The upcoming Windows 8 plaform has a lot in store for us, with the Metro UI being its prominent feature. Developers have designed the apps for the new desktop operating system keeping that in mind. So most apps on Windows 8 will work around the Metro architecture of the platform. And since Microsoft has made the OS (Consumer Preview) available to all via MSDN, people are free to try it and run some vital third party applications.

And some users thought it would be fun to check out the rather unfinished version of Mozilla Firefox on Windows 8. It must be noted that the app is still under construction and since Windows 8 isn’t ready for the market yet, Mozilla has ample time to make some changes accordingly. The app however isn’t that bad and the UI is very reminiscent of the Android version of Firefox which is pretty good on its own.

Needless to say, Mozilla Corp would want to revamp the whole thing before Windows 8 is ready for the market. Mozilla apparently aims to have a fully functional version of Firefox for Windows 8 before the end of Q2 2012. Well I haven’t used it myself personally, so it would be hard to comment on the fluidity of the browser, but it is being said that it comes with just about the same settings and preferences as the regular desktop versions of Firefox. You are free to check it out if you are curently using Windows 8 on your computer.

[Source] [Via]

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Mozilla Corp has been following the speedy/quick update roll out schedule over the past few months to keep up with other contemporaries. And starting from yesterday, Mozilla Corp started rolling out the Firefox 9 update. The update was announced on Mozilla’s official blog yesterday so you might be lucky enough to have received the update already.

The best part about this new update is the support for two finger swiping for Mac OS X Lion users. Also the updated JavaScript engine (Type Inference) brings forth a performance boost of 30% which should woo sites that are based on JavaScript. The download is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Firefox for Android has also been updated, which can be downloaded from the Android Market just as easily. Head over to Mozilla’s website for more on the new update.

Download:

Firefox For Windows

Firefox For Mac

Firefox For Linux

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Ever since Mozilla decided to speed up the update roll out process, we have seen new versions in a very short time frame. Mozilla rolled out Firefox 7 in the end of September and decided to roll out the next update sometime during November. And Mozilla Corp has finally started rolling out Mozilla Firefox 8.0.1 to the users around the world. This new version deals with a couple of bugs and doesn’t bring anything spectacular to the table. Nothing major was expected to begin with since this is a minor update. This version however brings Twitter search to Firefox which will now join the likes of Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Bing, eBay, Amazon. The interface is still pretty much the same as was expected.

This particular update deals with 2 crash bugs relating to Mac and Windows respectively. Windows users with Firefox running on older versions of Roboform (versions older than 7.6.2) faced crash related issues. Mac OS X users with Java SE6 1.6.0_29 faced similar bugs while running a Java applet. Interestingly, Mozilla has already found 13 new bugs on Firefox 8.0.1 which is said to be fixed with the upcoming update of Firefox (Firefox 9 in mid-December). As usual the update is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can either wait to get automatically notified about the update or download it manually from Mozilla. The roll out schedule may differ from region to region so we advise you to download it manually.

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Facebook has become one of the most popular websites on the internet, 500 million people login to the site every day. While it is a great tool to stay in touch with your friends, Facebook is generating huge profits by targeted ads. But even if you are logged out and also if you are not a Facebook member – Facebook is tracking every step you make on the web by tracking the websites you visit via the like-button that has been implemented on almost every website nowadays.  Does that make you uncomfortable? Well, it probably should. But there is a simple solution.

While Facebook denies that the like-buttons are used to generate surfing profiles it is technically possible. The only way to be sure is to prevent third party websites you visit from sending information back to Facebook. This can be done by simply blocking Facebook services such as the like-button from being loaded in your web-browser. The perfect tool for that is Adblock Plus, a free browser extension available for Firefox and Google Chrome. Adblock Plus is a content blocker, depending on blocking filters it can eliminate any kind of content from the internet. Users can either create their own filters or they can choose from over 40 filter subscriptions that are created by members of the Adblock Plus community and define the elements that are to be blocked. Most people use it to block ads but it can also be configured to block tracking scripts and Facebook integration. All that needs to be done is subscribing to the Facebook Privacy List. If you are on Firefox and have Adblock Plus installed, you just need to click here and confirm the subscription to the filter list by clicking the “Add filter subscription” button.

In Adblock Plus for Chrome, it is a little bit more complicated. To add a filter subscription, right click on the ABP logo in the address bar and choose “Options”.  Under the first tab there is a field to enter the URL of a filter list you wish to activate. Paste the URL of the filter list and click the “Add URL” button. An overview of ll available filter subscriptions can be found here, URL of the Facebook Privacay List is http://www.squirrelconspiracy.net/abp/facebook-privacy-list.txt.

