Following the release of new versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox, the infamous 'browser wars' are flaring up again. Despite both Firefox 1.5 and the Beta of IE7 making significant strides, it would be be foolish to think this was a two-horse race. While gaining a good reputation with geeks and power users, Opera has long been a bit-part player among the big boys of the browser world. However, if this preview release is anything to go by, the Norwegian-built browser could finally be ready to punch with the heavyweights.

Opera has been pioneering new ways of browsing the web for some time. It has had tabbed browsing since the days before tabbed browsing was cool and developed the innovative 'mouse gestures' control system, where you navigate through the web just by holding the mouse button and flicking your wrist. The developers even dabbled with a multi-pane interface for viewing several pages within one interface.

The good news is that Opera has lost none of its appetite for innovation, and version 9 is packed with new goodies that will have the programmers at Mozilla and Microsoft choking on their doughnuts. For starters the app runs much quicker than the previous release, making it arguably the quickest browser around (except perhaps for Safari) at rendering pages. Incredibly, despite this boost in performance, the program appears to use less memory than version 8.5, making it far less draining on system resources than Firefox and IE.

In terms of features Opera is the gift that keeps on giving. New to the program comes OSX Tiger-style 'widgets', allowing you to check news, convert currency, view the weather and so on through a series of draggable pop-ups which anchor themselves in front of the browser. Although there aren’t many widgets to choose from at present, this is sure to change once the tech-minded Opera fans start developing more.

Another great addition to Opera 9 is BitTorrent support, allowing you to download torrents directly within the browser – a feature that amazingly no one had thought of before. This system works very smoothly, which makes us wonder why RSS feed reading support in Opera is still so poor.

Among the other new treats within the program is a nifty new search feature which lets you add any search engine to the search bar in the main toolbar. This means you can instantly access searches within your favorite online destinations (Softonic, for instance).

Tabbed browsing remains, although some users may be annoyed to discover that Opera has added close tab buttons to the tabs themselves rather than as a separate button. Having said this, the new web page preview thumbnails that appear when you rollover a tab are a real masterstroke. Mouse gestures are still there too, along with the addition of Total Recall-style voice commands – another example of how cutting-edge this browser is.

Opera's developers have been keen to ramp up security features too, and although they aren't highly original, the new content blocking and pop-up blocking functions serve their purpose effectively. What's more, it's refreshing to see a browser that embraces the latest web standards so freely, with the latest release boasting support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 tags.

The browser is remarkably stable and is far better behaved than Internet Explorer 7. Combined with its speed, innovative features and standards support, Opera is undoubtedly web software's best-kept secret, and the final release may prove to be even better than Firefox. Don't say anything though, or everyone will want it.

Download Opera 9.52 in Softonic

Complete dhtml menus can be built, in a matter of minutes, without writing a single line of code. No special plugins and no programming or HTML knowledge required, with just DHTML Menu Builder you'll be able to create great looking and functional dhtml menus for all your web sites.

DHTML Menu Builder generated drop down menus code is 100% compatible with, Internet Explorer 4 and above, all Mozilla-based browsers such as FireFox 1.0 and 1.5, Netscape Navigator 4 and above, Opera 7 and 8, Safari and Konqueror under Windows, OS/2, Mac and Linux. The interface is unique and highly intuitive so all your work is to concentrate in the design of the structure of your pull-down menus.

Download DHTML Menu Builder 4.20.015 in Softonic

The big news at the end of Steve Jobs’ Keynote at the WWDC, was the release of Safari 3 for both Mac and Windows. Observers were quick to note that Apple’s aim was to stake its claim to a bigger share in the browser market. As Steve Jobs also pointed out, Safari will be the iPhone’s browser, so offering it for Windows feels like a natural step to take. Overall, a number of improvements were made to this latest version of Safari. However, it’s fair to point out that this is still a Beta and a number of issues can still arise until the official release. Let’s take a look at Safari 3 Beta.

Apple hails Safari has the fastest browser, both in terms of launch time and html and JavaScript performance. We did find however that it took much more time to load under XP than Vista. The classic dark grey interface will be immediately recognizable to users, but its Mac-ishness might slightly put off new users. It certainly stands out from the rest of your applications. We really liked the new tab functions, and how they can be smoothly dragged around your interface. You can also drag a tab out to view it as a separate window, or move tabs from window to window.

By clicking on the RSS tag in the URL bar, you can get a view of all the posts in a feed, which you can present chronologically and get a detailed or a title view. We were also impressed with the “Inline Find” function. Click CTRL+F to reveal the find bar under your bookmarks bar. Once you type a word in the find bar, the whole page will immediately turn a shade of grey except for the word itself. If there is more than one iteration of the word, you can scroll through them thanks to the arrow buttons on the find bar.

Safari claims to be one of the safest browsers around and supports SSL 2 and 3 and TLS as well as the basic set of proxy protocols like HTTPS or streaming proxy (RTSP). We found the name of one of the security features, “Safe Browsing”, misleading. Instead of actually upping the security of your Safari it instead limits the features of the browser by disabling history, autofill or searches. Perhaps it should have been called "Private Browsing" instead. Another element that left us frustrated was the search bar. It effectively works with Yahoo and Google but as of now doesn’t let you add any more search engines.

