Firefox - Page 2

IE 7 To Adopt Firefox RSS Icon

January 3, 2006

About three months ago, the Microsoft RSS Team posted a request for feedback on various proposed RSS icons.

About two months later, Microsoft announced that they would be using the same RSS icon as Firefox.

I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

Actually, the icons aren’t identical, but they are very close:

Firefox 1.5:
Internet Explorer 7:

Shortly after the Internet Explorer announcement, the Outlook team announced that they’ll be using the same icon in the next version of Outlook (currently known as Outlook 12).

I find it surprising that Microsoft would be willing to work together with its biggest competitor in the browser market — and vice versa. The only possible explanation for such cooperation that I can think of is a genuine attention to the needs of the end-user on the part of Microsoft and Mozilla. Which is really good; it means a further step towards XML feed identification consistency, something sorely lacking as evidenced by the array of XML buttons available today.

New Extension from Google: Blogger Web Comments

December 17, 2005

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In addition to a phishing protection extension, Google has released a “Blogger Web Comments” extension for Mozilla Firefox, which shows you what bloggers across the Internet are saying about the websites you’re visiting.

Although Google gives the impression that it’s Blogger-only, their FAQ says in question 4 that it uses Google Blog Search, meaning it supports all blogs (yippee!).

The extension puts an icon in Firefox’s status bar. When you click on it, you get a context menu:

Google Blogger Web Comments: Icon and Context Menu

When you click “View Comments,” it shows you a list:

Google Blogger Web Comments: Comment List

A neat idea, but I haven’t discovered any interesting blogs (except mine, of course ) using the extension yet.

Phishing Protection from Google

December 15, 2005

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Google released a cool new extension for Mozilla Firefox on Wednesday called “Google Safe Browsing.” It alerts you when you visit a known phishing site. A phishing site is a website designed to trick you into divulging financial or other personal information, usually for the purpose of identity theft or fraud.

Of course, if you follow basic anti-phishing rules (mainly, don’t click links in any email asking for information; type the links in manually), you should be safe from phishing threats, but this adds a nice extra level of protection.

Here’s a screenshot of what the alerts look like:

First Impressions: Firefox 1.5 vs. 1.0.7

December 14, 2005

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After three release candidates, Firefox 1.5 is finally released! I downloaded Firefox 1.5 and, even though I was expecting it, I was surprised to see that at first glance it looked identical to Firefox 1.0. Except for one thing I noticed right away on which I could not seem to put my finger. I finally figured out that the menu and toolbar styles were a tad different. Slight, but noticeable.

Menus and toolbars in Firefox 1.5:

And in Firefox 1.0.7:

In addition, after some browsing I realized that the Live Bookmarks icon has moved. Firefox 1.0.7 featured it in the status bar:

… While Firefox 1.5 puts it in the Location Bar (i.e. the address bar):

On a different note, several of my extensions that did work in Firefox 1.0.7 didn’t work with Firefox 1.5, but thankfully none of the incompatible extensions were used by myself very often anyway. One of them that didn’t work was a tab-reorganization extension, obviously due to the fact that tab-reorganization is now native to Firefox in version 1.5.

I’ve also noticed on a site that I made that Firefox now displays it slightly better than version 1.0.7 did. Of course, probably only I would notice this detail, since I made the site. But this is a visible sign to me that the rendering engine has undergone improvement.

If I find anything else worth noting, I’ll let you know. You can download Firefox 1.5 here.

Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Released

October 15, 2005

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The Mozilla Foundation has recently released the second beta version of the upcoming Firefox 1.5 browser update. Beta 2 includes numerous bug and security fixes as well as updated website rendering and an improved automatic updating system. Those interested in trying out the beta can go to the Firefox Project page. Mozilla has also released the second beta of their Thunderbird email client. Go to the Thunderbird beta 2 page for more info.

Since I’m so reliant upon my extensions, I personally will be waiting until the final version of 1.5 is released to avoid extension compatibility problems. If you’ve tried the new Mozilla betas I’d love to hear your opinion of them.