There's no way to reduce to zero your risk of picking up some piece of malware while browsing. You need layers of security to keep viruses, Trojans, and botnets at bay—the more layers, the safer your browsing. (Of course, the more layers, the slower your browsing, too, so don't get carried away.)
Much emphasis has been placed on the enhanced security features of the latest versions of the popular browsers. Whether one is any safer than another is anybody's guess, but no browser gives you more ways to thwart a Web-based attack than Firefox via its wealth of security add-ons.
Link checkers add warnings to search results
Search results are often difficult to trust, even when the URL looks familiar. Phishers are adept at planting dangerous links that look like harmless ones. Link checkers provide you with an indication of the trustworthiness of sites before you click their links. (Note that several of the products are available for Internet Explorer as well.)
Some of the programs, such as McAfee's SiteAdvisor, give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on a single company's research. Web of Trust (WOT) bases its recommendations on the collective intelligence of a network of volunteers. LinkExtend is a link-check aggregator that combines the analyses of eight different services.
McAfee SiteAdvisor adds a safety indicator to Web search results.
(Credit: McAfee)While the recommendations of link checkers are helpful in identifying safe sites, you can't take their yeas and nays as gospel. For example, sites that offer downloads of system utilities may be flagged as dangerous because the programs require access to the operating system and thus could do major damage in the wrong hands.
Track the trackers
You know popular Web sites download software that tracks your activities on their sites, but do you know who's doing the tracking? Find out with the Ghostery add-on that pops up the names of the trackers as the page opens. The program puts a small "ghost" icon in the bottom-right corner of the Firefox window that turns orange when trackers are present. Click the link that appears to the right of the icon to find out more about the trackers and block them individually or entirely.
The Ghostery Firefox add-on lets you know who's tracking your activities on the site.
(Credit: Ghostery)
View encryption specs
When you open an encrypted Web page, a lock icon appears in the bottom-right corner of the Firefox window and the URL in the address bar begins with "https." But there's more than one form of encryption, and knowing which type and strength of encryption in use can be handy.
The CipherFox add-on puts in the bottom-right of the Firefox status bar the Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) cipher and keysize currently in use. Double-clicking the entry opens the CipherFox dialog box, where you can disable RC4 encryption and display partial SSL/TLS. (Note that the developer accepts donations to support the product.)
Take charge of Web password management
Firefox's built-in password manager lets you create a master password and remember passwords for specific sites, but if you want to get serious about managing your passwords, get LastPass, a password manager that provides much more granular control over your sign-ins.
After you download and install the add-on, an icon is placed in the top-right corner of the Firefox window. Click it to open the LastPass menu, which lets you manage your identities, open the LastPass Vault, jump to favorite sites, and generate secure passwords. You can also import or export sign-in IDs, compose and print secure notes, and assign keyboard shortcuts for specific actions.
In addition to Firefox and IE, LastPass is available for Google Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers. LastPass backs up your passwords by storing an encrypted copy on its own servers. And because you can access your passwords via the Internet, you can use LastPass on any Web-connected device, although use of LastPass on an iPhone or other smart phone requires a Premium membership, which costs $1 a month. (You can also put LastPass on a USB thumbdrive for use with Firefox Portable and other portable apps.)
A couple of weeks ago, I described how to sync contacts between Outlook, Gmail, and your iPhone. The program missing from this contacts mega-merge was Thunderbird (download for Windows | Mac), and for good reason. Mozilla's free e-mail program is not particularly contact-friendly.
The first time I attempted to use Mozilla Thunderbird's import function to bring my Gmail contacts into the client e-mail application, I was seriously disappointed with the results. Most of the contact information was squished into a single nondescript field for each record. The few fields that did make the conversion were incomplete. The entire process was pretty worthless, overall.
Then I found the free Zindus add-on for Thunderbird. The program brings a subset of contact fields from Google and Zimbra into Mozilla's free e-mail program. For Google, the fields imported include the contact's name, primary and secondary e-mail addresses, phone numbers, IM names, company, title, and notes. (I didn't test the program with Zimbra.)
