(Source: PC WORLD) Mozilla ’s Firefox browser suffered from 26 percent fewer vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006 than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, a security company’s research said Monday.

According to Symantec’s tally, 40 Firefox vulnerabilities were disclosed between August and December 2006. Internet Explorer (IE), meanwhile, was hit with 54 bugs. Opera and Safari — the browser Apple bundles with Mac OS X — had four flaws each. (Read more)

Mary at the Official Mozilla Blog has a list of a few of her favorite Firefox features.

They include:

• Session Restore: Never feel the pain again of accidentally closing a website! (Editor’s note: can you tell this is my favorite?) You can recover closed tabs and windows, and even text you entered in web forms, by going to the History menu and selecting the “Recently Closed Tabs” option. You also can set Firefox so that it automatically opens the last websites you visited by going to the Tools menu, picking Options and selecting “Show my windows and tabs from last time” under the Startup section. (On Mac OS X: go to the Firefox menu, then pick Preferences)
• Crunch numbers within Firefox: You can use Google in the built-in search box (upper right corner) as a calculator. Simply type in the equation (e.g. 243 + 5,234) and the answer appears in the drop down menu of suggested search options (e.g. = 5477).
• Set multiple home pages: You don’t have to be limited to one home page with Firefox. In fact, I have it set so that Firefox launches both of my web mail accounts - Gmail and Yahoo! mail - when it opens. Learn Firefox has a great explanation of how to choose your start page in the first place. In the URL field enter the addresses of your preferred pages separated by a pipe or the “|”.
• Maximize or Minimize your font size: Using this keyboard shortcut, you can control the size of your browser font — this comes in handy when reading small fonts. Simply press the “Ctrl” and “+” keys together in Windows (or the “Command” and “+” keys on the Mac) and the “Ctrl” and “-” keys to decrease. “Ctrl” and “0″ keys pressed together returns you to the original text size.

What are yours?

Official Mozilla Blog.

In order to ensure the new browser survives in it’s next mode, the Firefox 3 timeline has been completely scrapped and a new one has been put in place.

In a note to the Mozilla development planning group Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering, said:

We are driven by quality, not time. We want to Firefox 3 to be something that we are all proud of. This means features that delight users and the same or higher quality than previous releases. “Quality” includes performance (Tp/Ts/TDHTML/etc), footprint, web compatibility, regressions, and general fit and finish. Having said that, we want to move the web forward and are in a competitive market. So we should converge on a release as fast as possible.

And judging by the numbers, courtesy of OneStat, Mozilla swiped that market share directly from Microsoft, which was down about one percent worldwide. The Beast of Redmond still controls just under 85 percent of the worldwide browser market, though.

Continue Reading “Firfox still gaining on IE” »

Microsoft has released a new Windows Media plug-in for Firfox which allows you to use Windows Media Player inside the Firfox browser. The new plug-in supports Windows XP SP2 and Vista including the 64 bit versions of both OSes.
Continue Reading “New Windows Media Plug-in For Firfox Released By Microsoft” »

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser may have the lion’s share of the general market, but when it comes to security types, Mozilla’s Firfox open source browser is an even contender, according to a security survey released on Monday.
Continue Reading “Firfox security goes head-to-head with Microsoft’s IE7″ »

Have you considered installing the Firfox browser but didn’t because you don’t know much about it? Some of you temporarily tried Firfox but switched back to your old browser because you didn’t have access to someone who could show you how to customize it. Perhaps you don’t have any idea why Firfox is better than the other browsers. I’ll address all of that and more as well a how Firfox can be customized. Customization is something IE (Internet Explorer) can’t even handle.
Continue Reading “Is now the time to transition to Firfox?” »

If you’ve done any Firefox tweaking, you already know about the special about:config area where you can adjust the browser’s hidden settings. But there are a bunch of other about: pages that give lots of juicy info about your ‘fox installation.

Click here for a quick list.

When the previous update to Firfox 2.0 was launched in October, Mozilla said it would roll out a major enhancement about once a year. According to the Firfox 3 download and release plan, however, the company may also consider incremental updates — Firfox 2.5, for instance — that act as extension packs to the standard browser.
Continue Reading “Mozilla Tweaks Firfox 3.0 Feature Set” »