The mobile version of Firefox will be full-featured mobile browser including support for add-ons that similar to what we already using as web version of it. Moreover it will also allow developers to develop, debug and deploy web applications for its mobile version along.

This open-source browser engine, optimized for mobile, can also be embedded by mobile manufacturers giving a tough competition to Opera mini, a mobile browser engine by Opera. Noticeably, Mozilla was working on mobile version of Firefox since one year.

Mozilla has already released mobile browser ‘Fennec‘ for Linux-based devices (Nokia N800 and N810) and Windows Mobile 6 based HTCS730 but it has been shipped in few places only, by Nokia with name of MicroB browser.

TechCrunch a well known Weblog and now more than a weblog, a network cum organization of people obsessed with technology and start-ups led by Michael Arrington are visualizing a Tablet PC that will cost $200 and run nothing more than just Firefox - people’s very own browser which just ended up making world record in number of downloads.

The ultra slim Tabloid PC device would totally be based on Open Source i.e. free technologies right from OS (BSD/Linux), Desktop/ OnScreen keywboard (Gnome, again open source) and Google Gears for widgets / plugins.

Techcrunch in its blog post says about its idea of the device:

The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.

Though the concept is not very new and in words of one of a comments in TechcrunchIT its like reinventing the wheels. The famous $100 Laptop is in existence and the tablet PC with such idea of nothing more than a browser do already made their presence such as Cherrypal and is available for $249 in market and other similar one is from India called Simputer that too cost near about $200 (more info) but available in India only.

The TechCrunch Web Tablet project is convincing enough as when made, it would custom designed for bloggers, people obsessed with social networking, watching just videos on their PCs/laptops and putting other software/ hardware in their respective devices waiting for their chance to do some work for what these has been made for.

The TechcrunchIT web tablet project in other way can be taken as first of a kind where the efforts is to make a product by working in collaborative manner asking people to help in any means of their expertise (via a blog), ideas and then putting these inputs as base of product, taking shape in real world. The TechCrunch is asking people to be a part of project and once they are made part of this, they will get first prototype of this Web tablet device.

One can see whooping comments the blog has got in just single day and offering help in project, in form of developer, tester, PCB designer, some as electrical engineer and some as just consumers.

The application indeed a rich experiencing tool with media player like controls where you can fast forward, rewind, view full screen or scroll thumbnails to view images and videos.

Piclens has recently make the application compatible to view YouTube videos along previous compatibility to view Google image search results into 3D visualization as well as that of Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com and Live image searches, thats too with just one single click. Moreover, PicLens allow to view photos on Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa and Smugmug into same 3D visualization along with social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Friendster.

For other sites/ blogs to be compatible with PicLens application, one has to create a media RSS along with its auto-discovery link for same and other addition in HTML to match those tags in media RSS with images and videos under webpage. However, WordPress users can use the plugin to create a mini slide shows, see an example WordPress blog.

PicLens from Cooliris Inc, is available for Firefox(Windows/Mac), IE and Safari for users to turn their traditional browsers into 3D transformed app. The application to some extent quite resembles that of Pogo Browser of AT&T which too have such kind of rich media experience, difference being its a browser itself and display everything from images, videos to bookmarks, history into 3D view. Nevertheless, the Pogo browser is yet to be released till then one can have spaceship’s cockpit like screen on their computers with PicLens.

Recently India’s premier technology institute IIT’s website has been hacked (source), although this is not single case in India, a total of 612 Indian websites were defaced during March 2008 as reported by CERT-In (Computer Emergency Report Team India), which has increased by more than 50% in India, comparing to just previous month.

Social networking is also a victim of hackers in a recent study, as per CERT-In, a worm called Scrapkut is spreading like a cold (human virus) among Orkut users, how it works?, well, a malicious scrap message is posted to victim’s scrapbook containing a fake link to YouTube video purporting to be from a known member of its friend list. When the victim clicks on the link, it redirected to some malicious website which prompts to download the file flash executable file (.exe) disguised as a Flash upgrade. The execution of which results in malicious scrapbook entry in all victims’ friends. So… DO NOT CLICK on any YouTube link on your Orkut scrapbook. For more details and preventions see - Here.

Mozilla and Microsoft Office products isn’t untouched by this, Mozilla products like Firefox, Thunderbird & SeaMonkey are among high vulnerability threat list, according to which this could be exploited by remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.

In Firefox, a borderless XUL pop-up is created in front of the active tab in the user’s browser from a background tab to misguide/ mislead the form elements such as a login prompt for a site opened in a different tab and steal the user’s login credentials for that site (phishing attack). and poke into your security fences. for this one solution (unavoidable though) is to disable javascript. For more Details and solutions for Mozilla products see - Here and for Fireofox - Here

The list of vulnerabilities threats are as -

High vulnerabilities - MS Office, Excel, Outlook, Mozilla Products, Real Player, Sun Java

Medium vulnerabilities - PHP, GNOME, OpenSSH

Malicious Code Threat - ScrapKut (Orkut)

]]> http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/india-high-on-internet-vulnerabilities-orkut-mozilla-on-list/feed/ http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/att-to-release-its-own-3d-browser-named-pogo/ http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/att-to-release-its-own-3d-browser-named-pogo/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:26:56 +0000 Vardaan http://www.indianweb2.com/?p=215

AT&T, a Communication, Internet and wireless major company entered into war of ‘Browsers’, AT&T has tied up with Vizible to create a new browser of other kind called Pogo Browser, the browser will be giving users the new internt browsing experience rather than the traditional browsers that over a decade managed to evolve just by inculcating handfull of features like plugins, extensions etc.