After you download and install Zindus, a "Zindus" option is added to Thunderbird's Tools menu. Clicking it opens the Zindus Configuration Settings dialog box where you're presented with a handful of contact-sync options, including a Sync Now button.
The Zindus Configuration Settings dialog lets you reset your sync options.
(Credit: Zindus)... Read more
I'll save us both some time by getting right to the descriptions of three Firefox add-ons that shave minutes off my workday. Hey, they add up!
Navigate Web pages using only your keyboard.
When it comes to speed, I'll take a keyboard over a mouse any day of the week. A post from April 2008 explains how to create a keyboard-shortcut list you can access quickly. I also wrote about using your keyboard to move and resize windows and shortcuts for Word and Excel.
Now I can park the mouse when I surf. Instead of clicking, I enter the number Rudolf Noe's Mouseless Browsing add-on places next to each link. If I want to put the cursor in the address bar, I enter 0, while pressing 00 puts the cursor in the search field. Each open tab gets a number, each text box on the page gets a number, each drop-down menu gets a number. (I just wish the bookmark toolbar options and the reload, stop, and home buttons did.)
The Mouseless Browsing Firefox add-on assigns a number to each link and option on a Web page so you get there from the keyboard.
(Credit: Rudolf Noe)The program is loaded with options, including the ability to use only the numeric keypad to enter the numbers, so the top-row number keys aren't used to enter shortcuts. You can also require pressing the Enter key before the action occurs or change the delay between entering the numbers and taking the action.
Granted, the numbers can play havoc with a page's layout, but I can't count the number of times I've struggled to get the mouse pointer over just the right tiny link in a sea of tiny links. Being able to enter a number instead of clicking is a joy for this keyboard aficionado. (Warning: the add-on also slows your page-load speeds a bit.)
Finally! Copy Web text without the formatting.
I know how to create a keyboard shortcut that pastes plain text, but I didn't have the ability to copy and paste text from Web pages without the formatting until I downloaded Jeremy Gillick's aptly named Copy Plain Text add-on for Firefox. Just download the extension, restart Firefox, and when you copy text from a page, you'll see a Copy as Plain Text option just under the Edit menu's regular Copy option.
Copy Plain Text lets you do just that from Web pages in Firefox.
(Credit: Jeremy Gillick)You also get the Ctrl-Shift-C keyboard shortcut to copy the text without formatting. You can say what you want about one-trick ponies, but I only wish all software was this straightforward. Of course, Firefox could have this feature built in, but I'm not complaining.
The latest scores are a right-click away.
OK, I admit it. If I'm working late and missing a big game, I visit a sports site to check the scores. Now I save myself time by right-clicking Vinny 2020's SportsFox add-on, choose the sport, and see that yes, the Tigers dropped another one to the Bosox, and even worse, the Red Wings lost their second game of the Stanley Cup finals the the Penguins. (Might as well keep on working.)
Get up-to-the-minute sports scores inside your browser with the SportsFox add-on.
(Credit: Vinny 2020)Now I'm going to enjoy some of the time these add-ons have saved me. Go Wings!
If you followed the steps in my post from August on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft's advice for deleting duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to remove, and press delete.
The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren't identical, so you're almost certain to delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information in the duplicate contacts. There's no such feature in Outlook, but if you're willing to spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running 4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook.
The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is said to work with "Microsoft Exchange type folders including public folders," according to the vendor's Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.
... Read more
The first program I open every day is Firefox, and most days the first Web site I visit is Google. That's why I'm glad so many Firefox add-on developers have created tools that give me a new perspective on my Google search results. Here are three of my favorites.
Sharpen your searches with GoogleEnhancer
The primary reason I click Google's Advanced Search option is to limit the results to a specific date range. With NettiCat's GoogleEnhancer add-on I can narrow my searches by date as well as by file type and a handful of languages via drop-down menus that are placed to the right of the search box.
