Wat's New in Latest Firefox 3

The latest version of Mozilla Foundation's popular browser, Firefox is all set for an upgrade. In fact, the Foundation is eyeing Guinness Book of World Records for maximum software downloads in a day for Firefox 3.0 as it goes live today.

Firefox 3.0 promises to add several new features that will enhance the users browsing experience as well as make it for secure. In fact, Mozilla claims that Firefox 3.0 will run twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory.

So, here's a peek into all that is new in Firefox 3.0.
The new version has enhanced malware protection which warns users when they enter a site which can install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.

Version 3 also lets users to access Web Forgery Protection page that displays the content suspected of web forgeries.

Also, the new version of Firefox automatically checks new add-ons and plugins and will disable older, insecure versions.
Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.

Another new feature, called activities, allows users to highlight text on a page, click on it, then instantly send it to another site, like a mapping, e-mail or blogging service.
Firefox 3.0 has several developer tools too. Like there are new tools for graphics and font handling.

Type Web Addresses Quickly -The Best Keyboard Shortcut in Firefox

If you haven’t upgrade to Firefox 3 yet, please do so. The new version is far more responsive and stable that its predecessors.

Another reason for loving Firefox 3 is the way it auto-completes web URLs - very intelligent and something you’ll miss in IE. Update: Firefox 2 users share that this works in the previous version as well.

To get started, press Alt+D or Ctrl+L to move the cursor to your Firefox browser address bar and then try some of these combinations:

To open Google Maps website, type "google/maps" in the Firefox address bar (no quotes) and press Ctrl+Enter. And for your Google AdSense page, type "google/adsense" followed by Ctrl+Enter.

Firefox will automatically surround the word(s) that are before the first slash with www. and .com. IE 7 and previous version of Firefox can’t do this.

And this URL auto-complete works even if you have several subdirectories in the URL. For instance, your Google Apps sign-in page will open correctly if you type "google/a/mysite.com" and press Ctrl+Enter.

If you want to open a .org site, you need to use Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Typing labnol/forums followed by Ctrl+Shift+Enter would therefore open our support website at www.labnol.org/forums.

And for .net websites, the shortcut key is Shift+Enter. So you can view the most popular PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare by typing slideshare/popular followed by Shift+Enter.

New Firefox is here! - Take a Glance

A new version of Mozilla's popular Firefox Web browser is ready for download with improved security and memory use as the tiny company takes a stab at Microsoft Corp's dominant Internet Explorer.

The programme's creators told Reuters that the privately-held company's trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development.

Until now, the company has discouraged average Internet users from moving on from Firefox 2, which was launched in October 2006.

"In many ways it (Firefox 3) is much more stable than anything else out there," Mozilla Corp Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview.

Key rivals to Firefox are market leader Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple Inc's Safari browser.

Engineers at Mozilla are still putting the finishing touches on the software and hope to release the final version of Firefox 3 by the end of June, Schroepfer said.

Mozilla is in a battle with Microsoft, which unveiled an experimental version of its Internet Explorer 8 in Las Vegas earlier this month and is looking to expand its presence on the Web through its bid to acquire Yahoo Inc.

Additions boost security and allow users to run Web sites when they are not connected to the Internet. Mozilla also says Firefox 3 uses less computer memory than Firefox 2.

Until now Mozilla has discouraged the typical computer user from exploring these new features. But its developers said that the situation has changed and that they will be revising their Web site.

As of Thursday afternoon, the Web site still stated: "We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 beta 4 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only."

But they said that as they concluded their fourth round of tweaking their software, they determined it was ready for prime time.

A fifth round of changes, due to begin within the next few weeks, will involve "tuning the visual look and feel of the program" and further improving its stability," Schroepfer said.

Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta1 Released - Download From Microsoft Website

Microsoft has released the first public beta of Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2.

Following are the download links for IE8 mentioned on the Microsoft IE8 Readiness website.

1. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2

2. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista

This release is essentially for people who want to make sure that their websites or web applications do not breaking in the upcoming IE 8 release that contains some key changes.

Update: The download links for IE8 were returning a 404 at the time of writing this story but am sure that’s just a temporary glitch.

Check Your Gmail or Yahoo! Mail with Flock (Web Browser)

Flock, the favorite web browser of social animals, now supports Gmail and Yahoo! Mail so you can easily check web emails without having to open separate browser tabs - the mail icon glows indicated you have new email.

