Mozilla has released Firefox 10 Stable version for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

Important Note: Bookmark this page (Press CTRL + D) to always Get the latest update about Mozilla Firefox including direct download links for all platforms.

Mozilla announced their move to rapid release cycle about nine months ago, since the move, Firefox has moved from version 4 to 10.

According to the official beta change log, Firefox 10 brings in a lot of new features, which you’d expect from a six-week update cycle. Firefox 10 features extension management improvements, a forward button that hides itself until you need it, the inclusion of APIs for full-screen web apps, and anti-aliasing for WebGL.

With Firefox 10, Mozilla introduces the ESR (Extended Support Release) version of the browser primarily for enterprises. ESR releases will receive no updates apart from necessary security fixes, and will change versions once every seven releases. So, after six months when regular Firefox 10 users will be upgrading to Firefox 11, ESR users will be upgraded to version 10.1.

You can download Firefox 10 from the download links given at the end of this post.

The most significant change in Firefox 10 is that add-ons are now automatically set to be compatible if they have also been compatible with Firefox 4. This will end all the add-on compatibility issues that users face after each version update. A great relief for the add-on developers too.

New features and bug fixes in Mozilla Firefox 10:

• The forward button is now hidden until you navigate back
• Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default
• Anti-Aliasing for WebGL is now implemented (see bug 615976)
• CSS3 3D-Transforms are now supported (see bug 505115)
• New <bdi> element for bi-directional text isolation, along with supporting CSS properties (see bugs 613149 and 662288)
• Full Screen APIs allow you to build a web application that runs full screen (see the feature page)
• Added IndexedDB APIs to more closely match the specification
• Inspect tool with content highlighting, includes new CSS Style Inspector
• Bug fixed: Mac OS X only – after installing the latest Java release from Apple, Firefox may crash when closing a tab with a Java applet installed (bug 700835)
• Bug fixed: Some users may experience a crash when moving bookmarks. (bug 681795)

Mozilla Firefox 10 Direct Download Links

Windows (English) | Mac (English) | Linux (English) | All system and languages

Mozilla provides Firefox for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a variety of languages. You can get the latest released version of Firefox here or the latest development version of Firefox here. You should also check out our Firefox section for everything related to Mozilla Firefox.

With each new release of Firefox by Mozilla, we see better performance, stability and security. But, despite all these improvements, Firefox is still resolutely a 32-bit browser. Yes, Mozilla is still working on Firefox 64-bit, but for some reason, they haven’t officially released any 64-bit builds for Firefox. If you can’t wait, you can grab a nightly build of the 64-bit available for Windows and Linux from Mozilla servers.

Many people will hesitate to use a nightly build for regular use. For those who wants stability and don’t want to try a risky nightly build, Waterfox might be an answer. Waterfox is an actual Firefox version, optimized for 64-bit systems and aims to fill the void. The release cycle of Waterfox is in sync with Firefox’s official release cycle. With last week’s Firefox 9 release, the Waterfox project developers released version 9.0 of its own software. Convincing enough to try? We guess, it is. Let’s quickly go through the main features of Waterfox.

The developers of Waterfox have tweaked Firefox source code to work better with 64-bit processors. For the technical persons, the developers have compiled the code base with SSE, SSE2, x64 favoring and the following optimization flags: /Og /Oi /Ot /Oy /Ob2 /Gs /GF /Gy. It’s built especially keeping Windows x64 system in mind, that means, you are effectively running the browser in its full potential complete with all the performance improvements.

All Firefox add-ons are supported by the browser. You can also use all the major plugins such as Adobe Flash, Sun Java, Microsoft Silverlight, since they all have supported 64-bit binaries available. One more feature to rejoice off is, you don’t have to do anything to migrate your existing Firefox profile. Since, Waterfox uses the same profile that your existing Firefox installation does. This convenient feature has one risk factor too. If you uninstall Waterfox and by mistake select the remove personal data check box, your Firefox profile will also get deleted. So, keep in mind not to select that check box.

