Firefox 3 Vulnerability Found

Within the first 5 hours of the release of Firefox 3, Tipping Point, a research organization for vulnerability analysis and discovery advised they had found a vulnerability. Now before you go adding this to your list of reasons not to download and install Firefox 3, this vulnerability also affects Firefox 2.  For security reasons, not much information is being released about this vulnerability other than:

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Not unlike most browser based vulnerabilities that we see these days, user interaction is required such as clicking on a link in email or visiting a malicious web page.

The good news is there is no known public exploit for this bug at this time. No word at this time if this is going to cause Mozilla to do a Firedrill release of Firefox 3.0.1 sooner than the planned release in about 4 to 6 weeks.

News Sources:

• CyberNet News
• Mozilla Links
  

Fx 3: Always Display ‘Go’ Button

Note: For this tweak I recommend using the ChromEdit Plus extension.

Okay, apparently some people do want to have the ‘Go’ Button to always be displayed.  To do so, simply add these lines to your userChrome.css file located in your profile folder:

/* Always display Go Button */
#urlbar[pageproxystate="valid"] > #urlbar-icons > #go-button { visibility: visible !important;
}

Tip Source: I’m Just an Avatar

Fx 3: Full Screen Mode Tweaks

A couple tweaks that allow you to change the behavior of the location and tab bars while in Full Screen mode. By default when you enter full screen mode (F11) in Firefox 3 the location and tab bars disappear.  If you put your mouse up the top of the screen, they will pop back up.

If you want the location and tab bars to always display (Firefox 2 behavior) made this change:

1. In a new tab type about:config in the address bar and press enter
2. In the filter field type browser.fullscreen.autohide
3. In the results listed double-click on browser.fullscreen.autohide so that the value defaults to FALSE

When you first activate full screen mode, the location and tab bars slide up. To disable this animation:

1. In a new tab type about:config in the address bar and press enter
2. In the filter field type browser.fullscreen.animateUp
3. In the results listed double-click on browser.fullscreen.animateUp
4. In the pop-up box type: ‘0‘

News Souce: MozillaLinks

No Google Browser Sync For Fx 3

Personally, I have never used the Google Browser Sync extension (or anything of Google’s) but I know a lot of folks have. Bad news for you folks, Google has decided to ditch the Google Browser Sync extension.  This means it is not going to made available for Firefox 3 and at the end of the year when Firefox 3.1 comes out and 2.0 is retired, Google will stop all support for the extension.

Here’s some information via Lifehacker

Thanks for trying out Google Browser Sync and for all of your feedback. It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

So are they are any alternatives? There’s Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer, but that only does your bookmarks, not history, cookies, passwords, and tabs between browsers. I am also hearing Weave created by The Mozilla Labs is going to be a good alternative, but it is still in developmental stages at this time.

News Source: CyberNet News

A Field Guide to Firefox 3

The newly released Firefox 3 has many new features to discover and learn about. Fortunately, the folks at Mozilla have written about the new features included in Firefox 3. There are more than 20 new features discussed in A Field Guide to Firefox 3. Here’s are some of the features covered in this Guide:

• Add-on manager
• Bookmarks
• Download manager
• Full page zoom
• History
• Malware protection
• Microformats API
• Offline web application support
• Password manager
• Performance improvements
• Phishing protection
• Site Identification button
• Themes
• Video and audio feeds

Read all about it here: A Field Guide to Firefox 3