Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

The search box in Firefox (located in the upper right corner) can be very useful if you put it to good use. To add some search engines you could go to this site that Mozilla has put together or there is an even easier way now.

The Add To Search Bar extension lets you right-click on any search box and it will give you an option to add that site’s search field to the search box. The quick 3-step process of adding a search field can be seen in the screenshot that I took above and you’ll notice that you can customize the icon that is associated with a search.

Before this came extension came around I was able to find most of the search engines that I wanted to add by using this site. I love what a simple thing this extension does yet it is so incredibly useful. This is definitely something that should be built into Firefox.

Thanks for the tip Chris!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 18, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has posted Firefox 2.0.0.7 which is an extremely critical update for all Firefox users out there. There is only one thing that has been fixed, but it’s a QuickTime vulnerability that could compromise Firefox and your computer.

Petko D. Petkov was the person who found the exploit, and says that he discovered it nearly a year ago. At the time he had actually come across two of these vulnerabilities, but only one of them had ever been fixed. Now nearly a year later he took it upon himself to show "how a Low risk issue can be turned into a very easy to perform HIGH risk attack." To sum it up as long as Firefox is set as the default browser it will open the link and execute some code, and in Petkov’s example the Windows Calculator is launched.

Here’s what the Mozilla Security Blog had to say about the issue:

If Firefox is the default browser when a user plays a malicious media file handled by Quicktime, an attacker can use a vulnerability in Quicktime to compromise Firefox or the local machine. This can happen while browsing or by opening a malicious media file directly in Quicktime. So far this is only reproducible on Windows.

Petkov provided proof of concept code that may be easily converted into an exploit, so users should consider this a very serious issue.

According to Petkov this exploit is actually cross-platform, although myself and BetaNews both failed to get it to work on Vista. As of right now this appears to be isolated to the Firefox browser, but QuickTime is installed with iTunes by default which makes the chances of people being exploited much more serious. So all Firefox and QuickTime users are urged to upgrade to the newest Firefox 2.0.0.7:

Note: These download links use Mozilla’s load balancing, which is better than what some sites are doing by linking directly to the executable. The download should be posted on the official Firefox.com domain shortly, but QuickTime users should upgrade as soon as possible.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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The jury is still out on whether Chromebooks will sell like hotcakes (we’re guessing not), but no matter to Mozilla. The organization behind Firefox has plans to develop its own operating system for mobile devices — a clear shot across the bow at Google’s browser-based Chrome OS. In a page on Mozilla’s own wiki, a handful of senior developers announced their intentions to create a “complete, standalone operating system for the open web” running HTML5 apps. The OS, codenamed “Boot to Gecko,” will be designed with tablets and handsets in mind, says Mike Shaver, the foundation’s VP of technical strategy. And here’s the fascinating part: the OS will rely on Google’s own Android drivers and kernel to boot the device. In a Google Groups discussion thread, the lead devs said they chose Android over a Linux stack since so many device makers have focused their efforts on Android, and it makes sense to “reuse its lower layers.” Still, they insist that they otherwise intend to borrow from it as little as possible. Obviously, don’t hold your breath for Firebooks, as the project’s very much in its infancy, but in the meantime there’s some mighty interesting conversation happening in that discussion thread about Mozilla’s lofty end game: breaking “the stranglehold of proprietary devices over the mobile device world.”

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Mozilla planning a Chrome OS-like operating system for phones and tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Labs isn’t the only thing winding down in Mountain View, it seems Google’s Firefox toolbar is also kaput. Citing exponential growth in the browser space, the outfit declared that the Google toolbar for Firefox is no longer necessary — modern browsers are just too darn capable. Support will continue for older versions of the browser, but Firefox 5 will have to stand on its own. Still, El Goog admits that dropping the toolbar kills more than a few features, and is offering a list of similarly featured add-ons to users via the defunct toolbar’s help page. Not enough? Head on over to the announcement’s comment page and join the peanut gallery, a few clever legumes seem to have uncovered a FF5 workaround. As for the rest of us, it’s not like we didn’t know Google had its own browser (and interests) to take care of, right?

Google says goodbye to browser toolbar, drops support for Firefox 5 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on May 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Today is a big day for Mozilla because it marks the last version of Firefox 1.5 that will ship. Last month Mozilla kindly extended the "end-of-life" date from April 24, 2007 to today in order to get one final release in. This last release was definitely necessary though since Mozilla had never prompted 1.5.x users to upgrade to Firefox 2, but that is about to change.

The Firefox homepage has not been updated with the new versions yet so I have put together two downloaders for each of the new versions. The downloaders below use Mozilla’s load balancing techniques to distribute the downloads across their mirrors, so you don’t have to worry about hammering their servers:

Download Firefox 1.5.0.12:

Download Firefox 2.0.0.4:

The list of changes in these builds haven’t been posted yet, but should be available on the release notes for later today. The release notes for Firefox 1.5.0.12 will be here and 2.0.0.4 will be here. However, there are 117 bugs that have been fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.4, of which 24 caused crashes, 2 were memory leaks, 18 were regressions, 2 were privacy-related bugs and 12 were security-sensitive. So, as always, the upgrade is highly recommended.

Overall it looks like most visitors to our site have made the upgrade to Firefox 2, although Mozilla said last month that about 40% of their users are still stuck on an older version of Firefox. For the last 30-days here is how the different versions of Firefox stack up on our site:

The good news is that Firefox 1.5.0.12 is finally supposed to prompt existing users to make the upgrade to Firefox 2. This seamless transition is what a lot of people have been waiting for, but I wish they would have gotten it done a little sooner than 7-months after the release of Firefox 2.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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