The GoogleEnhancer add-on for Firefox puts drop-down menus next to the text box that let you narrow your results by time, language, and file type.
(Credit: NettiCat)As nice as the search enhancements are, one of my favorite GoogleEnhancer features is the addition of icons to the left of the results for each link's site. The add-on also numbers the results, though these don't really add much to the results, in my opinion.
... Read more
A big reason for the growing popularity of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser is the amazingly creative and abundantly useful add-ons that are being created for Firefox. My three new favorites let you ax the ads on a site, see the tracking pixels on the current page, and gain a wealth of options when you select and right-click text in your browser.
Browse faster by blocking ads
Wouldn't you like to watch TV and listen to the radio without having to sit through the ads that pay the freight? Or dismantle the billboards that line the freeways? I can't help you with TV spots or roadside distractions, but you can kiss Web ads good-bye. Just download and install Wladimir Palant's Adblock Plus extension for Firefox.
After browsing with Adblock Plus enabled for a while, I started to wonder how I ever managed to surf without it. I noticed an immediate increase in the load speed of many of the sites I visit frequently, such as ESPN.com and CNN.com. And it's so much easier to find the information I'm looking for on a crowded page without all the ads getting in the way.
When you restart Firefox after installing Adblock Plus, you're given the option to import a set of filter rules or create your own rules. I took the easy route and opted for the canned filters, which do a good job of removing the ads from the sites I frequent.
You can view the number of blocked items on the current page by hovering the mouse pointer over the "ABP" icon in the top-right corner of the Firefox window. Or click the down arrow to the right to access the extension's preferences and other options.
View the number of blocked ads on a page by hovering over the ABP icon.
(Credit: Wladimir Palant)Some ads manage to slip past Adblock's filters, but you block them in the future by right-clicking the ad and choosing Adblock Image. There are a wealth of other options in the program; visit the developer's FAQ page for more information.
Know when you're being tracked
I'm usually not very curious about which of the Web-tracking services may have planted a pixel in the Web pages I visit, but knowing which sites use which tracking services gives me a little more information about what I can expect from the people behind the site.
Jan Bogutzki's Counterpixel detects the presence of tracking pixels from 19 different services, including Google Analytics, WebTrends, and Site Meter.
Counterpixel doesn't block the trackers; it merely alerts you to their presence on the current page. This might provide more information than the average Firefox user needs, but the add-on is a great way to find out a little bit more about the sites you frequent.
Get more right-click options for selected text
I've been using the Hyperwords extension for only a few days, which is not nearly enough time to learn all the text tricks this program performs. The first Hyperwords feature that caught my eye was the Translation option, which lets you convert the selected text into more than a dozen languages.
Customize the right-click options that the Hyperwords extension adds to Firefox.
(Credit: Hyperwords)Other Hyperwords context-menu options let you search for the selected text at various reference sites and view other occurrences of the text on the page by sentence or paragraph, among other alternatives. You can also save the selection as a text file or send it directly to your printer.
It's a mystery to my why more people still use Internet Explorer than Firefox or any other competing browser. But I don't get the success of American Idol, either, so it must be me.
I have banished the Yahoo Toolbar from my PCs. It's not that I have anything against Yahoo. I use many of the company's services.
It's just that for me, the shortcuts on the Yahoo Toolbar don't justify the lost screen space, especially on my 13.3-inch laptop display.
So imagine my surprise when I happened to find the Yahoo Toolbar listed among Firefox's add-ons. (It snuck in when another user of the machine downloaded the Yahoo IM client.)
You might be surprised by the add-ons and extensions that have wormed their way into your copy of Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3.
You can work your way through the list of add-ons in your favorite browser, disabling and uninstalling those you don't need. Or you can save time by opening IE 7 and Firefox 3 with all add-ons and extensions disabled.
