firefox

Get the low-down on the sites you visit with CallingID

I used to think the last thing I needed was another browser toolbar. But now I gladly sacrifice a little screen real estate to find out who owns the sites I visit, where they're located, and whether they pass muster with the security checkers.

That's what you get with CallingID, an add-on for Internet Explorer and Firefox that adds a multi-hued toolbar to the browsers. Along with use of green, yellow, and red to signify the site's safety, the toolbar shows the owner and location of the site.

Whenever you attempt to enter a name and password … Read more

Firefox 3? Not yet

Mozilla surprised us a bit with an unexpected release of the first release candidate for Firefox 3 last weekend. It's a likely sign that the official release is nigh.

When will that be? You already know the answer: "When it's ready." My best guess is sometime in the late afternoon, either this month or next.

That said, Release Candidate 1 is going to be close enough to the final version of Firefox 3 that you won't notice any significant differences...until of course, you check your add-ons--extensions and themes. A large number might be incompatible with RC1.

However, let's cut the developers some slack. If an extension is compatible with Firefox 3 beta 5, it will be compatible with RC1 shortly. There's some frantic updating that's likely happening right now. However, if you like Tab Mix Plus a lot (which I do), you might be waiting a bit.

The lack of a few of your favorite extensions and likely all of your favorite themes doesn't mean you shouldn't upgrade to Firefox 3 right now, especially if you're a Web developer (duh), or if you regularly use Web-based Javascript applications such as Gmail frequently.… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 727: Microsoft to Yahoo: Let's take it slow

Actual tech news today! For example, Microsoft is re-wooing Yahoo, Nintendo is stomping through the console market like Godzilla in Mario's Kart, the first public Firefox 3 candidate is now available, and Apple is trying to win direct downloads for the new iPhone. Oh, and if our caller from UPS is to be believed, those iPhones might be starting to arrive in stores right now! (Dear CBS: Send pie!) Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 727

Microsoft, Yahoo forced into each others’ arms http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9947185-56.html http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Microsoft-Yahoo.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7407585.stm… Read more

Google Apps Premier four days of failure in Firefox

It's a bit hard to see in this screenshot but Google Apps Premier hasn't been working for me in Firefox since Thursday. There is no rhyme or reason, no new plugins etc.--it just stopped working and won't start again.

Basically the page never loads, it just gives me that blue bar but never reaches the finish line. I've reset the cache, rebooted, reset Firefox entirely and will now try and reinstall. Hard to see what else would make this go away. Back to Safari I will go.

I wonder how this factors into the 99.… Read more

Firefox 3 release candidate goes public

The initial release candidate of Firefox 3 is ready for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It's a public preview of the new Firefox code, available in 45 languages, aimed at developers and early adopters to test out the new features. It has an extensive list of known bugs.

Among the major improvements are changes in the look and feel on the various operating systems, major security enhancements, and increased performance and stability. It is based on the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine, which includes 14,000 updates to the code.

On the performance front, the documentation states that … Read more

Power Downloader restores Mozilla applications

Last week when Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 3 unto the world, a few "lucky" XP users had their computers come to a screeching, brain-jarring halt. Kitty Kilobyte's best friend Penny Penryn was hit badly by this bug, and she had to do a full reinstall of her operating system.

As frustrating as a crash of this magnitude can be, Penny Penryn was surprisingly as cool as a fan for a quad-core CPU. She didn't lose any of her important documents because followed Power Downloader's advice and backed them up using SyncBack. She didn'… Read more

Mozilla joins the mobile Linux revolution

Mozilla has started making noise about the mobile browser market, and just turned up the volume a bit more by joining the mobile Linux trade group, LiMo Foundation. It's not all that significant in and of itself, except that it clearly demonstrates that "Minimo" (now called Fennec) is finally set to break free of its Windows Mobile shackles.

Finally.

The future of the Firefox address bar

I had an interesting discussion today about Firefox with Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer and Mike Beltzner. One of the things we drilled into a bit was the address bar in Firefox 3 (download). It's being called the "awesome bar" at Mozilla, and while it will end up with an official name eventually (the "smart location bar"), what it does for users can fairly be described as awesome. And as it's probably the most important touchpoint in the browser, it's worth exploring not just what it means for users but for Mozilla as well. … Read more

Asus making more motherboards with embedded Linux

Last October, I covered my first motherboard for Webware: the Asus P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP (check out the video).

It was a Webware story since it was, at the time, the only motherboard to ship with "Splashtop," an embedded Linux OS with Firefox and Skype. With this capability, 15 seconds after you hit the power switch, you could be online.

The idea is that it makes it possible to shut down the PC when you're done with it, yet still be able to pop online in a hurry to check something on the Web.

The only problem with … Read more

Mozilla's browser at the end of the rainbow

The BBC is spot on in suggesting that Mozilla's Firefox is a gold mine waiting to happen, though it's unclear how Mozilla gets there from here. Could Firefox be one of the web's biggest beneficiaries as a platform? Absolutely. Does it want to be?

That's not so clear.

Firefox is dangerously dependent on Google for its income. But now, in the "awesome bar" [Scheduled to hit as part of Firefox's 3.0 GA release this June], it's got its own search engine which could, in theory, provide a very valuable stream of … Read more