Firefox Magazine

Meerkat, Optimize Firefox for Netbook devices

2009-08-09T11:53:28Z

I'm using my netbook very frequently these days (FF3.5 on UNR) and I was just disabling the bookmarks toolbar to have more space as I do in desktop. Last week I tried Meerkat, a Firefox addon that optimize the browser display for netbooks, the idea sounds great !

Meerkat hides the statusbar when there is no activity
Removes the menu bar, rebuilt into a drop down button placed on the navigation bar
Adds downloads and bookmarks buttons to the right of the location bar, followed by above mentioned menu bar button
Reduces the navigation bar icon size to the small setting

My only issue was with the ScreenGrab addon since I'm not able to use it anymore from statusbar. I'm not sure about download and bookmarks button since I don't use at all. I think the best configuration for Firefox on Netbooks will be a fullscreen mode like with taskbar and statusbar visible in the same time.

Any better tips to optimize Firefox on netbooks ?

10 Best Practice Tips For Firefox Tabs

2009-07-13T13:00:41Z

If you are not big fan of bookmarking services and you use extensively Firefox tabs, you will notice at a certain time that you really need help to get all these tabs organized. A friend of mine "discovered" last month while closing FF that he got 159 tabs open, and some of them are three months old ! Don't let your daily browsing kill you, it's better to get organized since the beginning and use a bookmarking service to save your links. Here is 11 Firefox addons that will help you keep your tabs more organized.

1- HideTab

The first tip is a very new Firefox addon that will let you hide and restore tabs. HideTab is an experimental addon, but already do the job and let you hide all of your current tabs by using ALT+Q shortcut. You can use CTRL+ALT+Q to restore them again or simply restore one by one using the HideTab icon in the status bar.

2- FaviconizeTab

The second addon will let you reduce tab to show only the favicon, it will not only give you more space but will makes tabs look cooler. The only issue here is with websites without favicons. Keep reading, there are more tips below.

Firefox 3.5 Released

2009-06-30T19:04:03Z

The two magic numbers of the day are 5 and 3, and after PHP 5.3, Firefox 3.5 have just been released. Firefox 3.5 aims to be the Fastest browser ever, a Sunspider test on windows xp machine show only 1,524ms compared to FF2 and FF3 with respectively 18,148ms and 3,669ms, and I guess there is need to compare to other browsers.

Major new features in Firefox 3.5 are :

Support for the HTML5 video and audio elements including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio.
Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
Better web application performance using the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
The ability to share your location with websites using Location Aware Browsing
Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
Support for new web technologies such as: downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, new transformations and properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 local storage and offline application storage, canvas text, ICC profiles, and SVG transforms.

There are already 1,2 Million Firefox 3.5 Download, so you can also join the fun and upgrade here http://www.firefox.com.

Mozilla, Firefox, and XSS

2009-06-25T21:20:09Z

In a recent post in Mozilla Security Blog, Brandon Sterne Security Program Manager talked about Mozilla effort to shut down XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting) attacks with Content Security Policy.

For several years, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks have plagued many of the web's most popular sites and victimized their users. At Mozilla, we've been working for the last year on a new technology called Content Security Policy, designed to shut these attacks down.

Mozilla is making efforts not only to make Firefox the fastest browser, but also the most secure platform. Brandon explains CSP approach to validate content :

In order to differentiate legitimate content from injected or modified content, CSP requires that all JavaScript for a page be 1) loaded from an external file, and 2) served from an explicitly approved host. This means that all inline script, javascript: URIs, and event-handling HTML attributes will be ignored. Only script included via a script tag pointing to a white-listed host will be treated as valid. Additionally, CSP allows several other common-sense security restrictions to be enforced.

Of course this will not save you 100% from XSS, Clickjacking or Packet Sniffing Attacks, but I think it's a good initiative from browsers to help keeping the web safe.

