Anti-Malware & Anti-Phishing

Anti-Malware

improved Firefox protects you from viruses, worms, trojan horses and spyware. If you accidentally access an attack site, it will warn you away from the site and tell you why it isn’t safe to use. Firefox checks every part of a Web page before loading it to make sure nothing harmful is sneaking in the back door.

Anti-Phishing

Shop and do business safely on the Internet. Firefox gets a fresh update of web forgery sites 48 times in a day, so if you try to visit a fraudulent site that’s pretending to be a site you trust (like your bank), a browser message—big as life—will stop you.

Download Manager

Download Manager

Download files seamlessly and securely! A pause and resume feature means there’s no need to wait for a download to finish before you disconnect. So, if you’re halfway through the latest White Stripes album and it’s time to catch the bus, just pause and pick up downloading when you get home. The resume function also works if your system crashes or is forced to restart. The manager shows your download progress and lets you search your files by name or the Web address where the download came from.

Firefox and Social Networking Websites- A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

The relationship between the Firefox web browsing software application and social networking is a symbiotic one.

The Firefox browser used social networking and social communication on the World Wide Web to spread word about the launch of version 1.0. The launch was a huge success as the popularity of the Firefox web browser grew by word of mouth marketing. People posted links on social forums informing other that such a web browsing software application had been released. If you remember, that was a time when Internet Explorer was hardly as a responsive to the needs of the surfers of the web as it is today. Needless to say, the surfers of the web took to Firefox as a fish takes to water.

Today, social networking websites have become a part of our web experience in the same way as the Firefox web browser has become our favorite web browser. However, the symbiotic relationship has not come to an end. Those who love social networking web sites find the Firefox web browser perfect for their requirements.

One special feature of social networking web sites is that there is no limit to the total number of web sites that you can join. However, accessing multiple web sites at once and posting information on multiple social networking sites is not easy. In case of social networking sites, uploading links can be very complicated if one has to log in again and again. This is where Firefox extensions enter the picture. There are numerous social networking website extensions that enable the surfers to access their favorite social networks with just a click of the mouse. The user name and the password can be saved in the extension and need not be entered again and again. Further, you can add links, organize your account and communicate information to other friends on the social network through a single Firefox extension.

As a payback, almost all reputed social networking websites like Digg, Delicious, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Facebook contain communities dedicated to the Firefox web browser. Now that the Firefox web browser has become very popular, one may feel that it has no further use of the community. However, one should not forget that the Firefox web browser is an open source software application. It relies on the contribution of the masses to remain alive. The day the surfers of the web stop contributing to the web browser will be the day the Firefox web browser will go into a decline.

To ensure that the talent of the surfers all over the world is utilized for the development of the Firefox web browser, social networking web sites are used as the meeting place. The community of the Firefox web browser on face book has more than one hundred and fifteen thousand members. The popularity of the web browser on such social networking web sites is the primary reason where Firefox 3.0 was a roaring success. Even today, the progress of the Firefox web browser is closely intertwined with the popularity of social networking websites.

Want To Speed Up Your Firefox Experience? Read Ahead To Find Out More

Given below are some more tips that will help you speed up the performance of your Firefox web browsing software application.

By default, your Firefox web browsing software application is instructed to display all the data that has been transferred from the website every 0.12 seconds. This interval is known as the content notify interval. As the phrase suggests, it is the interval after which the Firefox web browsing software application will inform the surfer that it has received new content. If you are in the habit of opening Web pages that are large and complex in nature, then frequent notification of content can add to the delay of loading of the page. If you want to speed up the loading of the page, the smart thing to do is to enhance the content notification interval. The best part with making such changes in the Firefox web browsing software application is that you can undo the changes without any difficulty. In the event you find yourself stuck in a hole, you can always opt for the safe mode to bring back your Firefox web browser to the normal state.

If you feel that that a shorter content notification will help you improve your web browsing experience, read ahead to find out how exactly you can change the about:config page. Type about:config in the address bar of the web browser and press ‘Enter’ so that the web browser opens this page. Click the right button of the mouse and select a new integer. Name the integer as the content.notify.interval and enter five hundred thousand before clicking OK. Repeat the right click method to create a new Boolean. Rename it as content.notify.ontimer and set it as True.

Once this is done, your web browser will follow your instructions and have a longer interval for refresh of content. If there is an increase in the speed of your web browsing experience, retain the change. However, if you feel the change has hit the web browsing experience by delaying the loading of the page, you can always revert back to the original position. All you need to do is delete the entries that you have created.

