Instant Shift Technology

Firefox has proved to be a truly amazing browsing experience. When launched in 2004, it was fast and secure. It had all the things that Internet explorer had not. Due to the monopoly of Internet Explorer in the web browsing area, it was felt like a breath of fresh air in the web browsing environment. Since the demise of Netscape back in 2003, it seemed that with the only true competitor reaching the verge, IE will be the sole player here.

 

But Mozilla helped transform the browser from a mere utility to the heart of the modern-day computing experience. Due to its skyrocketing popularity, Microsoft was forced to improve Internet Explorer and it finally came with IE 7. For a certain period of time, Firefox went into a decline. But with Firefox 3.0, Firefox is back on track.

 

What’s New in Firefox 3

So what makes the Firefox 3.0 version better? The very first thing I observed that it is fast in all aspects. The downloading package comes quite easy and fast. The browser opens up fast, pages and tabs open fast, shut down process is fast. And the user interface has been improved dramatically. It is far better, brighter, clearer, and easier to access. Page zooming is brilliant. Things like bookmarking, saving passwords, and finding words and phrases in the text of a web page are now simple.

 

 

In simple words, Mozilla have gone back to basics and worked on what really matters to users – security, speed and ease of use.

User Experience: The new Firefox 3 smart location bar, affectionately known as the “Awesome Bar,” learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time.

Performance: Firefox 3 is built on top of the new and powerful Gecko 1.9 platform, which makes it a safer, easier to use and more personal product. Now it uses less memory while it’s running. Users can see the Web pages two to three times faster than Firefox 2.

Security: With the new malware and phishing protection, Firefox 3.0 helps protect from viruses, worms, Trojans and spy ware to keep the machines safe on the Web.

Customization: It allows everyone customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons. The new Add-ons Manager helps to find and install add-ons directly from the browser.

For the first time in a web browser’s era, we are witnessing real action behind a browser other than Internet Explorer. The most browser history we can remember, major and widely accepted internet browser was Internet Explorer. In late 90s, there was a time when Netscape was trying to claim superiority in that browser market share, but Internet Explorer walk away winning a lions share. However at present, for the first time Microsoft is facing tough competition. The new contender of Internet Explorer is “Firefox”, which is likely to take advantage of the security concerns that is counted as loop holes in Internet Explorer structure. A browser from the producers of Mozilla, Firefox is drawing massive attention. Firefox is a browser that focuses on opening websites rapidly while keeping malicious pop-ups and spyware a side. While, at final stages Firefox luckily was picked for the upcoming browser two federal agencies that recommended Internet users to select browser other than Internet Explorer for the first time, because of security concerns. Internet users began switching over Firefox after facing numerous security issues with Internet Explorer. Users believe that Internet Explorer has not actually been upgraded since beginning of 20s. Users have to download the patch known as Service Pack 2 as well as upgrade their system up to windows XP for more secured Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer use to hold around 95 percent of market share for web browsers but slide down to nearly 92 percent in just the few months. This might seem a few percentage points, but these few percentages depict millions of people who have switched over to Firefox from Internet Explorer. It shows that Firefox is becoming widely accepted by millions of its fans, for its excellent features such as download speed, outstanding user interface along with its pop-up blocker. But the biggest advantage for Internet Explorer is that most websites are still built to work best with Microsoft’s browsers. It may result that some sites may not sees right or not be accessible at all through internet browser other than IE. So, who will win this race Internet Explorer or Firefox? If Firefox sustains getting market share as it has at current phase than future is bright for Firefox. But, if Internet Explorer comes out with the solutions for its security issues, it can hold onto its over 90 percent lions share in the browser market. Whatever, but the fact is that both browsers have had advantages along with security problems and loop-holes. So only the time will show the right answer, just wait and watch.

You must have been living in a cave if you haven’t heard about the immensely popular social community site – Facebook. Another can just go create a new account on this website, and install a plethora of third party applications and games developed by innovative developers. Facebook is not just another social community website. Traditionally, social websites have some common features. You will expect to be able to share photos, write blogs, leave comments on one another’s blog entries, participate in forums, and even create custom profile pages. Profile pages are a big part of many successful community websites. This is because it allows members, who are able to sign up for free accounts, to personalize their browsing experience. Any member can customize the look and feel of their profile pages with free templates, easily available on many related websites. They may even put music players on their profile players and load them up with their favorite MP3 songs. So social interaction, and customization are all part and parcel of social websites. But Facebook is a little bit different. It doesn’t just do all of the above. It allows developers who want to tap into its huge member database to develop custom applications. This unique business strategy has thrown the door wide open for many talented developers, who have gone on to create many useful applications as well as entertaining games. Here is how it works. Simply sign up for a free account on the Facebook website. You will be asked to confirm your email address by clicking on a link. Once you do, your account will be active immediately. There are a few things you can do once your account is active. You may wish to start adding friends immediately, or you may wish to install games and applications. There are many new Facebook games coming up on Facebook daily. Corruption Unlimited is one such example. This is a full blown role playing game (RPG), where you get to be a mafia gangster online. To scour points, you have to commit crimes. This is not as simple as it sounds, for you will have the police to contend with. Perhaps the greatest thing about games like Corruption Unlimited is that it’s hosted on one of the most popular social website in the world. That means there will constantly be new players, and players have tons of opportunities to interact with one another. They can choose to share tips and strategies, and provide feedback on how to improve the game play. This provide a unique experience for gamers that no other mediums can provide. In addition, Corruption Unlimited has broken new ground when the founder announced that the game can be played on a mobile device. That means anyone who joins the game, can continue to add to his or her scours, even while on the move. For sure, innovative and unique games such as Corruption Unlimited will provide an alternative source of entertainment. The possibilities are endless, and games on Facebook promise hours and hours of fun and excitement.

