Looking back on it now, the first time I truly felt the need for a note-taking app was when I started researching note-taking apps. I was just looking for a simple tool to save ideas about upcoming articles or jot down an occasional to-do list. More »
This article was written on December 03, 2008 by CyberNet.
Last week Cody sent me in a tip for an experimental Firefox extension that I just had to try out. It’s called TooManyTabs, and it essentially adds another tab bar to your Firefox window where you can temporarily store some of your existing tabs. To do this all you have to do is hover over a tab, and you’ll see the tab’s icon turn into an up arrow (as seen in the screenshot above). Clicking on that arrow will move the tab to the new temporary bar.
Why would you want to do this? I’ve got a list of features below, but one of the nicest things is that it will free up some of your memory. It does this by unloading the page from the memory that is consumed by Firefox, which means any forms you’ve filled out will be lost once you’ve moved it to the temporary tab bar. To test this out I opened up 25 tabs which ended up consuming 184MB of memory. After moving them all to the more temporary tab bar that was created by the extension it brought the memory usage down to 133MB. Not too bad.
Here are some of the other things that you can use TooManyTabs for:
One nice thing that I have noticed is that if Firefox does get restarted the tabs stored by the extension will automatically get restored. So you don’t have to worry about losing them if Firefox closes.
Get TooManyTabs for Firefox
Thanks Cody!
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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We know how Mozilla must feel. It spends every waking hour tweaking and perfecting Firefox to eke out as much performance as possible, only to see it all ruined by lousy add-ons that weigh the browser down like a block of cement. It’s apparently now had enough, however, and has gone as far as to publish a list that exposes the worst offenders. As of this writing, the two biggest drags on the browser by far are the FoxLingo translator / dictionary and Firebug developer tool add-on which, according to Mozilla, each make the browser 74 percent slower to start up. That list is just part of a broader crackdown on poor performing add-ons. Mozilla says it’s also instituting automated performance testing of the top 100 add-ons in its gallery, and that it will begin reaching out to developers directly to get them to improve performance (and even provide them with some new tools to help out). Hit up the link below to see how some of your favorite add-ons stack up.
Mozilla shames developers with list of slow performing Firefox add-ons originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This article was written on February 14, 2008 by CyberNet.
Something you may not realize is that Firefox has a setting that will prefetch websites and images to improve the user’s browsing experience, and it’s actually enabled by default. It will utilize your browser’s idle time to prefetch images and websites as determined by the webmasters.
Mozilla has an entire page setup to describe how the link prefetching mechanism works, and here is the summary that they provide:
Link prefetching is a browser mechanism, which utilizes browser idle time to download or prefetch documents that the user might visit in the near future. A web page provides a set of prefetching hints to the browser, and after the browser is finished loading the page, it begins silently prefetching specified documents and stores them in its cache. When the user visits one of the prefetched documents, it can be served up quickly out of the browser’s cache.
Webmasters can enable the prefetching by placing code like this in their website:
<link rel="prefetch" href="/images/big.jpeg">
The HREF is what points to the website or image that needs to be prefetched, and in this example a fullsize version of a thumbnail is cached so that it loads faster. This can obviously be a useful feature, but it can also result in unwanted cookies and cached items showing up on your computer. Even Google uses this to cache the first result that is displayed.
If you don’t want Firefox to do this then you’ll have to manually go and disable it:
I’m not quite sure how I feel about Mozilla prefetching content without the users ever knowing. To me that is something they should ask users whether they want to enabled it when initially setting up the browser, especially since it can store cookies for websites that you yourself never actually visit.
What do you think about the prefetching?
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on July 09, 2009 by CyberNet.
Ever since we did a browser comparison test last year there have been a lot of emails and comments asking if we were going to update the article to reflect new releases. I thought about adding in the new browsers as they came out, but decided against it for one reason or another. Instead I thought it would be better to just do a fresh article, and include even more stats than last time.
The main reason that I thought this was worthy of its own article was because a lot has changed in the last year. Since March 2008 we’ve seen major milestone releases from each of big browser makers, and to top it off Google Chrome has come onto the scene. These browsers have also shifted focus from adding nifty new features to diving deep into the code trying to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.
We’ve got a lot in store for you today ranging from JavaScript speed tests to memory usage comparisons, and we’ll even throw in some Acid 3 coverage. Lets go ahead and dive right in.
Notes about testing:
The main speed test that everyone seems to use for JavaScript is SunSpider. Last year we compared the browsers with the SunSpider test prior to writing our first comparison, and so we wanted to try something different. That’s when we turned to the MooTools SlickSpeed Test. It tests various operations against a lot of common JavaScript libraries including MooTools and JQuery.
So which one did we go with this year? Well, we did both. We ran each test, SunSpider and SlickSpeed, a total of three times each. Then we averaged the results together to get the pretty little graphs you see below. For both of them the goal was for the browser to complete the tests as fast as possible, and so a lower number is better.