According to the developers, “for some people with older systems, the 64-bit version loads quicker and is much more responsive than the 32-bit build. For people with newer systems, it allows them to use the full potential of their systems.” So, if you are having a 64-bit system running Windows 7/Vista x64, you should definitely try Waterfox. In fact, we have seen in benchmarks, the 64-bit variant of Firefox out-performing the 32-bit variant.

There’s one major requirement before you install Waterfox on your computer. The browser requires Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64) installed, otherwise you’ll get an error message involving msvcr100.dll. To fully enjoy Waterfox, you also need to install dedicated 64-bit builds of Flash, Silverlight and Java. You can find the download links to all of them at the Waterfox download page. The download page also links to dictionaries and languages packs. The main software is available only in US English only, so if you are looking for localizations, you will need them.

[via Lifehacker]

Printing webpages is sometimes very painful experience. What to do when the webpage you want to print is not so “print friendly“? What to do when you want only a portion of the content to print instead of the full webpage? How to remove all the ads, useless navigation links and other unwanted content before printing to save toner and page?

Well, Print Edit add-on for Firefox is an answer to all these questions and more. It basically enhances the basic Print Preview functionality by adding an Edit button to it.

After installation of the plugin, restart Firefox. Now, visit any website which you want to Print it after using Print Edit. Click Print Edit in the Firefox File menu under Print sub menu or right-click on the page and select Print Edit or from within the Print Preview, click the “Edit” button in the toolbar.

Once in editing mode you can select and deselect elements, hide and delete elements. After you select a section, it gets outlined by a blinking-broken-red line border. You can even select many sections at once and do the tasks.

If you are an advanced user, you can even decorate the page by doing some advanced tweaking through the Format drop-down option. Using Format you can resize the margins, change alignment, change list style, change border and so on. Once you’re done formatting the page, click Preview to see the result. If you’re happy with it, print away. If not, you can always click Edit again and continue tweaking it.

The fastest way to use this add-on is to just select the content area you want to keep and click Delete Except. As you can see the result of Delete Except in the screenshot below.

You can download Print Edit from Firefox Addons website.

[Firefox Add-ons via Rock Your Firefox]

Google has launched a number of changes including a black nav-bar with gray font color, the navigation bar present at the top, which links to many Google services. But for many users this contrasting change is unacceptable unlike many who loved it. They want to get back good old white navigation bar. For those users who wants to get back the old interface, here’s a very quick tip (actually a userscript).

Google Light Navbar userscript restores back the original white nav-bar and blue font color on all Google pages. The userscript works in the Firefox, Chrome and Opera web browser. Here’s how to get the userscript working on your favorite browser.

New black nav-bar

Old white nav-bar back after using the script

Simply download Google Light Navbar userscript from http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/105735 and install it.

Firefox users will first need to install Greasemonkey or Scriptish add-on before they can install and use the script.

Chrome users can directly visit the userscript page and install it to instantly use it.

Opera users will need to specify a directory on their computer where they put userscript in, if they haven’t done so already.

You can do so by clicking on the Opera button, than on Settings, Preferences, Advanced, Content, JavaScript Options. Now browse to specify the directory. Download the script and put it into the directory specified for use.

The userscript works without restarting the browser. If you are having the page open already, you may need to reload the page to see the changes in effect.

The author of the script also mentions that the user is free to customize the nav-bar color to any color of their choice.

For changing the color, click on the spanner icon on the far right of the bar and click on the colors to change the hex values of the colors. [via]

Development of Mozilla Firefox has really speed up. We can tell this from the fact that Mozilla developers earlier set the official release date of Firefox 5 to June 21, still three days from today. Users, who do not want to wait for the official announcement of the stable release, can go ahead and download the popular web browser from the official Mozilla ftp site.

Though not relevant to the stable channel users, one thing to be noted is Mozilla developers has removed the Channel Switcher feature from both Aurora and Beta builds. See Channel Switcher for some information about it. You can get more information on why it is removed from Bugzilla: Bug 659972.

What’s new in Firefox 5? The release notes list the following new features and changes:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users.
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance

Interested users can get access to the complete list of bugs fixed in Firefox 5 here. Each entry links to Bugzilla where more information can be found. After installing the stable version of the web browser, do make sure that all your plugins are up-to-date by visiting this page. Users can get help and support for Firefox 5 from here.