Enable ActiveX On Firefox Using ff-activex-host Plugin

2008-12-10T13:02:39Z

This is a firefox plugin that I was looking for since long time, you will probably say why we need activeX with Firefox ? But some Intranet application require some functionnalities that are already available as ActiveX. I had a ActiveX twain solution that I wanted to run on firefox, so finally I think this could be done using ff-activex-host.

The extension is developed by Leeor Aharon, IT Structures Ltd, makes possible to use ActiveX controls in Firefox and provides full access to the hosted control (events, functions, properties) based on the Gecko NPAPI. Concerning security :

The plugin has some security related features to limit the risk it might pose to users by making ActiveX controls available in Firefox. First of all, it is using a special MIME Type so that it won't get triggered by sites that were not specifically designed for it. Additionally, it supports lists of well known CLSIDs and PROGIDs so that it can be limited to use with specific controls and interfaces. Finally, it can be "site locked" to make sure it's only being used by a predetermined list of domains.

You can find sample usage and download in the project website at http://code.google.com/p/ff-activex-host/

Firefox 3 Download Day, A New Guinness World Record Is Coming

2008-06-04T07:37:11Z

The Firefox community is joining forces this Friday to realize a new Guinness world record for highest software download in 24h ! Firefox3 is going to make the Buzz this week and certainly getting higher market share against Internet Explorer. The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 will be posted really soon in the next days, so for now you can pledge to get Firefox 3 during Download Day to set the Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours. Until today 718,034 pledges from all over the world, 15% of them from US, then 7.5% Poland and 7.5% from Brasil. You also could be involved and be part of this mission impossible http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord.

Amazon EC2 Firefox extension goes open source

2007-12-25T18:09:32Z

EC2 Firefox Extension is now open sourced, the extension which aims to make Amazon EC2 usage easier. From the extension it's very easy to manage and launch EC2 instances. The extension is now available on Sourceforge under the name Elasticfox and under the Apache License V2.0. What this extension do :

List available AMIs (Amazon Machine Images)
List your running instances
Launch new instances of an AMI
Manage security groups and launch permissions associated with your instances

Remember The Milk, Gmail-based task manager

2007-12-20T19:58:17Z

This is another amazing Firefox extension which let you manage your task right in your Gmail. Remember the milk for Gmail (or RTM) provide the possibility to add new tasks, complete, postpone, and edit tasks. Best of all, it connect tasks to your Emails, Contacts or Google Calendar events. You can automatically add tasks for starred messages or specific labels... Very innovative way to get your tasks done in Gmail.

Firefox 2.0.0.9, Version Pushed By Two Numbers In Two Weeks

2007-11-03T05:47:38Z

Another security release just announced today Firefox 2.0.0.9, to make a total of two releases in two weeks. The new release have been announced just four days after the 2.0.0.8 release on Mozilla Developer Center. The bugs concerned in this release :

Bug 400406 - Firefox will ignore the "clear" CSS property when used beneath a box that is using the "float" property. There is a temporary workaround JS/CSS code available for web developers with affected layouts.
Bug 400467 - Windows Vista users will get "Java not found" or "Java not working" errors when trying to load Java applets after updating. To fix this, users can right-click the Firefox icon and "Run as administrator", then browse to a page with a Java applet � doing this once will fix the problem and permanently restore Java functionality.
Bug 396695 - Add-ons are disabled after updating. Users can fix this problem by opening their profile folder and removing three files (extensions.rdf, extensions.ini and extensions.cache)
Bug 400421 - Removing a single area element from an image map will cause the entire map to disappear. There is no workaround available at this time.
Bug 400735 - Some Windows users may experience crashes at startup. There is no workaround available at this time.

FoxSaver, A Firefox-based ScreenSaver

2007-10-24T06:56:45Z

FoxSaver is an original extension which will let you turns Idle FireFox into a ScreenSaver and Photo Viewer. The extension run in fullscreen and could be configured to display online pictures or your own. FoxSaver viewers can also share pictures to be viewed by others, which a great collaborative feature. If you have dual monitor, you can move your FireFox to another screen and enjoy the view while working! Works also for linux.

