Firefox

Since taking office two years ago, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned Brazil into a tropical outpost of the free software movement. (by Todd Benson) :: NY Times

Also of importance this week: The US Supreme Court is hearing the case of Grokster vs. MGM. Grokster is a “file-sharing” company that publishes a free software package called Morpheus. Morpheus allows people to trade digital copies of files in a decentralized manner. Grokster is similar to Napster in that both company’s software facilitated file-sharing. However, Grokster does not running a central “match maker” server like the...

:: I’ve been experimenting with using a thumbnail preview extension for Google hits when searching in Firefox or browsing through my del.icio.us bookmarks. I’m quite surprised by how often it actually does help me scan a hit list faster than a list sans images, especially when I’m searching for something I’ve seen or visited before.

I stumbled into Scholar Monitor this afternoon, which looks like an interesting little Firefox add-on. I installed the script — one of several I have running thanks to Greasemonkey — and I now have a very handy little current awareness service whenever I visit Google Scholar.

Many of you have probably noticed that when you send an item from Onfolio to Outlook, the message that comes up on your screen is modal, meaning you can't do anything else until you have completed that message. I find this really annoying because I often want to look up and add some other information before sending the message, but I can't do anything until the message is sent. The way I get around this now is by hitting the "Save" button on the message. This puts it into my Inbox where I can open it later, add the information I want and then send it. Since it took me about 6 months to figure this out, I thought I would share it on the off chance that someone else was in the same boat.

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Onfolio Tip: Better way to email items from Onfolio :

Firefox Tips for Power Users: ten shortcuts tips like CTRL-K - jump to Google bar to search. Note: Mac users substitute Open Apple for ALT, and Command Key for CTRL. (via Lifehacker)

If you want to know more Firefox tips try Firefox Help and PM's Firefox Microsite. BTW, try the type about:mozilla on location bar to read a quote from The Book of Mozilla or read about it on Wikipedia.

I also spent some time working on Gmail, learning some tips off the Gmail wiki (like using Gmail for Notes and for web clippings). Since I check email from work and elsewhere from time to time, pushing more into Gmail helps make me a little more efficient. I’ve gotten into the habit of using it for reminders lately.

Firefox is the better one for me as the tab system itself is enough plus the faster loading times. FF’s strongest pro is the tab system and it’s strongest con is the file download fault.

Lots of great Firefox tips here.

Firefox straight 'out of the zip' is ok, but there's a lot you can change, modify and improve. From performance to looks to usability, Firefox tuning gives you the power to make a browser specific to your needs and taste.

There's some great extension recommendations that even I hadn't checked out before and even more stuff in the comments.

I've updated Google Desktop Search Tips to the new style sheet. I think it will be easier to navigate. I also discovered IE handles anchor links a little differently so my 'return to top' links weren't working on both my GDS and Firefox tips pages. I've fixed that. Also, I enhanced the format for printing.

For those other Firefox users, or soon-to-be Firefox users, here is a Firefox Tips & Tricks primer.

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Firefox Tips:

The Playstation portable has only been out a few days here in the states and there is already a really cool hack for it- using it as a web browser. There are a few ways to do this and here are a couple- all require (for now) the game "Wipeout Pure" and redirecting the traffic via a proxy. Wombat Mobile has a great how-to here for Windows users... and here's one if you have a FreeBSD machine- roto/moxy have some info. While I don't think this is any scientific indicator of success- the portable gaming console that has the most hackers will "win".

Yesterday, GoDaddy.com, to avoid being de-credited, discontinued offering private .US domain name registrations.

Existing private .US registrations owners will have to decide between losing their domain or making their personal information public. GoDaddy.com will also notify its customer base next week, that those who have purchased private .US registrations will have to make a choice by January 26, 2006. They will have to decide between having their personal information made public, or, canceling their domain name(s).

We are very happy to announce that the Release Candidate (Beta 3) of Onfolio 2.0 is available for immediate download. To read about some of the changes that have gone into Onfolio 2.0 since the Preview Release and Beta 1, please look through the Release Notes. At this point, all planned work is complete for the 2.0 release and the only changes that will be made between now and the final release will be to address stability issues that come up as people use the Release Candidate. Once again, we thank you for all that you?ve done to help us get Onfolio 2.0 to this point. To download the Release Candidate, go to: http://www.onfolio.com/download

SuperKaramba is an application that lets you place “themes” on your desktop, somewhat similar to the Windows application Samurize or Konfabulator for Mac OS X. But SuperKaramba themes are like mini-applications that live in their own windows on the desktop background, performing different tasks.