The do not track header preference moved to the Privacy tab for an easy setup. Users can activate it to send a “do not track” request to each website they open and have better online privacy.

Users can download the latest version of Firefox 5 from the official Mozilla ftp server. Most Firefox release mirrors will also soon offer the new version on their servers.

Mozilla has released the Beta version, Firefox 5. Firefox Beta channel will let you experience cutting edge features but with more stability. Adapting themselves to the Google Chrome’s rapid release cycle, Mozilla devs have released their flagship web browser in three versions; Firefox 4 (which is the stable version now), Aurora (Chrome users can relate this to Google Chrome Dev version) and in between both, Firefox Beta (can be related to Google Chrome beta).

The beta version of the web browser is little more polished and stable than the Nightly and Aurora channels, but lets you test some of those cool new features before they’re released to everyone else, released to the stable version of the browser.

Mozilla Firefox 5 beta includes the much waited fast channel switcher along with performance and stability improvements.

Mozilla recently introduced the Firefox Aurora development channel to support more frequent releases. The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster.

After five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, the next version of Firefox is ready for the beta channel. This release includes the Firefox channel switcher, performance and stability enhancements and support for the new CSS Animations standard to allow developers build more amazing Web experiences. The new Firefox channel switcher lets users move between Firefox Aurora, Beta and Release channels to test features at various levels of development, quality and polish.

First Rapid Release Firefox Beta Now Available – Mozilla Blog

Mozilla Firefox Channel Switcher lets you effortlessly switch between your current stable version of the web browser, Aurora build or the Beta version. You can change channels without affecting your Firefox profiles, right from within the About Firefox menu.

If you’re already using either the Aurora or Beta channel, simply click on the Firefox Menu > Help > About > Click on the “Change” link next to where it tells you what channel you’re running. Now, from the drop-down menu, you can easily switch to the Aurora, Beta, or Stable channel.

We have earlier covered in detail about how to change Firefox channels here.

[ Download Firefox beta version ]

After the first release of Mozilla’s “developer’s” build of Firefox, Firefox Aurora, Mozilla debuted Channel Switcher that lets users switch on the fly among Aurora, Beta, and Release versions of the web browser.

The benefit of the built-in channel changer is that users who want to see what’s coming in future versions of Firefox can now do so without having to download a separate installer (Google was also having something similar for Chrome web browser called Google Chrome Channel Changer, which is now deprecated and not recommended by Google).

Here’s how to change Firefox Release Channels:

1. To change Firefox channels, you must first be running the Firefox Aurora version.
2. Go to the menu button (the big orange button on the left-hand corner of the web browser’s window), then Help, and choose About Aurora.
3. The first sentence below the version information reads, “You are currently on the Aurora update channel. Change.“
4. Click Change, and the window shows the change channel drop-down.

   

5. Choose the new channel you want to use, then select the Apply and Update button below.
6. When the updates are done downloading, click Apply Update and Firefox will restart.

After the web browser restarts, it should be running the new channel you’ve chosen. You can confirm this by going back to Help menu, then choosing About.

Mozilla has explained more about how the channel changer works in an article on its site.

The channel changer does not affect your profile, so your tabs and other settings should all remain the same.

Windows, Mac, and Linux users can download Firefox Aurora here. You will be able to can now download the Firefox beta version when they are made available by Mozilla. If you’re looking for the Firefox Nightly channel, you’ll have to download it here, as it’s not offered by the channel changer.

Web browsers are the primary application used to browse the Internet by all users. Hence, it’s attacked the most from various forms of malicious threats. The most common example that we can see is when computer systems are getting infected without user’s knowledge during web browsing.

Even though most security systems are capable of blocking this attacks but, isn’t it a better idea to prevent the infection from the browser itself? BitDefender TrafficLight warns users about malicious websites and filters malicious web traffic.

