John Lamansky

There’s a handy list of Firefox Tips and Tricks at the Mozilla website that gives you instructions on how to perform common Firefox tweaks. For example, you can set a toolbar background image, force links that open new windows to open in new tabs, and disable certain JavaScript window features. Neat.

In the middle of the Browser Wars 2.0 between Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, a new application war appears. But it’s not about browsers. It’s about podcatchers. And it seems that history is repeating itself.

We start off in 1994 in the browser world and 2004 in the podcasting world. At these times there existed Mosaic and iPodder, respectively. Mosaic later changed its name to Netscape because of legal disputes. In the same way, iPodder later changed its name to Juice because of legal disputes concerning the iPod trademarks.

Anyway, in the beginning both iPodder and Netscape were dominant. Everyone used them. Even though the user interfaces weren’t the greatest. I mean, you can’t even listen to podcasts from within iPodder, and to me Netscape’s interface looks really ugly. But who didn’t use iPodder for podcatching, and who didn’t use Netscape for Internet browsing?

Yes, there were some other programs. iPodderX (now Transistr) was the Opera of the podcatcher world. Both were commercial programs and both had a much smaller user base.

Then one day in June 2005, Apple became Microsoft. Just as Internet Explorer usage shot up after Microsoft bundled it into Windows in 1997, so did iTunes usage as a podcatcher shoot up after Apple incorporated podcatching into that program.

Why did this happen? The simple answer for both cases: hardware. Microsoft Windows could be used on the prevalent PC. iTunes was used with the iPod. Bundle IE with the popular Windows, and IE’s share skyrockets. Bundle podcatching with the popular iTunes, and up shoots iTunes usage for podcatching.

Now we’re in 1998 in the browser world, and late 2005 in the podcatching world. Who uses iPodder and Netscape anymore? iTunes and Internet Explorer have taken over.

iPodder development has branched off into other projects, such as the PodNova client. Netscape development had branched off into other projects, such as Nvu, the Mozilla Suite, and SeaMonkey.

We arrive at the year 2004 in the browser world and 2006 in the podcatching world. Firefox, a descendant of Netscape, has come on the scene, quickly eating away at Internet Explorer usage share. Now almost everyone’s talking about Firefox, and Microsoft has responded by kicking IE up a notch with the upcoming release of version 7.

But where’s the podcatcher that will become the next Firefox?

As I was thinking about this browser/podcatcher war coincidence, I was surprised at how my plans to build a podcatcher coincided with this repeating history. I was planning to make a podcatcher, which is currently codenamed “Salamander.” Hmm, an animal name, kinda like Firefox and Firebird. I wanted Salamander to be easy to use while having really cool features. Hmm, kinda like Firefox. I wanted Salamander to be the program that would eat away at the usage share of the dominating program (iTunes). Hmm, kinda like Firefox.

Will Salamander become the next Firefox? Time will tell. One little difference, though. Salamander does not have its roots in iPodder, in the way that Firefox has its roots in Netscape.

Oh, and iPodder did not start out as a paid program in the way Netscape did.

But besides those things and few other small differences, the history of 10 years ago has indeed repeated itself. And it just might continue to do so.

CyberNet has a useful list of extensions that can slow down your Firefox browsing. This list, surprisingly, includes some of the most popular Firefox extensions, including some versions of IE Tab, ForecastFox, and SessionSaver.

Ouch. According to a CNet article:

For people who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to browse the Web, the picture wasn’t good. In 2004, IE was “unsafe” a total of 358 days of the year, meaning that the browser contained a publicly known, remotely exploitable hole for which there was no patch available. That means IE was “safe” only seven days, or 2 percent of the year, according to David Wagner, an assistant professor and well-known cryptography researcher. Wagner’s team compiled the data from Scanit and Secunia.

Quite surprisingly, Opera and Firefox didn’t score much better: Opera and Firefox scored much better:

In contrast, Opera was “safe” 300 days, or 82 percent of 2004. None of the bugs for Opera’s browser went without a patch and it would take 93 days total to fix them.

Firefox scored best. It was “safe” 339 days, or 93 percent of the year. Only two of its bugs went without a patch and it would take 43 days to install its fixes, according to the data summary.

