Mozilla Archives

The looming browser war on Windows RT: Microsoft wants to go back to “Return to the Digital Dark Ages”

Do you know or even heard about Netscape Navigator?

It has been the best browser from its initial launch in December 1994 to its death (almost dead, and bought by AOL) in 1998. It was buried by AOL in 2008.

Netscape Navigator was not defeated but was murdered, by Micro$oft. Sometimes, this is often referred to as the First Browser War. As a long time user of Navigator, I always believe Navigator was murdered. The murder is Mirco$oft. The ammunition used by the murder mainly includes: 1). monopoly in the PC operating system; 2). huge cash pile; and 3).the uninformed mass.

So, The notorious Internet Explorer dominated in almost all Windows PCs, and the digital dark age started. The antitrust slap on M$ could not revive Netscape Navigator. Thankfully, the Firefox, somewhat linked to Navigator and Mozilla, and Chrome, from the Chocolate Factory, lighted the sky.

Now, Micro$oft … Read the rest

Silent update of IE from January 2012

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

Finally, Micro$oft knows how to do a silent update for your IE browser. Maybe just learned from Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Anyway, this is a smart move to stop or at least to slow down the loss of market share (to Chrome and Firefox). M$ won the browser war against Netscape by bundling IE to Windows since Windows 95. But is has been a loser in the same battlefield against Firefox, nor against Chrome.

Security, speed, and W3C standard are the major reasons tech geeks abandon IE. IE 8 and IE 9 did have some improvement in security and speed. But the compliance with standards is still not as good as Chrome or Firefox.

So, M$ silently updates the IE browser for most users; a lot of users will not know because they already switched to other better browsers.… Read the rest

Firefox 8 cracks third-party add-ons

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

Everyday millions of third-party add-ons are installed for Firefox. Some of them can impose serious privacy and security holes for the computer.

Finally, in the latest release, Firefox 8 disables third-party add-ons. This is a correct step among so many mistakes in recent releases.

According to the official Mozilla Add-ons Blog:

These add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons.

So, in Firefox 8, users must opt-in to add-on installation. This means Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted into the addition.

Anyway, this is a positive move. What do you think about this?… Read the rest

How to surf safely? use webmail

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

This is part 3 of the Safe Surfing Guide series. You may check other parts as well to read the complete safe surfing guide.

Malicious code and malicious link can be easily hidden in emails. When you open emails, the execution of the malicious code may be triggered. Or, the malicious link may open automatically and download nasty things to your local computer.

Another security issue for your email is phishing. The sender pretends to be someone else, e.g., Facebook, or your banker. If you follow the link, you are trapped.

If you follow this Safe Surfing Guide series, you may wonder how this can happen after your install antivirus and anti-malware software already. The reason is simple.

All antivirus and anti-malware software can only find “known” threats, although some software can use certain patterns to find new threats. Most of the time, only after the virus … Read the rest