I just created a new Gmail account and found the confirmation in my Yahoo Bulk folder because Yahoo tagged it as spam.

Gmail confirmation found in Yahoo Bulk filder

Just for kicks I forwarded one of the Yahoo promotional emails from my Inbox to a Gmail account and it went through just fine.

I'm a big fan of both of these companies for different reasons; it's fun to watch the gaming between them.

A lot of people have written about Firefox’s features and advantages, so I’ll spare you that. Personally, one of the reasons I really like this browser is tabbed browsing and extensions. An MDI approach in browsers benefits users significantly, and Firefox put to good use this feature pioneered by Opera a few years ago.

Tabbrowser extensions is one of the most useful extensions I’ve ever gotten across, and enhances the already great tabbed browsing experience. However, as development continued and features crept in, it turned the once nimble browser into a somewhat sluggish and crash–prone tool. And so I tried Firefox without TBE, but the functionality was never the same. The only option was to go out looking for an extension (or combination of extensions) that would provide the functionality I missed.

The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday shipped a new version of its flagship Firefox Web browser to patch a serious security hole that could put users at risk of computer takeover. The flaw, which was discovered and reported by Internet Security Systems Inc., causes a buffer overflow because of the way GIF files are processed by Firefox. Developed by CompuServe in the 1980s, the GIF format is widely used on the Web because of the improved file-compression features it offers. “There have been no known exploits of the bug, but as Mozilla is committed to delivering the most secure product possible, we decided to quickly issue an update to patch the bug,” said Chris Hoffman, director of engineering at Mozilla.

For those looking for an alternative to the MS web browser control to use inside windows applications there is hope in the form of an embedded control that is using the mozilla brower engine. Check it out, it actually implements exactly the same interfaces as the MS web browser control and thus u can literally just replace the activex control in ur apps with the mozilla one without changing any other source code.

I have been trying out DreamHost (www.dreamhost.com) as the host of this blog for several weeks. Up to this point I have been impressed with the ease of setup, making configuration changes, the extra goodies they have (for example, the WordPress blog software) and the extra space (see below).

Paula Hane has written an excellent overview of two new releases in the web information management space. In her article: Two New Web Information Managers Debut at DEMO@15, Hane takes a look at Pluck 1.0 and OnFolio 2.0. A summary in this post.

FireTweaker groups the tweaks in four categories: program appearance, Web page appearance, performance and behavior. A Rollback button lets you cancel all tweaks, ever, and return to the Firefox you had before you downloaded FireTweaker.

But Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, said Thursday that there shouldn't be a problem in persuading Linux developers to migrate to GPL 3, as the license will be developed with their input.

Don't even try to sell me your anti-virus programs and spam blockers -- they all have back doors. Heck, as I type this piece, I'm getting random pop-ups from a program that isn't even running on my computer, warning me about the excess spam I have on my computer.

Maxthon also incorporates 2 popup blockers (Auto popup blocker & a popup blocker list filter) and a Content Filter. The Content filter can be used to filter offensive pictures on a web page,

Another article discussing the ever increasing market share of the Firefox browser from Mozilla. I wonder how long it is before advertisers, web designers and the like start noticing it. I would bet it will be right around the time Google releases their Firefox based browser ;-)

You know a browser is starting to mature when you can get the tools you need and use on a daily basis. This is a small collection of search tools now available for Firefox.

Googlebar
This extension now allows all Firefox users to make use of the Google Toolbar. The GoogleBar emulates all the basic search functions allowing access to almost all of Google’s specialty searches (including some that not even supported by the original Google Toolbar). Supports Netscape 7, Mozilla, and Firefox web browsers.

There was one part of the piece that I wanted to comment on though:

Part of Firefox's better security profile comes from how it is developed, compared with Internet Explorer, she said. "Not being in the operating system is a phenomenal advantage for us," Baker said.

Now I'm pretty confident that Mitchell doesn't actually know the details of how IE is developed so I don't fully understand the basis of the statement. As we develop IE we go through very thorough and stringent security reviews to ensure that every change is secure and does not expose the user to attack. The issue of not being part of the Operating System is an interesting one though that is frequently the subject of misunderstanding. IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that parts of the OS and other applicaitons can rely on the functionality and APIs being present. IE in turn relies on Operating System functionality to do it's job. To be clear there are no Operating System APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software that runs on Windows. The security of any browser is irrelevant to if it is part of the operating system.

Firefox 1.0.2 is a security and stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version.