Firefox 1.5 has just been recently released, but planning is already underway for Firefox 2.0. You can find some proposed features for Firefox 2.0 — and even version 3.0 — here and here.

Some possible Firefox 2.0 features:

• Improvements to search engine bar.
• New Bookmark and history system.
• Integrated Session Saver (yea!).
• New RSS reader and fully integrated RSS functionality.
• Anti-phishing.

And some possible Firefox 3.0 features:

• Spell Check (hooray!).
• Find improvements.
• Aging population accessiblity.

About three months ago, the Microsoft RSS Team posted a request for feedback on various proposed RSS icons.

About two months later, Microsoft announced that they would be using the same RSS icon as Firefox.

I’m excited to announce that we’re adopting the icon used in Firefox. John and Chris were very enthusiastic about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This isn’t the first time that we’ve worked with the Mozilla team to exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we’re sure it won’t be the last.

Actually, the icons aren’t identical, but they are very close:

Firefox 1.5:
Internet Explorer 7:

Shortly after the Internet Explorer announcement, the Outlook team announced that they’ll be using the same icon in the next version of Outlook (currently known as Outlook 12).

I find it surprising that Microsoft would be willing to work together with its biggest competitor in the browser market — and vice versa. The only possible explanation for such cooperation that I can think of is a genuine attention to the needs of the end-user on the part of Microsoft and Mozilla. Which is really good; it means a further step towards XML feed identification consistency, something sorely lacking as evidenced by the array of XML buttons available today.

In addition to a phishing protection extension, Google has released a “Blogger Web Comments” extension for Mozilla Firefox, which shows you what bloggers across the Internet are saying about the websites you’re visiting.

Although Google gives the impression that it’s Blogger-only, their FAQ says in question 4 that it uses Google Blog Search, meaning it supports all blogs (yippee!).

The extension puts an icon in Firefox’s status bar. When you click on it, you get a context menu:

When you click “View Comments,” it shows you a list:

A neat idea, but I haven’t discovered any interesting blogs (except mine, of course ;-)) using the extension yet.

Google released a cool new extension for Mozilla Firefox on Wednesday called “Google Safe Browsing.” It alerts you when you visit a known phishing site. A phishing site is a website designed to trick you into divulging financial or other personal information, usually for the purpose of identity theft or fraud.

Of course, if you follow basic anti-phishing rules (mainly, don’t click links in any email asking for information; type the links in manually), you should be safe from phishing threats, but this adds a nice extra level of protection.

Here’s a screenshot of what the alerts look like:

After three release candidates, Firefox 1.5 is finally released! I downloaded Firefox 1.5 and, even though I was expecting it, I was surprised to see that at first glance it looked identical to Firefox 1.0. Except for one thing I noticed right away on which I could not seem to put my finger. I finally figured out that the menu and toolbar styles were a tad different. Slight, but noticeable.

Menus and toolbars in Firefox 1.5:

And in Firefox 1.0.7:

In addition, after some browsing I realized that the Live Bookmarks icon has moved. Firefox 1.0.7 featured it in the status bar:

… While Firefox 1.5 puts it in the Location Bar (i.e. the address bar):

On a different note, several of my extensions that did work in Firefox 1.0.7 didn’t work with Firefox 1.5, but thankfully none of the incompatible extensions were used by myself very often anyway. One of them that didn’t work was a tab-reorganization extension, obviously due to the fact that tab-reorganization is now native to Firefox in version 1.5.

I’ve also noticed on a site that I made that Firefox now displays it slightly better than version 1.0.7 did. Of course, probably only I would notice this detail, since I made the site. But this is a visible sign to me that the rendering engine has undergone improvement.

If I find anything else worth noting, I’ll let you know. You can download Firefox 1.5 here.

The Mozilla Foundation has recently released the second beta version of the upcoming Firefox 1.5 browser update. Beta 2 includes numerous bug and security fixes as well as updated website rendering and an improved automatic updating system. Those interested in trying out the beta can go to the Firefox Project page. Mozilla has also released the second beta of their Thunderbird email client. Go to the Thunderbird beta 2 page for more info.

Since I’m so reliant upon my extensions, I personally will be waiting until the final version of 1.5 is released to avoid extension compatibility problems. If you’ve tried the new Mozilla betas I’d love to hear your opinion of them.