Although, almost every major antivirus company offers similar solution today, but BitDefender TrafficLight has one key advantage over them: it’s available on all five major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

Another deferential feature of BitDefender TrafficLight is that, the program installs itself as a service in Windows. This service than carefully monitors and analyzes the web traffic before the web browser even executes the codes. TrafficLight displays only a small slide-out grab tab that you can click to display its analysis of the current page. When malicious activity is detected, TrafficLight will spring into action and prevent the offending code from executing.

On performance cause, it does need 20 to 30 MB of RAM to run, which anyone can spare when security is concerned and memory comes cheap.

List of protections covered by TrafficLight:

• Each search result from Google, Yahoo! or Bing is labeled to show the safe and risky links. TrafficLight leverages the intelligence from BitDefender Cloud services to flag the search results appropriately.
• Each click on the links from Facebook or Twitter is scanned and the link could be blocked in real-time if the link appears to be malicious.
• Link shortening tools that works with Saf.li is included to make sure only safe links are shortened.
• Detect and block links pointing to malware or phishing sites.
• Ad-blocker (To be available in future)

To install TrafficLight in your browser, visit the BitDefender site. After installing it, you’ll have an unobtrusive malware protection hiding just below your browser’s toolbar. Here’s the direct link to the installer: WebInstaller.exe

Mozilla has released Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo devices, after the release of Firefox 4 for desktop users few days back. The mobile web browser delivers an intuitive interface, with customization and support for modern Web technologies like HTML5. To make mobile browsing effortless and fun, it provides seamless and secure access to personal data across desktop and mobile devices, including browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, form data and passwords.

The mobile web browser minimizes typing with features like tabbed browsing, bookmarks, add-ons and Firefox Sync. With a sleek new look that hides browser controls when not in use, users can now focus on the websites they visit. Sync gives users seamless access to their browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, form data and passwords across computers and mobile devices. Users can customize the features, functionality and look of mobile Web browsing with Add-ons.

The app is up to three times faster than the stock browser on Android. It is built on the same technology platform as the desktop version. With modern Web technologies like HTML5, developers can build rich, interactive applications and websites.

Features:

Streamlined Interface

• Focus on Web content: Features like tabs, one-touch bookmarking and browser controls that stow away when not in use help users focus on the websites they visit

Browse More, Type Less

• Awesome Screen: Type less with easy access to history, bookmarks and open tabs
• Save to PDF: Capture important websites, like directions or a boarding pass, to view offline
• Share Page: Share websites via apps like email, Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and more
• Add Search Engine: Customize your search engine list

Private and Secure Synchronization

• Firefox Sync: Access Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, passwords and form data across multiple computers and mobile devices with secure end-to-end encryption

Most Customizable:

• Offers thousands of ways for users to customize the features, functionality and look of their mobile Web browser with Add-ons

Cutting Edge Tools for Web Developers:

• Improves existing tools like CSS, Canvas and SVG to enable developers to make exciting Web pages
• HTML5 support includes Location-Aware Browsing, device orientation, accelerometer, desktop notifications and more
• The JavaScript engine incorporates the new JägerMonkey JIT compiler, along with enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey’s interpreter for faster page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games

Mozilla has also launched Spark, a cute social game that’s designed to fuel the adoption of Firefox 4 Mobile.

Firefox for mobile is offered in more than 10 languages. If you have Nokia N900 phone, or Android 2.0 or later device go ahead and install it from the Market, or by scanning the QR code, or by visiting Firefox.com/m. You can view the complete list of supported devices.

Mozilla on March 22 released the Firefox 4 final. After the release, the web browser was downloaded 7.1 million times in its first day and in the first 48 hours of release, Mozilla racked up more than 15.85 million downloads. Mozilla blog has put together an infographic detailing the first 48 hours of activity. Downloads peaked at 10,200 per minute and averaged 91.7 downloads per second.

You can also view Live Firefox 4 Download Stats : http://glow.mozilla.org.

Royal Pingdom Blog came up with their own version of Firefox infographic. Firefox has more than 400 million users worldwide and has been downloaded more than 1.35 billion times since 2004.

