I’m hoping that the new Firefox 3.6.0 release fixes the constant crashing of the said internet browser over the past couple of days. So after a couple of crashes this morning, I decided it was enough, restarted my computer only to find more crashing… so I found the 3.6.0 update and proceeded to download the new version.

After installation, I was greeted by the usual “You’ve updated Firefox, take a look at the new features.” Only this time, there was something to take note of… new themes!

Now, I’m not one for themes since I know it slows down my browser (unless of course it is very very practical), but I decided to take a look anyways.

And then I decided to choose this theme… It was nice, colorful and not very obtrusive. But there was 1 problem… I was using a Mac and the theme didn’t jive so well with my favicons. So I went back to my original theme (Stratini: Small buttons, includes favicons so I can bookmark my many sites (look at first 2 pics)).

But it didn’t stop there as I had to try this on my PC as well. But behold all of Windows glory, the themes actually work and looks good too! Pretty excited… except for the fact that I’m waiting for my first “new” crash of the day. Update now!

Move over McDonald’s, you’re not the only one serving billions.  Mozilla announced today that their browser, Firefox, has officially surpassed 1 billion downloads.  Quite the achievement considering half of those downloads happened in the past 17 months.  As an avid Firefox user, I applaud their success!

As reported over at Ars Technica, Firefox has an estimated 22.5% of the market share for Internet browsers, making it 2nd place to Internet Explorer.  Considering Firefox doesn’t come standard with Windows, let alone any operating systems, I’ll read that as a major win for Mozilla.

[ala Ars Technica]

Two weeks ago I brought you the happy happy funtime news that Mozilla has designed a mobile version of their Firefox browser for your cell phones. Well, on Monday the news broke, along with leaked photos of the browser and some information about the features.

I won’t take up a lot of space here telling you all about it. I’ll just link to the leaks and let you drool like I did… (Note… either the author of that site has terrible grammar, or else it is converted from another language to English. I recommend you just look at the photos like I did…)

If you thought the Cola Wars of the 80’s and 90’s were bad, just wait until you have to start choosing between mobile web browsers on your phone.

Obviously, there are the browsers that mobile web-enabled phones ship with – Internet Explorer, Safari, and Chrome. Plus there are a handful of browsers available for download – things like Thunderhawk, Opera, Skyfire and others. But in Monday’s San Jose Mercury News, Mozilla CEO John Lilly let slip information of an upcoming release of FireFox Mobile.

Unwiredview.com has the excerpts from the interview, perhaps the most revealing of which is the timeline – “a few weeks”.

With all the mobile news we’ve been reporting on here at TNMS over the past couple of weeks – T-Mobile’s removal of bandwidth caps, Flickr producing a mobile-optimized version of their site, the introduction of the G1 “Dream” using Google’s Android OS – this could be the biggest news of them all.

Here at TNMS, we’ve made no secret of our preference for FireFox over Internet Explorer. Now with the option of having FireFox on a mobile web-enabled browser, the good folks at Mozilla are establishing a firm grip on their niche in the Internet Browser market.

How often do you see pop-up ads? Once a day? A couple of times a day? Maybe you’ve followed our instructions, downloaded FireFox and installed Ad Block Plus and you don’t get any pop-ups at all! Well if you still get pop-ups, be careful as to what you’re clicking! Why? Ars Technica reports of a study conducted:

[The] Psychology Department of North Carolina State University, crafted a set of four fake dialog boxes. All of them contained the following warning: “The instruction at ’0x77f41d24 referenced memory at ’0x595c2a4c.’ The memory could not be ‘read.’ Click OK to terminate program.” One of the warnings was indistinguishable from the standard Windows XP system dialog, but the remaining three were had a number of warning signs that should tip off users to potential malware.

