Feature by feature: Firefox vs. Safari

Safari

Firefox

Comparison

Mozilla Rewriting A Lot Of Code For Upcoming Firefox V3

Mozilla programmers are rewriting a lot of the Firefox code for the upcoming version release of the open-source browser, according to the head of product security at Mozilla.

Most of the components in the current version of Firefox are being touched, said Window Snyder, “chief security something-or-other” at Mozilla. She added that programmers are replacing a lot of older code to increase performance, make the code base more modular and handle new security threats, like phishing and malicious Web sites.

“As we’re doing this, we’re considering security features and trying to minimize security issues,” said Snyder in an interview with InformationWeek. “The Web browser has always been an entry point into the system, so it’s been considered a critical application. The environment changes so we need to adapt.”

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Configuration Mania - Configuring Hidden Settings in Firefox

There is that nice extension called Preferential. Now if editing and configurithat still seemed too complicated with that extension, then you need something that breaks it down even further. How about something that puts the settings in an easy-to-understand interface similar to the existing configuration screen for the Options? Let’s now turn our attention to Configuration Mania!

This extension is cool because it puts a ton of settings together in a way that makes them very easy to understand and manipulate. Before now, almost all of these settings had to be configured through the about:config screen, but now they will almost seem as if they were naturally integrated in Firefox.

Just like the Preferential extension, Configuration Mania has its options located in the Tools menu. This one also has collapsible menus, but it organizes the settings a little nicer. Oh, and don’t be deceived by the small appearance because there are a lot of settings there for you to tinker with. Here is a screenshot of what all the browser settings look like when they’re expanded:

And that is only the settings from one of the 5 tabs! As you can see there are a lot of different things available for you to configure and play with, but it will take some time to go through all of the settings presented here.

Download Netscape Navigator ver 9 for Linux

Remember Netscape - the very web browser which once enjoyed a major browser market share and which was nearly killed by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices by its release of Internet Explorer ? The very Netscape navigator whose code base was then released as open source and which lead to the eventual development of the stable and increasingly popular Mozilla and then Firefox? Guess what, it has re-incarnated as Netscape Navigator ver 9.0.

Contrary to popular belief, Netscape Navigator was not dead though its popularity was severely diminished. One of the reasons for it to fall out of favor with the net users was because its succeeding versions accumulated a lot of unnecessary bloat. I remember using Netscape navigator ver 4.0 which was really sleek and then when I upgraded to the next major version, it some how did not live up to the mark of its predecessor.

The new Netscape navigator has shed a lot of fat and is now much sleeker. It is based on Firefox and has a couple of unique features built-in such as :

• Integration with Netscape portal which is now a social bookmarking site (Yes Netscape website is now a social bookmarking/voting site aka digg.com ). From within the web browser without visiting Netscape, you can share and vote for web pages that you find interesting.
• Read the latest news directly from your browser.
• Netscape navigator fixes commonly mis-typed URLs for you.
• And the highlight of ver 9 release is a link pad (Similar to what you have in Opera) which allows you to save interesting links without cluttering your bookmarks.

Netscape ver 9 is available for Linux apart from that for Windows and Mac OSX and is a modest 8.9 MB download. The minimum system requirements are 256 MB RAM and around 100 MB disk space.

If you are interested, you can download Netscape Navigator 9 and take it for a test drive.