Sunspider Test:
MooTools SlickSpeed Test:
I used the same method for testing website load times as I did last year. It’s a website called Numion Stopwatch that uses some fancy JavaScript to monitor when a page has finished loading, and then spits out the amount of time it took to complete.
We used two extremely popular sites for these tests: ESPN and the Wall Street Journal. Each site was loaded up three times in each browser, and then the results were averaged together. Obviously we were targeting which browser could load the websites the fastest, and so a lower number is better:
ESPN Load Time:
Wall Street Journal Load Time:
I’m sure this is what many of you were looking for. As geeks we like to have a lean browser that knows how to handle itself without us having to keep a watchful eye over it. That’s why we ran numerous different tests to see just how well a browser controls its memory usage when loading a decent number of sites, and also whether it’s able to release that memory once you’ve closed the tabs.
Here’s a rundown of the order in which we ran the tests to collect the stats:
And here are the results. The best browser for each test is highlighted in green, and the worst is highlighted in red.
| Startup | 10 Sites | 25 Sites | 25 Sites After 10 Minutes | Close Tabs | |
| Firefox 3.5 | 29.5MB | 63.2MB | 136.0MB | 135.8MB | 69.3MB |
| Google Chrome 2.0 | 29.2MB | 152.8MB | 279.9MB | 172.4MB | 56.9MB |
| Google Chrome 3.0 Beta | 39.5MB | 260.9MB | 389.4MB | 197.6MB | 53.7MB |
| Internet Explorer 8 | 37.0MB | 184.3MB | 400.8MB | 402.4MB | 67.6MB |
| Opera 9.64 | 21.3MB | 62.2MB | 166.4MB | 151.6MB | 135.9MB |
| Opera 10 Beta | 25.5MB | 70.4MB | 175.0MB | 179.0MB | 186.2MB |
| Safari 4 | 28.5MB | 109.5MB | 231.2MB | 241.8MB | 198.4MB |
Last year we also took a look at how the various browsers scored on the Acid 3 test. At the time a Safari nightly build was the closest to perfection by reaching a score of 86 out of 100. Today, however, is a different story. A few browsers can handle the test perfectly, some are very very close, and others (yeah, IE) have some work cut out for themselves.
Note: Click on any of the thumbnails for a full-size rendering.
So which browser is the winner? I wouldn’t really say any of them outshine the others. The problem that we are going to face with performance tests from here on out is that the browsers will all come very close to each other in the standings… often within a fraction of a second from one another. As the browsers continue to get optimized we will see these times get even closer, and performance might become less of a concern which picking which one we want to use. So I’d say to pick the browser you feel the most comfortable with, because it’s getting hard to distinguish one browser from another when it comes to performance.
What’s your take on the stats? Anything stand out to you? Will you be switching browsers based upon anything you learned here?
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on November 29, 2006 by CyberNet.
I just noticed that there was a new extension posted to Mozilla’s Add-on page and it will notify you if there are any unread items in Google Reader. This may sound similar to the extension that I mentioned last week but this Google Reader Notifier does a few things that the other didn’t do. First, and foremost, it has a notification window that will slide up whenever Google Reader has an unread item. This is important for those people who want to know immediately when there is a new message because the Statusbar icons just don’t stand out enough.
As you can see in the Preferences screenshot above you can also adjust the duration between updates and have it mark the items as read when you click on the icon. This isn’t quite as full-featured as I would like because the one ”critical” thing that is missing would be a listing of the unread sites/stories in the notifier. That would give you the information you need to determine whether it is worth going to the Google Reader to check the unread items. I’m sure that feature will be coming soon but for the time being this will tide people over quite well.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on May 17, 2007 by CyberNet.
Secunia launched a free online Software Inspector last December, and since then over 350,000 inspections have been completed. As we’ve discussed before, the service scans your computer looking for specific applications (Acrobat, QuickTime, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Firefox, Thunderbird, Internet Explorer, Opera, and more) to make sure that you’re running the latest version.
I ran the scan myself to see how well I keep my programs up-to-date, and it turns out that I do a pretty good job:
However, Secunia is reporting that not everyone cares so much about updating their software. Out of the 350,000 scans that they have done, here are the percentages of people running out-dated versions of the applications:
| Application | Out-dated |
| Firefox 2 | 5.19% |
| Internet Explorer 7 | 5.40% |
| Internet Explorer 6 | 9.61% |
| Opera 9.x | 11.96% |
| WinAMP 5 | 26.96% |
| QuickTime 7 | 33.14% |
In response to those numbers Secunia said that on average 28% of the applications were out-dated:
Most people using Windows and Microsoft products are usually aware of the monthly “Patch Tuesday” routine that Microsoft has set up, which can explain why the patch level for MS products are relatively high. These numbers also indicate that many people using Firefox and Opera are concerned about security and remember to keep their products updated.
But when it comes to other applications that don’t immediately seem that exposed, people tend to wait for an extended period of time before patching.