In all cases, mousing over the “OK” button would cause the cursor to turn into a hand button, behavior more typical of a browser control; all dialogs also had minimize and maximize buttons, while a second added a browser status bar to the bottom of the window. Finally, the most blatant one alternated between black text and a white background and a white-on-black theme. All of these should metaphorically scream, “This is not safe!”

Point of the study is to show that ad developers are crafty, and will do their best to mimic your operating system and make it look like a serious error, when in fact, its just a ploy to get their spyware onto your computer.

So when surfing, be careful clicking, unless of course you’ve followed our stories and have FireFox with ABP! Happy surfing!

Just the other day, Corey brought us Google’s new internet browser that is considerably faster than anything out there. There is just one caveat… they get full ownership of everything you make, write, download while on Chrome. And that was just within the first day or two. Since then a couple of things have been brought to Google’s attention:

1. The EULA or the End User License Agreement (that you normally accept because you can’t sit there and read about 100 pages of legal jargon about what is and is not allowed) will be rewritten and will hopefully be fixed soon.
2. When will Chrome leave beta and become a full fledged browser? GMail has been out for how many years? And that too is still in beta… Anyways, there are still bugs and since it still is in “beta” it is allowed to have these bugs… although maybe not as big as this…

So until Google comes up with a new EULA, I’ll stick with FireFox and my add-ons which I love dearly!

As I had posted before, Firefox has made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most downloads in a single day, over 8 million! What makes Firefox 3.0 so special? Tom’s Hardware has a short video about just some of the new features.

In addition to Tom’s video, hit the bump for a few screenshots of what my modified Firefox browser looks like as well as a list of addons and why I have installed them. Also, if you are interested in downloading Firefox 3.0, check the link on the right column with the cute little Foxkeh!

Here, we have my browser. Since I am on my work laptop, my screen resolution isn’t the best but it works for me for now… Anyways, you can see many differences between Internet Explorer and Firefox. Besides the “Vista Aero” theme that I have added, a lot of the major differences are subtle, but provide the user with powerful tools that can increase productivity.

• Delicious Bookmarks (A) – del.icio.us is a Yahoo! website that allows users who register to keep track of bookmarks where ever you go and you can access them from any computer with internet access. As you can see in the picture above (left most window), I have over 175 bookmarked sites that I can access anywhere. You can even see them at del.icio.us/pacozorro.
• Adblock Plus (B) – Adblock will block those annoying picture ads on all those websites. Oh will it save you the hassle of not looking at senseless dribble that really doesn’t pertain to the website (unless of course its our site and in which case our ads are all tech driven).
• Forcastfox (C) – Weather that takes up little to no room on your browser. Its always helpful and it even has radar (green orb to the left)
• Greasemonkey (D) – Using little bits of Javascript code (a lot of codes can be found here), you can make small tweaks to different websites or actions that you may use on a daily basis.
• Download StatusBar (not shown) – Adds a downloads status bar to the right of the “Done” status
• Finally, this isn’t an addon, but I love adding my most favorite sites on a bar (E) that can be accessed so easily.

Hopefully, this has given you a small sample of what Firefox can really do with little modifications.  Mozilla has a great support team and many people who can help you within their forums.  Check it out!

If you haven’t already heard of Firefox/Mozilla, now is the time to start. Firefox is an internet browser (like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer) that has become the dominant browser of choice due to its security features, customization and reliability. Included are tab browsing, download managers, like bookmarking along with hundreds of downloadable 3rd party applications to make your browsing an enjoyable one.

The folks at Mozilla wanted to break a new record for number of downloads in a 24 hour period. They set their lofty goal at 5 million downloads and by the days end, they surpassed that goal with a total of 8.8 million downloads. Translation? That is roughly 5,500 downloads a minute. Rather impressive I must say. So impressive that their Microsoft counterparts decided to bake them a cake for their release (the phrase “the cake is a lie” comes from Valve’s video game Portal.

To read more about Mozilla and Firefox, hit ArsTechnica for the main story. To find out more about what Firefox is, visit their website or their wiki page.