IE7 without WGA ?

Microsoft is officially supporting IE7 without WGA validation.



Almost a year ago, we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. Since then, IE7 is well on its way to becoming the most used browser in the world, and we’ve seen lots of evidence that IE7 makes it safer and easier to accomplish everyday tasks online. For example, the built-in Phishing Filter has protected consumers from known phishing web sites an average of 900,000 times per week. IE7 is the first – and still the only – browser with native support for Extended Validation SSL Certificates that help prevent online fraud. (Of course, tabbed browsing, QuickTabs, shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, CSS improvements, and some add-ons are all good things too.)

Read more and go and download if you care

We ofcourse still suggest Firefox

Back to School - Firefox!

Back to School ! Why would Firefox be left behind. This edition comes with add-ons that students might frequently use , such as Zotero, StumbleUpon, and Foxytunes.

Get it

Firefox Web Forgery Indication

I was planning to put in some junk data into one of the phishing mails I got and to my pleasant surprise - Firefox nicely warns about Web Forgery - see the screenshot above.

Firefox Extension - Password Exporter

While I prepare myself to upgrade to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, I've been backing up my data before I reformat my good old hard disk which currently has Mandriva 10.1.

In the process of the backup, I needed a Firefox password saver which would let me save passwords and then import them later - Password Exporter turned out to be the perfect answer - lets you export/import passwords to either a XML file or a CSV file and your xml file can be encrypted too. Neat.

Fuller Screen - using entire screen for browsing

Fuller Screen is a extension that enhances the existing Firefox Full Screen mode into a really full screen mode, hiding the remaining toolbars and statusbar and making them visible again when the mouse pointer hits an edge of the screen - more like a autohide mode

The autohide seems to be a little flaky though - and I am not sure if too many people use Fullscreen anyway - I am trying it out and finding a little hard to get adjusted - thats primarily because I use Live BookMarks, a lot of extensions like Firebug, del.icio.us, Foxclocks which reside on the toolbars.

Give it a try

Bugmenot !

If you haven't heard of this yet - well, you are not missing signups!. I've been using Bugmenot for about four years now and it's a REAL time saver So, instead of going to nytimes.com and registering for an account - you just use the "public" username and password that's already available at bugmenot Check Bugmenot There is a Firefox extension as well

Speed up Firefox

Start Firefox

In the location type

about:config


In the filter text box type

network.http.pipelining

Double click on it and turn it to true

You will also see network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Double click again and type 8

Again, in the filter text box, type

network.dns.disableIPv6

and Double click to turn it to true

In the filter text box, type

plugin.expose_full_path

and turn it to true

See if you find any difference ;-)

Many thanks to various sources!

Fixing Flash Sound issues in Firefox

You don't hear anything when playing a Flash video or it just doesn't sound after pausing and playing?

Install

sudo aptitude install alsa-oss


sudo vim /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

You will see a entry like

FIREFOX_DSP=”none”

Change it to

FIREFOX_DSP=”aoss”

Please note that these issues are usually noticed with the older versions of Flash.

Maybe you should upgrade to the latest version of Flash for Linux.

TalkBack - making Firefox more stable..

Talkback is a client application and server (plus server infrastructure and development/administration people) contributed to mozilla.org by Netscape. mozilla.org, many years ago, agreed to make an exception and include this product with our binary nightly and milestone distributions even though it's not open source because it provides huge value in debugging and isolating stability issues. Talkback has been used to identify and debug thousands of major crash bugs in Mozilla over the years and Mozilla is very happy to be able to include it in the Firefox testing builds.

How it works: A Talkback binary is packaged up with the Firefox browser binary. When the browser crashes, the Talkback application is triggered and it offers the user the option to participate. If a user says no then nothing happens. If a user agrees to help the Mozilla effort by submitting crash data then she is prompted with optional fields for including her e-mail address, the URL that triggered the crash and a comment. That user-entered data along with a stacktrace of the crash is sent to a Talkback server at Netscape which is accessible to many of the Mozilla developers. In aggregate, all of the crash data can very quickly point out specific problems being encountered by large groups of users. A small team of engineers pour through these aggregate reports and turn them into bugzilla bugs with good debug information which leads to quick fixing of the most high-profile stability problems. To see some of these bugs, query bugzilla for the keywords topcrash and topcrash+

What else: Talkback is not spyware, adware or anything of the like. Users are clearly prompted and asked to submit the report. User data unrelated to the Mozilla crash isn't at all useful to us. We only care about making Mozilla more stable. If you don't want to help Mozilla and Firefox become more stable by submitting your crash reports then don't. No data is being sent without your explicit consent. I'd encourage anyone that wants to see this browser improve to submit those reports. They are very, very helpful. But, like I said, if you don't want to, then don't. Just remember that we can't fix the bugs we can't identify. If you're happy seeing the same crash over and over then don't worry about sending in that report.

So, the next time you see a Firefox Talkback dialogue, submit that debug information!

OpenSearch Plugins for Firefox

If you are using Firefox 2, you can add your own Search Engine plugin to the Search Engine List by defining a OpenSearch based xml file

See more on Opensearch Plugin for Firefox

Refcontrol - Control your referrer info!

Refcontrol lets you block/forge/customize referer information. You can customize referer information for specfic sites as well. This is useful because some sites - such as rediff or indiatimes send your login id when you click on a link from your mail

Quite a useful Firefox extension to have !

Install it!

Learn about Referer

Gmail Greasemonkey Scripts

Tina Gasperson has a compilation of cool greasemonkey scripts for Gmail

Read here

You can see all the gmail based greasemonkey scripts here

Firefox Extension - User Agent Switcher

User Agent Switcher lets you change the User-Agent of your Firefox browser - useful for those pesky developers who think their html pages will work only on a particular browser

Get User Agent Switcher

Fight against Phishing!

PhishTank SiteChecker gives Firefox users a way to bring the community judgment of PhishTank into their favorite browser, for extra protection against phishing.

It sits on your Firefox status bar and tells you whether the site you are visiting is safe! Unsafe known sites are blocked and users are provided with an option to continue.

Get this useful extension

Firefox Extension - Download Status Bar

Hate that pesky Downloads window which takes eternity to comeup and disappear ? Get this neat Firefox extension which shows the status of your download on the status bar of your browser!

Get Download Statusbar

Tab Mix Plus - the power user's extension

Tab Mix Plus - the Firefox extension has so many features that I can't describe over here. You will have to experience it!

Among other things - Tab Mix Plus does Link Management, Tab Management , Mouse Gestures, Session Restore(after crashes). Indeed one of the best extensions in there. Supports Firefox 2.0 as well.

Get it

Firefox 2 - RC3

Firefox 2 - RC3 is available for download. Look at the features here

Techcrunch has an article on it too

Greasemonkey & userscripts

It's been quite sometime since I used Greasemonkey. I have started using it again and am so impressed with the number and the quality of scripts at userscripts.

For who haven't heard of Greasemonkey - Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction.

Forecastfox - your free weatherman

Forecastfox is a Firefox extension that can sit almost anywhere on your browser and show up the current and the forecasted weather conditions for your city - pretty accurate weather from accuweather.com. Try it out

Trackmenot - messing the search engine data

Trackmenot is a Firefox extension which lets you 'protect' yourself from surveillance and data profiling by the search engines. Basically, it sits in the background on Firefox and keeps sending random ghost search queries to various search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN & AOL

Download the Firefox extension