Today the technology world was rocked by the news that IE 7 is vulnerable to attacks. Oh wait, most of us already new this and switched browsers long ago! While this isn’t really big news, it does highlight how important it is for the average internet user to make sure they are vigil while surfing the net. Microsoft have said that the vulnerability is present in all version of IE, but state that moving to another browser is risky in itself.
While most users will not switch, experts are indicating that now is a good time to experiment with alternatives. Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are not vulnerable to the IE threat, but each browser does have their own flaws. One thing is for sure, most browser attacks are aimed at IE. This is because IE users (are generally) less sophisticated surfers and are therefore more suseptible to viruses. I would therefore recommend users to “upgrade” to an alternative browser. I use firefox myself and find it great.
As a mac user, I should be using safari, but firefox’s pluggins make it a more useful browser, if not a tad slower. I would live to try Chrome, but google have not released a mac version yet.
Following on from my post on twitterfox, another useful add on for firefox is the facebook toolbar. With this you can integrate your Facebook life into your browser. You do this by being able to:
Search Facebook from anywhere
Get Notifications of new pokes, friend requests, and messages you have.
Connect with Friends
Share Content
This is a must have add-on for any facebook user, which sits nicely under your bookmarks toolbar: I use it now and find myself using facebook more than ever. I always update my status, which is something I rarely did. Download it today and add it to your firefox browser. Firefox add-on site Developers site
As previously stated, I’m using twitter now and I’m finding it very useful. However, a little app that I’ve found has increased my twitter use no end, as it integrates twitter into firefox. Twitterfox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets and also has a small text input field to update your tweets. In firefox it’s located in the bottom right hand side of firefox in the status bar:
“The award-winning Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customisable to your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.”
Soon to be updated to Firefox 3, the current incarnation is an excellent browser. Part of Mozilla’s open source products firefox is a quite simply the best browser available today.
And here’s why.
Extensions.
If you use firefox at work and at home, then install google browser sync. This will keep your browsing experience up to date across internet sessions and ensure your bookmarks are always available to you.
Google toolbar
For those of you who are not using this already, why? It’s available for IE and firefox and it saves you time when filling in forms, searching, checking gmail. It’s an essential extension.
gmail manager
this checks your gmail accounts for you, and pops up a little message telling you when you have new mail. It’s a great tool that enables you to close your gmail window without the fear of missing new mail.
Customize google
This allows you to enhance google search, remove ads and do other useful things in google apps.
PDF download
I really don’t know what I did before I came across this. Quite simply, this lets you choose how you manage PDF downloads i.e. open as html in a new tab, always download to desktop etc.
Themes
With firefox you can choose you own theme. Not a big deal, but allows you to have a more personable browsing experience.
Let’s not forget that should you have a specific requirement that has not already been filled by the developer community, then get building! Why not build your own firefox extension or theme? See here for more.
Maintaining the open source theme, this week I take a look at the Mozilla Foundation, the company behind the successful open source web browser, Firefox.
“The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that sponsors the Mozilla project and devotes its resources to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet.
The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone. We are best known for creating the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
The Mozilla project uses a community-based approach to create world-class open source software and to develop new types of collaborative activities. We create communities of people involved in making the Internet experience better for all of us.”
So what does the Mozilla project entail?
Well it’s famous for firefox, but also produces many other products such as thunderbird (an email client), sundbird (a calendar project) and others. I’ve used most of Mozilla’s products and highly recommend them. They are easy to use, customisable, free and most importantly offer a level of security that is greater than the default applications present in Windows e.g. Internet Explorer or Outlook Express.
Should you use their products? I would say yes, but it comes down to personal opinion. The important thing is that you have the choice. You do not need to use proprietary software just because it came pre loaded with your operating system. A quick google search will tell you how many people like Mozilla’s products, so you may not have heard of them but they are a big open source company that should not be ignored.
I’ve also started using Prism, which is a Mozilla labs project on my mac. This allows me to launch web apps as stand alone applications in their own window.
Let me explain.
I use google apps. Google handles my calendar and on mac, there is no easy way to syncronise ical with google calendar. Sure I can read my google calendar in ical, but I can’t read and write to google calendar from ical. So what? I’m on a broadband internet connection, why not use my browser? Well, it’s the lack of integration with my desktop. Well not any more, with prism I can place an icon in my dock that will open up my google calendar after just one click (just like ical). All I need is the url of the app and I can add an icon to dock that allows me to open the application just like it is a standalone desktop application.
All of a sudden google docs seems like a real competitor to MS Office. I already use gmail as my primary email client and I will be experiementing over the coming weeks to see if I even need the mail.app in OS X.
So all in all Mozilla should be interpreted as one of the nets good guys I encourage you all to give them a try.
