Late Monday, Carbon Copy Cloner, the shareware favorite for drive cloning operations by Mike Bombich, has released version 3.3 of the program. The new version, a 3.2 megabyte download, adds the following changes:

- Added support for HFS+ filesystem compression that was introduced in Snow Leopard.
- To correspond with how the Finder and Disk Utility report these values on Snow Leopard, CCC will now use base 10 for reporting MB and GB on Snow Leopard. CCC will continue to use base 2 to report these values when booted from Leopard or Tiger.
- Improved the performance of backing up a large number of files with extended attributes.
- It is no longer a requirement that CCC be installed on media that supports the setuid bit.
- Added a bootability notification that will notify users when a target volume’s underlying disk is partitioned with the MBR partitioning scheme (rather than the Apple-recommended GUID or APM partition scheme).
- Increased the increment value of the disk image segment size stepper from 1 to 25. Now it takes mere seconds to get from 650MB to 4.6GB.
- Addressed an issue in which the source and target menus would not be properly updated if a disk disappears unexpectedly in the middle of a backup task.
- CCC now properly excludes the Time Machine database when backing up a hard drive using the “Backup everything” cloning method in file-level mode.
- Much like the Snow Leopard update, this release includes hundreds of tweaks and adjustments to improve performance and reliability.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.3 retails for a US$10 shareware registration fee. The application requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run.

Late Wednesday, software developer Quark released version 8.1.2 of its QuarkXPress design application. The 659 megabyte update, which can be downloaded here, adds the following fixes and changes:

- Improves PDF output capabilities and introduces features.

- Introduces a ‘Native Transparency’ mode for creating PDFs which can offer designers faster and more flexible PDF output support and provide greater control over their PDF workflow process.

- Renovates spell checking, adds the ability to paste text without formatting, and improves productivity with Scale functionality.

- Fine-tunes Usability and Item Styles.

- Can help prevent errors by reporting faux font styles such as bold or italic.

- Readies QuarkXPress for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 compatibility.

QuarkXPress 8.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 later to install and run and retails for US$799.00 for the full version.

Early Tuesday, software giant released version 5.5 of its Camera Raw plugin, a program which delivers access to “raw” image formats in professional and mid-range digital cameras from Canon, Fujifilm, Minolta, Nikon and Olympus.

Newly supported camera models include:
- Nikon D300s.
- Nikon D3000.
- Olympus E-P1.
- Panasonic DMC-FZ35.
- Panasonic DMC-GF1.
- Camera Raw 5.5 includes a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response.

Users can visit Adobe’s Camera Raw web site for a complete list of supported cameras.

Camera Raw 5.5 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run.

On Thursday, Apple released Security Update 2009-005, its consolidated security update containing the four previous security fixes for the Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”) and Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) operating systems.

Full details as to fixes and changes within the update can be found here.

The updates are also available as regular downloads for the following operating systems:
- Tiger PPC
- Tiger Intel
- Leopard
- Tiger Server PPC
- Tiger Server Universal
- Leopard Server

As usual, the update can also be downloaded and installed via Mac OS X’s Software update feature.

Michael Tsai’s must-have shareware program, SpamSieve, has just been updated to version 2.7.6. The new version, a 5.9 megabyte download, makes the following fixes and improvements:

* Improved compatibility with pre-release versions of Mac OS X.
* Expanded the Can I delete spam messages after training SpamSieve with them? section of the manual.
* Fixed a bug in the Setting up a Spam Filtering Drone instructions.
* Improved number entry in the corpus window.
* Improved the reporting of unexpected errors.
* Updated links to indicate that Mailsmith is now available from Stickshift Software.
* Added a Console warning if the Apple Mail plug-in detects that CTLoader is installed.
* The crash reporter works better with Mac OS X 10.6.
* Fixed a mistake in the French localization.

SpamSieve is available for a US$30 registration fee and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run. The new version can either be downloaded directly from the web site or brought up to the current version via the program’s built-in update feature.

Early Thursday, Mozilla.org released version 3.5.3 of its Firefox web browser.
The new version, a 17.6 megabyte download, sports the following fixes and changes:
- Fixed several security issues.
- Fixed several stability issues.

Firefox 3.5.3 is available in more than 70 different languages and requires a G3, G4, G5 or Intel-based Mac, Mac OS X 10.4 or later and 128MB of RAM to install and run.

