The mobile Operating System, Symbian goes completely open source – all the Symbian source code that comprises 108 packages is now available for free to all under the Eclipse license (EPL) version 1.0. The Symbian Foundation considers this transition from proprietary to open source as the biggest of its kind in software history. The Symbian Foundation is a non-profit organization “guided” by Nokia and other manufacturers like Sony Ericsson. More on Symbian Wiki – Platform Opening.

For Windows, Mac, Linux: Thunderbird, the open source desktop e-mail client reaches another important milestone. The first alpha of Thunderbird 3.1 has just been released. The Thunderbird team wants to align its development cycle more closely with that of the Firefox web browser, so that Thunderbird can better leverage the constant stream of improvements that the Firefox development community is making to Gecko and other components that are shared between Firefox and Thunderbird.

Thunderbird 3.1 Alpha 1 is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform. Though considered stable with 147 fixed bugs it is not for production desktops but developers and members of the testing community. Evident in this release is the presence of a Download Manager as a menu item. Use Ctrl+j to open it, or Tools > Saved Files.
Other changes include:

Several improvements to IMAP.
- Several fixes for Smart Folders, message filters, and attachment handling.
- Several design improvements and corrections to the interface.
- Stability and memory improvements.

Thunderbird 3.1 Alpha 1 is available for download – for all platforms: Mac, Linux and Windows. It is packed in 23 different languages. For more on the first development release of Thunderbird after 3.0 move to the project page and Release Notes.

The goals of these animations as Stephen puts it, is to give a visual clue to the functions of Tabs. The animation posted here simply shows how adding a new tab is will be an animated task.

For more details and Tab tearing animations with affordance move to Stephen blog.

Google Chrome for Linux Dev Channel has been updated to version 5.0.307.1 with “preliminary” desktop notification support, for GTK builds of Linux only.
Chrome desktop notifications in Linux uses D-BUS notifications also known as libnotify. Also, GTK+selection colors when using GTK theme mode gets noticeably better. Other adds and fixes in this update include;

- Improved complex text support, fixing a number of bugs in Hebrew/Arabic/Hindi/etc. display.
- Plug-ins will now be loaded from ~/.config/$PRODUCT_NAME/Plugins.

Follow-up; Why not libnotify, Linux FAQ. More on Chrome releases
If you get to implement Chrome desktop notifications on your Ubuntu, let us know how you did it. :-)

Many years back, Aaron Boodma wrote the Greasemonkey extension “exclusively” for Firefox, now working with Google, he has bent and twisted Greasemonkey so well that thousands of user scripts written in JavaScript now natively work in Chrome – just like any regular Chrome extension. Its a big smack to Firefox, if you consider that its even easier to get user scripts working in Chrome unlike in Firefox where you have to install the Greasemonkey add-on then get the script.

Of the over 40,000 user scripts out there that add to the long list of “official” Chrome extensions, Aaron says only about 15-20% won’t work, because of differences between Firefox and Chrome.

User scripts work on any Chrome 4.0 and higher – only Windows has a stable version of Chrome 4.0, Linux and Mac OS X still have beta versions.

Opera browser users can also try user scripts, but in the case many don’t work and when they do work they might not be as efficient as in Chrome or Firefox. Opera users can also use the UJS Manager that installs userscripts in Opera the Chrome-way.

via ~ 40,000 More Extensions!

While the Dev and Beta channels are still stuck in version 4.0, Chromium for Linux Daily builds make it to version 5.0. The Daily PPA is updated more frequently than the Dev PPA, but it is completely untested, that certainly makes it more unstable and unreliable. It works and loads web pages quickly too.
You won’t have the “Content Settings” window in the Options menu that gives users more control over changing and policing their cookies, images, JavaScript, Plug-ins, and pop-ups – like in Google Chrome for Windows development 5.0. Even the context menu Pin Tab feature is not available.

Remove your current Chromium build and use the codes below if you want a risky cutting-edge Chromium 5.0 with no damned new features in your Ubuntu ‘Karmic’
sudo apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/ppa sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

That Mozilla Firefox is a model to copy is well known, but I guess many did not expect the open source media player VLC, one of the best media players around to get community-built extensions just like Firefox. Well, a VideoLan player builder announced a complete overhauling of VLC codes to permit the implementation of community-built extensions come version 1.1. Developers will use Lua – a lightweight scripting language to create their extensions for VLC.

Like any “serious” platform they are already a few show-off plug-ins to wet your appetite.

- IMDb: read the plot summary, learn about the cast of a movie and get a direct link to the Internet Movie Database.
- Last.fm: Read useful information fetched from the artist’s page on Last.fm.
- Lyrics: Automatically get the lyrics of the current song.
- Subtitles: Find and insert subtitles on top of the video in two clicks.

Grab these extensions Here

Windows users can search the web for vlc-1.1.0-git builds, whilst Ubuntu Karmic users can use this ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 (via Web Upd8) to upgrade to an unstable VLC 1.1 – at your own risk.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
After upgrading, drop the lua scripts you want to try in your VLC scripts folder:
Linux: ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions/
Windows: %APPDATA%\VLC\lua\extensions

Do Tools -> Plug-ins and extensions, to view your installed extensions and reload them. To launch an extension go to the View menu (see second from the top screenshot).

More here ~ via Extensions in VLC