the web pages you view don't get all messy.
One of the really great features about Netscape and Firefox is tabbed browsing. This allows you to load multiple web pages in a single browser window. It's VERY handy if you like to switch back and forth between different pages or if you tend to open a LOT of pages at once. Having them all tabbed in the same browser saves a LOT of desktop space and memory. Explorer never got around to putting in that feature so every time you want to look at a new page you have to either dump your current page or open a whole new copy of the broswer. Well not anymore.
Avant Browser is really more of an overlay for Explorer than a separate program. Everything works just like Explorer. Everything is in the same place as you remember it. You just get more control over EVERYTHING. Want to block those pop-up ads? No problem. Lots of browsers do that now. Want to block those sometimes obnoxious Flash ads that slow your system to a crawl while they show commercials? It's just a click away with Avant. No external add-ons needed. Of course, there's the tabbed browsing as I mentioned before, but also you get GROUP launching. Think of your favorites menu. Now, say you like to view 5 specific newspapers every day. You normally go one by one through favorites or maybe on your "links" bar. With Avant, you can load them into a group then launch that group and watch those tabs fly baby! It'll load them all for you in separate tabs for you to view when you want. Fabulous program. You can customize your menus in ways Windows only dreams of! You can change how it looks and, if you download a little sub-program, you can change the skins making the browser look however you damn well want it to look.
I found it over on CNET. I'd been over there reading a story on something and one of their little "also featured" links caught my eye. Did a little reasearch and as it turns out, I'm not the only one who likes Avant. It gets 4 or 5 out of 5 stars pretty much everywhere it's listed. And here's the best part: It's free! That's right, it's free. You download it, install it, done. No ads, nothing. The programmer asks for a donation of course, and if you can afford it, you should be nice and pay him a little something. But the program will run the same, pay or not.
If you want to check it out, head over to cnet.com and do a search for Avant Browser. You can read up on the review and see screenshots before you download it.
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I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, everyone should sample a little bit of world literature from time to time. Wait, that sounds too snotty. Forget the "literature" part. Read some books from other countries. Why? Because it sure is a whole lot more fun when you can't figure out all the plot "twists".
I just finished The Inugami Clan last night. Great mystery novel. I've got a rather large selection of books from Japanese authors and the collection is growing. Since I studied English in college and read a LOT of books from Britain and the US, it's become quite easy to figure out where books are going long before I get to the end of the story. The "twists" that the authors put in to shake things up, I can usually spot those FAR in advance. In short, I find too many books to be predictable.
Now, that's not entirely a BAD thing. I mean, you pick up something by Shakespeare and it's got "TRAGEDY" in the title, you KNOW half the cast is going to be dead by the end of the play. Hell you can even predict how some of them are going to die. That's called foreshadowing. The problem comes when every book you see can be summed up as a variation of another book or pair of books. It's a very bad thing when you can write off novels the way Hollywood people write off movies: "oh, it's The Matrix meets Logan's Run" or "It's The Incredibles meets Harry Potter". That's bad for movies and it's even WORSE for books.
What I used to do was just switch genres. I'd read some sci fi, then some generic fiction, maybe something historical, keep things changing. But after a while even that's not enough. You see influences from one novel reaching into the others and you start to wonder if these people actually bothered to check and see if their "unique idea" had already been done a half dozen times. And I'm talking about series fiction. You expect, for example, all the Mike Hammer novels to be about the same. That's why you buy them. I'm talking about the books that are SUPPOSED to be different but aren't.
About the worst thing you can do is read the classics. That sounds bad but it's true. I've read a good chunk of the classics and that really does mess up modern fiction for you. Knowing that a certain story is just a retelling of a book from 40 or 50 years ago, it makes the author seem a bit lazy and it adds to the predictability.
So, if you read a lot and you want to KEEP reading a lot, try looking for books from other countries, the more foreign the better. I tend to head for Asia myself, usually Japanese and Chinese. Their stories build up in an entirely different way and I find that change quite refreshing.
Listen to me, I sound like a critic today :-)
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And our final item for today, Rear Window. Ever see it? If not, go out and get it, it's fabulous. I already loved that movie but now that I'm living in an apartment, I've found a whole new appreciation for it.
Basic story is this: photographer, injured while on assignment, is stuck in his apartment in a wheelchair with a broken leg. Bored out of his mind, he grabs his camera and using the telephoto lense, he starts watching the people in the courtyard and windows of the apartment complex he lives in. Each apartment has it's own little story of course, but the main one has to do with . . . nah, you just get the movie and watch it yourself. :-)
What's interesting is seeing how little things have changed over the years. We live in apartment complex now, having lived in houses up til now. And while the layout is different of course, if you watch the people who live here, you can find all the characters from Rear Window (minus the . . . nope, not going to give away the plot).
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SO, to recap, go to cnet.com and download Avant Browser, go to your neighborhood bookstore and get something foreign and pick up a copy of Rear Window. Then enjoy your weekend :-)
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