If you don’t have Adblock Plus installed already you can get it for Firefox from Mozilla Addons or for Chrome from the Google Webstore.

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Mozilla has embraced a quicker and faster launch schedule for its browsers which was clearly evident when the group launched the Firefox 5 browser (Beta) shortly after Firefox 4 was launched. And in June, the developer community launched the Firefox 6 on Beta for testing. Significant improvements were seen on the browser compared to the previous versions. The browser finally came out on Tuesday after some early beta leaks. Mozilla claimed that the early builds posted by them was only for testing purposes and that it wasn’t final.

The new Firefox 6 browser will come with a revamped web console which will benefit Linux as well as Mac and Windows PCs. The load up time of Firefox 6 will take lesser time since the browser will ask the user if all the tabs are to be opened or not, thereby reducing loading time. Also included is a new permissions tool which will let the users add permissions for passwords, popups etc with certain websites.

Mozilla is going through a fast paced launching process which will see the successor of the Firefox 6 browser launch on Sep 27, followed by Firefox 8 on November 8 and Firefox 9 on December 20.

Click on the respective links below to get the new Firefox 6:

Windows

Linux

Mac

[Source]

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Mozilla just released Firefox 5 out of beta, and this comes merely 3 months after Firefox 4 was released. This is the quickest version climb in Firefox’s development cycle, and partly thanks to the version wars which Google initiated with Chrome. Mozilla likes to call it Rapid Release Cycle which aims at bringing updates more often.

What’s new in Firefox 5?

Firefox 5 looks exactly like the older sibling Firefox 4, and majority of the improvements are under the hood to support newer web technologies. Mozilla claims to have over 1000 improvements and enhancements such as:

• “Do not track” options for Android, better visibility in Preferences of desktop version.
• CSS animation support, which helps developers build more dynamic websites.
• Better support for JavaScript and Canvas.
• Updated support for MathML, HTML 5, XHR, and SMIL.

Source: Mozilla

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Download Music from Grooveshark with Firefox

Groove Shredder is an experimental extension for Firefox that lets you download Grooveshark music while listening to them on Grooveshark itself. Once installed, the add-on will pop-up “Save As” dialogue box whenever you start listening to a song on Grooveshark.

Works great, but if you are completely hooked to Grooveshark, you will have to keep disabling the extension every now and then. You won’t be able to stream music from Grooveshark with the add-on enabled, and it gets pretty annoying when the add-on popups up the save dialogue each time a new music starts playing. Even though the author says there is a button to toggle Groove Shredder on and off, we weren’t able to find it after installation.

Considering it’s still in a very experimental stage, and works with the latest version of Firefox (3.5 – 4.2a1pre). We say, it’s worth checking out! – Get it from Mozilla Add-ons

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Angry Birds has been around for quite some time now on cellphones and tablets. The only platform it was missing out on was the PC, but now that seems to have been resolved. Developers of Angry Birds, Rovio just announced that the popular bird slinging game is now available on Google Chrome with the help of OpenGL. The game is offered in two variants, SD and HD. SD is for the slower running machines and HD is for faster computers with hardware acceleration for the browser. But IE9 or Firefox users need not be disheartened, because the game also works on these browsers.

Chrome users however have some more perks compared to IE9 or Firefox users. Chrome users apparently will be able to play special levels available only for this particular browser. Rovio in an official statement said – “We wanted to offer a special treat for Chrome users. We built a few exclusive levels that are only available in Chrome… it’s called the Chrome Dimension,”. Some might argue that this version of Angry Birds is not as fun as the original touchscreen version, but we can’t deny that it’s still fun.

Visit chrome.angrybirds.com to play.

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We tried everything we could in ATI’s Catalyst Control Panel, but nothing helped. This issue only affected Firefox, and none of the other application, which was a bit weird initially, but helped us narrow-down on the problem and resolve it. The main culprit for this problem turned out to be Firefox’s hardware acceleration feature, which tries to use GPU to render fonts and other elements of the browser. We simply disabled it, and restarted Firefox to solve the issue.

How to Disable Hardware Acceleration in Firefox

Click on the Orange Firefox Button, choose ‘Options’ from the menu (if you are using different operating system or older version of Firefox, go to Tools > Options). Go to Advanced, and under the ‘General’ tab, you will find ‘Use hardware acceleration when available’. Just uncheck it and restart your browser.

Hardware Acceleration is a very useful feature which uses your GPU’s potential to improve page and multimedia rendering, and it was too good to simply be disabled. Upon future stumbling, we found a nifty little extension called Anti-Aliasing Tuner which allows us to keep hardware acceleration feature enabled, but at the same time fix the blurry anti aliasing issue.