If you haven’t going to download Firefox 4 setup, click on the link below:

Download Firefox 4.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Mozilla has finally released Firefox 4 build after 12 beta releases and two Release Candidates. According to Mozilla, Firefox 4 is “faster, easier and more awesome than ever“. Firefox adapted its looks to the minimalist UI trend ushered in by Google Chrome. It eliminates some elements from the default configuration such as the menu, bookmark and status bars while others have been included into multifunctional buttons.

Firefox has a single button in the top left part of the screen that encompasses all options you need, which somewhat has resemblance to the Opera’s button. Tab management has been greatly improved in this release through app tabs and the Panorama feature. App tabs act just like shortcuts to your favorite or frequently used sites, pinning them right next to the Firefox button and reducing their size to the website’s favicon.

Panorama offers you the possibility to work with groups of tabs in a very convenient manner. It is designed especially for the users handling large numbers of tabs. To snap to Panorama view you can use the Ctrl+Shift+E shortcut or click on the “Group your tabs” button at the end of the tab bar. It’s functionality includes creating new groups by simply drawing a rectangle with the mouse holding either left or right buttons, moving tabs from one group to another, naming each group as well as reshaping them or arranging the elements in the page. Search is also available, so you can easily focus on a certain website. If you want to send a specific tab to a different group you can easily do it from the regular interface of Firefox, from the tab’s context menu.

The address bar can be hidden completely but there is no way to bring it back when you need to type in a new URL in a fresh tab. Instead, it offers two shortcuts to show the menu bar (Alt and F10).

Coming back to the performance factor, the JavaScript performance alone has been improved by a factor of three when compared to the current stable Firefox 3 branch.

Firefox 4 now comes with an improved web standards support, including better CSS3, HTML5 and web graphics compatibility. Other notable features include hardware acceleration support, support for the HTML5 video WebM format, out of process plugins for Macs (Linux and Windows have it built-in since Firefox 3.6), privacy enhancements and multi-touch support under Windows 7.

Download Firefox 4

Mozilla has released the Release Candidate 2 (RC2) of Firefox 4 web browser. Mozilla has a release date listed for Firefox 4 as March 22nd. The RC 2 build is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Mozilla Firefox 4 is almost here! We updated the Firefox 4 release candidate with some minor security fixes and updates to several localizations, including the addition of a Vietnamese localized version. Firefox will now ship in 80 languages. We’re excited to deliver the new features, look and speed of Firefox 4 to our more than 400 million users worldwide.

Unlike Internet Explorer 9, FF 4 will support Windows XP, which is a great news for its users. However, FF 4 will not work on Windows editions prior to XP or on Apple Mac OS not running OSX 10.5 or 10.6.

According to an article posted at the Technology section of MSNBC aptly titled “Why Firefox 4 isn’t abandoning Windows XP,”

Clearly, it’s in the interests of Microsoft’s business to get Windows XP users to upgrade to new Windows versions. Leaving them in the cold on the new Internet Explorer is one way to prod them in that direction. But it’s also not an unreasonable suggestion. A decade is more like a century on the web.

Here’s the main problem: A bunch of us haven’t gotten the message. More than 40 percent of web users are still on Windows XP. And that’s the first thing Firefox engineering director Johnathan Nightingale brought up when I asked him about the issue. In an ironic twist, Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox 4 is supporting not only Microsoft’s Windows XP but also Windows 2000, even though Microsoft’s new browser doesn’t.

“That’s a decision that they get to make, but it sure did surprise us, because the best metrics that we’ve got say 40 to 50 percent of the web is still on XP. That’s too big for us to just leave them behind,” Nightingale said via phone. “Yeah, it’s harder work, because XP has a totally different hardware-acceleration story. You need to be using Direct3D there, instead of Direct2D on Vista and 7. It meant we had to do a lot more work architecturally to make sure we could offer a high-quality experience across both of them. But you know what? That’s the job.”

Download Firefox 4.0 RC2

Mozilla has made the release candidate of Firefox 4 for Windows, Mac and Linux available for download. The release candidate has been available for a few days in more than 70 languages. If you haven’t installed the beta, then try the latest RC version because of its new features, enhanced performance and stability and HTML5 capabilities. Firefox respects your privacy and safeguards your security with new features, like Do Not Track and Content Security Policy.