I didn’t get started with Greasemonkey until tonight, but I can already determine just how useful but potent it is. You can modify pages, for better or for worse. Of course, the more rights you afford the user, the more responsibilities they inherently assume (and, if you’re dealing with novices, the more room there is for errors due to misconfiguration or misuse). The onus is on the user to ensure that the scripts they download and install are legal and safe to the user’s computer.

That's one cautionary note making the rounds along with a popular new extension for Firefox that lets people customize Web pages they visit without the knowledge or cooperation of Web publishers. The extension, dubbed Greasemonkey, lets people run what's known as a "user script," which alters a Web page as the page is downloaded.

That capability has gained the extension an avid following of Web surfers who want to customize the sites they visit, removing design glitches and stripping sites of ads. But the extension comes with substantial security risks and could stir trouble among site owners who object to individual, custom redesigns of their pages.

Yahoo said late Tuesday that it will provide 1 gigabyte of storage for each free e-mail account. The current limit is 250 megabytes. The expanded storage will be available in mid-April, said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president of communications products.

Roblimo: Well, I don't disagree with you. I use it myself. That leads us into the question: What will be the testbed -- that comes from a reader who calls himself Ars-Farsica (laughter) -- his question is, or her question, we don't know, "Now that the Moz suite is apparently non-official, how will new code be tested? Will there be some sort of 'beta' Firefox release for testing? Or a new very minimal piece of code that is a testbed yet not useful to consumers?"

Mitchell: Oh, that's a good question. Let me give a little bit of background first because sometimes those of us who are deep in the project tend to use... just assume contacts that not everyone has. So the name Mozilla, or Mozilla 1.8 or 1.7 or 1.0, 1.4 has always had many different meanings and that's been confusing. So sometimes it just meant the Mozilla code base, sometimes it meant the application suite, sometimes it meant the platform underneath, and we have... we've been working in the last year or so to try and clear up that confusion and we still have... we've made some progress and we have some work to do. So when we have said Mozilla 1.0 or Mozilla 1.4, 1.7, that actually applies to two different things. One is the application layer, you know, the set of user... the things that the user sees and the user interface and the kinds of interactions that the user can have with the program.

Ciphire Mail is a new encryption and signing agent for the masses. With this transparent proxy, e-mail can be signed and encrypted using special public key infrastructure, but without the need for the user to manually generate certificates (key pairs) and have them validated by a third-party certification authority. So far, so good. I would even say: wonderful! Finally! That's what we needed.

That said, I was wondering whether Ciphire thought of interoperability with existing e-mail solutions that have seen wide-spread implementation. The best-supported e-mail cryptography standard is probably X.509 certificates and S/MIME. Standard e-mail clients such as Outlook, Apple Mail and Thunderbird/Mozilla have it built-in, and it works seamlessly once you have managed to install your certificates.

Ciphire doesn't use X.509 keys and S/MIME. Instead, they install a local mail server that forwards your mail, acting as an encryption proxy. Ciphire's big challenge is to get a critical mass with a system that needs to be installed beside the local user's mail client. I'd say since neither PGP nor S/MIME have really reached what seasoned bullshit bingo players call market penetration, Ciphire will get its chance.

The US House of Representatives has recently passed the “Spy Act” - or to give it its full title - the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act. This aims to prevent software companies from installing spyware on users PCs without their knowledge, and anyone found guilty of breaching the act faces a fine of up to $3 million

Does this mean the end of spyware as we know it? Unfortunately the answer is no, not really. The problem is that most spyware can continue to operate in exactly the same way as it does now, by asking the computer user to agree to a licence before it installs itself. The majority of people who are faced with a lengthy legal-looking page of text when installing a new program, automatically click the “I Agree” option without reading the terms. Therefore spyware programs can quite legally continue to piggy-back their way onto PCs.

Even with increased popularity, the Firefox Web browser won’t face as many security problems as Internet Explorer, according to the president of the Mozilla Foundation.

“There is nothing that will be perfect,” said Mitchell Baker, president and chief lizard wrangler of the Mozilla Foundation, during a panel discussion at PC Forum here. (PC Forum is owned by CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.)

Still, Firefox, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, won’t harbor nearly as many security flaws as those that have Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and increasing popularity won’t change that, Mitchell predicted.

Some critics challenge that assumption. Symantec CEO John Thompson and other security executives have claimed that open-source programs will become more vulnerable as they pick up more users, because more hackers will become attracted to it.

"CNN Money is running a story about a new IBM service that spams the spammers. The idea behind the technology is that when a spam email is received, it is immediately sent back to the originating computer - not an email account. From the article, ""We're doing it to shut this guy down," Stuart McIrvine, IBM's director of corporate security strategy, told the paper. "Every time he tries to send, he gets slammed again."""