To open Internet Explorer with no add-ons or ActiveX controls working, click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Internet Explorer (No-Add-ons). (In Vista, a faster way to open IE with no add-ons is by pressing the Windows key, typing Internet Explorer, and choosing Internet Explorer (No Add-ons) in the resulting list of shortcuts.)
To disable all of Firefox's add-ons, you have to open the browser in its Safe Mode (no relation to Windows' own Safe Mode) by clicking Start > All Programs > Mozilla Firefox > Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode). A quicker way is to press the Windows key (in XP, follow this by pressing R), type Firefox -safe-mode, and press Enter.
Disable all add-ons in Firefox by starting the browser in Safe Mode and selecting the "Disable" option.
(Credit: Mozilla)In the Firefox Safe Mode dialog box that appears before Firefox opens, click "Disable all add-ons" and choose the Make Changes and Restart button to run the browser with no add-ons or extensions enabled.
I can't tell you for sure that every feature of every Web site you visit will work as designed, nor can I say unequivocally that you'll be browsing faster with no add-ons enabled. But I made the rounds of my favorite sites in each browser's no-add-ons mode and didn't feel like I was missing anything. In fact, the only way I knew my add-ons were disabled in IE was seeing the Manage Add-ons option grayed out on the Tools menu.
The "Manage Add-ons" option on IE's Tools menu is grayed out when you open the browser with all add-ons disabled.
(Credit: Microsoft)Disabling add-ons and extensions one at a time is a snap in both Firefox and IE. In the former, click Tools > Add-ons, select an entry under the Extensions tab, and click Disable. To toss an extension, click Uninstall. You can disable (but not uninstall) Firefox's plug-ins by clicking the Plug-ins tab, selecting an entry, and clicking Disable.
In IE, you can turn off add-ons one by one by clicking Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons. You have your choice of four views on the Show menu at the top of the Manage Add-ons dialog box (the default is "Add-ons currently loaded in Internet Explorer"). To disable an add-on, select it and choose Disable at the bottom of the dialog box.
You have a choice of four views when enabling or disabling add-ons in IE's Manage Add-ons dialog box.
(Credit: Microsoft)One reason you may need to disable your browser's add-ons is to troubleshoot poor performance. Microsoft provides a step-by-step guide for fixing problems with Internet Explorer, and one of the steps is disabling your add-ons and re-enabling them individually until the problem recurs, at which time you've found the troublemaker.
You'll find more information about Firefox add-ons at the Firefox Support Knowledge Base.
Last May, I described the CallingID add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. It lets users see at a glance the address or location of the server hosting the site their visiting, and it even offers a color-coded security rating.
Unfortunately, the add-on doesn't work with Firefox 3, and the vendor's site doesn't offer any information on or help with this problem.
While looking for a solution to the CallingID glitch, I discovered Shazou, a Firefox add-on created by Chuck Durham at Seisan that goes one step further by showing the location of the site's server on a map that pops up when you click its icon in the bottom-right corner of the browser window.
The Shazou add-on for Firefox shows the location of the current site's server on a map.
(Credit: Seisan)Click either the "GeoIP: Server Location" or "WhoIs: Domain Owner" buttons to show this information in a small pop-up. The locations are also shown via icons on the map that Shazou generates. You can pan the map, or zoom it in and out (which is a handy feature for when the server and registrant are not located near each other) or switch to either a satellite view or a hybrid combining satellite and street views.
The add-on throws in a Submit as Phishing Site button, but when you click this, you see a pop-up window saying only "Submission Successful--Thank You." I couldn't find any information on the vendor's site about what happens to these submissions. I also noticed on the download page that the add-on appears not to work with the most recent versions of Firefox 3, though it worked OK for me.
Shazou can't match the CallingID toolbar's ability to show the domain registrant's location at a glance, nor do users get a color-coded indication of the site's security rating. What users do get is a series of Google ads at the bottom of the map, but the ads are unobtrusive.
Still, I like being able to find the location of the sites with which I do business. I also have a soft spot for maps, so Shazou's combination of the two works well enough for me, at least until CallingID starts working again.
