Communities will be housed in a tab separate from the standard WhatsApp landing page and will offer a way to organize disparate channels. These groupings will also have new features for administrators so they can send messages to an entire community and add and remove sub-groups. WhatsApp says it is beginning limited beta testing of Communities now, with support for both iOS and Android, so it can get input before finalizing the feature.

“We’ve been using Communities ourselves internally for the last few months as we got all the pieces in place, and that’s been helping us find things we know we need and additions to make,” says Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp. “But I think it’ll be particularly helpful for us to have other communities around the world that are dealing with very different types of problems and challenges use it, because we’ll get feedback that better matches a much broader range of needs than just what we’re going to get from our own team.”

End-to-end encrypted communication services like WhatsApp offer users privacy and security assurances because the platforms are designed so the companies that run them can't access the content of users' messages and calls. This means, though, that abusive and illegal communications also receive that same protection, a challenge that has plagued WhatsApp and other platforms. The company has attempted to limit the spread of disinformation using tools like forwarding limits and reporting mechanisms to approach the problem from different angles. With Communities, Cathcart says, there's potential to further improve these issues by empowering administrators who have a more nuanced understanding of their organizations or groups and creating structures that can flag potentially abusive behavior.

Users will have to be invited to join Communities—they won't simply be able to search for open, free-for-all channels, as they are in services like Telegram. And Cathcart says WhatsApp will be expanding its forwarding limits to Communities, so messages that have already been forwarded can only be forwarded again to one group at a time.

WhatsApp already has access to “metadata” about users' communications—things like the account name, IP address, and timestamp associated with each message. Similarly, Communities will be end-to-end encrypted but allow WhatsApp to see metadata and some information about how a Community is organized. 

“While the communication is private, there will be some bits of information we do have," Cathcart says. "Today we do have the name of group chats, and we see the profile picture for them. We'll also know the name of the community and some of the structure there. And we've had a lot of success using anti-abuse techniques on that data, combined with the reports we do get from people. We think that's a good model where we're able to solve some of the anti-abuse problems without violating people's privacy and seeing their private communications.”

WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, recently outlined this approach in great detail through an independent report the company commissioned about the human rights impacts of end-to-end encryption—and its own response to that report.

Though it will take time to complete a beta test of Communities, some of the features WhatsApp built for it will be coming to the regular service in the next few weeks. Cathcart says emoji reactions for individual messages and the ability to send files that are up to 2 gigabytes will roll out soon. WhatsApp will also start supporting larger group voice calls with up to 32 participants. And group admins will be able to remove messages from the group at their discretion.

Communities will be a massive expansion of what WhatsApp is and can be. And while the company is certainly not the first to attempt end-to-end encrypted productivity chat, it's certainly the biggest—by a couple of billion people.

WhatsApp Doubles Down With End-to-End Encrypted ‘Communities’

(May require free registration to view)

Message reactions enable people to share their opinion without flooding chats with new messages. Users will be able to react with thumbs up, heart, laughter, surprise, crying, and the folded hands emoji. The feature is already available for some beta testers and will soon be rolled out to the general public.

Aside from the Message reactions feature, WhatsApp has also announced the Communities feature. For those unaware, Communities bring together separate groups under one umbrella. Admins will be able to send announcement messages to everyone and have control over which groups can be included.

To promote healthy conversations in a group, WhatsApp is adding the ability for admins to delete problematic messages in a group. This will promote a more peaceful chat room and will also discourage misinformation campaigns propagated through various WhatsApp groups.

Moreover, WhatsApp is also improving the File Sharing feature, enabling users to share files up to 2 gigabytes. According to WhatsApp, the increase in file sharing up to 2GB will help people easily collaborate on projects. The Meta-owned company has also announced a one-tap voice calling for up to 32 people.

However, it is worth mentioning that the Message reactions, the ability for admins to delete messages, 32-person audio calls, and file sharing up to 2GB will be available in the “coming weeks.” Meanwhile, the Communities feature will go live later, though the company hasn’t mentioned the timeline for when it will be available for the general public.

Do our readers use WhatsApp? If yes, then which above feature(s) sounds more useful to you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

WhatsApp announces a bunch of new features

Some Windows Insiders might also be ecstatic to know that a bunch of new shortcuts were added for Task Manager, which of course has seen a massive overhaul in recent months.

You can get a rundown of all the new features, fixes and known issues for build 22598 here.

You can download the Windows 11 build 22598 Insider Preview at Microsoft, you will have to be signed into a Microsoft ID and enrolled as a Windows Insider in order to download the ISO which also comes in Enterprise and Home (China) flavors.

Microsoft releases ISOs of Windows 11 build 22598 for download

First up, Microsoft gave some build specific release highlights, given below:

• We are releasing ISOs for this build – they can be downloaded here.
• Like last week, this build includes only a handful of changes and improvements but includes a good set of fixes that will improve Insider’s overall experience on their device.
• We’re rolling out a new update to Media Player for Windows 11 (Version 11.2203.30.0) to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel – details below.

Here are the changes and improvements in build 22598:

[General]

• We are now offering new builds to Windows Insiders in China on Lenovo PCs starting with Build 22598. These users should connect to the internet for a minimum of 15 minutes to allow the Lenovo PC Manager to auto update to the latest version (version 5.0.0.3292 or later) to receive an important fix with the app.
• We are trying out auto-launching of the Get Started app with some Windows Insiders after upgrade to help people get started with their PC.
• [REMINDER] As described in our in our blog post here, Windows Insiders who use the Dev Channel may get to try out new ideas, longer lead features, and experiences that may never get released. In this build, a limited set of Insiders will see the first of these experimental features as we explore additional ways to help people discover and get quick access to content they care about on the web with the Windows search box. If you see some of these concepts, be sure to let us know what you think via Feedback Hub (Win + F) and choose category Desktop Environment > Search.

[Windows Spotlight]

• We are trying out Windows Spotlight on desktop is on by as the default background for new devices (clean installs using the ISO) and for upgrades where the background the Windows 11 default. We are trying this experience out with a limited number of Windows Insiders at first.

• We are also trying out displaying 4K desktop backgrounds in Windows Spotlight. We are also trying this experience out with a limited number of Windows Insiders at first.

[Taskbar]

• Updated the tooltip on the volume icon to tell you when you’re using spatial sound.

Here are all the fixes in this release:

[General]

• Devices using Windows Information Protection (formerly EDP) policies can now access controlled data via protected apps such as Outlook, Word, Microsoft Edge, etc. as expected.

[Taskbar]

• We fixed an issue where if you used keyboard focus on taskbar, hovers like previews would stay up during all taskbar interactions.
• Fixed an issue that was causing taskbar badges to come back after explorer.exe crashes even if you had them turned off in Settings.
• Made a fix for an issue where some mouse move events weren’t being passed to apps for icons in the system tray.
• Fixed an issue where hovering over some app icons in the system tray wasn’t showing previews or tooltips.
• App icons in the system tray should now be showing more reliably when opened again in this build.
• Fixed an issue that was delaying or preventing the show hidden icons flyout from opening.
• Fixed an issue where Chinese characters weren’t displaying in the taskbar calendar when the Lunar calendar was turned on.
• Addressed an issue where the visual indicator around an app icon when sharing a window might not go away once you’d stopped sharing.