Just as you have the content notify interval rule, you have the content switch threshold rule as well. How does this rule work? Well, if your browser feels that you are not working on the browser, it will divert its efforts towards loading pages quickly. The web browser does this by becoming less responsive to your instructions. Once the web browser reaches this state, it will work faster but respond slower to your instructions

Go ahead and bring down the content switch threshold limit and find out whether you are comfortable with the change or not. If you are comfortable, then continue with the change and watch your web browser load web pages a lot faster but be a bit slow to responds to your commands. Of course, this does not mean your web browser will be extremely slow. However, you must be prepared for a more patient approach. This change can be implemented by- Enter about:config

Creating new integer by using right click button of the mouse. Set the content.switch.threshold to 250000 i.e. (a quarter of a second). Click OK

If you are not comfortable with the idea of making changes in your auto:config section of the web browser, you can download Firefox extensions that do the job for you. If you want to find out whether these changes really work or not, you can make use of the various Firefox related forums on the web today to voice your doubts and seek confirmation.

Increase Speed of Your Firefox Surfing Experience through Pipelining

Many critics claim that the Firefox web browser is very slow as compared to Internet Explorer. Primarily, one must keep it mind that the Firefox web browser is much smaller than Internet Explorer. Considering the number of features that Firefox offers, it certainly is one of the most revolutionary software applications around. You can download the setup file of the Firefox web browser over the internet but the same is not as easy when the web browser under consideration happens to be Internet Explorer.

Now, if you feel that your Firefox web browser is slow and if you wish to speed up your Firefox web browser, there are many tips available on the World Wide Web. Some of them are listed here. To implement any and every Firefox tweak, you will have to access the about: config page of the web browser. What is this about config all about? It is nothing but a shortcut that will take you to the source code of the Firefox web browser. You can use this link to make the changes to the source code. All you have to do is type the following words into your Firefox address bar – about: config.

You will quickly land inside the web browser and can now make changes to enhance the performance of your web browser. However, a word of caution is essential here. Tampering with this part of the Firefox web browser may lead to your web browser becoming unresponsive. Unless you know what you are doing, make it a point to seek some advice from the Firefox community before actually tampering with the about: config page.

Once you land inside the about: config page, it is time to make the necessary changes to increase the speed of your web browsing software application.

Any and every web browsing software application sends a single request to the website and waits for a website to respond before proceeding to load the page. However, you can alter the behavior of the Firefox web browser by instructing it to send multiple requests to the website. Needless to say, sending multiple requests from the same web browsing software application will increase your chances of receiving replies faster than others. The process is named as pipelining. You have the option of using pipelining to enhance the speed at which your web browser loads its pages.

If you want to opt for this tweak to speed up your web browser, just follow these steps Type about: config in the address bar Double-click network.http.proxy.pipelining and set its value to true Double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.

Once this is done, you should see a significant increase in the speed of your web browsing software application. However, the process of pipelining is often criticized as being unethical as the resources of the web servers of the various websites get overloaded by web browsers and its multiple requests. For starters, it is impossible to regulate and ensure that web browsing software applications do not send multiple requests.

Secondly, the websites always have the option of refusing to serve those web browsers that send multiple requests through pipelining. Hence, if you find it difficult to open a particular website using your Firefox web browser after you have opted for pipeline, then perhaps the website does not support pipelining. In such a scenario, you simply have to undo the changes made to your Firefox web browser. Your web browsing should return back to normal once this is done. In the event your web browser does not open due to any incorrect alteration of about: config, simply make use of the safe mode of the web browser to undo the changes.

Mozilla Firefox Has Done Its Bit To Speed Up The Social Bookmarking Revolution

There has been a sudden increase in the popularity of the Bookmarks feature in the Firefox web browser. For some time, it was not clear why the surfers were suddenly so interested in this feature which had always been a part of web browsing software applications.

The answer lay a partially in the fact that ordinary individuals were using the World Wide Web for not just entertainment and fun but also for purposes like Gaining knowledge, Doing shopping and Chatting with friends. The World Wide Web is no longer a bunch of web sites that are independent and aloof from the requirements of the ordinary user. Today, every surfer is treated as a potential customer and is given top priority. This has led to the development of many services that were not available earlier on the World Wide Web. Online banking, online trading, online education-these are just some of the services that have become a part of our lexicon on the World Wide Web.

