Less than two weeks away now from Windows 10 release and new details keep trickling in. A major detail that recently has been revealed is the way Windows 10 handles default browser. Even before I get into that, it is important to know that when you upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft’s Edge browser becomes your default browser. Okay, so just go into the browser you normally use and choose the option to make it default browser, right? Wrong! Microsoft has taken away the API functionality of a browser to make itself the default browser in Windows 10. Windows 10 does not allow a browser…
Technology
Read More
In many ways I hope I am wrong about this. Firefox is still a good browser (compared to Internet Explorer at least), but the Mozilla Developers continue to be indifferent towards the users. They have also deviated away from the original goals of keeping Firefox as small and lean as possible. In 2014, Firefox saw a drop in user base when the dramatic (and unwanted) user interface change known as Australia’s landed. Though most, if not all the changes made by this could be undone with The Classic Theme Restorer (CTR) add-on. Fastforward a year later and Mozilla Developers are still doing…
With all the talk recently about the exploits in Flash and Java, users are taking a closer look at their Firefox plugins. A couple plugins users may come across that look a little odd are the ones which provide HTML5 support in Firefox. Now remember, HTML5 Video is suppose to someday replace Adobe’s Flash (for the most part YouTube has been using HTML5 since early this year) and Microsoft’s Silverlight (no longer supported, but still used). These plugins are: Open H.264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems – shipped starting with Firefox 33 and allows playing of H.264 encoded content natively via…
Like it or not, Extension Signing starts with Firefox 40 (coming August 2015). The Mozilla Wiki has quite a bit of information about extension signing. Signing will be done through addons.mozilla.org (AMO) and will be mandatory for all extensions, regardless of where they are hosted. Here is a timeline of when and how Extension Signing is going to be enforced: Firefox 40: Firefox warns about signatures but doesn’t enforce them. Firefox 41: Firefox will have a preference that allows signature enforcement to be disabled. Firefox 42: Release and Beta versions of Firefox will not allow unsigned extensions to be installed, with no…
I was checking Amazon.com this morning on my Samsung Galaxy S4 with the Amazon Shopping App. Today is Prime Day so was seeing what they had to offer. I was presented with a pop-up notification to update what I thought was for the Amazon Shopping App. I started the update and the first red flag that came up was it wanted me to Enable Unknown Sources on my device’s security settings. Basically, this is to allow you to be able to install apps outside the Google Play Store. I was somewhat confused why I needed to do this, but went ahead and…
So Microsoft has announced that along with Windows 10 being pushed out on July 29th, so are the MS Office Universal Apps. From Tom’s Hardware: Universal Apps will run natively on any platform running Windows 10, whether it be on your PC, tablet, phone, Xbox, or what have you, and they will operate in the same fashion no matter what device you run them on. Microsoft has previously revealed that Outlook Mail and Outlook Calendar will be pre-installed in Windows 10, but the company has also been developing Word for Windows 10, Excel for Windows 10, PowerPoint for Windows 10…
Ah yes, Pocket the third-party feature nobody wanted, but Mozilla decided they would integrate into Firefox anyway. Well, that is not really fair to say. Apparently about 220K Firefox user (less than 1% of the user base) have downloaded Pocket when it was only an add-on. Mozilla makes it sound like it is no big deal saying that its impact on memory is minimal. Um okay, but I don’t think most users are concerned about the resources Pocket uses. They are upset about the integration of a third-party service as in from another company (NOT Mozilla) into their Firefox browser without their consent. A…
Adobe Flash is one of those browser plugins that a lot of people can not live without, with Java being a close second. Problem with Flash (and Java) is there are major security exploits that are being discovered daily. Adobe just release an updated for Flash last week and already has plans on releasing another update this week to patch an exploit just discovered in the last fix. Some people such as Grand Stream Dreams blogger Claus have opted to do away with Flash (and other Adobe products) on some their systems: Taking Flash Player out to the Bins. Unfortuantly,…
Came across this gHacks article via Grand Stream Dreams. Starting with Pale Moon 26 the rendering engine is going to move from Gecko to Goanna. From what I gather, the change is more for legal reasons (Gecko is registered trademark licensed to the Mozilla Foundation by Netscape/AOL) and also to fix compatibility issues with websites detecting the wrong version of Gecko because of the numbering differences with Pale Moon and Firefox. There is really not going to much changes under the hood so to say. It is going to be a fork off of Gecko much like Chromium (Open Source Project based…
I had mentioned in the in Three Pillars of Firefox post that I was going to try to find more info about the “Uniquely Firefox” pillar. So far the only thing I have come across is Tracking Protection may be included in Private Browsing mode. KWierso explained on mozillaZine Tracking Protection versus Do Not Track: “Do Not Track” really only indicates your wish that the site doesn’t track you while you visit. Tracking Protection is a feature that actively blocks tracking scripts while you browse. Of course, I am wondering how long until certain websites will either not allow you to access them…