Chrome’s Coolest Feature: File Upload Progress Indicator

Google Chrome 4.0 went live a couple of weeks ago, and it has a feature that’s been missing in most mainstream browsers ever since the Web was invented: a progress bar that actually shows, well, the progress of uploads. It’s really frustrating to be uploading a large file to a website or as an attachment to an email or forum post and not know whether or not it’s taking this long because it’s just slow or because it’s really stuck.

Chrome 4.0 now shows the status of file uploads as a percentage, making it very clear just how quickly (or not) your uploads are progressing – and it’s something that all browsers should add ASAP. Many social websites rely heavily on uploads of photos, videos, music, and other files and are forced to implement nasty workarounds (such as using Flash upload forms) to present a more user-friendly upload system.

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Just How Big is Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) Going to Be?

Opera is an awesome company. If you were wondering where most “innovation” in the world of web browsers came from, you need look no further. Many of the features that other browsers like to claim as their own actually originated in Opera; from in-line search to tabbed Windows, Opera had all of these and many more way before Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox ever knew they existed.

Opera 9.20 introduced a really nifty feature that, having tried it, you’ll find impossible to go back. Simply put, the “blank” tab page is a group of 9 screenshots of your top-nine most-visited sites. It renders the concept of “favorites” obsolete – because most people have this-is-a-good-resource-if-i-ever-need-it favorites and i-visit-this-site-every-single-day favorites. It’s a waste of time to go through the favorites menu (even the cool, new IE7 favorites sidebar/widget/utility) to find that site you visit every other time you turn on your browser, and Opera addresses this issue by making those pages just a new tab away.

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