[Start menu]

• We fixed a crash when selecting the More button in Start’s Recommended section.
• Addressed an underlying issue which could lead to Start crashing on launch when invoked with a gesture.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the buttons and labels in Start to be the wrong colors while using contrast themes.
• Addressed an issue where if you swiped to scroll the contents of a folder in the pinned section of Start, it would unexpectedly close Start.

[File Explorer]

• Addressed an issue which was causing the context menu to not render completely sometimes and be transparent.

[Input]

• Improved the performance of launching the touch keyboard on the login screen.
• Fixed an issue where if you had selected text with touch in certain apps like Settings, the backspace key in the touch keyboard would have to be tapped twice for it to delete.
• Voice typing should no longer stop responding if you repeatedly press WIN + H.
• Fixed an issue for people with a large number of input methods, where the currently selected one might not be in view when you opened the input switcher.
• Fixed the link at the bottom of the Chinese (Simplified) IME appearance settings so it points to Settings > Personalization > Text Input.
• Addressed an issue where the emoji panel’s background image and color might not be rendered correctly after using options in Settings > Personalization > Text Input.

[Settings]

• Fixed an issue where high DPI options in the Compatibility tab of the properties for an executable weren’t working.
• Narrator should now read the view options we added in Settings > Apps > Installed apps

[Windowing]

• Returned the missing animation when pressing WIN + D or clicking the Show Desktop button.
• We addressed an issue when using snap layouts with touch which could result in an acrylic sheet getting stuck on top of the window.
• The thumbnails in Task View should no longer be inverted when using Hebrew or Arabic display languages.
• Fixed an explorer.exe crash when invoking Task View.
• If you have a lot of windows open, they should no longer become superimposed on top of Desktops in Task View.
• Fixed an issue when using ALT + Tab with a screen reader, where if you ALT + Tabbed back to certain app windows, focus would be set to a pane within the window rather than the whole window.
• Fixed an underlying issue where accented colored title bars (when enabled) for certain apps and File Explorer were only displaying when the windows were maximized.
• Mitigated a rare issue that could lead to the system hanging when changing the resolution sometimes in certain games.
• Addressed an issue causing white pixels in the corners of some apps when using dark mode.
• Did some work to address an issue where certain app windows wouldn’t move to the expected area after selecting them using snap assist.
• Fixed a glitch in the animation when using snap layouts at the top of the screen to snap windows.

[Live captions]

• Fixed an issue where the very top of maximized apps (e.g., title bar window management buttons) couldn’t be reached with touch while live captions were positioned at the top.
• Live captions will now tell you when it’s done downloading and ready to caption.

[Task Manager]

• Mitigated an issue causing the Performance page CPU graph to be colored as if Show Kernel Times was enabled even though it wasn’t.
• Did some work to further improve Task Manager reliability.
• Added access key support for Run New Task (ALT + N), End Task (ALT + E), Efficiency Mode (ALT + V), and other buttons on each page. If you press ALT, the letters will display next to the button.
• With a process selected, pressing the Delete key will now end the process like it used to.
• CTRL + Tab and CTRL + Shift + Tab will now cycle through the pages in Task Manager.
• Fixed an issue where the memory composition graph was blank instead of filed in with the appropriate color.
• Mitigated an issue leading to the GPU graph on the performance tab not being displayed in some cases.
• The icons in the status column of the Processes page are no longer touching the side of the column.
• Fixed an issue where “Efficiency mode” was missing status column of the Users page.

[WSL]

• Fixed an issue that would prevent WSL2 from mounting the host file system on ARM64.

[Other]

• Fixed an issue from the previous flight where the acrylic might not extend across the entire login screen.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the volume and brightness keys that appear when your use your hardware keys to be cut off in the middle.
• Running powercfg /query should work now when launched from syswow64 or from a 32-bit process.
• Fixed an apostrophe that wasn’t rendering correctly in the text when doing an offline scan from the Windows Security app.
• Removed an extra “be” in the text describing Smart Account Control in the Windows Security app.
• Fixed an issue for certain language which could lead to question marks being displayed in the place of some of the text when upgrading to a new build.
• If you have increased the text size under Settings > Accessibility > Text Size and launch setup from a Windows ISO while booted into your currently installed OS, the text displayed in the setup window will now be increased to match your preferences.

NOTE: Some fixes noted here in Insider Preview builds from the active development branch may make their way into the servicing updates for the released version of Windows 11 that became generally available on October 5th, 2021.

Here are the known issues to be aware of in build 22598:

[General]

• Windows Insiders running Windows 10 who join the Dev or Beta Channels to get the latest builds may encounter a download error code 0xc8000402 while trying to download the latest build. As a workaround, please join the Release Preview Channel first, install Windows 11 from there (Build 22000.xxxx), and then switch to the Dev or Beta Channel to receive the latest Insider Preview build. This issue is understood and will be fixed in an upcoming build.
• We’re investigating reports that a few Insiders have been experiencing an issue where explorer.exe is crashing repeatedly in a loop in the latest builds and unable to successfully load. This build includes another fix that may help some Insiders who were experiencing this.
• When opening Group Policy editor, an Administrative Template error will pop up. Click “Ok” to dismiss and continue using Group Policy editor normally.

[Taskbar]

• The taskbar doesn’t always automatically collapse after launching an app or tapping outside of the expanded taskbar on 2-in-1 devices.
• Some areas of the OS are not yet tracking the height of the expanded taskbar on 2-in-1 devices so you may see overlapping components.

[File Explorer]

• Using context menu options in File Explorer or on the desktop for rename, copy, paste, and delete may cause explorer.exe to crash when the context menu dismisses. As a workaround if you are impacted you will need to use other methods for the desired action, for example, pressing F2 to rename a selected file or folder.
• The option to “Add to Favorites” does not show when right-clicking on a file on Home. As a workaround, this option can be accessed by choosing “Show more options”.

[Widgets]

• The widgets board may not open successfully when using the gesture from the side of the screen. If you are impacted, please tap the Widgets icon in the taskbar for now instead.

[Network]

• We’re investigating reports from Insiders about internet connectivity issues when certain VPNs are connected.

[Live captions]

• Certain apps in full screen (e.g., video players) prevent live captions from being visible.
• Certain apps positioned near the top of the screen and closed before live captions is run will re-launch behind the live captions window positioned at top. Use the system menu (ALT + Spacebar) while the app has focus to move the app’s window further down.

The Dev channel release is now known as the "NI_RELEASE" or Nickel branch in preparation for the major feature update to Windows 11 later this year. You can find our coverage of what's new and expected to ship in this Windows 11 build here.

Today's press release is linked here.

Microsoft has again reminded that Insiders can switch or change channels if they wanted from the Dev channel over to the Beta. If you are wondering how to do so, here's a handy guide we made that you can use.