This is led to a rise in the number of web sites that an individual visits on a daily basis. Earlier, there were just a few web sites that were popular on a global scale. Today there are different web sites providing different services and catering to different requirements. These websites are popular all over the world. Google is famous as the best search engine around, Amazon is famous as an online store, and Yahoo is famous for the content it provides while Windows Live provides a package of software applications that can enhance not just the web browsing experience but also the overall computing experience of the surfer. And this is not considering financial web sites that have become an integral part of our lives. You cannot afford to forget the web address of your bank’s web site, can you? This is one reason why surfers of the World Wide Web are using the Bookmarks feature more often.

The second reason behind the sudden rise is the phenomenon known as Social Networking web sites. Today, you can upload all your bookmarks on to the web and share it with all other individuals. If you run a business on your own website, your contribution to the social networking web sites may pull additional traffic to your site. Additional traffic increases your chances of concluding a sale and earning a profit. Of course, social bookmarking web sites also help you know the web better. No single individual can claim to know each and every site on the web. It is only when we cooperate with each other and share information can we expect to know something worthwhile about the World Wide Web. This is done by uploading bookmarks to online accounts and sharing the same with others.

The popularity of the Bookmark feature did not go unnoticed. Web browsing software applications struggled to provide better and better services as far as bookmarks were concerned. Accessing Bookmarks was a very difficult. This changed when individuals were given the option of saving Bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox by just a single click of the mouse. Searching for Bookmarks was a very difficult. The Firefox web browsing software application introduced the tags feature which helped the surfers search for bookmarks not on the basis of title but on the basis of its theme and basic idea.

This led to many fundamental changes in the way the Firefox web browser works. This also led to new Firefox extensions, Newt themes and new tips on extracting more from the web browser. Today, the surfer of the Firefox web browsing software applications can definitely claim to enjoy a much superior web browsing experience as compared to the surfers of other web browsers.

Mozilla Firefox Is Popular For Being Transparent With Security Flaws

At a time when developers of other web browsing software applications would give a leg and an arm rather than admit that their web browser has a security flaw, the developers of the Firefox web browser freely admit that Mozilla Firefox update version 3.0.9 has removed several critical security flaws in the web browser. At first, this transparency may seem strange and even counterproductive. Surfers of the World Wide Web would be very wary of using a browser that has security flaws, right? Wrong! The surfers of the World Wide Web are not fools. They understand the level of collaboration that is required to surf the World Wide Web.

The operating system of their computer combines its web browser and its network settings to access the server, which in turn has an operating system to deal with. Considering the fact that so many operating systems and software applications are involved, it is but natural for flaws and cracks to appear in the security plans. To pretend that this should not take place is absurd.

Rather, the sensible thing to do is to accept this as a part of the functioning of any web browser and work towards solving the problem as quickly as possible. Further, the inherent instability in the system combined with the fact that there are many individuals on the World Wide Web who have nothing but malice in their hearts and seek nothing else but to destroy the World Wide Web by hacking into the computers of other surfers drastically increases the chances of security problems. They take apart every new security innovation and study it to bypass it as quickly as possible.

The web browsing software applications are fighting the battle on both fronts and it is but natural that some hackers win and cause havoc for surfers of the World Wide Web. The only way to completely secure your computer is to take it off the web. If you log on to the web, you have to be prepared for security risks. Of course, that does not mean that security risks shall be welcomed and shall not be solved. There is a difference in accepting the problem and ignoring it.

This is exactly the approach that the Firefox web browser has taken. It is completely cool about the fact that major security flaws may be found in its code. However, it is very particular about stamping out these flaws in the code as quickly as possible. The moment such a flaw is located, it is immediately analyzed and the entire might of the Firefox community steps in to solve the security flaw as quickly as possible.

This is the reason why Mozilla Firefox insists on total transparency. How can one expect the Firefox community to solve the security flaw unless it is clearly told what the flaw is all about? Of course, if the flaw makes the developers look stupid, nothing can be done about it because protecting one’s reputation is not as important as protecting the computer of each and every surfer of the World Wide Web who trusts the Firefox web browser. Hence, all you need to do is run a quick search on the World Wide Web will find numerous websites covering the various security flaws that have existed in Mozilla Firefox.

The developers of the Firefox web browser can be called stupid for allowing security flaws to creep in but they certainly cannot be called liars who try to convince you that everything is hunky dory with your web browser when the truth is that it is filled with unresolved security flaws.