Changes have been made to Firefox 4′s overall appearance, specifically changing the tab location, to above the address bar, and Pin tabs very similar to Google Chrome. Tabs are given top visual priority for more efficient and intuitive browsing. You can now drag and drop your tabs into manageable groups that you can organize, name and arrange in a fun and visual way. More than 70 percent of Firefox Add-ons are now compatible with Firefox 4. If your favorite add-on isn’t marked as compatible, you can help test it using the Firefox Add-ons Compatibility Reporter. Mozilla Firefox 4 team has fixed more than 8,000 bugs since the first beta release of Firefox 4.

With a fresh new look and features like App Tabs and Panorama, Firefox makes it easier and more efficient to navigate the Web. With Panorama, you can drag and drop tabs into manageable groups to organize, name and arrange in a fun and visual way. You can easily group tabs for work, home, hobbies, research or whatever you like, to save you the time and frustration of navigating many open tabs. To get started with Panorama, right-click on any tab to Move to Group.

Firefox 4 Pin Tab feature called App Tabs

App Tabs helps take sites you always keep open like Web mail, music and social networking websites off your tab bar and give them a permanent home in your browser. App Tabs offer a better way to manage tabs that you use frequently to give a permanent home to the sites you always keep open. Right click on any tab to Pin as App Tab. Another feature is Switch to Tab that helps you navigate more easily by switching to open tabs from your Awesome Bar.

Firefox Sync is also improved in Firefox 4

Firefox Sync is integrated into Firefox, giving you access to your Awesome Bar history, bookmarks, open tabs and passwords across computers and mobile devices. The new Firefox Sync user interface also makes it even easier to set up, helping you go from work to home to mobile and back with ease. Set up your Sync account in the Options window.

Firefox 4 Add-on Manager is also revamped

The new revamped Add-on manager facilitates an easier way to manage your add-ons and discover new options for personalizing your browsing. You can easily browse descriptions, see screenshots, ratings and recommendations before you install. The Add-ons Manager also lets you view and manage third-party plugins and automatically updates all of your add-ons.

Firefox 4 also contains huge performance enhancements, including our brand new JägerMonkey JavaScript engine. From faster start-up times and graphics rendering to improved page load speed, you’ll notice the difference instantly. Firefox 4 also includes performance enhancements to make everything faster, from start-up time to page-load speed, and the performance of Web applications and games.

Firefox HTML5 support includes hardware accelerated,high-definition video (WebM), 3D graphics, offline data storage, professional typography, touchscreen interfaces, the Mozilla Audio API to help create visual experiences for sound and more.

If you want to give Firefox 4 RC a try, click here to download now.

Mozilla has just released the latest beta version of Firefox 4, beta 9, bringing them closer to a release candidate and final version release in February 2011. There’s still one more beta to pump out, though. In this new beta release, there aren’t any new features but just some tweaks and bug fixes.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta is based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform. In this release, Mozilla has overhauled the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance. Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations.

Mozilla has also added support for 7 new languages for Firefox 4 taking the total supported languages to 76. The Firefox Sync setup experience has been greatly improved across desktop and mobile devices. Firefox 4 beta now uses the JägerMonkey JavaScript engine, which is supposedly fast. Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users.

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu. The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. Firefox 4 beta now comes with native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.

To view the complete list of changes, visit this page. You can download Firefox 4 Beta 9 from here orvisit this post to learn what has changed in this beta.

This Firefox 4 Beta is considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release.

Facebook is the most popular social networking site today. It’s interface is evolving everyday and is one of the most easy to use one. If you like doing everything using the keyboard and seldom use the mouse or if you want to experience Facebook faster, then you should try the keyboard shortcuts that Facebook provides for keyboard-only users. All these shortcuts are available in the Facebook Help Centre > Accessibility and Assistive Technology help page. (source)

Below is the excerpt of the keyboard shortcuts available, simply replace the # with the numeric digit shown in the Map section for the surfing the desired page in Facebook. So suppose if you want to return to the Facebook Home page and you are using Internet Explorer 7, simply press Alt + 0. Firefox for Windows users should press Shift + Alt + 0. Firefox and Safari for Mac users on the other hand should press Ctrl + 0.