Windows 11 build 22598 released with new Task Manager shortcuts and more

Foxit has announced the release of Smart Redact - an AI-powered tool that can detect and redact sensitive information contained within PDF documents. 

The new tool promises to provide businesses with a more efficient way to stay compliant with global data laws and regulations like GDPR. Now, firms can search and hide sensitive data without having to exit the PDF editor and disrupt the workflow. 

Smart Redact comes as an optional add-on. However, it’s built directly into Foxit PDF Editor - considered one of the best PDF readers for Windows - so unlike other PDF plugins, you won’t need to install it. You just need to switch it on. 

 Smart, sensitive, secure

Privacy-conscious Foxit users are no strangers to redaction. The PDF editor, which we champion as one of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives, included the option to manually locate and mark text, images, areas, and even whole pages for redaction. 

Now, Foxit claims that Smart Redact “builds upon the redact capability in PDF Editor by expanding the number of automatic sensitive data pattern searches, including those without static patterns, such as person names, organization names, personal roles.”

Alongside the AI tool, user profiles are also now available. Profiles let you set certain types of confidential data that are always to be obscured. That means you won’t have to constantly search and scrub protected information across multiple documents and document types, as Smart Redact will automatically do it for you. 

With cybersecurity front of mind, Smart Redact is TAA compliant and SOC 2 Certified. Data transferred between the software and the Foxit cloud server deploys AES-256 encryption. 

Frank Kettenstock, Foxit CMO, said “By leveraging artificial intelligence, Foxit Smart Redact dramatically improves the productivity of knowledge workers involved in redaction. Users will save time and reduce the potential for errors.”

Source

What is new in Microsoft Edge 102.0.1220.1:

Added features:

• Added a prompt to pin PWAs after they’ve been installed from the Microsoft Store.
• Redesigned the Apps management page.
• Added the ability to import passwords on mobile.
• Added a management policy to control if the Outlook Hub Menu is Enabled. Note that updates to documentation and administrative templates may not have occurred yet.

Improved reliability:

• Fixed a crash when using 2-factor authentication to sign into the browser.
• Fixed a crash on Android.
• Fixed a crash on Android when using the search widget.

Changed behavior:

• Fixed an issue where the tab bar sometimes disappears.
• Fixed an issue where the Setting to use a custom Secure DNS provider doesn’t work.
• Fixed an issue where the Find bar shows 0 matches even though there are related matches shown on the page.
• Fixed an issue where the window control buttons are sometimes invisible when certain themes are applied.
• Fixed an issue where background tabs are sometimes invisible when certain themes are applied.
• Fixed an issue on mobile where signing into the browser fails.
• Fixed an issue in WebView2 apps where URL fragments are sometimes inadvertently removed during a navigation redirection.
• Disabled Kids Mode in Application Guard windows.

Note that Edge Dev is one of the preview channels Microsoft uses to test early updates and new features before shipping them to the public. That means you may encounter more problems and bugs than the stable version. Here are known issues in this release:

• Users of certain ad blocking extensions may experience playback errors on YouTube. As a workaround, temporarily disabling the extension should allow playback to proceed. See this help article for more details.
• Some users are still running into an issue where all tabs and extensions immediately crash with a STATUS_INVALID_IMAGE_HASH error. The most common cause of this error is outdated security or antivirus software from vendors like Symantec, and in those cases, updating that software will fix it.
• Users of the Kaspersky Internet Suite who have the associated extension installed may sometimes see webpages like Gmail fail to load. This failure is due to the main Kaspersky software being out of date, and is thus fixed by making sure the latest version is installed.
• Some users are seeing “wobbling” behavior when scrolling using trackpad gestures or touchscreens, where scrolling in one dimension also causes the page to subtly scroll back and forth in the other. Note that this only affects certain websites and seems to be worse on certain devices. This is most likely related to our ongoing work to bring scrolling back to parity with Edge Legacy’s behavior, so if this behavior is undesirable, you can temporarily turn it off by disabling the edge://flags/#edge-experimental-scrolling flag.

You can try Microsoft Edge Dev on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. If you do not want to test early updates, look forward to Microsoft releasing Edge 102 in the Beta channel on the week of May 3, 2022, and in the Stable channel on the week of June 23, 2022.

Edge Dev 102.0.1220.1 adds improvements to PWA and password import on mobile

Firefox 99.0.1 is already available. Most Firefox installations are configured to update automatically, but updates may take a while before they are downloaded and installed automatically. Firefox users may speed up the process in several ways, for instance, by selecting Menu > Help > About Firefox.

The page that opens displays the current version. When it is opened, Firefox will run a check for updates to download and install any update it finds. A restart is required to complete the installation of the new version of Firefox.

Firefox 99.0.1

The first issue addresses a hardware decoding issue on some Windows devices. According to the release notes, hardware video decoding was prevented on some Windows systems with newer Intel drivers. A quick check of the bug report reveals that this was caused by an issue that added drivers to the blocklist incorrectly. It appears that about 13% of all Intel users were affected by this according to the bug report on Mozilla's website. The correct amount would be 0.4% based on blocked drivers.

The second fix addresses a text rendering issue in Bengali. Letters were misplaced according to the bug report.

The third fix addresses a drag & drop bug in the browser's download panel. The report on Bugzilla states that drag & drop did always activate the first item in the listing and not necessarily the item that was selected by the user. Users may drag & drop files from the downloads list to load them in external programs directly.

The fourth and final fix addresses a Zoom Gallery mode access issue. It appears that access was prevented when users went to zoom.us instead of a subdomain of the zoom domain.

Firefox 99.0.1 is the first point release of Firefox 99. The major release was released on April 5, 2022 to the public.

Now You: did you run into any of these issues?

Firefox 99.0.1 maintenance update released

According to Proton 2022 survey, a shorter domain was one of the most requested features. And by making it temporarily free, the company appears to be aiming to attract more users to its platform. Google, Apple, Microsoft offer similar aliases. For example, you can use your example@gmail.com ID to create an example@googlemail.com ID for free.

You can follow the below steps to claim your free proton.me email address if you have a ProtonMail account.

How to claim a free proton.me email address

1. Log in to your ProtonMail Account
2. Go To Settings at the top right corner

   

3. Click on the "Identity and Addresses" located on the left sidebar
   or you can open the following page: https://account.protonmail.com/u/0/mail/identity-addresses
4. Click the button that says "Activate username@proton.me"

   

That's it; you have now created a free proton.me email address, which is now ready for you to send and receive emails securely, you can even choose to use it as the default email address for sending emails. However, it's worth mentioning your proton.me ID remains free forever even if you don't become a paid subscriber after April 30, provided that you keep your account active. You'll also be able to continue using your regular @Protonmail.com address after activating the proton.me ID.

Source: ProtonMail.com; via ghacks

You can now claim a proton.me email address at ProtonMail for free, here is how

You can pause all extensions in Microsoft Edge Canary by opening the extension flyout. Click the button with three dots in the upper-right corner and select "Pause extensions on this site." After that, Microsoft Edge will place a big banner in the extension flyout with a message that the browser has suspended all extensions. You can restore extensions by pressing the "Resume extensions" button.

