The next major milestone of the Firefox browser has been released into the wild.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. We were expecting it last week, as Mozilla had initially estimated the first beta would be available in June, but it’s here now. This release is for the adventurous only — it’s the first beta so it’s stable enough, but not rock-solid. So, if you’re eager to get an early peek at the next generation of Firefox, go forth and download.

The thing that probably matters most to everyday users is speed, and after using it for an hour or so, I can report that Firefox 4 is noticeably much faster than the various 3.x builds on my desktop.

Page load times are speeding up substantially across all the browsers now — Chrome and Safari recently received upgrades with hefty speed boosts, the new Opera 10.6 is on par with those releases, and the new Microsoft IE 9, due later this year, is also showing off some impressive speed in its current release, Platform Preview 3. Speed is one area where Firefox has recently drawn low marks, with some users switching to Chrome simply because it’s so nimble. But Firefox 4 appears set to change that when the final version arrives in a few months.

Continue reading

Called HTTPS Everywhere, the free add-on is the result of a collaboration between the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project.

The SSL add-on works on the following websites:

• Google Search
• Wikipedia
• Twitter and Identi.ca
• Facebook
• EFF and Tor
• Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines
• and lots more!

“As always, even if you’re at an HTTPS page, remember that unless Firefox displays a colored address bar and an unbroken lock icon in the bottom-right corner, the page is not completely encrypted and you may still be vulnerable to various forms of eavesdropping or hacking (in many cases, HTTPS Everywhere can’t prevent this because sites incorporate insecure third-party content).” says EFF.

To install HTTPS Everywhere, click here.

A new vulnerability was discovered on Firefox 3.5 yesterday (2009-07-14) by Secunia.

The “highly critical” vulnerability, currently unpatched, can be  be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error when processing JavaScript code handling e.g. “font” HTML tags and can be exploited to cause a memory corruption.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code.

The vulnerability is confirmed in version 3.5. Other versions may also be affected.

User are advised to disable JavaSript or use an alternative browser such as Opera until Firefox release a fix.

More here

Mozilla’s Web browsers now command 8.69 percent of the global browser market, according to a recent survey by Dutch analytics company OneStat.com.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the market, with a hefty 86.63 percent of the market, with Apple’s Safari browser trailing in third place with 1.26 percent of the market. Opera alone commands about 1.03 percent, and Netscape has about 1.08 percent.

Other studies have confirmed OneStat’s findings. In a recent report, Janco Associates found that Firefox is now the browser of choice for 10 percent of business users, with IE at 83.07 percent.

Hard to Be King

Although some analysts have scoffed at the enthusiasm of Firefox advocates, pointing toward Microsoft’s formidable lead, it is important to note how quickly IE is losing its share, said Niels Brinkman, cofounder of OneStat.

“IE is steadily declining, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to stop,” Brinkman said. “Unless Microsoft makes some major changes, other browsers seem to be nibbling away at its share.”

Microsoft has been criticized for failing to update its browser, most notably by Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Netscape Communications.

Last October, Andreessen accused Microsoft of getting a monopoly over the browser and then ending innovation.

Microsoft has countered by pointing to improvements done to IE in recent years, especially in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Less Fiery Fox

Also important to note in the OneStat report, Brinkman stated, is that the seemingly unstoppable Firefox adoption rate has started to slow.

But even though it might be losing a bit of its momentum, Brinkman does not anticipate that it will grind to a halt.

“Firefox has gotten a lot of attention, and the people who love it are evangelists for it,” he said. “That still goes a long way in getting others to use the browser.”

While Firefox’s adoption rate is worth watching, Brinkman noted that it also will be interesting to see how much Safari catches on. “The use of Safari is still growing,” he said. “IE users on Macs are switching.” -NewsFactor

The latest version of Mozilla’s popular open-source browser enjoyed one of the most successful launches in software history, with a record-setting 8.2 million downloads the first day it was available. With the ability to drastically expand the browser’s functions using plug-in extensions and Greasemonkey scripts, many of Firefox 3‘s built-in features are overlooked. Here are eight handy things you can do with Firefox, ranging from tiny tweaks to hugely powerful capabilities, all with nary an extension to install.

1. Duplicate tabs with drag-and-drop.
Duplicating tabs is a piece of cake: Simply hold the Ctrl key while dragging the tab you want to duplicate to an empty space on the tab bar.

2. Minimize the toolbar.
Free up a little extra screen real estate by getting rid of the big, round “Back” button and replacing it with a more streamlined control. Right-click the toolbar, choose Customize, and select Use small icons. The new controls are perfectly functional but smaller, allowing the toolbar to shrink and leaving more room for viewing sites.

3. Use smart bookmarks.
Smart bookmarks are live bookmarks that don’t just refer to particular sites but actually generate live lists of sites according to parameters you define. For example, you might have a smart bookmark that lists the 10 sites you visit most often, or the last 20 sites you’ve visited with a particular keyword in their title.