We experienced a number of crashes while testing Safari, particularly on XP, and noted that the browser does use up a significant amount of memory at start-up, around 60 MB to be exact. Also, we found that some popular pages (like Google or Digg!) do not render properly with Safari; a case of not being totally standards compliant perhaps? While it’s great to finally open up Safari to the PC crowd, the unstability of the browser makes you wonder if it wasn’t rushed out for the WWDC. Some interesting features, but on the whole, Safari is no match for the fully armed Firefox on PC yet.

Download Safari 3.1 in Softonic

Airfoil is one of those standout applications you come across sometimes.

What it does is allow you to send any audio from your computer via wireless to any other computer (PC or Mac), Apple TV or Airport Express. It works with any application that plays music in your computer.

Syncing is both easy and fast. The clear GUI will list up all the devices that you can sync to, and all you have to do is activate them and set the volume and equalizer. That means you can pretty much listen to your music anywhere. Rogue Amoeba have really succeeded in making a program which is efficient, useful and very easy to use.

The download also includes Airfoil Speakers, which basically turns any PC or Mac into an Airport Express unit which can then receive audio from the Airfoil of another computer.

On the help side, the Rogue Amoeba team is known to offer great support and respond quickly to user queries.

Naturally though, if your wireless connection is poor, then Airfoil will perform poorly, so make sure your WiFi is well set.

Airfoil is a smart and intuitive program, to sync music wirelessly to any computer, Airport Express or Apple TV.

Download Airfoil 2.5 in Softonic

If you've never heard of DjVu, it's a unique way of viewing high resolution images in your browser whether for a magazine or high tech research purposes.

It allows the scanning, storing and exchanging of complex color documents such as magazine articles, maps, technical manuals and archived financial records. The plug in allows your browser to interpret the resolution of the images and display them correctly in Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Despite it's power, it's a very small plugin requiring only 900KB to download and can even be added to applications using ActiveX via VB, .NET and C++. As yet, the plugin is only available in a limited number of languages, mainly English, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Korean, Italian, Polish and Chinese. The problem with this plugin is that you very rarely have to view DjVu images in you're an average home user although I can see it would be useful for professionals, designers etc. The other thing is that, a bit like Adobe Reader, it has a tendency to hang when opening images or texts in DjVu format. There's no telling sometimes whether it has crashed or is just slow in opening the file. It would have been more useful if they'd added a status bar when it's opening files for this reason.

If you view DjVu files and images frequently, then this is an essential plug in although don't expect it to reveal what it's supposed to every time.

Download DjVu Viewer Plug-in 6.1.1 in Softonic

Master your keyboard and become a real typing ace. Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor is an instructive program aimed at computer novices who wish to get professional level typing skills through an enjoyable learning experience. It also provides an exciting way for more advanced users to hone their typing skills.

The first thing I liked in Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor (TTTT) is that it holds your hand from the start. As soon as you launch the program a rough looking, yet friendly Viking greets you and will guide throughout the lessons. You can always rely on him if you have doubts or questions. The first exercises are meant to teach you how to place your hands correctly on the keyboard and how to type common letter associations. As you move on the difficulty rises and you are asked to type longer key words at a faster pace.

Where you need to reproduce a certain key combination a pair of virtual hands shows you how it’s done on the keyboard. Whenever you make a mistake the letters will appear in red and you will hear a beeping sound. You can check statistics to see with what keys you make the most mistakes. Not one to overlook a detail, TTTT even gives you tips on how to sit correctly in front of your PC so that you don’t tire too quickly. For the more experienced, you can also set your Words Per Minute count to see if you are typing on par with professional standards.

Once you feel more comfortable with your typing skills you can try them out in the two games provided by TTTT: Safari Park and Brick Factory. Both challenges give you a time limit to type certain key associations. You can adjust the speed to make it more difficult.

The Songseeker option blends iTunes to Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor. This option can detect what song you’re playing and will download the lyrics if you click on the iTunes logo in the right hand corner. The program will display them and you’ll have to type in the correct characters. This is another way of learning how to type, and what’s more, you can enjoy your favorite song at the same time.

Depending on the language you’ve chosen when you installed TTTT, you can set the type of keyboard you are using. For example, English users will have a choice of UK, US and Dvorak keyboards.

If you don’t feel at ease with your typing skills, I strongly recommend using Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor. You’ll be able to learn at your own pace and will improve thanks to a multitude of exercises testing your hand placement, dexterity and speed.

Download Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor 4.7 in Softonic

accessTunes allows you to play your iTunes music through any web browser like Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. You can even play your music through iTunes on another computer. How exactly does this work?

First, run the accessTunes program from the computer that stores your iTunes music. Next, you will get a special web address that you can use in any web browser on any computer. After entering the address in the web browser, you will see all of your music and playlists and be able to play them right from the website! You can even download a special file from the website that will let you remotely play your music in iTunes.

