Firefox 3 was released today

Anyway you should upgrade. Firefox 3 is much faster and more responsive. If you’re like me you will want to grab the addons oldbar, adblock plus, and noscript.

One of my friends suggested that I try the FireFTP plugin after I expressed both my love and frustration over CuteFTP and WS_FTP. This plugin is awesome it has the same layout of any popular FTP client as well as the useful features like drag-n-drop and SSL/TLS encryption. It is also totally free.

Download the FireFTP Plugin

It is now possible to take over a users entire screen with an unclosable window. Time to turn off java or more drastically javascript all together. I use noscript but I’ve enabled it to allow the site only the domain I’m visiting. This exploit (5 clicks to close) works in every browser I’ve tried. NoScript fixes the problem if you turn off disable the offending site. Internet explorer users will probably have a harder time with this due to market share compared to firefox.

There is also a javascript popup exploit in the wild that is modal and prevents you from closing the browser without ctrl-alt-del. Unfortantely I didn’t save an example. This combined with all the new exploits like computer finger printing with res timing as well as credential theft with XMLHTTPRequest.

Remember all the sites you could send people in 2000 to that totally fucked over their computers? They’re possibly making a come back. Firefox should hopefully be safer in a month but I wouldn’t have hopes for IE6 or IE7. It will be the bane of the internet in a few weeks when it makes its way into the wild.

Do you know the power of the middle mouse button? It opens and closes tabs and makes browsing the web so much more enjoyable. I was surprised yesterday when I was watching a friend of mine fumble around with his Firefox. For me, everyone should know how to use their mouse and its also something that is missing from internet explorer.

In summary, clicking on a link with the middle mouse button will open the link in a new tab and if you click on the tab with the middle mouse button it will close the tab which is less frustrating that aiming for the little red box. Is your mouse missing a middle button? Ctrl-left click also works.

Ever since I installed noscript I’ve been having trouble with web pages that have embedded movies in them. Firefox doesn’t like them. I have IETab installed so I could quickly bypass a page that was giving me an illegal operation.

Illegal Operation in Plugin
Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library
The plugin performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Firefox.

Or it would say

Mozilla ActiveX control and plug-in support error
The plugin performed an illegal operation
Restart the broswer

To fix this I had to install the Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin. If you don’t trust the link you can go to the Firefox Plugin site and scroll to the bottom and click on “Vers. 11 (XP, Vista)” in the Windows Media Player section.

I had some problems with the downloaded exe file not showing up in the Downloads history. I had to go to the folder where firefox saves my files and run it from there. If you are curious if the Plugin installed correctly you can type “about:plugins” into the address bar in firefox and you should see a section that looks like this.

You also shouldn’t be getting any illegal errors.

With the release of Safari for Windows a number of people have labeled its private browsing mode as “Porn Mode”. Stealther enables this functionality of surfing the web without leaving a trace while not having to annoyingly clear all of your private data.

Alex Albrect on a recent Diggnation episode claimed that Safari would be great if you wanted to buy your girlfriend flowers and/or hide your porn browsing from her. Either way you don’t want to leave a trace and you consider completely wiping out the history a trace. The Stealther Plugin for Firefox fixes this problem by temporarily disabling your private data.

If there are times you want to surf the web without leaving a trace in your local computer, then this is the right extension for you. What it does is temporarily disable the following:

• Browsing History (also in Address bar)
• Cookies
• Downloaded Files History
• Disk Cache
• Saved Form Information
• Sending of ReferrerHeader
• Recently Closed Tabs list

Installing Stealther

Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1306 and click the Install Now button.

You may be required to give permission for the addon to install by going to the Tools Menu and then clicking on Options…

Stealther Configuration

To access the configuration menu for Stealther you can go to the Tools Menu -> Addons -> Select Stealther -> Options

You can add a toolbar button by right clicking on your navagation toolbar (back/forward/reload/stop/etc) and dragging the round grey lock to the position you want it on your toolbar. Here is where I put it.

If you want to hide the existence of Stealther you can opt to not install the toolbar and hide the Tools menu entry.

Using Stealther

When you click the button it turns blue and it will force the browser to forget everything that happened once Firefox is closed. There are a number of ways to can use Stealther

• [Tools / Stealther] menu option
• Toolbar button
• Statusbar icon
• [Ctrl+Shift+S] keyboard shortcut (customizable)