When Bill Robertson decided last year to switch 450 workers and 100 desktops at De Bortoli Wines to the open source Firefox web browser, he had the company's future in mind.

In moving to the free Firefox, he did more than just install a web browser that rivals Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes for free with every PC running the Windows operating system. The CIO defined a radically new desktop interface for the company and forced his software suppliers to comply with his technology direction, which had a heavy emphasis on open standards so he would no longer be locked into any one vendor's products.

Firefox is a small and streamlined web browser created by the US-based charity The Mozilla Foundation from the bones of the Netscape and Mozilla browsers. It runs on all desktop computers and supports most languages.

Firefox is often paired with its open source sibling, Thunderbird, a free email client that competes with Microsoft's Outlook in the enterprise.

Onfolio, Inc., an independent software company committed to helping professionals conduct research and manage Web information, has unveiled Onfolio 2.0. Onfolio 2.0 is a PC solution that's built into the browser with integrated tools for reading RSS news feeds, collecting and organizing online content, and publishing to email, weblogs, and Web sites.

There are many reasons why I think Mozilla can be a better choice than Firefox for some users. Chief among them: Mozilla is much easier to configure, and a single integrated suite of applications is simpler to deploy and manage in a business setting than multiple stand-alone apps.

But it turns out that this argument is moot: The Mozilla Suite as we know it today won't be competing with Firefox for much longer because the Mozilla Foundation has decided to end development of the suite with the current 1.7 version.

For all of its advantages, the convergence could also cause problems. Security already is becoming an issue, and devices will be vulnerable to the same ills computers have today, including the difficulty of using the device, hard drives crashing and even threats of spam and virus attacks.

"Certainly, anything that happens on the Internet can now happen on the mobile phone," said Rich Begert, president and chief executive of Bellevue-based Wireless Services.

Wireless Services, which helps carriers roll out new services like text messaging and accompanying spam blockers, recently completed a survey showing that 43 percent of text messages in the U.S. are spam.

"Now that a device has Internet access, spam, viruses, Trojans and other devious things can happen on them," Begert said.

Congratulations! Your PC is boned!

It goes without saying that, apart from Webrebates opening up adverts in the bottom right hand corner, whole swathes of entries in my favourites advertising "Adware removers" that also sell popup blockers (with popups!), Powerscan which loads at startup, yelling "DON'T GET CAUGHT WITH PORN ON YOUR PC!", a Sidefind bar that doesn't actually do very much and an MTV toolbar to keep the kids quiet, there was my jaw being slowly scraped off the floor as I realised in that instant that for all Firefox's bravado, it had been cut down dead in an instant by what would normally be a bunch of rather average Adware installs.

The problem is, IE shouldn't have been hit in this way - especially as it was locked down so tightly, and wasn't even being used at the time. Vaguely worried by this, I tried some other browsers...the results aren't exactly fantastic reading for the Mozilla Foundation.

Brightcove Inc. closed $5.5 million in January, becoming the latest Boston-area company to launch a business for delivering video over the Internet.

Jeremy Allaire incorporated the Cambridge company last August under the name Video Marketplace. Cambridge-based General Catalyst Partners LLC and Accel Partners of California are backing Brightcove.

I have been mulling over this idea for quite come time, now and I have decided that I will publish it here and solicit feedback because I don’t think that I have the programming skills to exploit it in short order, which I assume that other people are.

“The Idea” is to integrate bittorrent and firefox somehow - optimally with a plugin, but with a patch if necessary, so that one could imbed bittorrent trackers in webpages and have stuff like images, or random files seemlessly hosted by peer-to-peer. I think that this is an excelent idea to cut down on the bandwidth necessary to host large, high-volume sights, and would immediately propel firefox (or any other browser that implemented it) into a majority marketshare position.

I have been thinking over how to construct a totally peer-to-peer hosted website using bittorrent, but as of now, the solution escapes me. The problem is that websites are inherently dynamic, where as peer-to-peer is inherently static. Once the first suggestion is implemented, I am sure that the solution will begin to emerge with more clarity. In any case, this is probably a “good enough” fix, for those simply worried about bandwith and avalibility issues.

Firefox continues to steal market share from Microsoft Internet Explorer, according to Net Applications, a maker of Web-monitoring software. According to the company's February figures, use of Firefox rose to 6.17% from 5.59% in January.

Firefox's gain comes at the expense of Internet Explorer, which dropped to 89.04% market share, from 90.31% in December. Net Applications reports that other browsers maintained their user base.

