With a straightforward and uncluttered design, it doesn’t take long to feel at home with Paint.NET’s interface. The basic editing tools are easily located and al open images appear as thumbnails along the top of the windows, letting you quickly switch between them. There are plenty of more advanced features available, such as the magic wand tool which automatically places selection paths around objects, and the ability to create multi-layered images, It’s also possible to add smooth fade effects using the gradient tool.

With the installation file measuring just 3.5MB, Pain.NET doesn’t hog resources and is perfect for low-powered computers such as netbooks. Although the program itself is no longer open source, it remains free of charge and third-party plug-ins are still supported which means new features such as 3D shapes and effects can be installed.

A revised beta version of the Firefox 4 browser is now available to download, offering “app tabs” for sites you visit frequently.

App tabs are quick access buttons for websites you visit regularly and keep open as emailing and social networking.

Rather than waste space in the tab bar for these frequently accessed sites, the revised beta version has smaller, permanent app tabs has at the top left-hand side of the browser for quick and easy access.

Firefox 4 beta 2 can be download in 23 different languages for the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, though not all the new features are available for every platform.