Firefox 3, which was released on Tuesday, has a really cool Easter Egg. Just type "about:robots" in the address bar and nice tribute to the Firefox 3 robot mascot appears.

There are hundreds of things that Firefox can do. Extensions can enhance your Firefox, but browsing through hundreds of extensions can be time consuming and some of them are useless.

What are the most popular and most functional Firefox extenstions ?

1. Block ads on webpages : Adblock Plus
2. Use mouse gestures (powersurfing) : All-in-One Gestures
3. Download manager in a statusbar : Download Statusbar
4. Customize Google pages; remove ads : CustomizeGoogle
5. Discover interesting sites being recommended by others : StumbleUpon
6. Manage tabs (multiple links/duplicate/close etc ) : Tab Mix Plus
7. Look up any word in dictionary : Answers
8. Translate pages : Translator
9. Download videos : Video DownloadHelper
10. Block Flash ads or content : Flashblock
11. Blog about the current page : Performancing for Firefox
12. Clear the cache with one click on the toolbar : Clear Cache Button
13. Surf the web without leaving a trace in my computer : Stealther
14. View an Internet-Explorer-only webpage in Firefox : IE Tab
15. See weather information : ForecastFox
16. Download/upload files using ftp : FireFTP
17. Speed up Firefox : Fasterfox
18. Blog to Blogger service : BlogThis
19. Synchronize Firefox bookmarks on different computers : Bookmarks Synchronizer
20. Bypass mandatory registration of username and password for sites : BugMeNot
21. Be notified when new mail arrives at Gmail account : Gmail Notifier
22. See thumbnails of pages in session history : Reveal
23. Store and sync bookmarks online : Chipmark
24. Chat on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) : ChatZilla
25. Minimize Firefox to system tray : MinimizeToTray
26. Use Gmail for space : Gmail Space
27. Add/remove/change some features for sites : GreaseMonkey
28. Block phishing sites : NetcraftToolbar
29. Control iTunes using Firefox : FoxyTunes
30. Use a sidebar to control multiple functions : All-in-One Sidebar
31. Open PDF files in a new tab : PDF Download
32. Save all the images/media on a page : Magpie
33. Zoom in/out on an image : Image Zoom
34. Search the bookmarks : Locate in Bookmark Folders
35. Manage user styles for sites : Stylish
36. Edit bookmarks easily : Flat Bookmark Editing
37. Download/open all/selected links on a page : Linky
38. Add a powerful multi-functional preference bar : PrefBar
39. Add more search engines to Firefox search box : Mycroft
40. Create a tiny url : TinyUrl Creator
41. Track time spent browsing / on a project : TimeTracker
42. Add RSS feeds to web-based/desktop readers or reader extensions : LiveLines
43. Search up to 25 custom chosen sites : Roll your Own Search for Firefox
44. See Alexa information, search engine backlinks for a page : SearchStatus
45. Fill web forms with name/address/email etc : Autofill
46. See all tabs in one window : Viamatic foXpose
47. Automatically copy the selected text to clipboard : AutoCopy
48. Change user agent for certain sites : User Agent Switcher
49. Find the meaning of selected word in a dictionary : DictionarySearch
50. Create new different passwords for different sites : PasswordMaker

Firefox 3.0 will be shipping with a lot of bugs that the Mozzarella Foundation knows about, but cannot be bothered fixing. As Mozilla pushes to post Beta 1 of Firefox 3.0, it has asked developers to prioritize already-identified bugs so that the most important can be fixed. But according to notes of yesterday's Firefox 3.0 status meeting, that will leave about eight in ten bugs untouched.

"We have 700 bugs currently marked as blockers," the notes read. "That's too many. We're asking [requiring] component owners to set priorities on blockers, as a first pass of what bugs should be Beta 2 blockers. You want it to be about 10% of blockers, or what you can get done in four weeks."

Firefox 3.0 is months behind the schedule Mozilla set about midyear, when it said the browser would reach Beta 1 in late July and move into a second beta in September, both preceding a final release by the end of the year. Now, however, the company's Web site alludes to getting Beta 2 ready by the December holidays.

Source

Most people take advantage of Firefox's ability to store your passwords for the websites you visit. Did they realize that those passwords are easily accessible to anyone with access to your computer? Anyone who can spend two minutes on your computer (or laptop) can indeed view and even print your entire set of saved account and password pairs.

Simply go to Tools -> Options -> Security and click on the View Saved Password button. Then choose Show Passwords

If you share your computer with others, or if you just want to make absolutely sure your saved web passwords are significantly safer, you have three options:

1. Disable the "Remember Passwords" feature in Firefox so that the program never remembers any of your web passwords.
2. "Lock down Firefox": Create a new, master password that automatically locks all of your passwords.
3. "Lock down your computer": Use your computer's user accounts feature along with a screensaver password to require everyone whose uses your computer to login.

Disable Remember Passwords

If you want to permanently disable Firefox's "Remember Passwords" Feature,

1. Go to Tools > Options > Security
2. Click on the + sign next to the words "Saved Passwords" or, in newer versions of Firefox, click on the "Passwords" tab.
3. Click on the "View Saved Passwords" button.
4. Click on the "Remove All" button.
5. Click on the "Close" button.
6. Uncheck "Remember Passwords."
7. Click on the "OK" button.

Doing this clears all of your old web passwords and prevents Firefox from remembering any new web passwords in the future.

