Technology

Profile And Compare Your Web Browser Against Others

Browserscope is a web service to profile the web browser used to access the website and compare the results against web browsers from other users who have tested theirs on the site as well. The service tests various functions that are divided into the categories security, rich text, selector apis, network and acid 3. All of the categories except the Acid 3 test test multiple features.

The profile creation takes some time but the individual tests complete very fast so that it becomes difficulty to read the test descriptions on the pages that are automatically loaded.

The profile of the web browser is then displayed next to the top browsers that have been used to complete the test before. More »

Remove An Important Choice To Make: Your Browser

If you are living in Europe right now and using a computer with a Microsoft operating system chance is that you are now presented with a program upon system startup that states “An Important Choice To Make: Your Browser”. This screen appears after system startup and leads to another screen called Select Your Web Browser. Many European Windows users are not sure if this is a legit program or part of a malicious software attack.

Those users should note that this is a legit Windows application that has been added to European versions of Windows by Microsoft to comply with European Union regulations. It basically allows European Windows users to select a different web browser than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The problem with that screen however is that it appears every time the user loads the operating system if no selection is made on the screen (for instance by closing the window after it appears). More »

Block Websites From Appearing In The Firefox History

For some time Firefox users had the option to enable a private browsing mode if they wanted to visit websites without leaving traces of them on the computer system. They also had the option to remove individual history information from the web browser.

History Block adds a third option for Firefox users as it enables them to block specific hosts from appearing in the web browser’s history. And history in this case means the standard history, the download manager and the recently opened tabs list.

The Firefox add-on is relatively easy to use with the exception of managing existing blocked hosts. New hosts can be added either from the menu of the add-on or more comfortably by right-clicking on the page and selecting Block This from the available options. More »

Facebook Lite Login Blank Page

Facebook Lite is currently offered as a public preview. It basically allows registered Facebook users to log into a lighter version of Facebook instead of the standard Facebook page. The advantage of this is that the Facebook lite page requires less resources and should therefor be faster for users accessing it. This can mostly be recognized by Internet users who have slow Internet connections, dial ups for instance.

The Facebook Login page for instance has a size of nearly 80 Kilobytes while the Facebook Lite Login page one of only 34 Kilobytes.

That’s less than half for the login page and the reduction of elements on the page after login is even more noticeable.

Several users are currently reporting about a blank page problem when logging into Facebook Lite. That’s usually not a big problem as most can go back to using the regular Facebook page for their social networking fix. But some users have configured Facebook to only use Facebook Lite and not the regular page. Any attempt to use the regular Facebook login will be redirected to Facebook light instead.

There is currently no option for those users to undo the changes and use the standard Facebook page instead. The reason for that is that the setting to always use Facebook Lite is only available in Facebook Lite. And if that page is not loading or displaying a blank screen instead then there is no way of using the standard Facebook page instead.

The only viable option is to contact Facebook support letting them know about the blank page issue to make them fix it.

Users who can log into Facebook Lite can open the following url to change their default login page: http://lite.facebook.com/settings/defaultsite/

There is one additional option for users who are experiencing a blank page when opening Facebook Lite: Trying a different web browser. I had for instance troubles logging into Facebook Lite with Firefox which displayed the blank page. Switching to Google Chrome on the other hand allowed me to log into Facebook Lite normally.

From there it is possible to change the default page back to the standard Facebook website.

Have you been experiencing Facebook Lite login problems lately? Let us know in the comments

Firefox Download Manager Extension

The standard Firefox download manager does not provide many information or options when downloading files. That can be a problem for some users who use the standard download manager and not an add-on or third party download manager for their Internet downloads.

The download manager extension dmextension replaces the standard download manager with an advanced version that provides additional functionality and information to the user.

The download manager window will display relevant information after installation of the add-on. This includes the source url, local download path and date the download was initiated.

The download manager window now contains buttons to access functions that have only been available by right-clicking the files listed in the window. Buttons are available to pause, retry or delete a download or to open the containing folder.

Another interesting feature of dmextension is the ability to change the location of the download manager. It is possible to open the download manager in a separate window or in the sidebar or a tab.

The options offer additional features like the ability to automatically launch downloads after they have been completed, showing alerts when all downloads have been finished, to automatically remove downloads from the list or remove buttons from the advanced download manager’s interface.

Dmextension is available for all Firefox 3.x versions. It can be downloaded from the Mozdev website.

Opera Releases Third Opera 10.5 Snapshot

The Opera developers have released a new snapshot release of the upcoming Opera 10.5 web browser. The last snapshot caused troubles for many users who experienced crashes among other things. One could say that it is not seldom that pre-alpha releases show that behavior.

One reason why the developers might have decided to release the third snapshot that close after the last one could have been the crashes that user’s experienced.

This new release fixes lots of the crashes that have been experienced by the users. It makes use of a new version of the Presto engine which the devs call a major update with over a hundred bug fixes and improvements. More »

Improve Firefox Private Browsing With Private Browsing Window Add-on

The Mozilla developers have added private browsing to the Firefox web browser since version 3.5. This basically allows a Firefox users to switch to a mode where no records of the web browsing session will be stored on the computer system. The way it is implemented is different from the incognito mode in the Google Chrome web browser. Firefox users can only use the private browsing mode if they agree to close all open windows and tabs in the web browser which means that there is not a way to work with a normal Firefox session and one private browsing session in another window.

This behavior is changed by the Firefox add-on Private Browsing Window which – as the name suggests – provides the means to launch a private browsing session in a new window without closing the standard session first. More »

Firefox 3.6 And Thunderbird 3.01 Portable [Software]

Mozilla has recently updated their Firefox web browser to Firefox 3.6 and the desktop email client Thunderbird to Thunderbird 3.01. Users of previous versions might want to test the new program versions first before they update the programs used in their standard work environment. Tests can for instance be performed to see if the new versions are compatible with the computer system and that settings and add-ons work as intended.

One of the best ways to perform such tests are portable versions as they do not alter the data of the installed versions. Firefox 3.6 portable and Thunderbird 3.01 portable have recently been released as well.

The portable version of the email client Thunderbird 3.01 can be extracted to any computer system folder. It can then be started from there to test the new version before the upgrade is performed.The same is true for the portable version of the web browser Firefox 3.6. More »

Microsoft Confirms Internet Explorer Vulnerability [Security]

Microsoft has confirmed a vulnerability in several Internet Explorer versions which has supposedly been used in the Chinese attack against Google and other companies. The vulnerability exists in Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 but the attacks seem to have been only targeting Internet Explorer 6 systems according to information posted in the vulnerability description at the Microsoft website.

The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted More »

Mozilla Lighting 1.0 Beta Released [Mozilla]

The Mozilla Lighting developers have released the first beta of the long awaited 1.0 version of the calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla SeaMonkey. Mozilla Lighting 1.0 beta 1 adds several new features to the calendar extension including seamless integration into the new Thunderbird 3.0 user interface, support for SeaMonkey 2.0 as a host application as well as improvements to the extensions’ stability, performance and memory consumption.

• Seamless integration into the new Thunderbird 3.0 user interface
• The different modes (calendar view, task view) are now diplayed in tabs
• Lightning now supports SeaMonkey 2.0 as a host application
• You can now define multiple alarms for a single event
• CalDAV support and interoperability with various CalDAV servers have been improved
• The application stability, performance and memory consumption have been improved
• A full list of changes that have gone into this release can be found on The Rumbling Edge website (LINK MISSING)

More »