It’s not really a plug and play kind of add-on, and you may possibly have to fiddle around with the settings of the add-on to be able to resolve the blurry font issue.

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On Windows 7, SimilarWeb and Personas Plus are the major culprits, individually slowing down the start-up by 223% and 202%. Firebug, an add-on which is widely used by developers tops the chart at #1 position and slows Firefox by 75% on Windows 7, 69% on Mac OSX 10.5, and 80% on Fedora. FasterFox add-on which is designed to improve productivity by simplify repetitive tasks in Firefox actually hampers the performance by 29%. Who would have expected that from FasterFox?

The idea behind this initiative is to help users identify the reason why Firefox is acting sluggish. The trend clearly seems to be in Chrome’s favor and Firefox is losing its market share for Chrome, Mozilla clearly recognizes performance as the reason why people are switching over to Chrome.

Future versions of Firefox will not allow add-ons which are bundled with application to automatically install itself without user’s consent. It’s a wise practice to routinely disable add-ons which you no longer use.

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1. You are the only person using the computer, and you have used a master security password. In this scenario, you find it rather annoying to see the message consistently, and it’s safe to disable the password prompt since you have encrypted all your passwords with a master password, which is required to either use or view your saved password.

2. Your friend frequently uses your computer, without your permission and you want to steal his password to warn him about the consequence. Whatever the reason maybe, I truly believe having your own little key logger in your own computer isn’t something which is morally wrong; unless you are stealing his PayPal password (Firefox doesn’t remember passwords from sites like PayPal by default).

Firefox saves all its “not-to-be-messed-with” settings in the components folder normally located at C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\. We modify nsLoginManagerPrompter.js to change the way Firefox behaves when it comes to saving passwords.

How to Disable Save Password Notification in Firefox 4+

1. Go to your Mozilla Firefox installation folder. By default, Firefox 4 is installed to this folder: C:/Program Files (×86)/Mozilla Firefox/ (in Windows 7)

2. Here comes the tricky part, Firefox 4 saves most of its components in an archive called omni.jar and archive extracting tools such as the one built into Windows 7 or 7Zip fail to open or extract omni.jar. I tried WinRAR 4 and it seems to handle omni.jar without any snags. I have not tested other programs, so it’s wise to make a backup of omni.jar for the worst case scenario. Also note that WinRAR cannot extract omni.jar in system folders such as “Program Files”, so copy omni.jar to a different location before extracting it.

3. Open component > nsLoginManagerPrompter.js with a text editor (preferably the one with syntax highlight. I use Notepad++)

4. Select everything between line 800 to 869 and replace it with:

{code type=php}var pwmgr = this._pwmgr; pwmgr.addLogin(aLogin);{/code}

5. Save the file and repack omni.jar. Again, be a careful while you repack. Do not repack “omni” folder, but repack everything inside that folder. Compress it as zip, and then rename omni.zip as omni.jar

6. Close Firefox and overwrite the old omni.jar with the one which you just modified.

How to Disable Password Save Notification Bar in Firefox 3+

Removing the password save notification in Firefox 3+ is simpler than Firefox 4 because older versions of Firefox do not compress their components in omni.jar. You can find nsLoginManagerPrompter.js normally located in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components\

Replace line 642 to 711 with this code:

{code type=php}var pwmgr = this._pwmgr;

pwmgr.addLogin(aLogin);{/code}

Firefox will now save all the usernames and passwords automatically without the user’s consent. You can view saved password from Firefox > Options > Security > Saved Passwords.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Use this tutorial at your own risk and responsibility.

2. Do not use this tutorial with malicious intent.

3. nsLoginManagerPrompter.js might change when you upgrade your Firefox to a newer version.

4. Use a strong master password before you disable “Remember Password” notification. Otherwise, anyone with access to your browser can see your passwords in plain text.

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That being said, it’s not always correct though. If it’s not sure about your query, it will simply take you to Google search results page for your query. But sometimes your address bar might change its default search engine with Yahoo or Bing without your knowledge thanks to some rogue application or erratic behavior by some Firefox add-on, and this can be very irritating since Firefox doesn’t provide easy way to change the default search provider of your location bar. If this ever happens to you, here’s how you fix it:

1. Open Firefox and type “about:config” (without quotes) and press Enter

2. Firefox will throw a witty caution message saying “This might void your warranty!” – Just hit “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button and move on

3. Use the filter text entry box to search for keyword.URL. Double click the Preference Name (keyword.URL) and paste Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky search URL – http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q=

4. That’s it

You can use the same approach to change your search engine from Google to Bing or Yahoo.