But there's one area where Microsoft won't be winning a lot of applause.

The company will continue to drag its feet by refusing to provide full support for the CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 2) W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) standard, Microsoft partners say.

Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser.

Thunderbird, an e-mail program developed by the Mozilla Foundation, is offering beleagured e-mail users an alternative, less virus-laden existence.

Following close on the heels of Firefox, the open-source Web browser whose launch included a full-page community-sponsored ad in the New York Times, the open-source e-mail program Thunderbird reached its 1.0 version recently.

Thunderbird has a clean interface that makes it easy to focus on mail. Thunderbird includes built-in filtering for junk mail, and it can encrypt messages (as long as the other party has support for the PGP encryption standard.) It is also not susceptible to most e-mail viruses, which target Microsoft Outlook's scripting features.

Despite promises earlier this week, Yahoo is backing away from it's pledge to ensure Firefox compatibility with future services. Despite the Gecko core technology being around since 1998, Yahoo has justified backing away from the seven year old rendering engine by stating, "In the grand scheme of things Firefox is still a new technology." With Yahoo recently celebrating it's tenth anniversary, one must wonder when a technology is mature to the Sunnyvale California company. The company representative continued, "I�m not saying we are not going to be developing and exploring other areas -- we are. But there are so many different products on the Yahoo network that there may be some products that are, perhaps, not appropriate for that browser." Yes, Firefox just reached version 1.0 recently, so please don't browse the racier parts of Yahoo without parental supervision.

According to a Google spokesperson, the San Francisco-based search giant started a promotion earlier this week on its homepage that offers randomly selected users the chance to join Gmail. "We're upping the amount of some types of users," was all the spokesperson would divulge.

"Web research has emerged as an essential component of scientific and academic research, and EndNote users rely increasingly on RSS feeds to stay abreast of changes in their fields," said David Kochalko, President of Thomson ResearchSoft. "After evaluating many offerings, we found Onfolio to be the only complete web information manager on the market, making it the ideal solution to tightly integrate with EndNote."

"We designed Onfolio to give researchers the ability to apply the same rigor to their web research that they have always applied to their literature research and primary research. Onfolio's integration with EndNote is a key part of this design, helping researchers track online information from the point of discovery to the time when they need to cite it in their own work," said JJ Allaire, CEO of Onfolio. "Partnering with ResearchSoft for sales and marketing gives us the best opportunity to reach the academic and professional researchers, students, librarians and professors who will benefit from this solution."

"We advocate using high quality free software as opposed to scaled-down versions of more costly proprietary software," Walter Bender, director of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a letter to the Brazilian government. "Free software is far better on the dimensions of cost, power, and quality."

Asa Dotzler has announced that Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.1 has been cancelled and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.2 and Thunderbird 1.0.2 releases are on the way. Asa explains, "We shipped the security update for Firefox 1.0 three weeks ago with the intention of shipping the Thunderbird and Mozilla Suite upates soon after. Well, just as we were getting ready to push out Thunderbird 1.0.1 and Mozilla 1.7.6 releases we came across a couple more issues that needed fixing in all three of our products."

I had a vexing problem with this combo, which Tom and others tried to help me resolve. The issue: I’d click a site listed in Bloglines left panel, a new tab would open, but blank. I ensured all extensions were updated, and tried various settings, but the hassle remained. Googling yielded one potential fix, requiring the addition/modification of one line via about:config. Unfortunately, it didn’t cure my problem. I’m using FireFox Preview Edition version 10.1, released a few days ago, and the stated fix predates that release.

Since Chatzilla was the only part of Mozilla I used besides from the browser, I figured I could start using Firefox, the browser only implementation of Mozilla. Since the default theme in Firefox has the HUGE tabs, I had to go and hunt down another theme. I settled on Phoenity Neo.

Of course, with a new theme for my browser I had to find a new theme for Windows. For that I settled on Corona is now! The two themes, Phoenity Neo and Corona is now! match surprisingly well. The final trick is to find a theme for Winamp that matches too.

This task has proven to be a bit harder. I have looked through thousands of Winamp skins and haven't found the perfect one yet. The best I have come up with is the Winamp Modern theme with the Artica color scheme. It's pretty good, but a bit too dark.

So let me ask you, why don't people make themes for all these programs? Why can't I find a Phoenity Neo theme for Windows or Winamp? If I ever make a theme—which I have been tempted to do for quite some time—I'm going to make one for each program I use that uses themes so everything matches. The problem is, I tend to change my computer's theme monthly. It's kinda like my website that way.