Microsoft also added another way to prevent extensions from working on websites with sensitive information. Edge received a new setting that can detect a potentially sensitive page and shut down all extensions automatically. Microsoft says the new feature will work, for example, on banking and payment sites.

The new privacy settings for extensions in Microsoft Edge are currently available to some insiders in the Canary channel as a part of A/B testing. Some users can access it right away, while others need to wait a few days or weeks for Microsoft to expand the testing scope.

In case you missed it, Google also wants to help users ensure the extensions they use are safe and trustworthy. The company recently notified developers about the upcoming badges in the Chrome Web Store to mark developers and projects that follow the best safety, design, and UX standards.

Thank you, Leopeva64-2, for the tip!

Edge Canary now lets you pause all extensions on specific websites

While that is useful in some cases, it is not something that many Firefox installations require. If you use Firefox at home only, you do not need the check to be performed. It reduces the automatic connections the browser makes and may speed startup just a little bit as well.

Firefox attempts to connect to http://detectportal.firefox.com/success.txt during the test to find out if it can connect to the address. The very same address is also used to test if the active network connection supports IPv6.

Note: you may need to undo the changes if you notice connectivity issues; this should not be the case, but it is easy to undo if something goes wrong.

Disable Firefox's Network Connectivity Tests

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar to get started.
2. Confirm the "Accept the risk and continue" prompt that is displayed. You may also want to uncheck the "warn me when I attempt to access these preferences" to skip the prompt the next time.
3. Search for the preference network.captive-portal-service.enabled using the search field at the top.
4. Set the preference to FALSE by clicking on the toggle icon located at the right. To undo the change, repeat the action so that the preference's value is TRUE.
5. Search for the preference network.connectivity-service.enabled using the same method as described above.
6. Set the preference to FALSE by clicking on the toggle icon. To undo the change, repeat the action so that the value of the preference is set to TRUE again.

The preference network.captive-portal-service.enabled checks if the network connection requires authentication. Firefox users who travel a lot and those connecting to networks that do require authentication may want to keep the preference's default value of TRUE. Everyone else may set it to FALSE without running into any usability or connectivity issues.

The preference network.connectivity-service.enabled determines capabilities of the network connection by connecting to the very same address as network.captive-portal-service.enabled.

The Tor project disabled the functionality in its browser, without any reported issues since the change. The development team noted that Firefox makes this connection whenever the network state changes:

NetworkConnectivityService probes http://detectportal.firefox.com/success.txt?ipv4 and http://detectportal.firefox.com/success.txt?ipv6 whenever network state changes (event network:link-status-changed). We should probably disable this unless it's needed for browser functionality.

Closing Words

Most Firefox users do not need the two preferences when they use the browser. Some users may want to do so for privacy, others to reduce the number of connections the browser makes.

Now You: do you monitor your browser's automatic connections?

How to disable Firefox's Captive Portal test connection on startup

Here are the relevant release notes for this April Patch Tuesday update:

Improvements

This update contains miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality. No additional issues were documented for this release.

Known issues in this update

As always, you won’t have to do anything to get this latest update on your home computer as Windows Update will go out and get it for you. Business-based systems will download and install the update automatically just as long as policies are set up to allow this. You can also head to the Microsoft Update Catalog to download this update manually.

Microsoft has released its April Patch Tuesday update (KB5012592) for Windows 11

You can find standalone links to download the new update on Microsoft Update Catalog at this link here.

The major highlight of the release is security updates for Windows 10 and as is generally the case, the Redmond company has also listed the known issues in the update, which is always handy. Here are the symptoms and their respective workarounds:

Some of the older Windows 10 versions have also received updates today which have been listed below with their respective release notes (KB) linked as well as links to download them at Microsoft's Update Catalog.

While not Windows 10, Microsoft has also released updates for Windows Server 2022 under KB5012604.

Windows 10 Patch Tuesday (KB5012599) is out — here's what's new and what's broken

Windows 8.1

Improvements and fixes

• Addresses an issue in Windows Media Center where some users might have to reconfigure the application on each start.
• Addresses a memory leak that was introduced by the PacRequestorEnforcement registry key in the November 2021 Cumulative Update that causes a decrease in performance on domain controllers.
• Addresses an issue in which Event ID 37 might be logged during certain password change scenarios.
• Addresses an issue in which Windows might go into BitLocker recovery after a servicing update.
• Addresses an issue in which domain joins may fail in environments that use disjoint DNS hostnames.
• Addresses an issue that causes a Denial of Service vulnerability on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). For more information, see CVE-2020-26784.
• Addresses an issue that prevents you from changing a password that has expired when you sign in to a Windows device.

Known issues in this update

Windows 7

Improvements and fixes

• Addresses an issue in Windows Media Center where some users might have to reconfigure the application on each start.
• Addresses a memory leak that was introduced by the PacRequestorEnforcement registry key in the November 2021 Cumulative Update that causes a decrease in performance on domain controllers.
• Addresses an issue in which Event ID 37 might be logged during certain password change scenarios.
• Addresses an issue that occurs when you try to write a service principal name (SPN) alias (such as www/contoso) and HOST/NAME already exists on another object. If the user has the RIGHT_DS_WRITE_PROPERTY on the SPN attribute of the colliding object, you receive an “Access Denied” error.
• Addresses an issue in which domain joins may fail in environments that use disjoint DNS hostnames.
• Addresses an issue that prevents you from changing a password that has expired when you sign in to a Windows device.

Known issues in this update

The Windows 8.1 update will be updated automatically through Windows Update while the Windows 7 update will be installed automatically through Windows Update if you are an ESU customer.

Microsoft releases Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 7 (KB5012626) and 8.1 (KB5012670)

Windows 10 and 11 allow users to show or hide app icons in the bottom-right corner of the screen. You can remove apps from the notification area if you have less available space or keep all icons on the taskbar for more convenience. Alternatively, Windows Settings lets you select what apps always sit next to the clock and what apps hide in the "overflow" menu behind the button with an arrow-up icon.

Windows 11 22H2, the upcoming feature update for Microsoft's latest operating system, apparently has a third option: remove the overflow menu and disable all the icons inside it. You can find the new toggle in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Other system tray icons > "Hide icon menu." Disabling the icon menu leaves only default indicators: clock, volume, battery, network connection, and input language.

Some may rightfully argue that disabling icons in the notification area worsens the user experience by removing options, such as "Safe Eject Media" or the OneDrive status indicator. Also, you cannot, for example, close some apps if they do not appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Still, you can remove the overflow with all unnecessary icons and leave those you need the most. In a nutshell, the new feature lets you make the taskbar a little cleaner without additional expandable menus. Unfortunately, Windows 11 still lacks the "Show all icons" option from Windows 10.

It appears that Microsoft introduced the option to hide the icon menu somewhere during the Windows 11 22H2 development process. The initial release of Windows 11 has no such feature, and release notes for Dev builds do not mention it. What Microsoft has mentioned is that the company has no plans to restore the option to move the taskbar. According to Windows engineers, it is not an important feature, even though it is the most upvoted request in the Feedback Hub.