The shortcuts are browser-specific, so please refer below for your specific browser:

Internet Explorer 7 for PC:
Alt + #, then Enter

Firefox 3 for PC:
Shift + Alt + #

Safari 3 for Mac:
Ctrl + #

Firefox 3 for Mac:
Ctrl + #

Map:
0 – Help
1 – Home
2 – Profile
3 – Friends
4 – Inbox
5 — Notifications
6 — Account Settings
7 – Privacy
8 – About
9 – Terms

If you experience any problems with the feature, you can email Facebook’s accessibility team here.

Mozilla has released another beta of Firefox 4. This beta release is mostly a bug fix release as evident by the number of bug fixes. Actually, more than 1000 bugs are fixed by Firefox 4 developers in this release. Mozilla has also simplified the process for setting up syncing between desktop browsers and mobile browsers.

Users who are testing Firefox 4 beta versions should definitely update to this latest stable version. Users can download Firefox 4 beta 8 for Windows, Mac and Linux, and other languages from Mozilla Firefox 4 home page for the beta. Users will also soon get notified through the automatic updates built-in the browser or they can manually “Check for updates.”

Do tell us what you feel about this new beta after testing it!

[ Download Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 8 ]

Is it too much if one is asking for one’s own privacy on the Internet these days? First, we had normal browser cookies, then we had more persistent Flash cookies and now the Evercookie that can provide everyone from advertisers to malware authors with useful information about the sites you have visited and more. Evercookie, an open source JavaScript API developed by security researcher Samy Kamkar, when implemented by any website stores a user ID and cookie data in eight different places. This makes evercookie a more persistent cookie form than Flash cookies or normal browser cookies.

Its goal is to identify a client even after they’ve removed standard cookies, removed Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects or LSOs), and others. This allows websites to track user behavior even when users have enabled private browsing because an Evercookie stores data in locations outside of where standard cookies are stored, an Evercookie can rebuild itself unless users go through a number of steps to completely clear and reset their local storage.

Generally, the Evercookie JavaScript API will make use of the following storage mechanisms if supported by the web browser.

• Standard HTTP Cookies
• Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies)
• Silverlight Isolated Storage
• Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached
• PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out
• Storing cookies in Web History
• Storing cookies in HTTP ETags
• Storing cookies in Web cache
• window.name caching
• Internet Explorer userData storage
• HTML5 Session Storage
• HTML5 Local Storage
• HTML5 Global Storage
• HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite

“Simply think of it as cookies that just won’t go away,” reads the evercookie FAQ.

ArsTechnica has posted an article “It is possible to kill the evercookie,” that shows different ways to protect yourself from evercookie but Firefox users can protect themselves by just using a simple add-on named “Anonymizer Nevercookie.”

Anonymizer Nevercookie eliminates the manual steps required to completely remove Evercookies. It does so without removing all the necessary cookies that you may actually want to keep, such as those for browsing history and remembered logins. When Anonymizer Nevercookie is engaged along with Firefox’s private browsing mode, it quarantines an Evercookie and removes it after the browsing session.

Quick Start Guide to use Anonymizer Nevercookie add-on:

1. After installing the add-on, launch Firefox browser again, go to Tools > Start Private Browsing
2. A new browser window will open. It will be branded with a blue Navigation Menu bar.
3. Use this window for your private browsing session.
4. To leave private browsing mode, close the private browsing window and in the parent Firefox window go to Tools > Stop Private Browsing.

Note: Leaving private browsing mode will release Flash and Silverlight cookies from quarantine and make you trackable again, so don’t end private browsing mode until you are finished your private session.

Important: If you haven’t used Firefox profiles before, you will probably notice a Profile selection prompt when starting Firefox after installing the extension. This is because the extension creates a temporary profile for each browsing session. If you don’t wish to see this prompt, select the default profile and check the box marked “Don’t ask at startup”.

Here’s a quick update for all our Mozilla Firefox web browser users. Mozilla has updated its popular web browser Firefox incrementing the version to Firefox 3.6.11. This new version fixes several stability and security issues found in the earlier version Firefox 3.6.10.