For my final class at RIT I had to create a Firefox extension using XUL, CSS, and Javascript. Just to shake things up around here, I decided to post the tutorial about its development here instead of on a standalone website. I know that extension development may not be your cup of tea, but maybe you'll find some of it interesting. Here we go!

There have been several recent reports of squabbles and problems involving Mozilla and Firefox development. In an attempt to clear the air about what's going on inside the Mozilla Project and the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker has agreed to answer 10 - 12 Slashdot questions. Please look at some recent interviews with Ms. Baker and check her blog before posting in order to avoid duplication. We'll publish her answers within the next week.

Some useful citizen has created an installer that will nail IE with spyware, even if a surfer is using Firefox (or another alternative browser) or has blocked access to the malicious site in IE beforehand. The technique allows a raft of spyware to be served up to Windows users in spite of any security measures that might be in place.

Christopher Boyd, a security researchers at Vitalsecurity.org, said the malware installer was capable of working on a range of browsers with native Java support. "The spyware installer is a Java applet powered by the Sun Java Runtime Environment, which allows them to whack most browsers out there, including Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and others. In the original test, only Opera and Netcaptor didn't fall for the install but Daniel Veditz, who is the head of Mozilla security, has since confirmed to me that this will also work in Opera and Netcaptor," he explained.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

    * removes ads on most Google pages
    * fixes fonts on most Google pages
    * Google web search:
          o adds links to other search sites ("Try your search on...")
          o in news results, adds links to other news sites
          o in movie results, adds links to other movie sites
          o in weather results, adds links to other weather sites
          o in product results, adds links to other product sites
    * Google image search:
          o adds links to other image/photo/art sites
    * Google News:
          o adds links to other news sites
    * Froogle:
          o adds links to other product sites
    * Google Print:
          o Removes image copying restrictions
          o adds links to other book sites
    * Google Toolbar Firefox page:
          o adds links to other Firefox-friendly toolbars

As with all things, Firefox could be improved. Firefox, by default, is designed to be a lightweight browser. That means that it doesn't ship with tons of extras. If you want additional features, you'll need to go out and get them yourself. Fortunately, it's easy to upgrade Firefox by installing "extensions."

An extension is simply an add-on that extends Firefox's functionality. You can get lots of different extensions on the Firefox extensions site. Since there are nearly two hundred different extensions currently available, it can take some time to sift through them all on the Firefox site.

Following the release today of Google Maps I thought I would whip up a search bar plugin for Firefox. (Thanks to Joe for introducing me to writing search bar plugins.)

One of the great things about Google Maps is the simple query syntax:

Search for an address: type in as much of the address as you know at any level of resolution.

Google has changed its definitions link from dictionary.com to answers.com. A google search for juxtaposition shows the effect. What is interesting is that answers.com pulls information from wikipedia.org, which was provided bandwidth by google.com [and now Google is providing a service that will be used worldwide to pull information off Wikipedia]. Aside from having both a dictionary.com and a wikipedia.org search box in FireFox (as well as Google) the definition link on Google is still useful and I regularly check it for obscure uses or exact definitions of words. Now it uses answers.com we do not get all the different forms of the word, but we do get any medical or wikipedic information. Interestingly, answers.com does not use Google AdSense, but commission junction that looks like it. There is no announcement yet from Google of their change.

A few other administrative and overhead notes. Simpy’s website seemed dog slow to me, regardless of the time of day or whether I was on my 1.5 Mb DSL at home or my T1 at work. It was slow enough that it would take up to 30 seconds to add a bookmark. This is not acceptable for a release-level product but I’ll let it slip since they’re technically beta. Onfolio costs bucks, Simpy is free (for now anyway). Both offer the ability to import existing bookmarks. Onfolio integrates only with IE on Windows. Simpy offers bookmarking from various browsers but only integrates a sidebar with Mozilla/Firefox.

And this all brings me to something I was complaining to my manager about the other day. Why did we just all of a sudden decide to stop innovating in the browser space? I mean it’s still in the top 2 things that people do on the Internet. Do we feel that IE is perfect and that further innovation is no longer warranted? Is it because it’s the dominant browser, end of story? Well we have other products that are market leaders and we still pour R&D into them. Well, it’s more than likely that it’s because it generates no direct revenue. However, it’s a part of Windows and that generates a lot of revenue. I’m personally upset that nothing is being done to enhance my productivity when browsing the web. Right now it’s atrocious, with all the windows that I can never track down, the annoying disappearing status bar, the CSS bugs etc. I’ve used Avant Browser and Firefox, but still find myself coming back to IE because it’s the default, and it’s there.