To create a smart bookmark, select Organize Bookmarks from Firefox’s Bookmarks menu. In the window that opens, select Bookmarks Menu in the left-hand pane, then click Organize in the toolbar at the top and New Bookmark in the drop-down menu. Give your smart bookmark a descriptive name, such as “10 Most Recent Bookmarks.” In the Location field, you’re going to enter in a line of code telling the smart bookmark what to do. For the 10 sites you bookmarked most recently, you’d enter: place:queryType=1&sort=12&maxResults=10 . There are dozens of parameters you can use; Mozilla’s developer site includes a list of commands you can use in smart bookmarks. Here are a couple of the most useful:

• The 10 sites you’ve visited most recently (some installations of Firefox come with this smart bookmark already in place on the Bookmarks toolbar): place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10
• The 10 most visited sites with some search term in them: place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10&terms=keyword (replace “keyword” with your desired term)

4. Send e-mail via Yahoo! Mail or Gmail by default.
Normally, clicking on an e-mail address on a Web page will open up a new e-mail using your default e-mail program. If you’d rather use Yahoo! Mail, open up Options under Firefox’s Tools menu, select the Applications tab, and scroll down to the mailto: entry. Select Use Yahoo! Mail and click OK.

Gmail is not included as a built-in option in every installation of Firefox, but if yours doesn’t have it, you can add Gmail easily enough. Skip the Options dialogs for now and instead type about:config in Firefox’s address bar and hit Enter. In the Filter field, type gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost. Actually, you can simply type gecko and find the entry in the filtered list. Double-click the gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost entry to change it to True.

Next, cut-and-paste this line into the address bar and hit Enter: javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(“mailto”, “https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”Gmail”)

A message will appear at the top of the browser window asking if you want to add Gmail as an application. Now, repeat the process above for choosing Yahoo! Mail, but select the new Use Gmail option instead. —next: 5-8 >

5. Change or remove the Close tab buttons.
By default, Firefox 3 puts an X on each tab, similar to the X button that closes an application. You can remove this button, or see it only on the tab you’re currently viewing. Open about:config again and enter browser.tabs.closeButtons in the Filter field. Enter one of the following values depending on the behavior you prefer:

• 0 (Zero) Close button only on the active tab.
• 1 (Default) Close buttons on every tab.
• 2 No close buttons.
• 3 Single close button at the end of the tab bar, instead of on the tabs themselves.

6. Change the behavior of the Awesome Bar.
Mozilla has dubbed Firefox 3′s address bar the “Awesome Bar” because of the useful suggestions it makes as you type. By default, the Awesome Bar bases its recommendations on your recent history, pages you’ve tagged, and your bookmarks. You can change the way the Awesome Bar acts in the configuration page. Open about:config and change the following values, depending on the features you want:

• To disable the Awesome Bar entirely and revert to Firefox 2–like functionality, change the value of browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to -1.
• To allow the Awesome Bar to recommend only sites whose address you’ve typed directly into the address bar, change browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to TRUE.
• To remove unvisited bookmarks from the pool of recommendations, change places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus to 0 (zero).
• To remove all bookmarks from the Awesome Bar, change both places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to 0 (zero).

7. Search any site from the address bar with smart keywords.
The smart keyword function allows you to create searches for any site with a search engine, and trigger the search from the address bar using your choice of keyword. For example, you could create a smart keyword “me” to search the archives of your own site. If you wanted to see if you’d ever written about cat juggling, you’d type me cat juggling into the address bar and Firefox would return the results from your own site’s search page. Visit the site you want to search and right-click its search box, selecting Add a keyword for this search. In the window that pops up, add a short description of the search and enter a short, memorable keyword that you’ll use to trigger it. For example, to create a smart keyword for PCMag.com, I visited the home page, right-clicked the search field, opened the smart keyword window, entitled my search PCMag.com and then entered the keyword pc as my search keyword. Now, if I want to search for something—say, laser printers—I just type pc laser printers and the search is run.

8. View your saved passwords for any page.
To view the passwords associated with any site, go to the log-in page and right-click anywhere on the page. Select View Page Info, and then the Security tab. Click View Saved Passwords. Another window will pop up showing the usernames associated with that site. Click Show Passwords to see the passwords for each username.

If you want to view all of your saved usernames and passwords, open Options under the Tools menu and select the Security tab. Click Saved Passwords to open a list of every site you’ve ever saved a password for. Again, click View Passwords and the list will display all of your passwords. You can’t print this list, but you can just as easily take screenshots if you want to print out your passwords for safekeeping. Isn’t this a huge security hole?, you may ask. Why yes, it is. Knowing how easy it is for anyone with access to your PC to view all your passwords, maybe you’d like to password-protect your passwords. In the Options | Security tab, click Use a master password and enter a password. Now this password will have to be entered any time you or anyone else tries to view saved passwords. You’ll be asked to enter your master password every time you open Firefox; without it, Firefox won’t automatically enter saved passwords for you. Make sure you don’t forget this one.-PCMAG

A study from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Google and IBM says more than 600 million Internet browsers were at risk this year.

“Insecure Web browsers are of course a critical security problem,” the report noted. “But vulnerable plug-ins that are accessible (and exploitable) through the Web browser extend the ‘insecurity iceberg’ and form the part hidden below the water surface.”