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Google Global enables you to quickly switch between geographical locations and see how organic and paid Google Search results look like in different countries, cities and even IP addresses.

It’s extremely useful for people who keep track of ranking for specific keywords living in different parts of the world. It’s Firefox 4 compatible. Get Google Global from Mozilla Add-ons

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Things are shifting for Firefox in their roadmap. Firefox 5, 6 and 7 are being developed to be tossed in 2011 with several slight incremental updates. Nightly builds of Firefox 5 have been existing for quite some time now, but if you are one of those early adopters of Firefox, you can go ahead and get the nightly build of Firefox 6. Yes, you heard it right! Firefox 6.

Although Firefox 5 is very much juvenile at this point of time, Mozilla has gone ahead and started working on Firefox 6, and you can download nightly build of Firefox 6 from Mozilla’s Nightly Build Page

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The Firefox browser has managed to reach yet another milestone this time by crossing the 7 million mark in terms of downloads. The official number when checked an hour ago was 7,623,887. Magical indeed.

Firefox 4 managed to beat Firefox 3.5’s number of 5 million downloads but fell short of Firefox 3’s milestone of 8 million downloads. Firefox 4 consistently maintained a rate of 4000 downloads per minute consistently but by afternoon the downloads per minute picked up peaking at 9000 at a certain stage.

The US saw the most number of downloads within a span of 24 hours, with approximately 1.5 million downloads, Germany registered the second place with about 600,000 downloads. The U.K though didn’t live up to it’s expectations, registering a meager 235,000. In Asia, Japan and India saw huge amounts of downloads leaving China behind despite having a large number of internet surfers in the country.

The download rate is increasing at a steady rate and with most of the Americas awake, it is expected to increase even further. Seems like the excessive media hype helped them reach this mark comfortably. Earlier, IE registered a 2 million download mark within 24 hours of its availability, it was expected of Firefox to comprehensively beat that mark. And it has. By now it has almost reached the 8.5 million mark. Download the browser [here] if you haven’t had a look at it yet.

Soruce: Mozilla Glow via Download Squad

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“Five years ago today, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 with belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. Within the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded a brand new browsing experience.

In just five years, that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience.” – The Mozilla Blog

Firefox fans are hosting parties and celebrating FF’s 5th birthday by uploading images to Flickr. If you want to chip in or need ideas, please head over to this link (Spread Firefox)

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It has now been discovered that the code in the plugin can cause a very serious vulnerability in Firefox, which will potentially expose users to "browse and you’re owned" attacks. According to Microsoft’s Security Research and Defense blog:

A browse-and-get-owned attack vector exists. All that is needed is for a user to be lured to a malicious website. Triggering this vulnerability involves the use of a malicious XBAP (XAML Browser Application). Please not that while this attack vector matches one of the attack vectors for MS09-061, the underlying vulnerability is different.  Here, the affected process is the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) hosting process, PresentationHost.exe.

While the vulnerability is in an IE component, there is an attack vector for Firefox users as well. The reason is that .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installs a "Windows Presentation Foundation" plug-in in Firefox, as shown below.

Good news is that, Microsoft has released a fix (MS09-054), which has been delivered through Windows Update. Firefox users, who haven’t installed this update, please open "Tools"-> "Add-ons" -> "Plugins", select "Windows Presentation Foundation", and click "Disable".

Installing a plugin with vulnerability without user consent into other browsers is a shame on Microsoft’s part, especially when they complain about Google’s Chrome Frame making IE less secure.

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PicLens 1.6 from Cooliris is a free add-on for the Firefox browser that instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen slideshow experience. It offers immersive picture browsing from popular Photo Sites (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Web Albums, DeviantArt, and Smugmug); Social Networking Sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster); Image Search Sites (Google Images, Yahoo Images, Ask Images, Live Images, and AOL Images); and other sites supporting Media RSS. PicLens makes your photographs come to life via a cinematic presentation.

Using PicLens is easy.

Download Piclens 1.6 here and log on to any supported sites. Simply mouse over an image and click the PicLens button that fades in. While in full-screen mode, sit back and enjoy the slideshow. Skip to any photograph by clicking it.

The new “3D Wall” feature in PicLens enables you to instantly zoom, scroll, and go full-screen on a variety of images from across the web.

Jump between photographs or start an automatic slideshow by using the buttons at the lower-left.

Press the space bar to play and pause the slideshow, and the arrow keys to move between photographs. Press any other key to return to your browser.

Refer to this tutorial to find out what all the excitement is about.

By the way, Alex from the Cooliris Team has informed me that the IE and Safari upgrades are coming soon. I’ll keep you posted on that.

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