Some people seem to think they have carte blanche to spell any which way they want to when they're on the Internet. But whether you're writing Web mail or IMs, filling out a Web form, or just entering a term in Google's search box, spelling matters.
And that's not just because an abundance of spelling errors can make people think you're an eighth grade dropout. (Nothing against eighth grade dropouts!) It's also because misspellings can prevent you from finding the information you're searching for and lead to e-mail miscommunication.
Firefox 2 and 3 have spell-checkers built in, though they're pretty basic. That's a tad better than Internet Explorer 7, which comes spell-checker-less. Free dictionary add-ons enhance Firefox's spelling abilities, and the free IE7Pro provides IE with a way to minimize Web misspellings.
If you're an iGoogler, there's a great new gadget called SpellBoy that puts a spell-checker on your home page.
Activate Firefox's spell-checker
To enable the spell-checker in Firefox, click Tools > Options > Advanced > General, make sure "Check my spelling as I type" is checked, and click OK. Now you'll see the familiar red dots under words the browser's dictionary lacks (including "Firefox," surprisingly).
If you don't see the red dots under misspelled words, right-click and choose Check Spelling. Now when you right-click a misspelling you'll see a handful of optional spellings at the top of the context menu.
I wasn't particularly impressed with the choices Firefox presented for misspellings, so I downloaded the U.S. English dictionary add-on. While I was at it, I also installed the French dictionary add-on, just in case I bump into Ludivine Sagnier in a chat room someday. Right.
Give IE 7 some spelling skills
One of the many reasons I recommend IE7Pro to Internet Explorer users is the great spell-checker in the add-on. To get it operating, choose Tools > IE7Pro Preferences, click Spellchecking in the Modules pane of the Settings window, and click OK.
I was more impressed by IE7Pro's spelling suggestions than with those offered by Firefox's dictionary. As with Firefox, you can add dictionaries for other languages. Plus, you get all the other great IE7Pro features, including a customizable ad blocker and shortcut-key manager.
Add spell-checking to Internet Explorer 7 via the free IE7Pro add-on.
(Credit: IE7Pro) Put a spell checker on your home page
You can check your spelling from any browser by adding Christopher Blum's SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle. Type or paste text into the large SpellBoy window and click Check spelling.
The SpellBoy gadget for iGoogle puts a spell-checker on your browser's home page.
(Credit: Christopher Blum)The gadget gives you a count of possible misspellings and shows each underlined in red. Click one of the entries to see five possible corrections, as well as an empty text box you can use to type your own alternative spelling. Corrected words are shown with a green underline.
Note that this beta has no bells or whistles: You can't add languages or custom dictionaries. There were some comments from early users who claimed they were unable to delete the gadget, but I was able to remove it without any problems. Still, a beta is a beta, so use SpellBoy at your own risk.
On Monday, I described Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, an add-on that finds duplicate copies of Outlook messages, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks. Now, I'll continue to trim my bloated Outlook in-box by using another freebie: the Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover created by Bruno Marotta.
After you download the program and restart Outlook, you see a floating Attachment Remover toolbar that you can drag and dock at the top of the screen along with all the other toolbars to keep it from blocking your view. Click the toolbar's one-and-only button to open the program's one-and-only dialog box.
The Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover shrinks your in-box by storing attachments in a separate folder and placing links to the files in the original messages.
(Credit: Kopf/Bruno Marotta)You can choose the folder to scan for attachments, the type of files to remove, the size limit (the default setting is to remove all file attachments more than 10KB in size), the folder to place the attachments in, and whether to replace the file with a link or text message, or to simply remove it.
The add-on will recreate the structure of the folders and subfolders you scan, but I wish it offered a way to separate attachments by file type or by sender prior to the scan. This would let me detach all the PDFs from my boss, for example.
Since Outlook Attachment Remover is donationware, be sure to drop a couple of bills in the hat if you find the program beneficial.
Wednesday: tweak the Registry to return missing icons to the system tray.