The report says browsers need to have auto-update mechanisms that are enabled by default and that cause minimal disruption to users. Though Microsoft’s Windows auto-update service includes Internet Explorer, patches are released less frequently in comparison with Mozilla’s Firefox, which “can result in a lower short-term patching effectiveness,” it said.

Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of security research and communications, thinks the report is on target about browser and plug-in vulnerabilities. But he added that Microsoft’s current method of conducting updates in a controlled manner makes better sense.

“I can certainly understand why they are recommending auto updates, but that’s always going to be problematic to enterprise environments, which have a lot of customized applications so you can theoretically break something,” Marcus said.

He also warned that malicious scripts are increasingly being embedded into hijacked Web sites.

McAfee’s technology “can actually evaluate pages and scan for those scripts to be sure they are not doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” Marcus said. “It stops the install of the script that the malware is attempting to push out.”

Though browsers now incorporate features that warn users when they access risky sites, such warnings depend on lists that must be continuously updated, Marcus noted. “There is a certain amount of truth to saying that they can only warn you about what they already know about,” he said.

According to the study, most users updated to a new version of Firefox within three days of a new release, so up to 83 percent of users had the most current and secure Firefox version. By contrast, only 47.6 percent of Internet Explorer users were using the latest version on any day during the first half of the year.

The researchers also called the single-click auto-update mechanism in Firefox the most efficient patching method for Web browsers. “Firefox’s mechanism regularly polls an online authority to verify whether a new version of the Web browser is available and typically prompts the user to update if a new version exists,” the report said.

Browser-update mechanisms also need to be “capable of alerting the user of any plug-ins currently exposed through the Web browser that have newer and more secure versions available,” it said, and here Firefox also delivers. “Firefox also checks for many of the currently installed Firefox plug-ins if they are similarly up to date, and, if not, will prompt the user to update them,” the researchers observed.

Still, one out of six Firefox users continues to surf the Web with an outdated version of the Web browser. But that is nonetheless a considerable improvement over the startling 52.4 percent of Internet Explorer users worldwide who continue to rely upon outdated versions of Microsoft’s Web browser, the report’s authors said.-News Factor Network

We all know that opening multiple tabs in your browser takes up a lot of computer memory :???: .

The team behind Firefox 3 is working hard to improve the memory usage of the upcoming Firefox. The graph above shows that they are already making that improvement :lol: although it really makes IE7 looks bad. :twisted:

Full report here.

Mozilla has launched Firefox Beta 3 :lol: , containing approximately 1300 individual changes from the previous beta.

The download is around 7MB and Firefox 3 Beta 3 is available in more than 30 languages for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. :grin:

New features in Firefox Beta 3:

More Secure

• [Improved in Beta 3!] One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you’re connected to. (Try it here!)
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)
• New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)
• New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)
• Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
• Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
• Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
• Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
• Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
• Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

• Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
• Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
• Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
• Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
• Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
• Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
• Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
• Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
• Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
• Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
• Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
• Integration with Vista: Firefox’s menus now display using Vista’s native theme.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and spell-checker in web forms and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

• [Improved in Beta 3!] Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
• Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you’re looking for. New in Beta 3 is an improved search algorithm which calculates the recency and frequency of a visit to come up with a frecency score that is used to determine the most relevant results.
• Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
• Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
• Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
• Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

• New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
• Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
• Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
• A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

• Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases that continue to increase page drawing speed in Beta 3. This release also features over 90 changes that improve performance over the previous beta.
• [Improved in Beta 3!] Memory usage: Over 350 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 3 includes more than 50 improvements to memory use over the previous beta.

Download Firefox Beta 3 here

Malaysia Technology Blog recommends this product:

Even as Firefox 3 moves into beta, Firefox 2 is getting a security makeover.

The Mozilla Quality Assurance Community has called for volunteers to help test Release Candidate Builds of Firefox 2.0.0.10, which is expected to be released next week, following the Thanksgiving holiday.

Firefox 2.0.0.10 addresses a Java Archive handling bug that was first reported back in February. The vulnerability allows a malicious attacker to conduct a cross-site scripting attack by hiding exploit code in a Java Archive (.jar) file. This is because the .jar protocol is not restricted to .jar files and will open .zip files, which can be malicious.

“In simple terms, [this] means that any application which allows upload of .jar/.zip files is potentially vulnerable to a persistent cross-site scripting,” said Petko Petkov, founder of security consultancy gnucitizen.org, in blog post earlier this month. “Potential targets for this attack include applications such as Web mail clients, collaboration systems, document sharing systems, almost everything that smells like Web 2.0, etc., etc., etc.”

The browser update also addresses a redirection bug related to .jar/.zip files.

The Mozilla Security Blog notes that this exploit has been demonstrated to work against Gmail as a way to access the victim’s stored contacts.

“In future versions Firefox will only support the jar scheme for files that are served with the correct application/java-archive MIME type,” says the Mozilla Security Blog. “Firefox will also adjust the security context to recognize the final site as the source of the content. This will be addressed in Firefox 2.0.0.10, which is currently in testing.”-InformationWeek