Other than checking email, you can also share links of web pages and photos using web email without leaving Flock.

This may sounds similar to the GmailThis! bookmarklet of Firefox but its integrated in the browser so all mailto: hyperlinks open in Gmail by default and not in desktop programs like Outlook or Thunderbird.

Related: Make Gmail the Default E-Mail Client in Firefox

And if you like adding smiley icons or image signatures to your outgoing Gmail messages, Flock is a perfect choice - drag the image onto the web clipboard of Flock, then compose a new mail message and drag that same image from the web clipboard to the body of the email.

Flock is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Firefox Extensions Used Extremely

After playing around with dozens of Firefox extensions in the last few years, here I share ten extremely useful extensions that will definitely improve your browsing experience:

1. Aardvark - If you regularly print web pages, this is a must-have Firefox add-on. With a simple shortcut key, Aardvark lets you remove elements from a web page that you don’t want in the print version. This could include advertising banners, HTML tables, graphics, etc.

To use Aardvark in Firefox, hover your mouse cursor over areas of the web page that you don’t want to print and press E (erase). That’s it. See "Reduce Printing Costs"

2. BlogRovR - As you browse the web, this extension will quickly show you what your favorite bloggers have said about the web page that is currently open in your browser.

You just have to pass a list of your favorite blogs to BlogRovR and it will automatically fetch articles/commentary that link to whatever web page you’re viewing.

3. Morning Coffee - With Firefox, it is possible to set multiple homepages (separated by | ‘pipe’) so all your favorite sites will open in different tabs each time you launch Firefox.

But imagine a scenario where you want a different set of website to launch depending on the day. For instance, one of your favorite website may not be updated on weekends while another one (like PostSecret) posts new content only on Sunday. With Morning Coffee, you can organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously in tabs.

4. LinkAlert - - When you click an hyperlink on a web page, you normally expect it to point to another web page but that may not be the case always as links can point to PDFs, Office Documents, MP3 files, zips, email addresses, etc.

You know the frustration when you click a PDF and it starts to load Adobe Reader causing your browser to freeze for some time. Or you click an email address accidentally and Outlook opens up. With LinkAlert, such accidents may become a thing of the past as it appends a small visual icon next to links on web pages that are not HTML documents.

5. HyperWords - When you select any word or phrase on a web page, HyperWords lets you explore the web without leaving the current web page.

For instance, you view pictures on Flickr related to that selected word, read the Wikipedia entry (if there’s one), convert currency, translate text, view dictionary meanings and so much more right from the Firefox menu without having to click anything. Read "HyperWords Review"

6. IE Tab - Firefox is popular but we routinely encounter so many websites are designed for Internet Explorer only. A good example is the Microsoft Windows Update update.

IE Tab brings the Internet Explorer rendering engine inside Firefox so you don’t have to leave Firefox in order to view those IE only websites.

7. Scrapbook - This is like OneNote for Firefox as you can save clippings, images or even entire web pages to the local disk with a simple right click or a drag-n-drop. Scrapbook lets you search through the clippings and it also saves the original links incase you need to cite or revisit the original source.

8. FireBug - While this is primarily for web designers and developers, what I like about Firebug is inline image editing that lets you modify web pages while it is still loaded in the browser.

That means you can modify the HTML or even Javascript of the web page while maintaining all the links and CSS layouts. And with Firebug installed, you can also read Wall Street Journal online for free.

9. CustomizeGoogle - Google is the best search engine out there but it is not the only one. With CustomizeGoogle, you get to repeat the same search on other popular search engines from the Google website itself. I use this all the time.

10. PicLens - If you spend time on Flickr, Picasa or Facebook photo albums, PicLens will completely change the way your browse pictures on the web.

It adds a small icon near the pictures, you click it and the browser transforms into a full screen slideshow viewer. PicLens Also works with image search engines of Google, Yahoo!, etc.

Read about other Firefox Extensions that we have reviewed in the past.

Make Your Firefox Run Faster than before

Earlier we suggested improving the speed of Firefox by using a brand new profile. The trick is effective because it creates an almost virgin copy of Firefox sans any problematic add-ons or user settings that were probably causing Firefox to slow down.

James Meyer has written an alternate trick where you can make Firefox run faster even without losing any of the cookies, bookmarks or extensions.

