Recently it has been revealed Windows 10 changes the way users can set the default browser. Furthermore, when users upgrade to Windows 10 Microsoft’s Edge browser becomes the default browser. If you trying to make Firefox your default browser from within Firefox (Tools > Options > General Tab > Make Default) you will get this unfriendly message: Windows 10 does not allow a browser to set itself as default browser. Microsoft has taken away the API functionality of a browser to make itself the default browser in Windows 10. Trying to set the default browser the traditional method give this annoying pop-up which…
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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…
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…
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…
Currently Firefox users can go into the about:config and customize the preference browser.newtab.url to a specific web address (URL) or even set it to about:blank for a blank tab. However, so can malicious/unwanted software (McAfee, Ask, AVG, Babylon, Yahoo, etc.) by directly making changes the user’s prefs.js profile file. However, many novice Firefox users don’t know about or how to work within the about:config interface. Mozilla’s solution to this as purposed in Bug 118285 (The browser.newtab.url preference is abused and should be removed) is to only allow (approved) add-ons to change the behavior of the new tab page. This would be landed in Firefox…
This is a really an odd one and it affects both Chrome and Firefox (possibly Safari as well), but NOT Internet Explorer. If you have had unexplained crashes while/after visiting a WordPress (WP) site, it is possible it could be caused by this bug. The good news is this bug has been reported to Mozilla [Bug 1174811] and it was patched on Wednesday (June 17th). Just not sure yet when it is going to be pushed out. Firefox 39 is due out in less than two weeks (June 30th), but then there could also be a 38.0.6 release between now and then (though…
Mozilla released an update for Firefox 38 regular and ESR versions on Thursday, May 14th with the Firefox 38.0.1 release. Fixes in this version include: Systems with first generation NVidia Optimus graphics cards may crash on start-up Users who import cookies from Google Chrome can end up with broken websites Large animated images may fail to play and may stop other images from loading Complete details can be found in the Firefox 38.0.1 Release Notes. Depending on their update settings, users will be prompted to update within the next 24-48 hours. Users can also manually update by going to the Firefox Help Menu…
Last night Mozilla announced on The Mozilla Security Blog: Deprecating Non-Secure HTTP. There’s pretty broad agreement that HTTPS is the way forward for the web. In recent months, there have been statements from IETF, IAB (even the other IAB), W3C, and the US Governmentcalling for universal use of encryption by Internet applications, which in the case of the web means HTTPS. After a robust discussion on our community mailing list, Mozilla is committing to focus new development efforts on the secure web, and start removing capabilities from the non-secure web. While they don’t specify in details as to “removing capabilities from…
Google researchers announced recently of the POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) Attack which hackers take advantage of sites (around 0.3%) still using the outdated (introduced in 1996) SSLv3 security protocol. Mozilla has announced that SSLv3 will be disabled, unfortunately it won’t be until Firefox 34 which will be released on November 25th. However, user can (and are urged to) install the SSL Version Control extension which will disable SSLv3 on the fly. I would not be surprised though if Mozilla pushes out Firefox 33.1 update to have SSLv3 disabled in the coming days or weeks. Google Chrome is already testing changes to disable…