It has been seen that Mozilla has launched a new advancement for the Firefox which is the ‘Firefox 3.6’ which is not totally different from its predecessors but some very nice and user-friendly enhancements have been made into this browser. The main and a very interactive change which you’ll notice in this new browser is the custom paint job which is called ‘Personas’ which changes the outlook of your browser according to your style. This is kind of putting your own themes on the browser so that apart from the standard body of Firefox you’ll be able to see sceneries, sports, flowers, seasons and many themes relating to different categories.

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For the new version of Firefox it has also been notified that it also possesses a new language of web the ‘HTML 5’ which is enhancement of the HTML and it allows you to stream videos online on the sites like YouTube without the need of Adobe flash plug-in which sounds really exciting and with that its has been notified that the HTML5 brings more enhanced security for the browsers. Thus the new enhancement for the user of Firefox will really bring some better experience for the user and the new capabilities of this browser will really prove fruitful for attracting more users.

A really nice and sound extension support in Firefox browser is an ample proof of the dexterity and smartness of developers at Mozilla. Now there you would find a wide array of extension that serves as a key or to be more exact most prominent factor in the success of the browser.

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You may know this before, extensions are add-ons of the browser that are developed on the Firefox browser functionality. They can be complex (like an entire application) as well as simple (like a toolbar buttons addition). With different extensions, Firefox can be customized to meet the preferences and needs of different users.

What are the best Firefox extensions? Well, different people have different opinion in this connection and you would also notice that different online sites have their different list of the best Firefox extensions. Features, functionality, and the workability of these extensions with other extensions are some things to evaluate the characteristics of these extensions. The following array of the best Firefox extensions has been ordered considering these very characteristics.

Adblock Plus

It is used to eliminate undesired elements and other annoying content like ads in pages. Adblock Plus is quite easily customizable and offers an entire subscription based automatic solution for the block list. Sometimes, this Adblock Plus often omits necessary content and it’s its only downside, but you can easily disable it temporarily as well as for always.

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Adsense Notifier

Adsense Notifier extension can be a nice help for those who are using AdSense on their websites to generate more and more revenue. With the help of Adsense Notifier, you can convenient, but quick access to the revenue for some specific period of time like Last Seven Days, Today, Yesterday, This Month, Last Month etc.

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AutoAuth

This extension causes the login to appear automatically once your password is saved for the dialog of HTTP authentication and you need not to click on OK button at the page.

Always Remember Password

Firefox seems to honor this when some website, by default, gives these instructions that do not allow a password manager to keep the login info. But it can be very helpful for you to keep your password saved if someone else doesn’t access your computer. With this extension you can retain the passwords for any site including Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other banking sites.

Converter

The Converter extension allows you to get unit conversion from any assigned page. With this nice extension, a wide array of unit conversion is supported.

Copy Link Text

Copy Link Location appears when you right click some link in Firefox, it has an option that is called “Copy Link Location,” that can be very helpful to copy the URL of some link.

Download Statusbar

With this extension, downloads can be conveniently downloaded in the Firefox statusbar rather than displaying a dialog for these downloads. You can easily pause and resume downloads by double clicking some download to make it run.

ErrorZilla Mod

When there is some difficulty to load a page in Firefox, it offers you “Try Again,” “Wayback,” “Coralize,” “Trace,” “Ping” and many other options that you can utilize to gain this page access.

Fireshot

This extension can be used to take a web page screen shot for a snap and it can capture the whole page even if it is not visible. You need to make a single click and Fireshot not only captures this page, but copy, upload, print, mail or open it for the editing of this file.

Highlander

When some link is clicked to an already opened URL in some tab, this extension causes to be focus on the tab that is already open instead of duplicating this URL in another tab.

OpenBook

This Firefox extension offers customization to add Bookmark dialog and also adds the ability to resize the Add Bookmark dialog as well as open bookmark tree.

Google Cache Checker

To find out whether the current page has been Google cached or not, this extension checks different visited pages automatically.

These are some Firefox extensions that can be called the best Firefox extensions, but aside from these extensions, there are many Firefox extensions that doing nice job in their respective fields.

Credit: techradar

The browser ballot has been Microsoft’s latest proposition to settle the long term dispute running between Mozilla and Microsoft. Their dispute has been urged to be settled down through anti-competition mediation through European Commission. The new proposals from Microsoft suggests that users in XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating system will always have a great election style ballot with easy installation options.