For the most part, both GMail and Firefox rock. However, when you're typing a long e-mail in GMail and you hit Ctrl R instead of Ctrl T, it really sucks. Rather than opening a new tab, I lost my whole e-mail message.

For those who didn't know, there's something called plussing in Gmail. It works simple: you put a and some text after your username (so e.g. praseodym@gmail.com can become praseodym fxfolding@gmail.com). All emails sent to praseodym fxfolding@gmail.com will also be sent to you: handy when filtering your email.

Marcia just let us know that she wrote a book with Chris Hofmann and John Hedtke. Called "Firefox and Thunderbird Garage", that's a book for users: "This book is meant to be an introduction to the many features of Firefox and Thunderbird".

Development problems concerning the Mozilla Suite have led to some soul-searching in the Foundation, with some calling for Firefox to be spun off

The survival of the original Mozilla Suite is very much in doubt as developers question whether the success of stand-alone products Firefox and Thunderbird mean the death of the integrated suite that spawned them.

Mozilla developers on the 'netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey' newsgroup have been in fierce debate over the future of the open source suite since the minutes of the 28th February mozilla.org staff meeting were posted online on the 7th of March. At that stage the demise of the Mozilla suite was hinted at by one solitary line: "*Mozilla 1.8 final* — to be discussed tomorrow whether we do one".

Discussion on the newsgroup focused on the fact that nobody was currently taking responsibility for the suite (code-named 'SeaMonkey'). As developer Robert Kaiser put it, "What we badly need is an active core developer group and an 'app czar' or project leader". Fellow developer and MIT graduate Boris Zbarsky answered the call, saying: "Absolutely. Do you have people in mind who have time to do this? If so, I'd love to know who they are. They are sorely needed."

2005-03-07: 4.0.0 is now available. Changes since the last stable release:

* All new queue-based user interface
* Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate
* Lots of other interface improvements
* Extra stats are visible, for those who like it
* Remembers what it was doing across restarts
* New .torrent maker "btmaketorrentgui" replaces "btcompletedir"
* Better performance, as always
* License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License
* Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8
* Too many little things to list

A few technical notes, for those interested:

* Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread
* Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets
* BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier

Search giant Google has released the first non-beta version of its Google Desktop application, which now includes support for several Mozilla-based applications. The desktop search tool lets you find Web pages you've visited with the Mozilla Application Suite, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape 7 and locates emails received with Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups, Mozilla Thunderbird and Netscape 7 Mail & Newsgroups (though note that some tinkering may be required if you install any Mozilla applications after Google Desktop). This latest release also adds support for searching PDFs and some multimedia files and has a plugin architecture to add support for other file types. It requires Windows XP or Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or above.

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the launch of www.mozilla.org.cn and the creation of Mozilla China, a non-profit organization to help develop, promote, and deploy Mozilla products in China. The launch of Mozilla China follows similar international affiliate programs Mozilla Europe and Mozilla Japan. The Mozilla China project has been spearheaded by the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) and the Sun (China) Engineering and Research Institute (ERI). ISCAS is a leading government funded research institute in China which focuses on the fundamental theories of computer science as well as software technologies and their applications. ERI is an integral part of Sun's international R&D program.

Happily, help is available. Ciphire Mail, a new and soon-to-be-open-source application, aims to put an end to these sorts of annoyances with strong and user-friendly e-mail authentication and encryption.

E-mail authentication -- confirmation that the stated sender actually sent the message in question -- could make many e-mail hassles fade away, since most scams and computer viruses rely on bogus sender information to lull recipients into a false sense of security. Encryption is also a good idea, given the increasing prevalence of snoopy software.

The Ciphire Mail application, free for individual users, nonprofit organizations and the press, works in conjunction with all standard e-mail programs. It operates almost invisibly in the background, encrypting and decrypting e-mail missives and digitally signing each message to confirm its source.

Yahoo said Wednesday that it has released a test version of its toolbar for use with the Firefox browser. Click here to go to the download page.

The organisation said in a statement issued this morning that "unlike other recently released video search tools, an Annodex search delivers actual video content. Tools such as Google's beta video search work by searching a program's closed captioning text. The search results simply provide an excerpt from the text and a single still image from the program".

"In contrast, an Annodex search provides the user with a detailed summary of the video content, an interactive list of video clips, and hyperlinks to additional material".

Saferfox is a poorly named, but beautifully designed skin for Firefox. It's based on Safari for Mac, but is more than just an emulation of the interface. It's a complete skin rather than just a few visual tweaks.

