A Smörgåsbord of Firefox related news items from the past couple weeks. Fake PayPal screen dupes IE, Safari, Chrome – Microsoft Blog/Seattle PI Sadly it is stores like these that give PayPal a bad reputation as being associated with fraud and theft. But it is not PayPal’s fault. Most of the fault comes down to the uneducated web user who don’t take a quick moment to review the address bar for https as well as making sure they are really at PayPal.com and to look for the secure ‘padlock” (also in IE7 and Firefox the address bar will have a…
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Found this interesting story on the Microsoft Blog earlier this week. Seems Sony has cut a deal with Google (the makers of the Chrome Browser) to have Chrome to be the default browser on new Sony Vaio PCs instead of the usual Internet Exploiter. The deal is a big win for Google, which has struggled to give Chrome a significant share of the market. In August, Chrome captured nearly 3 percent of the market, versus Internet Explorer’s 67 percent and Firefox’s 23 percent, according to Net Applications. The agreement is Google’s first with a computer manufacturer. Microsoft has similar deals…
Part of the big improvements for Firefox 3.5 was it is suppose to be faster. Unless you have started using Firefox 3.5 with a clean profile, you are going to notice that the initial startup of Firefox can be a bit (or for some user painfully) slow at times. This is especially true for those on Windows. There are a couple quick fixes to improve the startup time of your Firefox. These involve cleaning up temporary files (Windows users) and vacuuming your databases. Both tips come courtesy of Percy at Mozilla Links.
After nearly a year in development (and six months later than planned) Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5 today! Many new exciting features for users and web developers:
In a move that has been described as “a step backward in the retail software arena” Microsoft release a statement saying they will NOT bundle Internet Explorer (or any other browsers) with Windows 7 when it it is release in the European Market. Since the computer will not have a web browser installed, users will be unable to go on to the Internet to download a web browser. Microsoft’s “solution” to this is to offer Internet Explorer at no charge on a CD-ROM. Full details are on the Microsoft Blog plus response from the European Union (EU). Yep, this is…
As if the Gates-Seinfeld ads (Shoe Store & New Family) weren’t odd, dumb, idiotic, etc, Microsoft has released two Internet Explorer 8 commercials. F.O.M.S. (Fear of Missing Something) and S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. (Sharing Heavily Yet Not Enough Sharing Still). Thankfully these are not as long as the Gates-Seinfeld ads, but they aren’t much better. It seems Microsoft is trying to target the social ‘market’ of the Internet with these two commercials: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQolo0Xdqw&feature=player_embedded] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjUzzxAKs20&feature=player_embedded] If there is one comment from The Microsoft Blog that really sums up this latest campaign it would have to be this one from Frustrated: It is amazing they…
Back on May 1st, The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog turned 3. Taking a looking back around May 1st for the past 3-years, here were some of the big news items: 2006 Mike Schroepfer announced developers were yanking Places from the then upcoming Firefox 2 release. Bon Echo/Firefox 2 Alpha 2 release. 2007 Support for both Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5 would be ending soon. Dell was going to offer (on some systems) Ubuntu & OpenOffice.org instead of Windows Vista and Office 2007 The Guru begins to experiment with Ubuntu. 2008 The failed takeover/merger of Yahoo! by Microsoft. Still not sure if…
I mentioned earlier today in my personal blog, that I discovered Microsoft has released and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. However this upgrade is in the form of a Windows Update. Now before I start getting an Inbox full of hate mail, I want to make it clear I don’t have a problem with an upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. What I have the problem with is the way Microsoft is delivering this upgrade. I know that many people never look at their Windows Updates or they just allow the updates to be automatically installed. I get customers calling in…
As Firefox users it is easy for us to forget, overlook or even not notice the large (choke) hold Microsoft has on the browser market. For all intents and purposes, Microsoft has a monopoly on the browser market with Internet Explorer. Over the past couple years Firefox’s market share has grown tremendously in Europe. In January 2009 the European Commission (EC) stated its preliminary conclusion that “Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.” Over the past couple months Mitchell has discussed on her blog…
Back on December 9th, 2008, Mozilla released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2. Ironically when Firefox 3.1 was announced (see What’s Next For Firefox?) back in June 2008, this was suppose to be around the time Firefox 3.1 was released. Now, nearly 3 months later Beta 3 is finally going to be release during the early part of March. With that news, does it mean the following release is going to a Release Candidate? Sadly, no it is going to be Beta 4 which is scheduled to be release about 6-weeks after Beta 3 is released. The continuing and great work on…