This constitutes a significant problem because many of those applications, like WinAMP and Quicktime, are readily used whenever users encounter media files of various kinds. Most people wouldn’t hesitate to open an .mpg, .jpg, .mov, or .mp3 file from any source if it seems the least bit interesting and relevant. It’s easy to embed a movie in your homepage, for example, and all it takes is one unpatched Quicktime vulnerability and a provocative video title to compromise a lot of visitors.
As you can see the updates are very important for more than just the browser, but users typically shrug them off as not necessary. So while you’re sitting there right now why don’t you open a new tab in your browser and run Secunia’s Software Inspector to make sure you are completely up-to-date (it does require that you have Java installed).
Source: Secunia Blog [via PC Advisor]
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on March 07, 2006 by CyberNet.
EDIT: Firefox 1.5.0.2 is still a TinderBox release which means it is not 100% official! However, most TinderBox releases do not get changed before their official release.
John T. Haller put a lot of work into the Portable Firefox 1.5 to make it easy for us to carry Firefox with us anywhere that we go. I use this all the time at school, and just today with the release of Firefox 1.5.0.2 my mind got to wondering whether I can update the Portable Firefox 1.5 to 1.5.0.2 myself without having to wait for it to be updated.
John designed the program very well and it made it very easy for me to upgrade. All I had to do was install Firefox 1.5.0.2 to the Firefox directory that was located in the main folder. Everything (extensions, profile, etc…) was left in tact and I was back up and running in minutes.
To make it easier for people in the future I have taken the liberty to install Firefox 1.5.0.2 in Portable Firefox and I zipped it up. To use it on your USB drive or flash drive, all you have to do is download the file, unzip it, and run the PortableFirefox.exe that is located in the main folder.
I have only been testing it out today so I don’t know if everything is fully compatible yet, but I would imagine much would not have changed.
I am in no way taking credit for the design of Portable Firefox but I am merely updating it. If you would like to find more applications that can be used on your USB drive or other portable device then make sure to check out PortableApps.com. They also have cool applications like Portable Gaim, Portable OpenOffice, and Portable Filezilla!
Portable Firefox 1.5.0.2 Download
Portable Firefox 1.5 Homepage
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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This article was written on September 05, 2007 by CyberNet.
Web Browser Wednesday
One of the major reasons Firefox is approaching 400 million downloads is because of how customizable the browser is thanks to extensions. In a way Firefox extensions are bittersweet, because they can provide some unique and useful features, but at the same time they can cause some unwanted problems.
It’s been well over a year since I last took a look at the issues some popular Firefox extensions caused. Most of the extensions listed there caused crashes, memory leaks, and excessive CPU usage. Since then, a Leak Monitor extension has been created to notify users when a certain type of memory leak occurs. This has successfully helped dozens of developers eliminate memory leaks in their extensions.
Unfortunately not all of the problems have not been solved when it comes to the extensions. Some can still cause Firefox to crash, leak memory, or make your CPU usage skyrocket. Today I thought that I would revisit the current status of extensions to see which ones are still causing the problems.
To find the extensions that have problems, I turned to the Mozilla Knowledgebase as well as their bug tracker. I was able to uncover more than a dozen extensions that have performance related issues, and I’m assuming you’re using the most recent versions of the extensions as well as the latest version of Firefox. You’re sure to have even more problems if you’re using older versions of Firefox or extensions that are outdated.
Below is the list that I came up with, and along with each extension I mention the issue along with any known fixes.
Note: You may or may not experience the problems mentioned. If you haven’t had a problem with an extension there is no sense in removing it.
People running Firefox 3 right now should be careful if using the ForecastFox or FoxClocks extensions. Both of those are known to have memory leaks (ForecastFox report here and FoxClocks report here).
The extensions that I’ve listed above are all currently known to have some sort of problem. The bad news is that not all of the extensions have been as thoroughly tested as the ones mentioned here, and that’s because Mozilla relies on people like you to submit bug reports when you encounter an issue. If you frequently notice memory leaks, try a fresh Firefox profile, and then install the extensions one by one until you find the culprit. The odds are pretty good that the leak will be the result of one of your “more complex” extensions, and so you may want to start with those.
Additional resources from Mozilla include the Reducing Firefox Memory Usage page and the long list of Problematic Extensions.
Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com
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It was a release candidate just about a week ago and today it’s all ready to go. Firefox 4 for Android has just been released from the Mozilla labs and is now prowling the mobile internet. You can get yours at the Android Market, in no less than 10 languages, though there’ll be no Flash playback. Still, tabbed browsing, extreme customizability, and bookmark / tab / history coordination between desktop and mobile (via Firefox Sync) are all nice to have, as is the promised threefold improvement in speed over the stock Android browser. Pretty nice list of improvements for some freebie software, wouldn’t you say?
Continue reading Firefox 4 for Android launched, ready to Sync and speed up your browsing
Firefox 4 for Android launched, ready to Sync and speed up your browsing originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink The Mozilla Blog | Android Market | Email this | Comments
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