Outdated plugins are a major source of security and stability risk for web users, and some studies have put the proportion of users with older versions as high as 80%.

Just visit mozilla.com/plugincheck/ to run a plugin check for your browser.

You should also check out SecBrowsing, another powerful tool that helps you keep your browser and plugins up-to-date. If you are using Google Chrome, there is a SecBrowsing extension that alerts you if plugins are out-of-date.

Keep in mind though that this release requires Android 2.0 or above. It has been tested only on Motorola Droid and the Nexus One. And there is high probability to cause your phone to crash or make it temporarily unresponsive. You can still test Fennec on you desktop if you want to.

Weave Sync

There is an experimental version of Weave that is compatible with this build.

If you want to test Weave on your android phone, head over to mozillalabs.com/weave and click on “Experimental Version”. Read more on this on Vladimir’s blog post.

We’ve created a temporary Google Group for feedback about this pre-alpha build.

A couple of days ago, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. If you have no idea what Weave is you should check it out here. Weave aims to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences, by syncing bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs across your platforms. So, in short you can leave your home computer and access your, lets say, browsing history via your mobile phone.

For the time being such capabilities existed in the iPhone but only limited to the bookmark syncing via MobileMe features or via apps like Instapaper.
There is also Google Web History which merged with Google Bookmarks last summer and now has some great features like viewing your web activity, searching the full text of pages you’ve visited, getting personalized search results and more. However these features are only available if you install the latest Google Toolbar and there is no immediate access via your mobile phone.
So, Weave is here to change this. You don’t have to install any toolbar and now that there is an API out there the possibilities are numerous. Mozilla already released a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs including a web-based Weave client, an iPhone Weave client, a commandline Weave client and a WebOS Weave client.

Now that Weave API is out I would love to see a Weave client for my Android phone along with some import/export features in Weave or even better some Ubiquity commands to interact with the Weave.

By the way, does anyone know when the latest Ubiquity version will be available for Firefox 3.6?

Back in 2008, Google released a nice feature inside Gmail’s settings where you could opt to enable https throughout your session. That made you feel a little bit safer when browsing your emails using a public WiFi at your local coffee shop. However, the usage of SSL/TLS protocol has one main drawback which is imposing some extra overhead. Thus causing some extra latency. This latency could be noticeable a few years ago when the average broadband speed did not exceed 1 Mbps in contrary to nowadays. So after researching the security/latency tradeoff, Google decided to roll out default https for all Gmail users for the sake of security (you can still turn it off at any time but https will still be “on” when you login).

About two months ago, I came across with a couple of interesting articles at the h-online.com regarding a vulnerability in SSL/TLS protocol which could lead to password theft. It is surprising that something we used to trust for years now has been compromised. At first I thought “what the heck..?!”. Indeed, what’s the point of choosing to use https or not at all. Well, the truth is that if you are investing in 100% security you are wasting your money. Unfortunately there is no such thing as 100% secure (at least for the time being). The good news is that there seems to be a solution to the TLS vulnerability. According to H-online:

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has ammended the RFC 5246 specification (Transport Layer Security [TLS] Protocol Version 1.2) and introduced a new renegotiation_info TLS extension which will store a connection’s cryptographic information.

If you ask me, there is nothing even close to 100% secure. The harsh truth is even when quantum cryptography will be applicable somehow, end-to-end security will still suffer from various kinds of attacks. Still having second thoughts every time you try to login somewhere..? In that case you should check out ForceHTTPS (a Firefox add-on) which forces https “every” time you hit the enter button.

ForceHTTPS allows sophisticated users to transparently retrofit security onto some insecure sites that support HTTPS.

[ photo via anonymouscollective ]

I didn’t have the chance to get my hands on the new Nokia N900 for time being so I was experimenting with Firefox for mobile with its download-for-desktop version. Until a few days ago I was only able to download and play with the latest alpha version, which didn’t surprise me that much, but lately Firefox released a beta version so I thought I should give it a try. Well, the beta version is much more prettier and far more reliable than its predecessor. Except for the new polished user interface there are a few other things that actually make you smile. First and foremost the new super swipe-left-or-right navigation menu rocks.

It is a totally cool new feature and it is really-really-really fast accessible. You just swipe right to get a quick view of your browser’s tabs, or just swipe left to access some hidden buttons like the back and forth buttons, preferences and the bookmark button. I have to say that I ‘ve been using Android for a couple of years (incl. emulators and real phones) but I didn’t have that fast access to the browser’s tabs or settings and the same goes for the iPhone’s Safari browser. Although both platforms provide a quite fast access to the browser’s tabs and/or settings, none of them was as fast as the new mobile Firefox. I like this new approach of mobile browsing experience and I could probably get used to it very soon.

Furthermore, there is a zoom-when-tap-a-textfield feature where the browser zooms in the tapped input field so that you can easier check what you type (keep in mind that this very first version of Firefox for mobile is available for phones with a 800×480 pixel resolution screens which makes things a little bit crowded when it comes down to the 3.5 inch screen). And of course there is the all-time-classic double-tap-zooming.

Lastly, there couldn’t be a mobile Firefox without having mobile add-ons! There are currenlty 40 or so available add-ons. I ‘ve already tried the Mozilla Mobile Add-ons Challenge award winner, TwitterBar by Christopher Finke. Have you?

5 years ago Firefox 1.0 was released! Firefox is celebrating its 5 years for all the good things that came with it and all the good things that are about to come. There is no doubt Firefox is somewhat responsible for the look of the Web today. It’s hard to tell how the Web would look like if Firefox wasn’t there. Almost ready to dive into the mobile industry, Firefox will definitively rock our mobile world.

Happy 5th birthday Firefox!

[ photo via guapolo ]

There has been some very interesting activity at hacks.mozilla.org lately. As Christopher Blizzard said in the according blog post “One new feature that we’re including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for web pages to access machine orientation information if it’s available. As you can see from the demo you can use it to figure out if the machine is moving and what direction it’s facing.”

Just sit back and watch. This new device API will blow your mind. :)

[ via ]