FavBackup is a freeware portable software for Windows users that lets you save and migrate almost any major web browser settings. It archives all your personal settings and data such as bookmarks, history, cookies, and saved passwords from all major web browsers: Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari and Flock.

In this digital age, one just can’t afford to lose their personal settings and data. As the number of web browser choices have increased, most of us like to use multiple web browsers for surfing the Internet. Keeping a backup of all the data, spread over all these different browsers is difficult, thanks to FavBackup it is less of a hassle now. FavBackup offers an easy and comprehensive way to back up all the data and even lets you migrate easily to a browser on a different computer.

FavBackup is completely portable application and requires no installation. The program has an intuitive Ribbon user interface, so getting started with it is easy and quick. After downloading the program, extract the FavBackup executable file in your choice of folder, run the executable.

Backing Up a Browser Profile

The “Backup” option allows you to choose which items you want to save for a specific profile, while “Full Backup” saves all settings for all profiles. FavBackup saves all your personal settings and data into a default.dat file.

Choose either “Backup” or “Full Backup” option according to your needs and select the browser that you would like to back up. Browse to the place where you want to keep the backup and click on “Next”. After the backup is completed, click “Finish” to close the program.

Note: In case of “Backup,” all items are selected by default. The Backup process for all the other browsers are identical (pictured above).

Restoring a Backed Up Browser Profile

To import all your personal settings and data which you backed up using the steps above, use either “Restore” or “Full Restore,” and select the backup file “default.dat”.

If you choose the “Restore” option, you can selectively import items from the backup file. “Full Restore” lets you restore the complete data back.

Choose the option that best suits your needs and select the browser that you would like to restore. Select the backup file and click “Next”. The program will restore your browser settings and data. Click on “Finish” to close the program.

Note: In case of “Restore”, all items are selected by default. The Restore process for all the other browsers are identical (pictured above). If you are restoring portable browser data and custom location is not provided, it may overwrite your regular browser settings. If you don’t want this to happen, please provide portable browser’s backup location.

Convert Opera 10 Profile

FavBackup also lets you convert Opera 10 profiles from Windows XP to Windows 7/Vista in both 32-bit and 64-bit format. Simply select the options available under conversion and click on “Next.”

Conclusion

FavBackup is a powerful backup and restore program which is extremely easy to use. It is definitely a recommended software by us which lets even the most novice users to keep their browser settings. You can download FavBackup from the author’s page.

UCWeb has announced that the latest version of its flagship product, UC Browser 7.7 English version has been released. The latest version, UC Browser 7.7 English, is released for Symbian, Windows Mobile and Java.

These days there’s no shortage of mobile web browsers, each one claiming to be the fastest and most feature-rich. UC Browser is another such mobile web browser which is cross-platform. Much like the rest of the lot, it offers useful features, speed enhancements and quick-access to your favourites.

Just like the popular Opera Mini mobile web browser, UC Browser doesn’t handle each destination within the application. Each request is handled by UC servers, first compressed and then sent to the phone. This essentially provides you with a fast, thin client perfect for use with mobile data plans. It has multiple tab support with in-built support for Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.com search engine.

Other notable UC Browser features:

More traffic saving for WWW Site

• Optimized the compression algorithm, compress the content in the server-side.
• Duplicated and similar data will not be transmitted again.
• Save another 30% traffic compare to earlier version of UC Browser when visit WWW site, especially for those site is full of words.

Better page rendering

• Support more WAP2.0 tag
• Upgrade the compatibility to WAP 2.0 page.

No more glare in night mode

• In the night mode, UC Browser doesn’t only process the text and background, but also process the image to lower the brightness, make the image softer.
• Process to both static and dynamic images.

Dial+Number to get quick access to site in the start page

• Press “Dial+Number” can get quick access to the corresponding site in My Shortcuts in Symbian V1/V2/V3

Input directly in website

• UC optimized Java version in 7.7 version to bring the direct input feature in website

Tips optimization

• Tips’ place, background color and font color optimized

To download UC Browser 7.7, please go to www.ucweb.com by PC or wap.ucweb.com by handset.

[ Mirror download from BrotherSoft ]

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 finally released Firefox 3.6.4, the latest security and stability release for Firefox. This release provides crash protection for Windows and Linux users by isolating third-party plugins when they crash. The feature is like that in Google Chrome as it runs plugins in their own process to increase browser stability and security.