Windows 11 22H2 will let you disable the overflow and all app icons in the notification area

Designed to provide a simple on-off toggle for using the operating system's color management in the Firefox web browser, it is giving Firefox users an option to disable the use of the operating system's color management capabilities in the browser.

Web browsers like Firefox use the color management options of the operating system by default to "optimize and render colors and images" according to Mozilla. While that is usually wanted, it may cause issues in areas that require colors to be identical across devices and operating systems.

The Extended Color Management add-on was created to add this capability to the Firefox web browser. It installs in a matter of seconds and displays a single button in its interface when its icon is activated. A click on the icon toggles the use of the operating system's color management functionality on or off.

Since it is on by default, clicking the button for the first time will set it to off. A restart is required before the changes take affect. Once disabled, Firefox will display "the colors of graphics and videos consistent", even across different device types and operating systems.

 With the extension, creators and their vendors can now disable color management, then simply restart the Firefox browser so that the colors of graphics or videos are consistent, even across different operating units. This allows media engineers to make consistent and reliable assumptions about the color pipeline between the content shown in a browser and the actual pixel values sent to the computer’s display.

Color management can be turned off in most applications, e.g., in Adobe Photoshop, but some content may only be viewed in a browser, and the extension ensures that this content is displayed as color-accurate as possible.

Mozilla describes one use case that the new extension provides for Industrial Light & Magic, best known for its work on various Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows:

With this extension, Firefox offers creators a turnkey solution to simply turn off in-browser color management when sharing content between color-calibrated and matched displays, so that both Lucasfilm and remote partners can see the intended colors and view ‘dailies’ more easily than before.

In short: the browser extension helps ensure that content is as color accurate as possible, regardless of how and where it is viewed.

Firefox users can check out Mozilla's blog post on the matter or head over to Mozilla's add-ons repository to install the extension directly.

Now You: what is your take on the new extension? (via Caschy)

Mozilla releases Extended Color Management add-on for Firefox

During the Hybrid work event, Microsoft officially teased new features coming to the operating system this year.

Phishing protection

One of the new security features is enhanced phishing protection. In version 22H2, Microsoft Defender SmartScreen will be getting significant improvements and protection from the chip to the cloud by combining modern hardware and software.

This new feature uses Microsoft Defender SmartScreen to alert users when they try to store passwords in plain texts in apps like Notepad. The feature will also warn users if they accidentally enter the Microsoft account passwords on phishing sites.

"These enhancements will make Windows the world's first operating system with phishing safeguards built directly into the platform and shipped out of the box to help users stay productive and secure without having to learn to be their own IT department," Microsoft said.

File Explorer gets tabs, modern sidebar and contextual suggestions

File Explorer getting support for tabs in Windows 11 version 22H2.

With tabs support, you'll be able to manage folders/directories with ease and the experience will be similar to tabs in Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft is also working on a new modern sidebar called 'Home' and it will house options like This PC. The update will also improve OneDrive integration in File Explorer, thus making it easier to find what you’re looking for, allowing you to see all files in one centralized place.

You can pin files and make files as favourites similar to Microsoft 365 or OneDrive.

Additionally, Microsoft is also testing the contextual suggestions feature. This will allow users to easily share files with their contacts.

Full screen widgets

As you're probably aware, Windows 11 comes with a widgets board where you can read personalized news, weather updates and interact with web-based widgets of apps like Microsoft Store.

This widgets board currently appear on the left side of the display, but this could change soon.

During the event, Microsoft teased a full screen widgets board. However, it's unclear when the feature will arrive.

Suggested actions

Another new feature is 'suggested actions' which is going to be particularly useful in apps like Microsoft Teams. With this new feature, you can highlight a date in a Teams message and Windows will suggest actions.

For example, if you highlight a date, you'll see a recommendation to create an event in Microsoft Calendar for that day.

Here are the new features coming to Windows 11

Microsoft's Head of Product Tali Roth started off by saying that:

When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge.

Having the Taskbar on the right or left apparently breaks the flow of apps... even though it worked fine in Windows 10? That's kind of the crux of the problem here, when Microsoft rebuilt the Taskbar from scratch, it essentially removed a lot of the functionality that people used in Windows 10. This was done in the name of simplification and I have complained about this before too.

Coming over to another problem, the rebuilt Taskbar is reportedly a relic from the now-defunct Windows 10X, an OS that was being designed for dual-screen devices where design simplification was needed. Simply porting it over to Windows 11 meant that people on regular devices lost a lot of functionality in the process.

In other words, there was no massive demand to redesign the Taskbar for existing, "traditional" Windows devices. Microsoft essentially broke what was already working fine for everyone.

There's another interesting thing to talk about here too. Microsoft has cited engineering difficulties in making the Windows 11 Taskbar movable... but, a comparatively much smaller company like Stardock has already implemented it just fine through its Start11 software, which allows the Taskbar to be moved to the top, at least.

If third-party developers can put in the time and effort to fix Microsoft's mistakes, there's no reason why an organization as big as Microsoft can't invest the same level of effort and commitment in its own software. If you can't allow moving the Taskbar to the left or right, at least allow people to move it to the top for now, because that is definitely possible through third-party tools.

Now, talking about the second part of Roth's argument:

And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around.

This part of the statement really irks me. Microsoft claims that not enough people want to move the Taskbar... but, that is the most requested feature in the Feedback Hub, by quite a hefty margin. Microsoft casually dismissing this fact is problematic since it has always talked about how user feedback is crucial to Windows development.

If we believe that Microsoft is indeed right and that it has formed this conclusion based on telemetry data, that has other implications. That means that the company might as well just throw out the Feedback Hub because it would rather give telemetry more importance. And to be honest, I'd be okay with that considering we are now seeing that feedback in that service is apparently not important enough to Microsoft at all. But the company needs to be transparent about it, you can't have a Feedback Hub for the public and then ignore it based on your internal metrics and priorities.

Overall, I don't think Microsoft's argument holds enough weight. I'm not involved in Windows development so I can't speak on behalf of the engineering difficulties but we do have evidence that moving the Taskbar to at least the top is possible and that enough people do want the feature, so I think it makes sense to call Microsoft out on this. People didn't ask for Taskbar functionalities to be removed so they shouldn't have to beg for them to be returned. It's not simply a matter of "stay on Windows 10 if you want this feature so much", it's a matter of principle and a case of Microsoft ignoring clear public demand.

What do you think of Microsoft not making the Taskbar movable in Windows 11? Does the company's argument hold any weight?

Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardock

Microsoft's argument for not allowing us to move the Windows 11 Taskbar makes no sense

This feature started rolling out for Edge users running version Beta 88 in December 2020 to drastically reduce memory and CPU resource usage, four months after its initial unveil, in September 2020, as an experiment.

"Beginning in Microsoft Edge 100, we've updated sleeping tabs to enable pages that are sharing a browsing instance with another page to now go to sleep," the Microsoft Edge Team said earlier this week.

"With this change, 8% more tabs on average will sleep, saving you even more resources! On average, each sleeping tab saves 85% of memory and 99% CPU for Microsoft Edge."

