Software : Download guide: How to build your perfect browser with Vivaldi

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Download guide: How to build your perfect browser with Vivaldi Posted: Download Vivaldi free and create your own browser Vivaldi is a free, open source browser that will change the way you surf forever. It's almost infinitely customizable, letting you adjust every link, toolbar, shortcut and gesture to suit you and putting all the sites and tools you need at your fingertips. Vivaldi is built on the same foundation as Google Chrome, so it also supports hundreds of extensions including ad-blockers and YouTube downloaders. Download it free and make the web work for you. Color schemes are Vivaldi's latest addition, and after installing the browser you'll be invited to select a palette (note the Internet Explorer-inspired theme cheekily named Redmond). If nothing here takes your fancy, you can select your own exact shades in the browser's settings later. Theme scheduling is planned for the browser's next release, letting you pick different colors for certain times of day. Next, choose where you want the tab bar positioned. It might seem counter-intuitive to have your tabs along one side if you're used to Chrome, Firefox, IE or Edge (and you can keep them at the top if you prefer) but these extra options give you a live thumbnail preview that makes managing open pages easier. Finally, you'll be asked to pick a background for your start page; there's a selection of tasteful abstract options, or you can use a photo of your own. Your default homepage in Vivaldi is called Speed Dial. It's similar to the bookmarks toolbar, with sites represented by square tiles. Each tile has a refresh button that enables you to check for updates without visiting the site - particularly useful for blogs. Move your cursor over a tile and click the cross to remove it, and use the plus button to add new ones. Beside the Speed Dial heading you'll see a plus icon, which lets you add another page for quick navigation; you might want one page for work, another for social media and another for academic resources, for example. If you're more of a traditionalist, you can set a single site as your homepage and manage your favorite sites using the bookmarks menu. Bookmarks work just like they do in Firefox, Chrome, IE and Edge, and you can add several sites at once by right-clicking the tabs bar. Bookmarks and downloads are accessible via a narrow navigation bar on the left called the Panel, which can be collapsed using a little switch at the bottom. Here you'll also find a notes tool that works much like a text-only version of Evernote, enabling you to jot down thoughts while you browse. You can also add site links to the Panel, which open alongside the main browser window. This is a particularly good way to keep an eye on your Twitter feed. At the bottom of the Panel you'll find Vivaldi's main settings icon. As you'd expect, the options here are extensive. Some of the most significant are: Keyboard, where you can define your own shortcuts Mouse, for setting gestures Privacy, including phishing protection If you're on a slow connection, you can toggle images off using the small picture icon at the bottom left. The double arrow icon beside this offers a range of filters and effects. Some of these (like highlight focus and the CSS debugger) have a clear purpose, whereas others (like the 3D effect that skews the page to create a 'turning' effect) are just for fun. Finally, visiting vivaldi://extensions gives you access to the Chrome web store, where you can install any add-on built for Google's web browser. Extension icons will appear to the right of the browser's search box. Vivaldi has an active and enthusiastic community of developers working to add more features and options, so keep an eye on the team blog to find out what's coming up next. Happy browsing.

Round up: The best free download manager 2016 Posted: The best file downloader and accelerator The best free download manager Older internet users will remember the pain of downloads: you'd spend a few days trying to download a GIF of a cat, only for the connection to drop when someone else picked up the phone. Download managers were essential, because they enabled you to resume broken downloads and make the darn things download faster too. Dedicated managers and accelerators are still relevant today, especially if you're prone to downloading enormous operating system ISOs or trying to get your videos via unreliable Wi-Fi. These are our favorite apps for taming traffic, boosting BitTorrent and managing media downloads. 1. Ninja Internet Downloader A superb free download manager for saving and converting media files Ninja Internet Downloader is a relative newcomer to the downloading party, and it looks considerably more contemporary than its, er, contemporaries. The interface is simple and modern, the download accelerator capable of up to 10x acceleration, and if you tend to download media such as music or movies you'll be delighted by its sequential downloading. Many download managers download chunks here and chunks there until you have the whole file, but Ninja Internet Downloader starts at the beginning. That means you can preview files long before they've finished downloading. There's also a built-in video downloader and media converter. Not bad for a free app. 2. Free Download Manager An open source program with all the media management tools you need Free Download Manager aims to be all things to all men and women. It's a download accelerator, a BitTorrent client, an audio and video previewer and a traffic management tool, and because it's open source there's no charge to use it, and it's completely free from adverts. There's a portable version that you can run directly from a USB stick, plus powerful scheduling features and a nifty remote control that means you can leave your downloads running and check on their progress from any internet-connected device. It can spider sites to download specific kinds of files, and you can choose to download only the bit(s) of a ZIP file you actually want. It's really good, and it was tough to choose between this and Ninja Internet Downloader for the top spot. 3. Download Accelerator Plus Only a taster of the premium edition, but it might be all you need The free version of Download Accelerator Plus is handy enough, but is really designed to sell a paid-for product - in this case DAP Premium, at £18.95 (about US$20, AU$30). The free version lacks the DAP Premium's privacy protection and fastest acceleration, but it does include a link checker, video previewing, file conversion, safe downloading and multiple connections to boost the speed of your downloads. It's clearly designed for media downloading and can help avoid irritations such as slow servers and internet congestion. 4. JDownloader 2 An advanced manager for more experienced downloaders JDownloader 2 is a free, open source tool with a massive developer community, and it's available for Windows, Linux and Mac. It's really one for power users, with support for over 300 decryption plug-ins, automatic RAR extraction, password list searching and OCR to automatically complete some of the CAPTCHA 'I'm not a robot' checks. You'll need the Java Runtime Environment to run it, which means you'll need to be wary: the installer contains adware, which will be installed if you don't specifically deselect it. 5. Free YouTube Downloader Grab multiple videos in moments and save them in resolutions up to 8K The installer is a little too keen on adding bundled software, but Free YouTube Downloader is very good and completely free. Its focus is on downloading rather than converting files from one format to another, so you get a good multi-stream download manager for grabbing several clips simultaneously. It can download files of up to 8K resolution (in MKV) and convert to AVI and MP4. Remember that you should only download videos from YouTube if you have the copyright owner's permission.

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