If you’ve snagged the new version and have any feedback to offer about it, let us know in the comments.

DivX for Mac, the shareware player that allows users to view high definition H.264 (.mkv) videos with AAC audio and video, hit version 7.0.1 yesterday. The new version, a 23.3 megabyte download (courtesy of VersionTracker), contains the followings changes and features:

- DivX Player 7.0.1 now supports playback of DivX Plus files (.mkv/H.264/AAC) and has an updated UI.
- Use of the DivX Codec 6.8.3.
- Up to 50% faster decoding on multi-core computers for better HD Playback.
- New custom matrices that allow for better fine tuning of encoder for specific content type.
- DivX Converter 1.3.1 has been updated to work on Leopard (and to work in general).

DivX Player 7.0.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run.

Early Tuesday, Opera Software released Opera 10.0, the latest version of its free web browser.

The new version, a 16.3 megabyte download, offers the following fixes and changes:

Improved:
* Opera Turbo dialog box margins and whitespace
* Tab states and positioning of the Standard Skin
* Visual tabs appearance
* Minor alterations to the opera:x, Error and Fraud pages appearance
* Increased Auto update check interval

Fixed:
* Opening the Address bar dropdown
* Navigating back and forth to a form with an open input suggester
* Disabling links on the Navigation bar
* Toolbar updates
* Gmail Contact manager issue
* Collapsed Address Bar not showing domain name until page finishes loading
* Problem while navigating History
* BitTorrent problem
* Not being able to remove the Menu button
* Issue when saving a picture that has not been fully downloaded
* Problem with “Sychronize Opera” button in Opera Speed Dial
* Deletion of speed dials not being synchronized

Display and Scripting Fixed:
* ECMAScript allocator/garbage collector issue
* Web font with a local src not working
* Spotify link conversion issue
* History entry incorrectly created when IFRAME added using JavaScript (Yandex)
* XMLHttpRequest buffer overflow

Mail, News, Chat Fixed:
* Message body missing when marking a message as read before the body is downloaded
* Unchecking “import messages” in the import dialog still processes messages
* E-mail addresses are not fetched from a header using iso-8859-15 encoding
* The customized HTML font dropdown in the Appearance dialog
* Resetting HTML compose toolbar making the font list unusable
* Words in Opera Mail and Feeds being cut off by the vertical scrollbar
* Problem when opening image attachments

Security Fixed:
* Sometimes unable to complete a secure transaction

Mac Improved:
* Tab states and positions on the Mac native skin

Fixed:
* Issues with with some plugins
* Problem with Web fonts display

Opera 10.0 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to install and run.

Adium, the open source instant message chat client with support for multiple programs (including AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo! Google Talk, Bonjour, etc.) has been updated to version 1.3.6.

The new version, a 21.4 megabyte download, offers the following fixes and changes:
- Updated to libpurple 2.5.9
- Fix a crash via a specially crafted MSN message (CVE-2009-2694).
- Fix a crash in Bonjour, MSN, and XMPP when trying to transfer files with NULL names.
- Numerous fixes from libpurple 2.5.8.
- Updated to pidgin-facebookchat 1.6.0 from 1.5.1
- Fixed issues with dropped & missed messages.
- Fixed retrieval of profile information.
- Fixed retrieval of buddy icons.
- Fixed messaging with Facebook users whose user IDs are very large.
- Numerous other fixes; see pidgin-facebookchat changelog for details.
- Note: Facebook contact group support is currently disabled.
- Added option to control Facebook mail checking.
- Merged down the space dust.

Adium X is available for free and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run. The program functions as a Universal Binary and runs at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based hardware.

Late Tuesday, software developer Quark released version 8.1 of its QuarkXPress design application. The 752 megabyte update, which can be downloaded here, adds the following fixes and changes:

* Improves PDF output capabilities.
* Introduces a ‘Native Transparency’ mode for creating PDFs which can offer designers faster and more flexible PDF output support and provide greater control over their PDF workflow process.
* Renovates spell checking, adding the ability to paste text without formatting, and improves productivity with Scale functionality.
* Improves Usability and Item Styles.
* Works to prevent errors by reporting faux font styles such as bold or italic.
* Readies QuarkXPress for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 compatibility, and the Windows version of this release adds a Welcome Screen.

QuarkXPress 8.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 later to install and run and retails for US$799.00 for the full version.