Users who are already using Mozilla Firefox can update to the latest version by using clicking on the Help menu and selecting Check for Updates option. Firefox will also automatically let know users automatically about the update very soon.

Other users can download Firefox 3.6.11 using the following direct download links:

Download Firefox 3.6.11 (Windows)

Download Firefox 3.6.11 (Mac OS X)

Download Firefox 3.6.11 (Linux)

Interested users can go through the Release Notes of Firefox 3.6.11 to find out what is new and what bugs are squashed (fixed!).

Xmarks is a bookmark sync browser add-on that lets you synchronize all your bookmarks, passwords and other data over several computers, across almost all popular browsers. I am a Xmarks user myself and use it to sync my bookmarks across all the browsers that I use. Sadly, this awesome bookmark sync service will be shutting down service on January 10, 2011.

According to the blog post update on the official Xmarks blog, from today Xmarks will start sending notifications to its users (I still haven’t received one) that the service will be shut down in 90 days. The reasons for the shutdown are explained in detail in the blog post. It can be understood that the main reasons behind shutting down Xmarks are funds running out and Xmarks being unable to find a viable business model or a buyer.

Xmarks (founded in 2006 under the original name Foxmarks) started out as a Firefox plug-in that lets users sync their bookmarks on several computers. Later, Foxmarks rechristened as Xmarks, as it extended support for other browsers and added more functionality, such as browsing recommendations and password syncing.

Xmarks claims it serves around 2 million users across 5 million desktops, and still adding nearly 3,000 new accounts per day (their registration page is still online). You may be wondering, then why Xmarks is seeing the end of the road?

Well, when big players like Google, Opera and Mozilla starts providing sync service and with most of the features that Xmarks offers, free, it becomes really difficult for startups like Xmarks to survive.

A quote from Xmarks CTO and Co-founder Todd Agulnick:

“For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses, primarily salary and hosting costs. Without the resources to keep the service going, we must shut it down.”

Its not like the Xmarks developers never tried. They tried various ways to make a profit out of its business, including a “smarter search” idea based on data gleaned from its anonymized collection of 100 million bookmarks. “If you were looking for the Web sites in a particular category, the results were shockingly complete and entirely spam-free,” Agulnick said. They also launched a 99-cent iPhone app to extend sync to Apple’s devices and had begun work on an equivalent for phones using Google’s Android OS. Though the iPhone app will continue to work with bookmarks cached on the phone, but the Android app will never be released.

It is really sad to say good-bye to such a good service. You can easily understand this even if you are not a Xmarks user, when you see comments by users willing to pay for the service, at the official announcement blog post.

Xmarks Alternatives

If you are presently a Xmarks user, you should check Xmarks’ guide to alternatives for advice on the best way to keep your data.

Browser Sync Alternatives

While you may have to give up cross-browser sync when Xmarks goes away, there are a lot of good browser-specific sync options available:

In that page we found two suggestions by Xmarks as its alternative for users who wants more than bookmark sync: Evernote and SugarSync. Xmarks seems to have tied up with the two to offer some exclusive plans for its users. SugarSync is offering free 2 GB storage space for all Xmarks users who signup through the link available here.

Google Scribe is a new Google Labs project that helps you speed up text typing. Google Scribe basically provides text completion service. Using information from what you have already typed in a text field, Google Scribe provides related word or phrase completion suggestions. In addition to saving keystrokes, Google Scribe’s suggestions indicate correct or popular phrases to use.

You can use Google Scribe on any active text field in a webpage. For example, you can now type faster in Twitter to send updates faster, fill comment form of a blog, compose email, be it GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or any other email, etc. With the handy keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures you can now fasten up text typing while also cut typing errors.

If you are using Google Chrome, then you can enable Google Scribe using the official Google Scribe (Labs) Chrome Extension. If you are using any other browser like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or Apple Safari, then you can use the Google Scribe Bookmarklet to enable Google Scribe.

Handy Google Scribe keyboard shortcuts:

If you use a Mac, you can use the shortcuts below by replacing Ctrl with Command/Meta key.

More detailed help on using Google Scribe can be found here.