He says: In my experience, what slows down Firefox is usually some preference for some installed add-on.

To fix the problem, make a copy of the pref.js file in your profile, and then edit it. The prefs.js file can be edited using notepad and it is available in your Firefox profile folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[xxx].default

Try removing lines that are related to various add-ons, and you will at some stage remove the line/lines that are causing the problem.

A method I have tried before is simply remove half of the lines, and try running Firefox with several tabs of pages with a lot of content. When you have identified the bad half, restore the original prefs.js file and remove half of that bad half and try again.

In this way, you can identify the lines that are causing the problem and won’t lose all your saved preferences.

Thank you James. As he suggested, make a backup of your Firefox Preferences file before deleting any lines.

Run Firefox 3 And Firefox 2 Together

Apple Safari Browser for Windows - Is It a Failure ?

Apple introduced Safari for Windows around six months ago calling it the fastest web browser that is almost twice as fast as IE 7 or Firefox 2.

Since then, Apple has released couple of minor upgrades for Safari 3 that are mainly bug fixes and the browser is still in beta stage.

We never heard of any third-party browser plugins being released specifically for Windows Safari and there’s practically little or no talk among the blogging community about Safari browser on Windows.

So did Safari manage to win any browser market share during the six month stint ?

I referred to the Google Analytics report (OS / Browser) and out the last 6 million visitors, only 8500 (0.15%) were using Safari on Windows.

The sample data may not be very big but it at least gives a reasonable idea about the possible market share of Safari 3 browser on the Windows platform.

Making Money By Writing Firefox Extensions

There’s money in writing Firefox Extensions, the free add-ons that add new functions and features to the already powerful Firefox Browser. PDF Download is one such example.

When you click some link on a web page that points to a PDF document, the default behavior is that the browser starts to download the PDF file and loads it inside the embedded Adobe Reader. This can sometimes freeze Firefox especially when the PDF is large.

PDF Download extension solved the problem by letting users decide the next action if they accidentally clicked a .pdf link. The extension also offered PDF to HTML conversion very similar to Gmail.

Nitro PDF, who develop a PDF writer similar to Adobe Acrobat, got interested and acquired this Firefox extension because it allowed them reach a very targeted audience who have already expressed their interest in PDFs by downloading the “PDF Download” extension.

The extension remains free and is a recommended download by Mozilla. It has so far been downloaded more than 5.5 million times and is providing more than half a million free PDF-to-HTML conversions per month.

A win-win situation both for end users and Nitro. We may see such a trend catching up in 2008 where product companies grab the popular extensions from respective Firefox developers to make their presence felt in the community.

Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft will release the first beta of Internet Explorer 8 in the first half of 2008 that will have full support for web standards. And the new browser will be known as “Windows Internet Explorer 8″.

Website designers will be able to write websites based on standards, insert a flag that tells IE to render in IE8 standards mode, and IE will then switch its rendering engine to use this new mode.

Thus IE8 won’t break the layout of existing websites coded for previous versions of IE (IE7 or IE6, for example). They’ll behave in exactly the same way in IE8 unless website designers opt-in to IE8 standards mode by placing a simple tag at the head of their HTML document.

It is not immediately clear if Windows IE8 will be available for Windows 2000 and XP versions. [MVP]

Closed An IE Browser Tab By Mistake? Get It Back Easily If you accidentally close a tab in Firefox, you can easily retrieve it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T. If you do the same mistake in Opera, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z will help you reopen the most recently closed tab. Or click the Trash icon near the toolbar to see a list of closed tabs arranged in reverse chronological order. Coming to Internet Explorer, there's no inbuilt feature to restore closed tabs but there's a free add-in called IE7 Open Last Closed Tab that makes your IE 7 behave just like Firefox or Opera. You can click Alt+X in IE and it will open up the most recently closed tab - the add-in is worth installing because you never know when you may need it. Available at Download.com

Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation

Problem: You cannot imagine life without Firefox but over time, your favorite browser keeps getting slower and slower. Not only is it slow, Firefox sometimes hangs for no reason, consumes a large amount of memory and CPU usage can climb to 90% or more when you have multiple tabs open simultaneously. You have uninstalled most of the extensions and toolbars, deleted all the cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates - but none of this has helped you speed-up Firefox. Solution: This is a common problem especially if you have been running Firefox for some time - I don't know why Firefox slows down but here's a small trick to rejuvenate the aged copy of Firefox without doing a fresh install. Step 1: Start Firefox and export your bookmarks as a file on your hard-drive (we'll need them later). Step 2: Type firefox.exe - P in the Run box of Windows. (see screenshot) Step 3: Click the Create Profile button without making any modifications to your existing profile (which is normally called "default") Now when you Start Firefox in the new profile, you are very likely to be impressed with the speed. You can import the bookmarks that you saved in Step 1. If you have made any changes to the Firefox Dictionary, copy the persdict.dat word list file from the old profile folder to the new one. Yes, there won't be any old Firefox add-ons in the new profile but the browser will be extremely quick and won't hog the CPU - just the way you want Firefox to run on your computer. And if you ever need to revert to the old profile, just type Firefox -P again and click the old profile. Nothing is lost.

How to Verify That You Have Typed In The Correct Password

When you type your password on a website, all you see are asterisk (*) signs. That is probably a security measure in web browser to prevent people, sitting next to you, from finding your password.

But there are cases when you would really want to know the exact characters that you are typing in the password filed.

For instance when logging into your online bank account, if you type the wrong password more than three times, the account access could be locked for the next few hours. And it’s not uncommon to make typing mistakes especially when you have a long password.

A simple solution to prevent password typo errors is the show my password bookmarklet - just drag the link into your browser bookmarks.

Now the next time when you login into some website, just type the password and click the “show my password” bookmarklet before hitting the Submit button - this will reveal the actual password characters, not the asterisk signs. (see screenshot)

So you can very easily confirm that the password you are just about to submit is the right one.

Parents - Block Accessing Unwanted SiteS

[For non-techie parents who have a computer at home and are worried about their kids safety online.]

A Parent recently wrote saying she is very concerned that her young children are spending too much time on websites like Orkut, MySpace and Facebook etc

Her worries are not just about children wasting time on the Internet - it’s more about the activities that children are doing on these sites. She is concerned that children could be interacting with complete strangers (or online predators) and even sharing personal information.

And with some news reports saying that criminal activities could have been planned on Orkut, the mother has finally made up her mind to restrict access to Orkut and some other websites on the home computer.

The only problem is that she has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money.

To block websites on your home computer without investing in expensive software, here’s the trick (for Windows PCs):

Step 1: Click the Start button and select Run. Now type the following text in that Run box:

notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Step 2: You will see a new notepad window on your screen containing some cryptic information. Don’t panic. Just goto the last line of the file, hit the enter key and type the following:

127.0.0.1 orkut.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com

Save the file and exit. That’s it. None of the above sites will now open on your computer.

You can block as many websites as you like with the above technique. If you want to remove the ban later, open the same file as mentioned in Step 1 and delete the above lines.

Pretty simple but remember, our children are also very smart. And there are some popular ways to unblock websites.

GMail/GTalk Blocked ? Here is the solution for it.....

One day I was talking to a friend who recently joined a Software Industry in India and he shared that a lot of websites and IM clients are banned inside his Office under the pretext of “security”.

While he is not a regular on social networking sites like Orkut,Facebook or Myspace, what makes him unhappy about the new workplace is the fact that he cannot check Gmail in Office or connect with other friends over GTalk – they are all blocked by the corporate firewall.

If you are in a similar situation, dont panic no more as here are some simple tricks to bypass the filters (but use them at your own risk). [Access Restricted Websites]

Google Talk (GTalk) – If you are not allowed to install the GTalk IM client on your computer, there’s a better web based version of Google Talk available at talkgadget.google.com – open this page in your web browser, sign-in with your Gmail user/password and start chatting with friends who are online. You can even group chat with multiple contacts, a feature that’s missing in the desktop version of Google Talk.

Gmail (Google Email) – There are multiple ways to check your Gmail email in the office. The first option is to create a Gmail filter, an option that’s available right near the search box in Gmail. Type your email address in the To: box and then select “Forward all incoming email”. You can select any other email service that’s accessible from office and Gmail will auto-forward all incoming email to this address.

Google Web Search – If totally Google.com web search itself is blocked in your office, you can try other alternatives like www.jux2.com or www.aftervote.com which offer search results from Google. Another option is to use googlesyndicatedsearch.com which is the same as google.com but on a different server that’s probably safe from your corporate firewall.