The new Browser Pogo will be 3D environment & visualizaton browser along with rich graphics, content handling to engage user nicely with what he is browsing, the browser will be having tabbed browsing but far different from traditional tabbed browsing unlike to Firefox or IE7 as tabs will be small screenshots of pages to chose from, tag them and drag/ drop them around, to put in archives or bookmarks.

At present the browser is in closed beta invites which will be released under open public beta soon within a month or two.

The 3D rendering engine of browser with its more user engageable features to experience from Vizible’s visual-based technology. the Pogo would prove, the next geaneration of browsers to compete hard with itself unless it is assumed that this browser doesn’t demand to much computer memory (as goes with all rich media apps), and presumed that it can be run on most common system requirements of these days.

This is an image captured Hubble Space Telescope and of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our own Milky Way Galaxy, though photo was taken way back in March 2004, it almost resemble that of Firefox logo.

This is just an example how the space out there changes it shape and looks so much so that it can randomly resemble any shape of our physical world (and now it web world), wander if it we could find all such kind of images that resemble IE, Safari and Opera logos as well :)

Via - Newlaunches

1. Increasing Speed of Firefox Browser »

1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” as -> “true” (doubleclick if its “False”)
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true” (doubleclick if its “False”)
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30 or so. This means it will make 30 requests at once.P.S - Double click on “value Row

Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

2. Network Tweak Settings - Firefox Extension

One can use this Networking Tweak Firefox Extension as an alternative to above mentioned trick in configurations/ preferences if you find changing each settings manually as annoying.

The Network Tweak Extension tweak few hidden setting under Firefox preferences/ configurations and speed up web page loading time as well as maximum no. of simultaneous downloads from a single site which by default is only 4.

This Extension when installed will be placed under Firefox ‘Tools’ menu and can be configured from there and compatible with Firefox 2.0+. Download Extension - Here

Thanks Edwin Martin

3. Close Buttons for Tabs »

Basically in Firefox for close buttons there are three options to choose, which you can choose by editing entry called - browser.tabs.closeButtons;

just like former hack in this as well you have to type- about:config in address bar and Edit value of entry - browser.tabs.closeButtons which is by default is 1, for different values what it mean is;

1 -> show close button for each tab
2 -> do not show close button
3 -> show close button at right-hand most corner for closing tabs altogether

4. Caret Browsing in Firefox »

A very few people know about Caret Browsing, which can be enabled or disabled in Firefox by pressing ‘F7′, this feature places a cursor in web pages that allows to select text with keyboard and other key combinations (Ctrl + Shift + arrow keys to select texts word by word), it is just like to that of any text editors like Notepad, MS word etc.

Alternatively for caret browsing go to Tools->Options->Advanced->Accessibility-> Uncheck “Move system caret with focus/selection changes”.

5. Restore Browser Sessions

Normally, in Firefox 2+ versions, if Firefox shuts down all of a sudden then it restore session but it does not happen if you close all tabs accidentally and lost all your work, you can do this by setting another preference as - Tools -> Options -> under main tab select - ‘Show my windows and tabs from last time‘.

Alternatively you can also set preference under about:config page as - browser.startup.page key to 3.

This trick is extremely helpful for Bloggers as the post will reopen as intact (tested by myself in WordPress) as well as form entries will be intact in any web page with form.

6. Easiest Way to ‘Open Links in new Tab’ »

Most of the Firefox users know that to open Link in tab, Right Click -> Select ‘Open Link in New Tab’ but there is easiest way to do so i.e. your scroll wheel of your mouse or center button just click it and open the link in new tab via most quicker way.

7. Feed Preview Option »

Since a long time when someone click on Feed/ RSS link a page opens asking about to subscribe in Google Reader rather than to show XML/ RSS page itself, you can change this preference by editing your preference under menu tabs of Firefox - Tools > Feed, now select the option - ‘Show me a preview and ask me which Feed Reader to use’

8. Setting Home Page when Firefox Starts »

Though I believe pretty good amount of the Firefox users know about this settings under firefox options but for those who don’t, you can set one or more home page(s) when Firefox starts by editing ‘Home page‘ entry under main options setting i.e. - Tools > Options > Main.

Here you can add one or more URLs of web-page you want to open every time Firefox starts, you just have to separate each URL entry with pipe-symbol which is - ‘|’ (just above Enter key in QWERTY keyboard). see picture below for more -

9. Scaling/ Rescaling Images in Firefox »

Toggle Firefox Automatic Rescaling Preference - Firefox by default rescale the large images so that it can fit browser window, though users can alter this feature by changing the automatic rescaling preference to false, this gain done by typing about:config in address bar and look for preference - browser.enable_automatic_image_resizing, double click on entry so that value (if true, which is by default) is toggled to false.

10. Google Browser Sync - Firefox Extension »

Google Browser Sync is a Firefox Extension from Google to synchronize you browser settings and open tabs, windows across different computers provided provided you have Google account.

This extension synchronize bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords across different computers.