The Windows 7 option in Europe has been suggested by Microsoft to be circulated throughout the rest of the world. Barker however contends to say that the proposal is going to be on default for Microsoft and the voting would not mean anything really. Choice over default would still be making prominent placement on internet hits and creating a higher place. He shows that the IE logo remains unchanged on everyone’s desk and that is also similar for Windows 7. The IE thus overall gets prominent choices.

Source: techradar

A security advisory appeared Tuesday tells that it was the third update during this year and the vulnerabilities that have been fixed in it two of them relates to browser engine and two are of JavaScirpt engine.

Developers at Mozilla have succeeded to identify and fix various vulnerabilities in Firefox browser engine and other products from Mozilla.  Memory corruption evidences have been noticed in some crashes in some conditions.

The release has come as Mozilla is making preparation to launch Firefox 3.5 fourth beta that will be the next version of this open source browser. The new Shiretoko version of Firefox was due earlier this year, but now the organization says that they are considering a fourth beta of it.

Quick execution of JavaScript programs, new mode for private browsing, support for JavaScript Object Notation technology to exchange data in browsers and servers and different multimedia technologies are some changes that are being expected in Firefox 3.5.

According to Secunia, a security testing company, Mozilla seems to have a lot more vulnerabilities in its browser than can be seen IE, Opera and Safari as combined. But at the same time, Mozilla has been dealing with these flaws a lot quicker than other parties.

However, Mozilla’s web browser has been chipping away the market dominance of IE. Currently, it has 22.05% of market share while Internet Explorer has 66.82% share that is nearly 7% down from previous year. The users of Firefox3 will be notified within 48hrs and if they don’t, the update can be downloaded manually through Check for Updates.

JavaScript is there to back Fennec which indicates that it will offer nice support to add-ons that relate to third party as well as gesturing and browsing without buttons. Well, you will find all that quite impressive.

You can get a better know what this Beta 1 has and what not as Mozilla has released some notes on its site with the video that can tell you a lot about the new features and background info of this new mobile browser.

We will also inform you soon about what it actually has and how does it work as we have an opportunity review the latest on the Fennec.

A final verdict in favor of one is impossible, because they all have their good and bad points. If Safari has a better interface; Firefox provides enhanced add on. Therefore, best way to evaluate them is comparing their level of functionality under various divisions.

Interface:

Microsoft owns the worst looking web browser, in fact. There seems no quality designing in IE 8’s interface. All the tabs, favorites and dropdowns are placed on a single bar.

Firefox has given a bit better show than IE when it comes to looks. Users can change the themes according to their own choice.

Actual rivals in interface competition are Safari and Chrome. Apple has introduced an i-Tune-like-view of history, favorites and bookmarks. It, definitely, is a fine vista for eyes. Safari’s “text smoothing” is somewhat annoying, though.

Chrome, on the other hand, has nearly as appealing interface as Safari, with nice layout for tabs and no text smoothing, indeed.

Thus Chrome wins this round.

Features:

In features, neither Safari nor Chrome is a practical competitor of IE and Firefox. Both the former browsers lack extensions. RSS feed is still unknown to Chrome; also it has a bad zooming feature, which is effective only for text and not for pictures etc.

IE possesses better features than Safari and Chrome, with a few extensions, but the real conqueror is Firefox. It is certainly more extensible than any of its rivals. Its ecosystem of add-ons is the reason of being given priority over every other browser.

Evil-killing:

All web browsers offer anti phishing, pop up blocking, private browsing mode etc, thus there isn’t any competition here.

The most annoying hitch is “crashing”, when the whole window goes down with a single problem creating tab. Chrome gives a tab manager with which every tab can be handled separately. IE 8 has taken Chrome’s track, and provides separate treatment of every opened tab through Task Manager. Neither Safari nor Firefox provide this feature, though it is of vital importance. Crashing of the whole window because of a single tab is aggravating enough for a busy user.

Once more, Chrome takes the lead.

Performance:

All browsers were tested on a single computer; 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo running Vista Ultimate with 2GB of RAM, on a single page. Regarding memory requirements, IE 8 was the greediest with 86 MB, followed by Safari 4 beta with 44 MB, Firefox 3.1 beta 3 with 39 MB and Chrome with 36 MB. Chrome was the finest performer, evidently.