Download accessTunes 1.7 in Softonic

Ript basically adds a new option to Internet Explorer and Firefox. It enables you to drag images from the Internet to a floating clipboard that stores everything that's posted to it. You could easily compare it to Safari MAC OSX Tiger. Part scrapbook, part “to-do” list (or to-buy list), Ript mimics the actions of ripping, piling and arranging scraps of information. If you can see it on your computer, you can “rip” it - simple as that. Simply drag and drop images and text from the internet or your computer and arrange them however you please — making it easy to compile, print and share your handiwork.

Once you've pasted your clippings, you can rotate, enlarge, add text, and sort and create different collections. If you are only interested in image files you can find them in path C:-> Documents and Settings-> [User Name] -> Application Data-> Ript. Ript saves you the hassle of right clicking and saving images so you can now just drag and drop photos and clippings of your choice.

This is a really handy little program as it can literally extract anything on your screen - a great tool for a more organised life.

Download Ript 0.5.1218 in Softonic

ActivePerl is a language interpreter for Perl for Windows. Once installed, scripts developed under this language will allow you to execute such scripts as CGI's in Windows. The program is based on the multi-platform, multi-language IDE for what the developers call "end-to-end dynamic web application development."

If you are a Perl programmer, you'll find it easy to create, test and debug all of your code in ActivePerl. The Komodo IDE offers several advanced editing and debugging tools for dynamic languages and client-side Ajax technologies. It also includes some intuitive tools for team development and customization.

ActivePerl also includes The TDK Pro Pack which features application builders for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. It also features a suite of tools to speed-up development time and improve code quality.

If Perl is your speciality, you'll be spoilt for choice amongst the features that ActivePerl offers you.

Download ActivePerl 5.8.8.820 in Softonic

Minigolf Mania is an extremely addictive game, a big part of that surely due to the variety in courses, obstacles and balls. Not only do you get to play on ice or lava, you can also find stop signs, boosters, super jumps or many more other elements that spice up your game. As you conquer courses, you'll unlock special balls that unleash their own power. The game is very intuitive and all you'll need is your mouse to play. We also appreciated how courses got harder as you progressed through the game.

While Minigolf Mania is very addictive the 3D graphics can leave to be desired. The music is fun at first but quickly becomes annoying. We suggest you turn it off from the start.

Minigolf Mania is full of little surprises and offers an intuitive gameplay and challenging courses that will keep you putting for hours.

Download Minigolf Mania 1.0.395 in Softonic

Africa, 1944. Join Professor Pack on the ultimate jewel matching adventure across the world's richest continent. Rearrange precious relics to turn tiles into gold as you advance through relentlessly challenging puzzles. The wilds of the safari, the history of the Zimbabwe ruins, and the majesty of Victoria Falls await your discovery. Filled with puzzles of skill, treasure, and twists, Jewel Quest 2 is the adventure you've been waiting for.

Features:

• 180 puzzles and boards
• 9 new jewels and power-ups
• 5 skill levels to master

Download Jewel Quest II in Softonic

WebAdmin allows administrators to securely manage MDaemon, RelayFax, and WorldClient from anywhere in the world. This convenient remote administration tool is FREE of charge and is a separate download from MDaemon.

The WebAdmin interface is compatible with Microsoft IE 5.5 and newer, Netscape 7.1 and newer, Mozilla 1.4 and newer, Mozilla Firefox 0.9 and newer, and Safari browsers; includes SSL and IIS support.

Download WebAdmin 3.2.7 in Softonic

Selteco Menu Maker provides an easy way to create pull-down web menus without coding. The application requires no knowledge of JavaScript or DHTML and produces navigation that is compatible with all major browsers, including IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape. You can fully customize your menus to suite your website.

Features include:

• Design in Live Preview and see your web menu exactly as it will appear online
• Single JavaScript file to include into your web site
• Use different menu styles
• Fast menu loading - the code is light, reliable and size optimized
• Design either horizontal menu bar, or vertical menu box
• Use TARGET frame for menu item
• Pop-up prompt for each menu item
• Align menu bar either left, right or center
• Use HTML tags in the item text
• Use multiple menus on a single web page
• Save and open menu files for editing
• Indexable by search engines

Download Selteco Menu Maker 4.1.3 in Softonic

dashLicious is optimised for Safari and NetNewsWire users. When you enter into the dashboard dashLicious will automatically populate the url and description fields from either Safari or NetNewsWire (and will allow you to toggle between the two inputs).

The main feature in this release is the autocomplete. When you first launch the widget, it connects to your del.icio.us account and retrieves all your tags. Then when you start typing in the tag field of the widget, it will make suggestions based on what you are typing. You can navigate these choices by using the arrow up/down keys on your keyboard then press return to select. this should speed up your tagging.

Download dashLicious 1.0 in Softonic

ACEMenu is a versatile DHTML menu builder. Create horizontal menu bars, vertical side menus, floating menus and image menus quickly and easily using the menu creator software. Compatible with Netscape, Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror and Safari browsers.

Download ACEMenu Creator 3.6.3 in Softonic