Firefox

Firefox will soon be able to block third-party advertising cookies by default, preventing ad networks from tracking users' browser activity.

Advertisers use cookies to track users' Web activity to deliver more-targeted ads. The new patch will allow cookies from sites users actively visit but block those from third-party sites that haven't been visited by the user.

Firefox users have long had the ability to manually disable the cookies, but the patch will allow the browser to automatically perform the task. Contributed by Jonathan Mayer, a researcher at Stanford, the patch is expected to be released in Firefox 22 on … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Laying the groundwork for its nascent Firefox OS, Mozilla has won over a sizeable list of allies including LG Electronics and China Unicom, and the first phones with the browser-based operating system should arrive in the second quarter of the year.

Mozilla announced today at the Mobile World Congress show here that it's persuaded 18 mobile network operators and four mobile phone makers to back its open-source mobile operating system. That's not enough to unseat the incumbent powers of Google's Android and Apple's iOS slayer, but it is enough to ensure Firefox OS at least … Read more

While Chrome has had an internal PDF viewer for a couple of years now, Mozilla only just added the feature to Firefox 19. It's a feature that most people will find convenient as is, but if you're looking to take some control over how Firefox handles PDF files on the Web, here's how:

PDF file handling options The Firefox PDF viewer is enabled by default and will display PDFs within the browser when you click on PDF links. If they don't, make sure you've disabled any PDF plug-ins you may have previously installed. If you … Read more

Review: Mozilla Firefox has undergone an enormous rebirth over the past two years. Since Firefox 4 debuted in March 2011, the browser has been hell-bent on improvements. These have come in large part on the rapid-release cycle, which sees a new version of Firefox every six weeks. Many people like them, but a vocal minority has pooh-poohed the increase in version numbers. That's hardly a legitimate complaint in a world where mobile apps also update silently and effectively, but the transition for Firefox hasn't been an easy one.

As you can see, Firefox is on version 19 at … Read more

Review: Firefox for Android used to be a must-use mainly for Firefox fans. It was good at what it did, but it wasn't great, and the competitive field of Android browsers surpassed it on many levels.

As a reaction, Mozilla spent the better part of a year redesigning the browser from the ground up. The new Firefox for Android brings an interface powered by native code, competitive page-load times, and Flash support. As important for Mozilla is that the sum of the new browser's parts will keep its flagship brand relevant on Android as Chrome for Android grows. … Read more

The Portable Document Format is one of the more ubiquitous document types both on the Web and on personal devices, and can be used for distributing manuals, brochures, and most other formatted documents.

However, until now Firefox, one of the more popular Web browsers, in part due to its availability on OS X, Windows, and Linux, has not had a built-in PDF reader. Instead, to open PDFs it's been necessary to either install a browser plug-in or download the PDFs and open them in a managing program like Apple's Preview.

However, in the latest version of Firefox, Mozilla … Read more

Mozilla is catching its browser up to Windows 8.

The Firefox Nightly version -- the precursor to Aurora, beta, and final releases -- now supports the touch-oriented, no-menu interface of Windows 8 formerly known as Metro, according to a tweet from Mozilla about the development.

Mozilla developer Paul Rouget posted several screenshots of the Metro version of the early Firefox build.

The early build features a number of Metro features, including a no-menu-bar look that relies instead on actions triggered by swiping in from the edges of the screen. That includes the access to search engines, downloaded files, and tab … Read more

It is nearly impossible to hear the acronym "IE" in a workplace setting without somebody appending to it the word "sucks." To be more genteel about it, older versions of Internet Explorer on corporate computers simply do not reflect the quality of modern browsers. So why does that massive corporation you work for make you use IE 8 or older in the first place?

A complicated problem Why you're forced to do at least some work in slow, standards noncompliant, security risk-prone legacy versions of Internet Explorer comes down to your employer's need to … Read more