Just kiddin'.
Posted on 06/12/2008 6:02:12 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A new version of the Firefox Web browser is scheduled for release Tuesday with improvements in security, speed and design.
Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new "Places" feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently but haven't bookmarked.
There's also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list-similar to what's already available on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 browser.
Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager that doesn't disrupt the log-in process.
Firefox also will start blocking rather than simply warning about sites known to engage in "phishing" scams that try to trick users into revealing passwords and other sensitive information. The new version adds protection from sites known to distribute viruses and other malicious software.
The list of suspicious sites come from Google Inc. and StopBadware.org, a project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities.
Security researchers who need access to problem sites can manually turn the feature off.
Firefox 3 also offers speed and design improvements-the back button is now larger than the forward button, for instance, because people tend to return to a previous page more often, said Mike Schroepfer, the project's vice president of engineering.
Firefox is the No. 2 Web browser behind Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer. It comes from Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people, mostly volunteers, collectively develop free products.
Mozilla has been developing Firefox 3 for nearly three years and has been publicly testing it since November for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
Its supporters are organizing launch parties around the world next week, and Mozilla is trying to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.
Microsoft is currently testing Internet Explorer 8, while Opera Software ASA released Opera 9.5 on Thursday.
3RC1 and RC2 have been great on my desktop; unusable on my two older laptops. Start out OK, but before long (one minute) are using 100% of the CPU and disk thrashing like crazy. Happens even in safe mode. No obvious configuration or resource problem and Firefox developers have not made any headway on the bug I submitted.
Nope, never have. But a suggestion, when ever you download a freebe like foxit.pdf, see if they have a "custom" install. If they do, just install the basic application and not the bells and whistles they like to add on.
I do wish someone would set up the Tabs so we could select where to put them; I'd prefer the right side and 90o text isn't that tough to discern.
Regarding memory leaks, I haven’t been troubled by them for several years since installing an automatic memory recovery utility called Memturbo. I have version 2 installed but looking tonight I see they are up to version 4. There may also be competing similar programs out there, I never really looked.
I’m a big fan of Opera. Seems faster than Firefox to me. Is definitely about 5 million times faster than IE. In addition all of the built in features already handle the most popular addons for Firefox. The only problem is that in an IE world, its strict standards adherence can cause problems.
My biggest complaint is that every time they change some tiny something in Firefox in order to claim it’s a new version, your extensions and themes are broken. I’ll wait a while before checking this one out.
I just drag & drop (with left mouse button) from FireFox to the desktop.
Nice. You learn something new every day. :-)
I have Stumble installed too, and you’re right, it is kind of a pain. It’s amazing how many websites depend on javascript just for basic viewing. Some websites only have one or two scripts running locally, and I’ll usually unblock those, so the next time I return, I don’t have to go through the trouble of unblocking again. Some wehsites have a dozen or more scripts from all over the place trying to run. I usually don’t make a return visit to them.
Happened twice now and I have no idea why.
I checked google and there were some fixes listed that did not work for me.
Just kiddin'.
I wouldn't necessarily agree. Or that Apples are more secure because Windows sucks. Microsoft products are bigger targets. Hackers would rather invest their energy doing the most damage.
It’s getting color management, cool! The one thing I like (soon to be “liked”) Safari better for is that it does proper color management.
Maybe, maybe not. An extension can be "broken" in one of two ways:
1) It can simply not be compatible with the new version. But this is not always the case.
2) The author put a version as the maximum version it will run on, even though it will run on later versions. Firefox respects this max version flag (there's a min version one too), and won't run it if the version is outside of the range.
I can give you instructions for how to modify extensions to increase the allowed version. You only need Notepad and a compression utility that can work with .jar files. No guarantee the extension will actually work with the new version, as in #1 above.
I have a crapload of addons, some of which may not be compatible with v3. I’d rather wait a couple of months to give the authors time to update them before upgrading to the new version, but I’m not sure if the newer, better, shiner auto-updating Firefox will let me block the updates it’s so excited about looking for. Is there a way to do that?
How do you like Stumble? I was interested and almost downloaded, but didn’t quite.
Tools > Options > Advanced > Update
Change it from “Automatically download and install the update” to “Ask me what I want to do”.
A common myth. And quite wrong.
Microsoft software is more easily exploitable. That's why they're targeted.
Just like bank robbers hit local banks but not Fort Knox.
I think it's more a matter of windows being the lowest-hanging fruit due to design decisions made years ago that have still not been corrected. It's been shown many times over that security through obscurity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.