Redmond also added a new dialog that will give users an overview of how much system memory is saved by the sleeping tabs feature.

You can open it by clicking 'Performance' under the top-right menu or enabling the Performance button to the Microsoft Edge toolbar to have access to this info with a mouse click.

How Edge sleeping tabs works

Sleeping tabs will automatically force inactive background tabs to "go to sleep" automatically, " releasing system resources after a pre-defined time. These resources get redirected to active or newly opened tabs.

By default, inactive tabs get "put to sleep" after two hours of inactivity, but you can easily change this interval from the Settings page at edge://settings/system.

Resuming a sleeping tab requires only a mouse click, and you can add websites you never want to be frozen by this feature via a blocklist accessible on the same Settings page.

"Sleeping tabs builds upon the core of Chromium's 'freezing' technology," Microsoft Senior Program Manager Eleanor Huynh explained when the feature was announced.

"Freezing pauses a tab's script timers to minimize resource usage. A sleeping tab resumes automatically when clicked, which is different than discarded tabs, which require the page to fully be reloaded."

The feature significantly lowers Microsoft Edge's memory and CPU requirements leading to better browser performance and increased battery life.

Based on performance tests across roughly 13000 devices, Microsoft says sleeping tabs reduce memory usage by 32% on average and, in most cases, it will also lead to approximately 37% lower CPU usage.

Microsoft Edge gets performance boost with updated sleeping tabs

The Start menu and taskbar are among the most controversial changes in Windows 11. Microsoft threw away the old taskbar during the development process and started making the new one from scratch. As a result, developers had to decide what features needed to be ready for the initial launch, what features they could postpone, and what features were not worth the effort. The option to move the taskbar fell into the last category.

Long story short, Microsoft thinks bringing back the movable taskbar is too much work for too few users. Here is how Tali Roth, Microsoft's Head of Product, explains the situation:

When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there's a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge.

And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that that se of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around.

It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we should, actually build the side taskbar.

The logic behind the explanation is easy to understand. Windows enthusiasts are quite a vocal yet relatively small community in the Windows install base with more than 1.3 billion devices. Microsoft needs to constantly balance satisfying its hardcore fans and keeping the priorities in check for the entire audience. Oftentimes, decisions Microsoft makes in favor of the larger group of users hurt the enthusiasts.

But the funny thing about the taskbar is that the Feedback Hub directly clashes with what Tali Roth has said. The ability to move the taskbar is the most upvoted feedback piece, with more than 17,600 thumb-ups and 1200 comments. Unless Microsoft has another tool to source more feedback from "regular" users, you can tell quite a large chunk of Windows 11 customers want Microsoft to bring back the missing feature more than everything else. People do not want stickers on the desktop. They want the taskbar they have lost.

Fortunately, third-party developers thrive where Microsoft fails. You can reclaim some of the most popular taskbar features killed by Windows 11 with help from Start11 and similar utilities. Start11 recently introduced the option to ungroup icons on the taskbar, plus it lets you move the taskbar to the top. You can learn more about changes in the latest Start11 release here.

Do you think the option to move the taskbar is overhyped? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Microsoft says changing taskbar location in Windows 11 is not important

Changelog

It’s been more than four weeks since Microsoft added new features to Office for Windows users. The last time Microsoft added new Office features for Windows users was when Windows Office Insider Preview Build 15028.20050 was released.

Office Build 15028.20050 added the ability to refresh your stock data in the background regularly, and the ability to insert hyperlinks into Excel comments. The update also added the ability to let users apply labels whenever a document, worksheet, or presentation is either created or modified as against previous scenarios where your administrator configures default sensitivity labels.

Microsoft recently released Office Insider updates for Mac and iOS users too. Like Windows users, Office Insiders on Mac can also add hyperlinks to comments in Excel. Also, in the last iOS Office Insider update, Microsoft added important PDF options to the bottom bar. The company added many new features alongside the ability to add hyperlinks to the latest Office Insider update for Mac.

To update to the latest Microsoft Office Insider Preview Build, open any Office program and go to File> Account> Update Options> Update Now.

Microsoft releases Office Version 2205 (Build 15130.20000) for Windows users

• Intermittent crash or hang seen in A Total War Saga: Troy* when the campaign is launched and “Ultra” quality game settings are selected.
• Rust* may intermittently experience an application crash when joining a new server.
• Creo* may experience graphical corruption or anomalies during general application usage.
• Intermittent stutter or lag may be experienced during gameplay in DOTA 2* (DX11) and Grand Theft Auto V* (DX11).
• Naraka: Bladepoint* may experience texture corruption or flickering on some ground surfaces.
• Horizon Zero Dawn*, Shadow of the Tomb Raider*, Strange Brigade*, Borderlands 3* and Diablo 2: Resurrected* may exhibit lighting or texture corruption in some areas of the game when using DirectX®12 API.
• Path of Exile* (Vulkan®) user interface and/or HUD may exhibit corruption.
• Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI* may fail to process video output or may experience graphical corruption while processing video output.
• Some Adobe Lightroom* effects utilizing WinML may fail to process or output correctly.

And there are still plenty of open issues that remain:

• Back 4 Blood* may experience lighting or texture corruption when mist is visible on screen.
• Forza Horizon 5* may experience texture corruption.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War* may experience an application crash during regular gameplay.
• FIFA 22* may experience an intermittent application crash during regular gameplay.
• Map textures may fail to load or may load as blank surfaces when playing CrossFire*.
• Gears 5* may experience terrain corruption when using medium or higher quality graphics quality settings.
• Some objects and textures in Halo Infinite* may render black and fail to load. Lighting may also appear blurry or over exposed in the multiplayer game menus.
• Guardians of the Galaxy* may exhibit texture corruption on some interactive objects.
• Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition* may experience minor texture corruption.

There are also many issues specific to the new Arc Control feature:

• Intel® Arc™ Control Studio may fail to capture microphone audio when streaming for extended periods of time.
• Intel® Arc™ Control may fail to start after a driver installation or upgrade. A workaround is to restart your system.
• Checking for driver updates or attempting to install driver updates through Intel® Arc™ Control may sometimes cause an “Error Installing Driver” message to appear.
• Smooth Sync is enabled by default when “Application Choice” is selected from the Frame Delivery settings in the Intel® Arc™ Control game settings page.
• Intel® Arc™ Control hotkeys such as “Alt+I” may fail to work in some games that are capturing keyboard inputs such as CrossFire™ and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege™.
• Invoking the Highlights hotkey may sometimes produce an “Unknown Error” message via the Intel® Arc™ Control overlay.
• When altering the performance metrics overlay visibility in Intel® Arc™ Control, some settings may intermittently fail to be hidden from the performance overlay.
• The Performance Tuning page in Intel® Arc™ Control may erroneously appear visible or configurable on unsupported platforms. When this occurs, changing settings on this page may throw an error message and/or will not function.
• A Windows® UAC prompt may occur when launching Intel® Arc™ Control.

