Archive for the 'Web browsers' Category

Fixing Firefox search engine order

Published on February 20, 2006 in Tips and Web browsers. 2 Comments

Quick details:
1. Type about:config at your Firefox address bar.
2. Type browser.search.order at the filter bar.
3. Change browser.search.order.1 to Google.

Why?
I’m a big of del.icio.us and I thought it was a great news when the official Firefox extension was made available. Now you can tag and search your saved bookmarks even more easily.

However, I dislike the idea that it wants to be the first search engine of Firefox without even getting my permission first. Google is still the place I would go to when I want to look for something. Being someone lazy to take the hands off the keyboard, I want to be able to find something quickly by just pressing CTRL+K (Firefox’s keyboard shortcut for search). If Google is not currently the search engine, I can simply press CTRL+Up repeatedly before I start the search. With Google search engine as the first choice, you’ll never miss it because the scroll stops at the top and bottom position.

Note that you’ll have to do it everytime you upgrade your del.icio.us extension. Ouch.

P2P coming to Firefox

Published on December 27, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments


One of the nicest things I find in Firefox is the extension feature that lets developers around the world to extend its core functionalities (well, that happens to also be a room to make the browser more unstable, but let’s forget about it first). And the latest addition to the extension arena is the P2P file-sharing. Yes, the pandora box.
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Google unveils 2 new extensions for Firefox

Published on December 15, 2005 in Google, Security and Web browsers. 0 Comments


Google today launched two new extensions for the Mozilla Firefox browser. The Google Safe Browsing extension aims to notify the users of Firefox whenever they visit a phishing site. This is very much similar to the Netcraft Anti-phishing toolbar and anti-phishing feature that Microsoft is going to incorporate in IE7.

Another extension is the Blogger Web Comments. Once installed, the extension searches the Google Blogsearch and find whether other bloggers have any comment on the page you are currently viewing. You can use it to post to your own blog too.
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Firefox 1.5 exploit discovered and made public

Published on December 9, 2005 in Security and Web browsers. 0 Comments

A bug that exists in Firefox 1.5 has been discovered and made available to public. The exploid code takes advantage of a bug of Firefox in handling history of visited sites, and could cause denial of service to the victim. When the topic of a page is crafted to be long enough, it will crash Firefox each time it is started.

Currently there is no any official fix from Mozilla. The only workarounds are either to erase the history.dat file manually, or to disable history feature of Firefox 1.5 (Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> History -> Set the number of days to save pages at 0).
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Mykzilla Firefox-style tabs for Thunderbird

Published on December 8, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments


One of the features that make Firefox such a useful and friendly browser is its tabbed browsing. Unfortunately, such a feature is not seen in Thunderbird, another flagship product by Mozilla, the company that makes Firefox.

A software developer Myk Melez has published a “hacked” version of Thunderbird that comes with tabbed browsing feature. This is an unofficial release and it’s likely to break. So handle with care.
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Firefox 1.5

Published on November 30, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments

Firefox 1.5 and Mozilla 1.5 have finally been released. A new website at www.mozilla.com has also been setup to host the programs.

What’s new in Firefox 1.5:
* Automated update to streamline product upgrades. Notification of an update is more prominent, and updates to Firefox may now be half a megabyte or smaller. Updating extensions has also improved.
* Faster browser navigation with improvements to back and forward button performance.
* Drag and drop reordering for browser tabs.
* Improvements to popup blocking.
* Clear Private Data feature provides an easy way to quickly remove personal data through a menu item or keyboard shortcut.
* Answers.com is added to the search engine list.
* Improvements to product usability including descriptive error pages, redesigned options menu, RSS discovery, and “Safe Mode” experience.
* Better accessibility including support for DHTML accessibility and assistive technologies such as the Window-Eyes 5.5 beta screen reader for Microsoft Windows. Screen readers read aloud all available information in applications and documents or show the information on a Braille display, enabling blind and visually impaired users to use equivalent software functionality as their sighted peers.
* Report a broken Web site wizard to report Web sites that are not working in Firefox.
* Better support for Mac OS X (10.2 and greater) including profile migration from Safari and Mac Internet Explorer.
* New support for Web Standards including SVG, CSS 2 and CSS 3, and JavaScript 1.6.
* Many security enhancements.

Firefox 1.5 RC3

Published on November 18, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments


As reported earlier, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3 is now available for download. This should be the last release candidate release before the final release of version 1.5 of the popular open-source web browser.
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Firefox 1.5 not ready yet

Published on November 17, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments


First reported by Neowin, words have been speculated that official release of Firefox 1.5 would be made available yesterday. Asa Dotzler of Mozilla made the clarification that it’s not true, and a RC3 instead would be unveiled in next few days and final release would be available later this month.
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Firefox 1.5 RC2

Published on November 11, 2005 in Web browsers. 0 Comments


The second release candidate of the popular Firefox browser has been made available for download. This release has several fixes to automated update system of RC1.

Since this is not the final release, no end-user support is provided, and you risk losing your data by installing it. However, from what I’ve been testing so far, Firefox 1.5 has almost come to a very stable stage. Even the RC1 is more stable than 1.0.7, IMO.
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Extend Firefox and win an Alienware Computer

Published on November 7, 2005 in Web browsers. 1 Comment

Stand a chance to win this cool looking (albeit not the final design) PC by writing or upgrading Firefox extensions in the Extend Firefox competition held by Mozilla corporation (the company behind the popular Firefox browser).

A custom designed Alienware Aurora 7500 Firefox edition PC will go to the Grand Prize category winners, while Best in Class winners walk away with Apple iPod nanos and O’Reilly gift certificates.
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