Out-of-process plugins are enabled by default and make sure that a crashing plugin will not crash the browser itself as well. Firefox can now prevents Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight crashes from bringing down your entire browser on Windows and Linux computers just like Google Chrome does. Read the Crash Protection FAQ for more detailed information about this new feature.

With the ability to automatically alert users when they have out of date plugins, and now crash protection, Firefox 3.6.4 allows users to experience all the content they love without any of the hassles. (If you’re not running Firefox, Mozilla recommends that you make a habit of visiting the Plugin Check page to keep your plugins up to date.)

Unfortunately crash protection doesn’t yet support Apple Mac OS X (but OS X is still receiving an update, presumably of smaller bug and stability fixes). Firefox 3.6.4 does not only add out-of-process plugins, it fixes several stability and security issues in earlier Firefox 3.6.x editions. You will find the release notes of Firefox 3.6.4 here.

Firefox 3.6.4 is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

All Mozilla Firefox users are encouraged to upgrade for free by using the “Check for Updates” function in the Help menu, or by visiting Firefox home page. For more information, please visit:

We previously shared a quick tip about a registry tweak using which you can disable browser choice update screen on windows. Off late, I have found a lot of people still asking how they can disable the browser choice screen in Windows.

The registry tweak was based on a knowledge base article (KB2019411) released by Microsoft, explaining how IT administrators can disable a Browser Choice screen for their users using a simple registry key. Now, you can get the same result by using the Group Policy Preferences editor and its also easier to use than the registry editor.

Note:

• If your computer is running Windows 7, the Browser Choice application removes Internet Explorer from a pinned location on the Start menu and in the taskbar.
• If you do not set Internet Explorer as your default Web browser, the Browser Choice application does not make any changes to your computer.

Use Group Policy to Disable Browser Choice

1. Press [Windows Key] + [R] to open the Run dialog box and type gpedit.msc to open Group Policy Management Console.

2. Now, navigate to Computer Configuration > Preferences > Windows Settings > Registry.
   

3. Here, right-click and create a new registry item (Registry > New > Registry Item).

4. Type Software\BrowserChoice in the Key Path then type Enable in the Value name, then select REG_DWORD as the value type 0 in the value data and then click OK.
   

5. You can then restart the computer to see that the browser choice screen does not appear again.

Microsoft has recently published an article detailing steps required to disable or remove the Browser Ballot (or Browser Choice) screen. Starting this March, the Browser Choice screen began displaying on Windows machines for European customers. If you are a regular user annoyed by it or if you are a system administrator who wants to manage the display of the Browser Choice update screen in managed personal computing environments that are under a Volume Licensing program. Then here is a solution for you all which will help you disable the Browser Choice update screen.

Update: Another way to disable browser choice screen can be found here.

How to Block/Disable Browser Choice Update Screen on Windows?

1. Open the Registry Editor by typing regedit in the Run dialog box (Goto Start Menu > Run, or, press [ Windows Key ] + [ R ] to access the Run dialog box.)
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\BrowserChoice
3. Create a new entry by right-clicking on the right pane and choosing “New DWORD“
4. Name it “Enable” and set the value to 0. This will stop displaying the Browser Choice screen. If you want to revert back, set this value to 1.

Read a brief FAQ related to the Browser Choice update (KB976002)

Opera team has released the final version of its much awaited web browser Opera 10.5010.50. Opera 10.50 brings a lot of new features to the table, most noticeable the speed improvements which leaves Firefox behind in the dust, at least for now. Opera 10.50 is currently only offered for the Windows operating system with the likelihood that versions for other operating systems follow suite later this month.

The most notable changes includes:

• Better integration with Windows Vista and 7
• Opera Carakan JavaScript engine
• New Opera “O” tab and its associated menu on the left side of Tab bar
• Opera Presto 2.5 rendering engine
• Opera Vega graphics library
• Opera Widgets for Desktop
• Download acceleration software compatibility
• Non-modal notification messages
• Private browsing
• More here.

The latest release candidate of Opera 10.50 had some bugs, mostly interface and accessibility related. It is unclear if all of those bugs have been fixed in the final release of Opera 10.50.

[ Download Opera 10.50 Final ]