Firefox

Amount of improvements and new features in upcoming version of Firefox web-browser made developers jump the version from 3.1 to 3.5 signifying the major improvements in their browser technology, here is an video showing exactly whats' new in Firefox 3.5.

Tab overload and its performance impact on system is a big annoyance most Firefox users experience, While there have been Firefox extensions like TooManyTabs to get rid of this tab-overload but none actually addressed the problem in a more practical way then the brand new Firefox addon Cluster Tabs for Firefox does, the addon allows users to easily create and save group of Firefox tabs as clusters unloading them from memory allowing easy retrieval later-on.

The best part is that every cluster has a unique anonymous cluster URL which can be shared with friends and published on internet like this.

In some interesting development at Firefox 3.1 status meeting held on 5 March 2009, Mozilla is considering changing upcoming Firefox browser version from 3.1 to 3.5 indicating increased scope, upcoming BETA of the popular web-browser will be called Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 but version jump to 3.5 is under consideration and a final decision is expected soon.

According to the meeting notes a lot has been changed and improved since the current version 3.0, the version jump from 3.1 to 3.5 signifies new features and improvements incorporated into the browser, after the upcoming Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 another BETA is expected before the final build is announced and released.

Few days ago my Firefox profile got corrupted and resulted in loss of essential data, Loosing your browser's saved passwords, bookmarks, settings and customizations can be very frustrating if a lot depends on it, While searching for Firefox profile backup solutions, I came across FEBE - A simple to use, highly customizable Firefox Environment Backup Extension, unlike other Firefox backup and restore solutions FEBE lets you automatically backup your browser data of choice to Box.Net free online storage service, allowing you to easily synchronize your office and home browsers.

We wrote about Microsoft preparing to release IE8 Beta 1 yesterday, and they released it today (link at the end of the post), Interestingly enough Firefox 4 Alpha 1 also got released today, the browser war seems all set to heat up once again.

Internet Explorer 8 looks promising this time, but Firefox is surely taking the lead, with Firefox 4 supporting Javascript 2 already into the pipeline, the future seems to be with Firefox.

At times you may want to delete a specific website address from the web-browsers location bar to preserve your privacy, in Firefox you just need to move your mouse over the website entry and press Shift + Delete key combination to delete the desired address from history.

For Internet Explorer follow the steps exactly as described below, do keep in mind this trick needs editing the registry and you need to be very careful with it:

1. Close any open Internet Explorer window.
2. Goto Start -> Run and Type regedit.exe press enter to launch registry editor.
3. Navigate to the following key : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs
4. Delete the desired URL.

If you are a regular web surfer you must have encountered annoying webpages disabling right-click menu, moving and resizing windows, hiding status bar and having all sorts of fancy scrolling status bar texts, However, Firefox provides users an easy way to stop these common javascript annoyances.

Just Follow the simple steps below to enhance you web-browsing experience:

1. In Firefox, Goto Tools -> Options.
2. Click Advanced button right next to the Enable Javascript chekbox (See image below).
3. Uncheck all options as shown below.



4. Click OK to exit.

"Stop AutoPlay" is a free firefox extension to block annoying autoplay media on webpages like background sounds and auto-start movies, Stop Autoplay will stop the auto-loading media and allow you to control whether to play it or not.

To block the autoplay of the embedded media, you have two modes to choose:

• Disable only the autoplay of the embedded media. In this case, the media file will still be loaded and embedded when page is loading. Press the Play button of the controller when you want.
• Block the media when loading a page. It will be replaced by a red frame with a play button in the center. Click in the red frame to load and then play it.

It is advised not to use this extension with Flashblock extension for Firefox.