The free open source blogging platform Wordpress continues to be a popular tool for internet marketers who want to create websites fast. Though feature rich, an out-of-the-box Wordpress install lacks some features that many internet marketers rely on. Fortunately, there are many free Worpdress plugins that provide these features. Here are three of the most popular.
Keep in mind, before you install any of these plugins, you’ll want to make certain you have the current version of Wordpress installed to avoid any errors or possible vulnerabilities. The latest upgrade of the platform can always be updated at Wordpress.org’s main site.
All In One SEO Pack – Although blog traffic can come from many sources besides the search engines, there’s no doubt that free natural search engine traffic is still very important to the success of any website or blog. With the All In One Seo pack plugin, your Wordpress blog will be automatically optimized for onsite SEO. This plugin saves hours of time over tweaking themes, options and individual plugins to acheive the same results.
Please note that because the search engines often change the way they rank pages, you’ll want to have the most current version of this plugin. Check back frequently on their main site to make sure your plugin is up to date.
Adsense Plugin – This plugin has been around for a while, but it is upgraded to work with the current version of Wordpress. Seems the popularity of adsense never goes away, even if the earnings per click have gone down over the past few years. If you want a quick and easy way to get adsense or even Yahoo Publisher Network ads showing up on your Wordpress blogs, and you want an easy way to control where they show up and how they look, this is a must have plug-in. The learning curve is very fast with this plugin, and users will enjoy tweaking the settings to increase ad clickthroughs and profits.
Remember though, Adsense isn’t your only option for monetizing your blog. You can also run paid ads yourself by dealing directly with other sites that want to advertise. Though more profitable, it is also more time consuming.
FeedWordPress – Feedwordpress is a plugin that takes rss feeds and creates full pages out of them on your blog automatically. It should not be used alone, as your site will start to look like a scraper site. When added to a blog with original content though, it can greatly increase traffic to your site.
A couple of warnings though, the learning curve with this plugin is high and you need to make sure you have permission to use the rss feeds you program this plugin with. Most sites that have rss feeds available also provide a copy of their terms of service for using the feeds, so be sure to check those out. Not complying with another site’s TOS can lead to nasty emails or even a cease and desist letter, so consider yourself warned.

I recently had an interesting inquiry from a Twitter follower asking the question “Which would you say is safest, Firefox or IE?”. Not a question that hasn’t been asked before, but in light of the happenings of the past few days a far deeper question than it may seem on the surface.

I work with (and play with for that matter) many people who are fans of alternative operating systems, whose natural response to any question that includes choosing between Microsoft and anything else is always to not choose Microsoft. We need to more carefully consider this based on merit and not brand.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been the king of browsers on the internet for 10 or more years now. Although its market dominance has been diminishing somewhat as of late, it still holds a commanding lead.

Microsoft also had a rocky start when it comes to the security of IE, but has worked hard to improve it and made lots of progress. One benefit IE brings to the corporate IT table is the ability to centrally manage it through Group Policy Objects, and centrally update through Windows Update and WSUS.

The now famous patch Tuesday can be considered another benefit to receiving predictable updates that processes and scheduling can be designed around. The other side of this is that you sometimes must wait a month or more for a fix (Like the current IE exploit being targeted as noted by SophosLabs).

ActiveX has also been a large worry for administrator’s as many controls are needed in a business workplace, yet allowing users to install and update ActiveX controls gives 3rd parties the ability to run malicious code on users’ PCs.

The final story for Microsoft is the introduction of Internet Explorer 8. While IE8 is more compliant than any previous version, it still trails behind Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Internet Explorer 8 makes large improvements toward secure design and awareness of interoperability.

Mozilla Firefox on the other hand has a different set of issues to contend with. It is more difficult to centrally manage than IE, and has no predictable update release pattern.

By default Firefox will check with Mozilla for updates, but does require that the user accept the update. They must have enough privilege to apply the update, and cannot be behind an SSL proxy that may interfere with its signing certificate.

Firefox being open source means that flaws are often discovered by the public and developers, and patches are quick on the heels of new vulnerabilities.

Firefox’s open nature also means it has a large suite of available security extensions like NoScript that are able to protect against JavaScript attacks, as well as click-jacking and other techniques to exploit browsers.

Recently Firefox has faced new challenges from Google, Microsoft, and others in the browser security arena, and the Mozilla team seem up to the challenge of maintaining Firefox’s security respect.

Searching on the National Vulnerability Database for Firefox bugs rated medium or higher since January 2009 results in 56 separate disclosures (Some of which have more than one flaw).

Microsoft has reported 34 for the same period, with the same statistical note as to many having multiple issues in a single advisory.

The more interesting part that seems to divide the commercial software giant from the open source driven Firefox is the methods they choose to use to inform the public.

The Firefox vulnerability in its JIT compiler was discovered by a Firefox developer and resulted from a public bug that was filed last Thursday (July 10th, 2009). The Firefox community has debated whether it was appropriate for the bug to be disclosed publicly which led to its exploitation the following Monday.

On the other hand, The Register has published an article suggesting Microsoft knew of the most recent IE flaw for more than a year before making a disclosure and patching the flaw.

There is no clear answer to which browser is more secure, the only conclusion a security expert can come to is that surfing the web is always a potentially risky activity. Hopefully this information provides you with more facts to help you make an informed decision.

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