The site is not in English, but you'll figure out how to dl it.

Merriam-Webster has launched five tools for Firefox to search their dictionary and thesaurus

Being a dedicated Firefox user, one of the few things that was still thwarting me was SharePoint. We use SharePoint internally for a ton of stuff, and it was a drag to have to fall back to that other browser. SharePoint pages look and work fine in Firefox, but I was having to reauthenticate on every single page, which really hindered my enjoyment of the experience.

I finally figured out how to get Firefox to do NTLM, which means I don’t have to deal with the authentication dialogs, thereby reducing my dependence on IE to one and only one application (Oddpost).

Pimpzilla is a theme for the browser Firefox. It's also probably the most tacky & overdone piece of GUI design out there, aimed solely for true internet-connaisseurs. If you are into fur and lot's of bling, this is the theme for you.

We're in the early stages of pushing out the automatic updates for Firefox 1.0 users. We're doing a staggered rollout and the first two updates we've pushed are ca-AD and es-AR.

If you're using Firefox 1.0 in either of these locales and can tell me how your update went, please do so in the comments here.

I'll be updating this post as we bring new updates online. Stay tuned.

OK, we've pushed ru-RU. Feedback welcome.

And now it-IT is live.

OK, here's en-US.

Get your hu-HU while it's hot!

And now de-DE.

Oh, just a reminder, this is Windows only. If you're a Mac user or a Linux user, just head to the website and download there.

Ugh, seems like we were serving bits up to Mac and Linux users, which didn't work well considering they were Windows bits. We've temporarily pulled the update on all platforms and locales while we investigate.

update: The full installers per platform work great, it's just the automatic update that we're working on. To get the 1.0.1 update, head over to www.mozilla.org and download from there.

Today, the security firm Secunia has released 8 more security bugs it has discovered in Mozilla products, including Firefox and Thunderbird.

If you have downloaded the Firefox 1.0.1 update, you have nothing to worry about. The Mozilla 1.7.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.1 released should be out this week as well. The exploits "could be used by criminals to spoof, or fake, various aspects of a Web site, ranging from its SSL secure site icon to the contents of an inactive tab."

This announcement comes 1 day after iDefense announced a vulnerability is Mozilla 1.7.3 and Firefox 1.0 that would allows hackers to "create a memory heap overflow, which then allow remote code execution and a compromise of the system."

Microsoft this week agreed to both apologize and pay a Dutch portal for mistakenly flagging it as a purveyor of malicious content, the latest in a rash of problems that anti-spyware vendors -- including Microsoft -- have recently faced.

The Startpagina.nl directory site objected to being classified as a "browser hijacker" by the first edition of Microsoft AntiSpyware, the beta software Microsoft first released in early January, and demanded that Microsoft change its tune.

After being threatened with legal action, Microsoft gave in on Monday, and agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Startpagina.nl's parent company. It has also posted an apology on its own Dutch and Belgian sites dedicated to the AntiSpyware application.

Previously-mentioned Google Suggest creates a dropdown of search terms and result totals as you type a query. If you use the search box in Firefox more often than the web page, developer Juan Carlos Navea’s GSuggest Firefox extension integrates Google Suggest right into your browser. GSuggest doesn’t let you arrow key down the dropdown of suggestions (you have to point and click). Besides that it’s fast and useful for the power Google-searcher.

Many people have pointed out recently that the reason "alternative" browsers like Safari, Firefox and Opera seemed to be more secure than IE was because no one was using them. That is, they aren't any more secure in reality, but the people who exploit security holes saw no reason to target them. With the recent growth (and related attention) of Firefox, however, some now expect spyware makers to start targeting that browser as well. The question, really, is how well Firefox/Mozilla will be able to fend off these attacks compared to IE. That might show how secure Firefox really is in comparison to IE.

Gervase Markham, a Mozilla staff member, said on Sunday that over the past year the Foundation has hired around 10 people, which would not have been possible without the money that Firefox makes by linking to Google.

"The Google deal has provided a significant stream of income for the Foundation," said Markham, speaking at the FOSSDEM conference in Brussels. "Without that deal the Foundation would not have been in a position to have hired some of the people that it has."

However, the speed at which Firefox is gaining market share has slowed down, WebSideStory said. Firefox's market share grew 15 percent over the last five weeks, compared to growth of 22 percent in the period between December and January. From November to December, it was growing at 34 percent.

Microsoft is promising a more-secure, Internet Explorer 7.0 this summer. Firefox, rather than becoming the savior of safe surfing, might end up the next Netscape instead.