When Java script performance was tested; Safari won with 985.6ms / 1,079.6ms and IE lost badly with 5,804.2ms / 5,834.6ms.

Final Words:

Safari; the fastest performer, Chrome; the finest evil-fighter, Firefox; most expandable with top-notch add-ons, and IE; the existent! Though Chrome took the lead visibly, its plainness and ignorance to RSS pulled it back; Firefox wins the game.

Written by “Seemab”

Based on the Gecko 1.9.1, beta 3 has improved the performance of Firefox in certain ways. Main enhanced features are its availability in 64 languages, better web performer, advanced Private Browsing Mode, new Trace Monkey Java script engine, native JSON support, video and audio support (no more flash player required), W3C Geo location API, SVG transformers, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, Java script query selectors and certain offline applications.

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 is available to download for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Moreover, certain known issues have also been stated on Mozilla’s website, e.g. dragging a tab on to the desktop fails to create a new window; Gmail fails to respond at times; quality of audio / video may suffer owing to slow internet connection or computer etc. one can also find an FAQ part on Release Notes page.

It isn’t the final beta version of Firefox 3.1; another is expected before the full release of Firefox 3.5. Yes! Next full release will be 3.5 instead of 3.1 because of the extent of variations in 3.1 betas. “The increase in version number is proposed due to the sheer volume of work which makes Shiretoko feel like much more than a small, incremental improvement over Firefox 3.” said Mike Beltzner of Mozilla last week.

Basically, this design consists of two elements; Quick Access Bar and Contextual Actions. Former is situated in the upper right corner, whereas the action buttons appear in the top-left area.

Quick access bar shows only the most recently visited web-pages to choose one from. With RSS feeds, latest updates for most frequently visited pages will always be available. Position of the access bar is being objected at, but Mozilla say that they wanted the bar to be Modest; one which doesn’t hinder the user if he wants to type in the URL himself.

Action buttons provide the user with more effortless browsing experience. If the user selects some text from an opened window, and clicks on the new tab button, that new window will automatically search the selected text. Similarly, if a URL is selected and a new tab is opened, the fresh tab screen will immediately open the selected URL.

A prototype based on this new concept has been introduced by Mozilla, basically to collect users’ feedback. Reviewing consists of 3 steps; installing the latest development build of FireFox 3.1 and the New Tab Prototype; experiencing it; and finally commenting on the blog.

Since January, Mozilla has been experimenting new tab choices. From the feedback for past two rounds, Mozilla has understood that users believe in a fast launched page with minimum or less visual disruption. Perhaps for this purpose, right-sided access bar has been introduced.

Out of all these bugs, the issue with the Javascript was a crucial one as it affected the entire layout of the site to a great extent. There is the vulnerability issue that affects the other applications of Mozilla such as the email client called Thunderbird and the internet suite SeaMonkey. The previous bugs would easily allow the attackers to run some unauthorized code in the machines. The update is also said to improve the previously scripted commands as well as those that are included in the AdBlock Plus, the varied plug-ins. The update was launched Firefox is looking forward to chip away the dominance of Internet Explorer existing in the market today. If we believe the figures, Internet Explorer in the present day has a share of 67.5% of the global browser market. Such a figure shows a decline of almost 7% in the total percentage shared. These figures were generated by the Web Metrics Company Net Applications and were released on Monday. Mozilla’s only web browser Firefox has also gained some considerable market share in the same time frame and has increased more than 3% and has reached 21.53% of the total share.

There are some pieces of information on Mozilla’s bolg which say: “Symbian saw a 49.8 percent sale of the total handset sales during third quarter next year and similarly it was 57 percent in the second quarter while, as Gartner revealed Windows Mobile saw a 11.1 percent and Linux 7.2percent.

“So to cover that space it is essential for Mozilla to have a good place on Symbian as well.”
It shows that the release of Firefox as a Mobile browser is being made considering not mere one or two handsets, but going on multiple handsets

There is sad news for iPhone lovers as it has also been mentioned that some other platforms like RIM, Android and iPhone also have a good market share but Firefox can’t be deployed because of technical and licensing reasons.

However, people who are using N96 will soon get Firefox Mobile in their handsets and it’s really awesome indeed.