Android users download Mozilla Firefox 100 million times (and counting) from Google Play
Firefox is important to me and I hope it is important to you. Even if you do not use the browser, there is value in having an open source browser available that isn't based on WebKit or a fork of it (Blink), as so many are nowadays. Variety is the spice of life, and having only one browser engine is not only sad, but dangerous; competition drives innovation.
If you are an Android user, you probably use Chrome or the stock Android browser and that is OK; both of those browsers are great. With that said, some people, such as myself, prefer Mozilla's Firefox. It is fast, buttery smooth and offers plugins. Today, Mozilla announces that Firefox for Android has been downloaded 100 million times. Whoa.
Save Text To File is a handy research tool for Firefox
If you find something interesting while researching online, your first instinct will probably be to bookmark the page for reference later. And that’s just fine, as long as you can find the bookmark later. And remember why you saved it. And don’t mind re-reading the entire page to locate the fragment you need.
Save Text To File is a Firefox add-on which could make this much easier. If you’re only interested in a paragraph or two of text, forget bookmarks, just select what you need with the mouse, then right-click, Save Text To File > Save, and your chosen words are saved directly to a local file.
Firefox 37 implements new HeartBeat ratings system
Mozilla has released Firefox 37.0 FINAL for desktop, with Firefox for Android 37.0 due to follow in the coming days.
The new release debuts the Heartbeat user rating system, plus a number of incremental improvements and tweaks. Version 38 has also been made available in Beta and includes some more radical changes, including a new tabbed-based preferences UI.
Mozilla approves Nazi-themed, anti-feminism Firefox extension [Update]
Mozilla could soon find itself at the center of a new controversy, as it just approved a Firefox extension, called Men Kampf, designed with the sole purpose of replacing so-called "radfem rethoric [sic] with nazi friendly alternatives".
Men Kampf scans the page that the Firefox user visits for any words considered to be linked to feminism -- certainly not radical feminism, as claimed in the description -- and replaces them, on the fly, with said "alternatives". As such, an article about feminism will quickly appear to be one about nazism. The developer behind the extension, Erim Secla, says that it's all "just for fun" in Men Kampf's description. Except that it's not.
Firefox 36 arrives, allows pinned tabs to be synced, implements full HTTP/2 protocol support
Mozilla has released Firefox 36.0 FINAL for desktop, with Firefox for Android 36.0 due to follow in the coming days.
Version 36 implements one visible new feature: when users pin tiles on the New Tab page, those pins will be synced to other platforms using the Firefox Sync feature. Those using the Android version on tablets will also gain a new, tab-optimized user interface to work with when the app is updated over the coming days.
HTTP/2 has been approved, bringing the promise of a more efficient web
The web could be in line for a speed boost as the HTTP/2 standard edges closer to being finalized. The updated standard will be the first major alteration to the protocol since the late 1990s, and it includes a number of important updates that should help to make life online faster and more enjoyable.
Although HTTP/2 is yet to be published as a completed standard, it is already supported by some web browsers including Chrome and Firefox. However, it won't be until the standard is far more widely adopted that the real benefits will be felt.
Worldwide Equation Group hid undetectable spyware on hard drives
In a new twist to the on-going NSA story, security firm Kaspersky Lab has discovered that a threat actor of previously unknown complexity and sophistication has been embedding surveillance software on hard drives produced by a number of well-known manufacturers. With names such as Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba mentioned, and the reach of the spy program stretching to dozens of countries, it's not clear quite how many people may be affected.
Although Kapersky does not go as far as naming the NSA, or even specifying which country is responsible for the advanced surveillance, it seems that the spying campaign is somehow related to Stuxnet -- the tool used by the NSA to attack Iran -- and the Flame group.
Google blocks Mozilla Firefox for Android from the Play Store
If you're an Android user, there is a good chance that you use the Chrome browser on your device. Look, I get it, it can be easier and more seamless to use all Google apps. Me? I use Firefox on my Nexus 6. Why? I find it to be a better experience from a speed perspective -- scrolling is very fluid. More importantly though, I enjoy using plugins, such as Lastpass.
Today, however, I noticed something odd. When clicking a link to the Play Store in Firefox for Android, I did not see the app store. No, I instead saw an error message that Firefox was no longer supported. In other words, Google has flagged the user agent for Firefox, thereby blocking it from the web version Play Store.
What's the point of AdBlock Plus if Google, Microsoft and Amazon can pay to bypass it?
Ads are pretty much universally hated; in the list of lovable things in the world, ads rank pretty far down. On TV, in movie theaters, in magazines and online, ads are forced upon us and are impossible to avoid. Except that's not true online. Ad-blocking software can be used to filter out the stuff you don’t want to see, making for a happier web browsing experience.
However, it turns out that installing an ad-blocking tool like, ooh... I dunno... AdBlock Plus... is not enough to prevent the appearance of unwanted advertisements. Some time ago we learned about the whitelist operated by AdBlock Plus and now the Financial Times reports that big companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have paid to be included on the list so their ads are no longer blocked.
Firefox 35 FINAL released, adds room-based chat to Firefox Hello
Mozilla has released Firefox 35.0 FINAL for desktop, with Firefox for Android 35.0 due to follow in the coming days.
Firefox 35 extends the Firefox Hello real-time communication client tool with a new rooms-based conversations model, plus adds more features to the new search user interface along with improved preferences. Android users gain improved geolocation tools.
Protect your Firefox settings with Preferences Monitor
Firefox is an excellent browser, and its configurability is a major plus. If you don’t like some aspect of the program then there’s probably a tweak which can help.
Keeping your preferred settings can be more of a challenge, though, especially if an extension changes one or more of them without asking. Preferences Monitor is a Firefox addon which can help by monitoring all your about:config changes, warning you of any that seem dubious, and allowing you to undo them with a click.
Yahoo takes a big bite out of Google's search share, catching up to Bing
When Mozilla announced that Yahoo would be replacing Google as the default search choice in Firefox in the US, there were raised eyebrows everywhere. After all, Google has been baked into Firefox for the past decade, and Yahoo’s days as a top search engine are long gone. Or were long gone at least.
Yahoo’s inclusion in Firefox has given the ailing search engine a major boost, helping it achieve its highest US search share since 2009. Unsurprisingly, this share increase came at the expense of Google.
Textarea Cache: save web form text as you type (Firefox)
It’s happened to us all. You’ve spent an age at a website, deep in thought, working on a lengthy forum post or similar wall of text, when the browser window closes unexpectedly -- and you’ve lost everything.
You could get angry, maybe throw things, before calming down and starting again. But it might be better to install Textarea Cache, a free Firefox addon which saves the contents of text fields locally, as you type, and makes them ready for recovery in seconds.
Grab every link on a web page with Copy All Links (Firefox)
You’re at a web page, maybe reading a forum post, looking at a list of links. You’d like to copy them somewhere, maybe share them with someone else. But your browser has no way to work with every link on a page, so you must copy them individually, select all the text and edit it later, maybe just bookmark the site and come back when you’ve more time.
It’s annoying. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Not if you’ve equipped yourself with the Firefox addon, Copy All Links.
Update Scanner alerts you when web pages change (Firefox)
If you’d like to know when your favorite websites are updated then you could monitor their RSS or ATOM feeds, maybe a Twitter account or Facebook page. But if they don’t have any of these -- or checking them all seems like too much effort -- then you’ll probably just keep revisiting the site, again, and again, and again.
Update Scanner is a Firefox addon which saves time by automatically detecting and notifying you about changes to your chosen web pages.
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