Set a Master Password

Another way to lock down Firefox is to set a "Master" password. This is a special password Firefox asks you to key in once per session. The master password is not set by default, and the average user will not set it by himself. I warn everyone I know that is using Firefox to set a master password. This is best achieved by showing them how I can look at all their saved passwords just by looking in the options-dialog.

To set a master password,

1. Go to Tools > Options > Security
2. Click on the + sign next to the words "Saved Passwords" or, in newer versions of Firefox, click on the "Passwords" tab.
3. Click on the "Set Master Password" button.
4. Key in a new "master" password.
5. Click on OK.

If you already have tried this lighter and fast Firefox last month don't lose the opportunity to try out this new version (for Windows) that saves more RAM.

We've tested FWE 1.1 memory usage (only 27MB) opening three websites (CNN, Youtube, Netscape).
The same scenario with Firefox 2.0.0.7 showed more than 60MB of system memory used.

FWE 1.1 Features are:

• Portable (no installation required, no need to remove your existing Firefox)
• Low memory usage
• Fast page rendering
• Low Firefox start-up time

Download

Server # 1 - Server # 2

Screenshots

Installed extensions (NoScript, Tab Mix Plus, Firesomething)

Firefox Portable 1.5.0.7 is really fast and doesn't waste your system memory. With the Noscript extension you don't have to fear any Firefox 1.5.0.7 security flaws.

ChangeLog

*****************
FWE Version 1.1
*****************

What's new:
removed some extensions and the script file that assigns high CPU priority because some anti-virus detect it as trojan virus (just a false positive)

Browser:
Firefox Portable 1.5.0.7

Extensions:
NoScript 1.1.7.2
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6
Firesomething 1.7.0

Tweaks:
Some settings in Firefox configuration

*****************
FWE Version 1.0
*****************

Browser:
Firefox Portable 1.5.0.7

Extensions:
NoScript 1.1.7.2
DOM Inspector 1.8.0.7
Flashblock 1.5.4.1
Fasterfox 2.0.0
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6
Firesomething 1.7.0

Tweaks:
script file that assigns high CPU priority to the browser

Mike Schroepfer has announced that Mobile Firefox is coming in a big way.

When you think of a mobile browser, you may first think about Opera and WebKit, but Mozilla wants to change this. We have already seen the seeds of change as Mike points out:

You can already get a Mozilla-based browser for the Nokia N800 and Firefox is a key part of Ubuntu Mobile and the new Intel Internet Project, and most recently ARM has put serious effort towards Firefox on mobile devices.

Mike announced:

• Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla2. This means we will make core platform decisions with mobile devices as first-class citizens.
• We will ship a version of “Mobile Firefox” which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL.
• Mozilla will expand its small team of full-time mobile contributors to focus on the technology and application needs of mobile devices. In particular two new folks just joined:
  • Christian Sejersen, recently the head of browsers at Openwave which has shipped over 1 billion mobile browsers, joined Mozilla Monday. He’ll be heading up the platform engineering effort and setting up a R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark.
  • Brad Lassey just joined Mozilla from France Telecom R&D. He’s already been an active contributor to our mobile efforts and can now focus on Mozilla mobile full time.

It seems like more and more people are looking at the number of phones out there versus computers and want to jump in.

Should Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, iPhone Web Browser and Microsoft Deepfish developers be worried already? Safari for iPhone is locked to the iPhone, which doesn't let you install third-party applications. Opera Mini (and to an extent Deepfish) is aimed at low-end devices that can't run a full browser. So I'd say that no, they don't have anything to worry about.

Opera Mobile, perhaps. Either way, we're looking at a year or two out, because this initiative is tied to the Mozilla2 overhaul, which means it'll be either contemporary with or after Firefox 4.

Of course, that also means that the average phone, by the time this comes out, may be able to handle full browsers like Opera Mobile, so things like Deepfish and Opera Mini might be on their way out. It's hard to say.

These have been around for quite sometime now but newer Firefox users will find these interesting.

You can type these in the address bar and press enter to access the pages:

about:cache - Shows you some detailed stats on your disk and memory cache which includes the directory and the list of files/web pages accessed and stored there.
about:config - Pointed this out way back. Allows you to configure Firefox in-depth.
about:plugins - Lists all the installed plug-ins in your browser.
about:credits - The long-ish list of people who have helped in building our favorite browser.
about:Mozilla - It seems to be a quote from a passage in "The Book of Mozilla." You can’t find that anywhere though. Reads:

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

What is Firefox Wonder Edition ?

Firefox Wonder Edition is a special version of Firefox that combines one of the most efficient Firefox build with special extras that make it the fastest Firefox around for Windows.

I'm already using Firefox. Can I download and test the Wonder Edition?

Yes : You don't have to remove your existing version of Firefox to try Firefox Wonder Edition. It's a portable application so no installation is required. Simply download and execute the self-extracting archive: Firefox Wonder Edition is ready to start (just remember to close any Firefox windows before launching it).
You can keep it on your hard drive or copy it to any USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod/MP3 player, etc and use on any Windows computer; it's also useful if you're working on a computer in which you have insufficient privileges to install anything: just insert your USB drive and start Firefox.

Why is Firefox Wonder Edition so fast ?

Firefox Wonder Edition makes more efficient use of system memory and CPU than the Firefox build you're probably using and it comes with some useful add-ons to enhance even more the overall speed and security like Fasterfox, Flashblock and NoScript.

Download

Server # 1 - Server # 2

Version 1.o no longer available; Version 1.1 will be released soon

Important

Read this clarification before downloading