Free Firefox Browser Blog

Free Firefox Mobile 1.0 (Fennec) Now Released Review: Free Download

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:22:00 -1100

Mobile Firefox has now been released for Nokia’s Maemo platform. This means that Mobile Firefox will run on only two devices the N900 and the N810. The new browser brings the promising possibility of custom add-ons to the mobile platform. Mozilla hopes that the custom add-ons will bring the same success to the mobile platform that it did to the personal computer. Firefox 3.6 has now garnered 25% of the browser market and hopes to capture even more from the likes of Opera Mini.

While the first reports of Mobile Firefox 1.0’s performance are excellent, there are some downsides. One being that flash support has some problems. Users will need to install an optional Flash Plug-in to view flash. There have been reports that flash plugin’s performance has also been a little bit flaky. Nevertheless, it’s better than having no flash at all ala the Iphone.

Interestingly there is a Firefox / Mozilla type browser for Windows Mobile. Most people have not heard of the software called Minimo but I have had it installed on my Pocket PC for over 3 years. Minimo is light-years ahead of the pocket internet explorer. Multiple tabs and flash are only handful of the features that Minimo supports. Another plus is that Minimo is very lightweight and can be installed on most Windows Mobile’s PDA’s / Smart phones internal memory.

The other open mobile browse is Opera Mini. Opera Mini has been out for a while and I have installed it on a blackberry world edition. While the Opera Mini was definitely better than the standard blackberry browser, I wasn’t impressed with the performance.

I honestly have to say that the Iphone Safari takes the cake for Mobile browsing. We will see if Fennec or Firefox Mobile 1.0 customization ability will best Iphone’s usability.

Mobile Firefox 1.0 Download - http://www.mozilla.com/mobile/
Minimo For Pocket PC - http://pocketpccentral.net/help/tutorials/install_minimo_vista.htm
Opera Mini Download - http://www.opera.com/mini/

Firefox 3.6 Updates and Improvements: Free Download.

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:13:00 -1100

The Firefox 3.6 release date has finally been confirmed on January 21st 2010. Of course, I couldn’t wait till then so I downloaded the Firefox 3.6 RC2 preview version released on January 17.

Upon opening the browser, I immediately noticed a speed increase. Web page loading is significantly faster. I feel as though the browser is really matched with the 6mbit connection that I use.This goes along with the official Mozilla line that Firefox 3.6 is 20% faster than previous versions.

One thing that I liked is that all of the prior versions’ add-ons (extensions) were completely functional in 3.6. No update check was required. I congratulate Mozilla on pressuring add-on developers to have compatible software with Firefox 3.6 because upgrading before was a really big pain. It is even more annoying when one relies on a Firefox extension to complete their daily work. In fact, Colorzilla disappeared for 2 weeks because they just released an update for the 3.57 version.

Unfortunately, memory usage hasn’t improved as claimed. Just having 11 tabs with no flash open consumes at least 126 megabytes of ram. CPU usage is also relatively high. On a positive note, the download is still only 7.7 megabytes in size.Some more notable features that are in Free Firefox 3.6 are as follows…

•    Browser Core Add-on Separation. This feature will prevent rouge add-ons from messing with Firefox’s core code. This will increase Firefox 3.6’s stability and also prevent Firefox from frequently crashing.
•    Multiple JavaScript Execution: Most websites today have at least 3 or more scripts installed and scripts also tend to slow down a website the most. Previous versions of Firefox had to load each script in succession. Firefox 3.6 now can execute multiple scripts at once speeding up internet browsing.
•    Personas. Firefox will now have a one click them

e change through a new featured called Persona. A user can now easily customize the browser to their liking. I am hoping for an IE persona to completely replace IE.

Head to the freefirefoxbrowser.com homepage to download Firefox 3.6.

Free Firebug for Firefox Download

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:15:00 -1200

FireBug is another extremely useful extension for Firefox. FireBug allows you to on the fly edit any webpage inside of Firefox. This is perfect for web developers because often a web development application such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage doesn’t display the webpage like the browser. Designing a website used to be tedious as you would have to go from the editing program to the browser and then back again to see how the changes would be reflected (this was made especially more difficult when modify CSS style sheets.) Now, with FireBug for Firefox, you can use the “Inspect element” cursor to highlight any element within a page and have the corresponding active CSS styles and the html code displayed simultaneously. A user can then edit the CSS or the Html and the desired results will be displayed in real time in Firefox. The code changes can then be edited into the web development application to produce the perfect webpage. The only problem is there still is no support for Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari.

Update: There is in fact a FireBug lite for Internet Explorer etc. All one needs to do is add a JavaScript line into a page and the Firebug dialog box will become available. There is also the Web Developer toolbar available for Internet Explorer from Microsoft. But, It doesn’t have the functionality that firebug has for Firefox.

Firebug can also integrate with FirePhP which is an extension for Firebug. Finally, there are the Firebug Net Panel, Yslow, Google Page Speed which will show you all of the components included with a webpage (i.e. JavaScript and css etc.) and how fast they load. This will help a developer find script, image, or html bottle necks that may arise.

Download Firebug for Firefox Here

Pera-pera-kun and Quick Proxy changer.

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:46:00 -1200

Today I wanted to talk about two new add-on or extensions that make FireFox so great.

Pera-pera-kun:

Pera-pera-kun is by far the best Chinese language tool for one’s computer. What the free firefox add-on or extension does, is it translates Chinese characters on websites into English. It is so easy to use. You simply highlight the Chinese character and a pop down menu appears and gives you the translation. What’s even better is that Pera-pera-kun can recognize blocks of characters rather than just an individual character. Also, I am not sure if you have ever used KingSoft PowerWord software, but Pera-pera-kun is light years ahead in terms of it’s Chinese dictionary. The translated characters actually make sense. Also Pera-pera-kun is open source so people are constantly updating the dictionary. There are now Japanese and Korean languages also available. Thankfully, the software finally supports firefox 3.5 and above. Here is the download link. See the screen shots below.

Pera Pera Kun drop down box

Pera Pera Kun Icon in Firefox

Quick Proxy:

This is another useful extension for firefox. Say you have a work proxy or a private proxy server that you frequently use. Normally you would have to goto Firefox’s options and then set the network connection back and forth if you wanted to switch between a normal connection and a proxy server connection. This process gets extremely tedious after a while. However, with quick proxy all you need to do is click the icon and the software will automatically turn on or off the proxy. See the screenshots below for more information. The download link is here.
I’ll be updating free firefox browser with the latest extensions on a very regular basis. Stay tuned for more.

Quick Proxy "P" screenshot