With this merger, we are adding some fresh ideas into the project, and most of them are EQ-related. They are:
- Media library and playlist now can save individual EQ settings for each songs, just like the one found in iTunes. As we have reviewed about iTunes before, we believe different music needs different EQ settings because not all songs sound the same.
- As we believe different music needs different EQ settings as not all songs sound the same, we also believe even in a song it never constantly sound the same througout the playback. Sometimes the bass are deeper, some other times the treble sounds louder, depending on which part you are currently listening. Songs usually starts slow in the beginning and reaches it's peak at the chorus, thus the volume is inconsistent and may cause distortion. Traditionally, to tackle this most audio players feature volume limiter/compressor/normalizer to make the volume constant and prevents clipping. However there are trade-offs with this method. For instance, when the bass becomes the culprit that caused the distortion, the volume limiter will tune down the volume of all frequencies, resulting the treble being compromised. What we need here is actually a feature that can dynamically only tune down the volume of frequencies that introduces distortion. In modern audio term, we call it dynamic EQ. We are going to add this feature and user will be able to set the limit manually (in dB unit) or let the player do the compression automatically at the best calculated value (although it may not always produce the best result. We should really believe our ears more). Throughout the playback, the player will analyze (in real time) the volume of each frequencie bands as customized by user and will do its job of limiting the volume of frequencies that is most likely will resulting distortion.
- For each customized EQ bands, there will be '"groove" sound enhancement feature. Literally speaking, the 'groove' here means the sound of the respective frequency band which this feature is enabled will fade out in a certain time as set by user whenever the sound in that frequency hit its peak.
- User status: This 'twitter-like' status will appear as a text below user avatar. By default, user can update their status via the text field that appear at the top of the forum page (available throughout the forum sections and threads too) and their status will be updated in real time, just like twitter. Alternatively user can turn off the text field and choose only to update their status via user CP or *Personal status page*. Twitter integration is also available to update twitter status simultaneously (requires twitter authentication via OAuth).
- Personal page (not activated by default): This is a publicly viewable user personal page with friendly URL (example: www.mysite.com/forum/username). This will act like a blog to a forummer where s/he can choose to publish any of his posts, including those in his/her own private threads. Upon activation, user will have access to Personal Page CP. By default, all of a user's posts (both public and private threads) will be retrieved but user will be able to choose to publish which post. After the activation, The user will have an added feature; "Post to Personal Page" option whenever s/he is about to post an article. And to complement this feature, *Personal status page* (as mentioned earlier) will also available via friendly URL as well (example: www.mysite.com/forum/username/status). It will display all status updates of a user and via twitter-API or @anywhere twitter feature (administrative setting) user also can choose to show their twitter updates as well.
- Sidebar+widget: We don't like AJAX but too bad AJAX is the 'in' thing today and everybody is gaga over it so we couldn't help but to get into it as well. If everything is fine we think this is going to be the world's first internet forum with sidebar and widget. Not much to talk about this because some might like it while other might hate it but rest assured, this feature will most likely to be available as an add-on module (plugin) but even if it happen to be included in the main package, we will make it disabled by default.
The difference between Chrome and Iron is that, according to their website, Iron doesn't send data silently to Google as Chrome do. That also means it doesn't check for updates as well. Otherwise, its just like Chrome. You can even use themes and extensions designed for Chrome.
I'm not paranoid about my activities being tracked by Google anyway, as they were anonymous, but if you are, maybe this is the browser for you. It also features a built in adblocker, although it's not real clear how to configure it.
Unlike Chrome, there's even a portable version of Iron, which is the main reason why I'm using it. I still use Chrome for my PC, but on PCs without Chrome, I use the portable Iron as an alternative.