OneClick Install of Wordpress Themes and Plugins from Firefox

2007-08-13T07:43:27Z

OneClick for Wordpress is another Firefox extension which aims to make your every day's Wordpress maintenance more simple. The extension is provided with a wordpress plugin which proceed the extraction of themes or plugins to appropriate folder. After installing the plugin, you can install the OneClick Firefox extension. Whenever you find a theme or plugin you want to install, right click on the zip link then choose from OneClick menu if it is a theme or plugin. OneClick will make the necessary upload and unzip, so you only have to check your admin interface and activate your new plugin or theme. Before installing, OneClick diagnose the system to check for possible update in addition to auto diagnostics wether everything is working properly.

Firefox 2.0.0.5 Security Release

2007-07-19T13:05:53Z

Mozilla just released a security update of Firefox 2.0.0.5, fixing major security issues :

XPCNativeWrapper pollution
Unauthorized access to wyciwyg:// documents
Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer
File type confusion due to %00 in name
Privilege escalation using an event handler attached to an element not in the document
Frame spoofing while window is loading
XSS using addEventListener and setTimeout
Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

Firefox users proved that they are always up to date, so there is no need to mention that it is highly recommended to upgrade to this release.

Sparky, Official Alexa Toolbar for Firefox

2007-07-19T12:49:59Z

Finally, Alexa got an official toolbar for Firefox ! It took long long time, but good to see it here. I was wondering why Alexa was blaming Mozilla for not supporting them, while anyone can develop plugins for Firefox without any support. The Alexa toolbar for Firefox is called Sparky and features include :

Related Links: Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.
Traffic Trend: A sparkline showing the traffic trend from the last four months.
Reach Meter: A neat little indicator that shows the site's Reach.
Traffic Rank: Shows the current site's Alexa Traffic Rank.

Now you can install Sparky on your Firefox and you can see your Alexa ranking jump in the next days. Just a note that Sparky might ~~not be compatible with the latest security release of Firefox 2.0.0.5 which released on the same day. Shame !~~ slow down your Firefox ! I just got a warning that it is not compatible with 2.0.0.5, and after restarting Firefox it was working fine but very slow.

Firefox 2 Certified for E-Business Suite 11i and 12

2007-07-15T19:17:08Z

While the community is waiting for Firefox3, the Oracle E-Business Suite Technology announced last week that Firefox 2 is certified with E-Business Suite. I think it is a good news for Firefox usage in enterprise, even that it came very late, and hoping that things goes faster with Firefox3 as Keith mentioned in the announcement. And as Jake said in the Oracle AppsBlog, "For IE6, Opera and Safari users, sorry."

[..]But this should be viewed as good news the next time a new Firefox release comes out and you're a little nervous about taking it too early. Should a similar confluence of events hold up our ability to certify Firefox 3.0 in a timely manner, keep in mind that Oracle will still support Firefox 2.0 as a client for our applications, at least until we've certified the latest version, and for some reasonable overlap period. During that time, we'll make our best efforts to address any browser-specific issues.

Firefox Companion for eBay and Launch Party Wednesday

2007-07-05T14:37:29Z

Firefox Companion for eBay is an official Firefox extension developed by Mozilla and eBay to provide a new fast and safe online auction experience. The new eBay companion was officially launched yesterday in London in a small party reserved for about 50 guests. The aims of Firefox Companion for eBay is to help eBay users to never miss a bid, Stay up-to-date, and provides a safer browsing experience. The Firefox page of the extension is now called "mozilla Firefox eBay-edition", and there is a similar page on eBay from where you can download and install the extension.

Keep an eye on your eBay trading whereever you are on the web when you install the Mozilla Firefox eBay-Edition. I's a free tool built with eBay users in mind that will help you get more out of your buying and selling.