You can download the new Intel 30.0.101.1330 driver at the company's official website here. It is compatible with the following products:

• Intel® Arc™ A370M Graphics

• Intel® Arc™ A350M Graphics

• Intel® Core™ i5-12450H Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i5-12500H Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.50 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i5-12600H Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.50 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-12700H Processor (24M Cache, up to 4.70 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-12800H Processor (24M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-12650H Processor (24M Cache, up to 4.70 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i9-12900H Processor (24M Cache, up to 5.00 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i9-12900HK Processor (24M Cache, up to 5.00 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i5-1240P Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i5-1250P Processor (12M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-1280P Processor (24M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-1260P Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.70 GHz)

• Intel® Core™ i7-1270P Processor (18M Cache, up to 4.80 GHz)

   

While the effort by Intel's driver team is certainly commendable, the company has already confirmed that it has delayed the launch of Arc A300M laptop GPUs at least outside of Korea.

With Arc nowhere in sight, Intel continues to release drivers with new version 30.0.101.1330

People might find Adobe Photoshop’s pricing too expensive. Today we review Affinity Photo, which is an alternative to Photoshop, without the high costs associated with it.

Adobe Photoshop, a software considered an industry standard for creation, editing and manipulation of an image. It however comes with a huge cost associated with it. It’s subscription-only model costs $20.99 per month to almost $239.88 per year.

Compared to that, Affinity Photo, often considered a Photoshop alternative, costs $54.99 upfront without any additional monthly or yearly charges for the base software.

Affinity Photo history

Released in 2015, Affinity Photo is not entirely a new product. It has at least two decades of a history behind it. Affinity Photo is a successor of Serif PhotoPlus which was released way back in 1999. In 2009, Serif Europe Ltd., a British company behind these products, decided to make a new software from an entirely new code written from ground up as an successor Serif PhotoPlus – which was phased out when Affinity Photo released. Six years in making, Affinity Photo was finally released to the public in 2015. Windows version came a year later.

Developers of Affinity Photo claim to provide a lot of features. From editing of RAW image files, merging of HDR files, Panorama Stitching, Focus Stacking, Batch Processing, 360 Image Editing, Digital Painting, Unlimited Layers, support for Smart Objects but more importantly, ability to edit and export PSD files.

But the question is. Does Affinity Photo justify it’s Photoshop alternative tag. Does it come even near it. We decided to try to review the Windows version of Affinity Photo to find it out.

Download and Installation

Downloading Affinity Photo is not entirely easy. One requires to create an account to get a download link emailed to their account. The file is 579 MB in size and downloaded quickly.

Affinity Photo installer

The installer uses a custom UI with the ability to install the software in whichever location one wants on the disk. The installation was done rather quickly.

When we ran the software after its successful installation, we were first greeted with a trial screen, then a beautiful splash screen, then a welcome screen.

User Interface

The new document page at start up had all the features required. From various image sizes, DPI, Orientation, Color format – including RGB/32 (HDR), Color profile, Transparent background option and other things.

Affinity Photo New Document

When we started Affinity Photo, we immediately noticed how similar it looked to Photoshop, while still maintaining some of its originality.

Affinity Photo User Interface

It has all the tools one commonly finds in an image editor. Hand tool, Move tool (something we enjoyed using), Color Picker Tool, Crop Tool, Selection Brush Tool, Flood Select Tool (similar to Magic Wand Tool of Photoshop), Marquee Tool of various shapes like Rectangle, Elliptical, Row, Column and also a Freehand Selection Tool. Other tools included Flood Fill (Paint Bucket), Gradient Tool, various Paint brush tools, Erase Brush, Dodge Brush, Clone Brush Tool, Blur, Sharpen and Smudge Tool. It also has Healing Brush, Patch Tool, Blemish Removal Tool, Pen Tool, various shapes creation tool, Text tools, Zoom tool and a lot more.

On right-hand side we have a “Studio”, with Histogram, Scope, Color selection, Brushes and others. Below it are Layers and their creation / deletion buttons. Layer effects look and work quite similar to Photoshop. It also has Layer adjustments which allows one to manipulate individual layers among other things. Even below is the Navigator, RGB color Channels selector and editor, also an Info tab which shows mouse location, memory efficiency among other things. We however had to manually find and enable History from the top View > Studio options to enable it.

Tools on top

What we liked was that Affinity Photo had special, easy to use tools on top.

Affinity Photo top tools

It has Liquify Persona – which allows one to manipulate the size of various objects inside the photo with your mouse by dragging the area. Another option is Tone Mapping Persona, which allows one to modify the image with presets of various color and brightness tones.

The top tools also come with buttons like Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colors and Auto White Balance. All of them automatically adjust the image to what Affinity Photo considers to looks best. Other buttons include Select All, Deselect, Invert Selection among others.

However, our favorite top side tool is Develop Persona, which is a feature which professional photographers might find useful with their RAW and other image files. It gives one an ability to edit and modify Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, White Balance, Shadows and Highlights. In addition to it is ability to modify camera captures like Lens Correction, Noise Reduction, Tones modification, Split Toning and many other things. Making it almost a real life photo studio by itself.

Affinity Photo Develop Persona

Menus

The Menu of Affinity Photo has all the features one would expect. The File menu has an ability to Open New files normally, through Clipboard and also open New Panorama file among other things. One can also save files in a default .afphoto format native to Affinity Photo. It also gives an option to Export files in PNG, JPEG (JPG), GIF, PSD and many other formats.

Affinity Photo Export Settings – PNG, JPG, GIF, PSD and others.

The ability to save the file (export) in PSD however was not complete satisfactory. While it did have options of saving PSD in two formats – preserve accuracy and preserve editability, it did not save our text layers properly in an re-editable manner, no matter which option we selected. This problem was not found in its native .afphoto format.

Edit Menu

The Edit menu has basic options like Cut, Copy, Paste, Fill and others. It however contains main Preferences options of Affinity Photo.

Affinity Photo Preferences

The preferences window comes with a lot of options like General tab – Startup options, clipboard options, Language options.

The Color tab offers various color profiles they use while using the software.

The Performance tab allows one to modify RAM usage limit, Disk usage warning, file recovery, View Quality, Renderer – with an ability to select GPU and Hardware Acceleration among other things.

The User Interface tab allows one to adjust Background Gray Levels, UI Gamma levels and UI Style – Dark or Light.

Other tabs include things like the Tools tab which allows selecting left-hand side toolbar sizes, ability to change Keyboard Shortcuts, Reset all settings, but most importantly, ability to add Photoshop plugins – this feature was a surprise to us.

Other menus

The Text menu has various options like Character options, Typography, Paragraph Styles, Text styles, Spell check and others.

The Document menu the gives ability to Add and Restore Snapshot, Resize Document – something which worked excellently in our trials, Resize Canvas, rotate and flip image.

The Layer menu has all the options we had mentioned previously – same as Layer options on the right. Blur, Shadow, Glow, Overlay, Gradient being some of them.

The Select menu gives an ability to Select All, Select specific layers or specific Color Range, Tonal Range and Alpha Range for individual editing.

The Filters menu is among the most interesting aspect of Photoshop and Affinity Photo disappoints here a little. It has almost everything, like dozens of Blur options, Sharpen, Distort, Noise, Detect, Color, Lightening, Shadows, Haze Removal among others. We however did not find any options to render clouds or add lens flare.

The View menu has Zoom options, Ruler, Grid, Margin options and ability to show and hide various objects on the screen.

The Help menu has Affinity Photo’s build in guide, which is one of the most detailed guides we have seen in a software. The menu also has a link to hundreds of video tutorials hosted on Affinity Photo’s official site.

Left toolbar

Coming back to the left toolbar that we had mentioned at the start of the article. We tried all the tools at our disposal and all of them worked as intended. Whether it was Flood Fill tool or whether it was Gradient tool or whether it was Paint Brush Tool – which came with a lot of options like Width (brush size), Opacity, Flow, Hardness, Blend and many other things. All of them worked as intended – some of them in fact worked better than Photoshop. However, we wanted to try what we consider our favorite feature of Photoshop – Content Aware tool. We knew Affinity Photo provided its alternative.

Content Aware and Inpaint

Content Aware is among the best features of Photoshop. It allows one to mark an area and make the object disappear completely from the image. The image editor fills the disappeared object with the background area and make it appear as if the original object did not exist. In Affinity Photo, this tool is known as Inpaint.

There are two ways to use this. One is to select and area with the Marquee Tool and then select the Inpaint option. The second option is to use the Inpainting Brush Tool. We used the second one as it is easier to use.

We chose a simple photo with a tree and used the Inpainting Brush Tool. See the results for yourself.

Affinity Photo Inpainting Brush Tool Select

Affinity Photo Inpainting Brush Tool Result

Looks good to us. But where is the tree?

Using advanced images might require advanced skills, though.

Conclusion and rating

Simple image we created in Affinity Photo with some tools and brushes

We are not professional image editing experts. So we tried to review Affinity Photo to the best of our abilities. This was especially done with a consideration that the common users too might find benefit with this review, as professionals already might be aware about it. If anyone feels our review was lacking or insufficient or if there is any other way we could have improved it, then we would like to hear the feedback.

In our tests. We found that Affinity Photo has the ability to almost reach the Photoshop level of greatness. In some things, however, it pulls itself behind. But cheaper, one time payment cost is a huge advantage. Additionally, more features are getting added to it. So we recommend everyone to try it at least once. Maybe they can replace their favorite image editor with Affinity Photo.

Rating: 4.5/5.

Review: Affinity Photo Is An Excellent Photoshop Alternative

Despite this though, Vivaldi is still not fully pleased with Microsoft's effort. The co-founder and CEO of Vivaldi, Jon von Tetzchner, offered the following statement to The Register regarding the development. He said:

While they have made an attempt, the fact that it has been done the way it has leads to the assumption that it is only being done to avoid being prosecuted for anticompetitive behavior, not to actually solve the underlying problem.

[...] This should apply to all users, not just the ones who are technically competent enough to realize that they need to install an optional update, and know how to actually do so. It should be installed for all users.

[...] Microsoft should make it as easy for all users to use other browsers, as it is to use Edge, and stop abusing their power to push Edge onto users. They continue to try to make it harder to switch to and use other browsers. We look forward to the EU following up on this malpractice.

Mozilla too will probably agree with Vivaldi, though probably to a lesser extent perhaps. The Firefox developer definitely acknowledged that it's a "step in the right direction" but also quipped that "more can be done".

Source: The Register

Vivaldi still not fully happy with Windows 11 default browser choice, wishes EU will step in

Here is an example of how this feature works: you receive a message in Telegram with a YouTube link. You click the link, and Windows opens it in the YouTube PWA instead of the browser.

To enable link handling for progressive web apps, do the following:

1. Update Microsoft Edge Canary to the latest version. You can download Edge Canary from the official Edge Insider website.
2. Ensure Edge Canary is your default browser. If you use Windows 11 22H2, here is how to change the default browser with a single click.
3. Install a web app, such as YouTube or Reddit, by clicking a button in the address bar.

   

4. Go to edge://flags/#edge-webapp-link-handling and select Enabled.

   

5. Restart the browser.
6. Go to edge://apps, find the web app you need, and click Details.

   

7. Turn on the Link handling toggle.

   

8. Try opening a link that leads to the website installed as a web app.

It is worth noting that the link handling feature has some quirks. For example, Edge Canary cannot open a shareable YouTube link (youtu.be) in a PWA but has no problem launching the web app with a regular youtube.com link.

Also, the new flag does not affect how Edge works with websites installed as apps. There is a difference between fully-fledged progressive web apps (those Edge offers you to install from the address bar) and websites that simply open in dedicated windows. For now, Edge cannot open external links in websites installed as apps. Instead, the browser launches as usual and opens the link in a regular tab.

Thank you, Leopeva64-2, for the tip!

Edge Canary gets link handling for web apps

• #17332: AlwaysOnTop windows would lose their topmost status sometimes. It'll be reapplied when detected.
• #17390: PowerToys Run would consume 100% of the CPU when many changes were done on settings. This is fixed.
• #17406: FancyZones not restoring rounded corners after unsnapping bug is fixed.
• #17367: Not everyone was happy with FancyZones removing rounded corners on Windows 11. This is now a setting.
• #17318: Settings would get stuck in a loop checking for updates too frequently. This is fixed.
• #1605: PowerToys Run can now run programs as a different user.
• #17468: PowerToys Run WindowWalker crashed on startup on certain Virtual Desktop configurations. This is fixed.
• #16283: New installations or updates of VS Code were not being picked up by PowerToys Run.
• #17454: PowerToys Run was taking a long time to show queries on configurations with many network interfaces. This is fixed.
• #17027: Some applications were not being resnapped to a Zone as they were restarted. This is fixed.
• #17410: Sign the PowerToys .msi file bundled in the .exe installer.
• #17513: Special shortcuts like Control Panel and File Explorer appear again in PowerToys Run.
• #16552: Improve FancyZones Editor grid editor support for screen readers.
• #17537: Update the .net core installed version to 3.1.23, containing security fixes.
• #17493: Fix crash on Developer File Preview when the setting file is not created yet.
• #17539: Fix FancyZones bug when restoring original size of windows when unsnapping on certain display scalings.
• #17570: Additional logging for the Windows Terminal plugin in PowerToys Run.

As such, there are no changes, you can view the full set of changes in our v0.57.0 post here.

PowerToys is Microsoft's open-source project that offers a collection of nifty tools that people can use to customize the Windows 10 or 11 UI and experience to their liking. As we know, depending upon feedback and general stability, some of the utilities also make their way to the OS eventually. A prominent example of this is Snap Layouts and Span Groups in Windows 11 which borrow heavily from the FanzyZones tool in PowerToys.

If you are using PowerToys in Windows 11, you can grab it in the Microsoft Store. For others on Windows 10, you can open the app and click on "Check for updates" under the updates section on the General tab. Those who would like to try PowerToys for the first time can grab the version 0.57.2 installer from the app's GitHub page.

Microsoft PowerToys 0.57.2 fixes FancyZones rounded corners, Always on Top lost focus, and more