If you’re a Mozilla Firefox user you will be getting an update shortly (if you haven’t already) to update your browser to v3.0.5.

The release notes for this version state there have been several security and stability issues addressed. So if your Firefox has been a bit on the buggy side and crashes periodically, an update to v3.0.5 should cure that ill in short order.

For Windows users, you can kickstart the update process by clicking Help then Check for Updates.

This series is dedicated to specific e-mail providers on the internet. In this installment, the service provider concentrated on will be Google’s Gmail.

Gmail, launched in March 2004, has grown to be one of the most-used free e-mail services on the internet. While it doesn’t have a large of a userbase as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

The latest trunk build of Mozilla Thunderbird at the time of this writing is version 3.0b1pre, called Shredder (the Mozilla Firefox 3.1b2pre is called "Minefield" just in case you were wondering). I downloaded it and tried it out - more on that later.

Thunderbird at this stage of the game is really, really far behind. It has not followed along in advancement with Firefox as the official release is still at version 2 (version 2.0.0.17 to be exact). This is not to say that t-bird is bad. Rather it’s an awesome e-mail program and served as my mainstay e-mail client for several years before I switched over to using Windows Live Mail (both client and web-based).

There are times when I really miss Thunderbird. Truly I do. The reason is because the way t-bird does mail makes complete sense. Simple things like file attachments are easy. Searching your mail is at its best in this client. Assigning colored tags was in t-bird way before anyone else got it right (and the other guys are still playing catch-up to a fair degree). You can customize just about everything in t-bird and that’s just plain awesome.

However the problem with t-bird that ultimately forced me to give it up is the same even in the latest 3.0b1pre Shredder trunk build - no ability to sync the address book built-in. Local only. This makes t-bird what’s called an "island unto itself", and that’s not where the internet is going.

Yeah, I know, you could use an LDAP directory server for addresses, but that’s not the answer. The vast majority of home users don’t even know what an LDAP directory server is, never mind know how to connect to one.

~ ~ ~

If you happen to be a Gmail user, you would definitely like Shredder. Additional options have been put in the software where you can configure an IMAP Gmail account without any need to manually type in server addresses. It just takes a few clicks and you’re off to the races.

In the new interface, t-bird has tabs, star icons to quickly add people to your address book and a drop-down next to addresses to edit contacts super-easy style.

Other nice little touches are throughout the software making it really nice to use overall. In fact I’d dare to say you could use a trunk build right now and be completely happy with it.

However the problem still remains that Thunderbird is an island. The IMAP-only means of sync with no Address Book communication between local and web makes it a dinosaur even at this stage.

~ ~ ~

Thunderbird needs to have some kind of sync ability with a major e-mail service if it expects to survive. And to be honest, since it has such good support for Gmail, that should be the service it should wholly sync to as an option - or at least mail + address book at bare minimum. Mozilla is largely on Google’s payroll anyway, so why not?

If this doesn’t happen, Thunderbird could turn into vaporware quickly.

Foxmarks is a freely available add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Normally what you would do to send/retrieve your bookmarks is use the Foxmarks servers to store this information, however if you host your own web site (or just use free FTP space provided by your ISP) you can store your own bookmarks privately via FTP. See video below for details.

My primary browser is Mozilla Firefox v3.0.1. The reason I champion that particular browser over others is because it has the most plugins available. If there is anything on the internet that can be done in a browser, chances are it will happen in Firefox first.

Plugins, while a blessing, can also be a curse. As cool as it is that you have tons of nifty add-ons to choose from, some of these add-ons may screw up your browser. How the screw-up occurs could be in any number of ways, but you know when you’re browser is screwed up.

Firefox browser problems don’t happen often, but when they do you can fix just about any of them by creating a new profile.

Here’s how:

Close the browser first.

Do a run dialog and type firefox -P, then click OK.

This is what you will see by default:

If you want to "start over", delete the profile and all files associated with it. Note: You will lose all your bookmarks and browser settings when you do this. (For bookmarks you can retrieve them if you have Foxmarks installed.) Add-ons will remain installed.

When you create a brand new profile, Firefox will treat it as if you’ve just installed the browser for the first time.

If you’re not sure whether you want to delete the old profile, just create a new one. Firefox allows multiple profiles to be installed. From there you can troubleshoot to see if it fixed any issues you may have present.

For the add-ons present, they will "see" it also as a new installation so you can do additional troubleshooting that way.

If you happen to use the Mozilla Firefox web browser, here are a few little hidden things about it you may not have heard about.

The Book of Mozilla

This has been in every Netscape browser and in every Firefox browser. In the address bar, type about:mozilla and you will read a strange passage from the "book" of Mozilla. No such book exists obviously but they call it as such. You can read up on what these mysterious words mean here.

Running Firefox inside Firefox

Type chrome://browser/content/browser.xul inside the address bar and it will launch another instance of Firefox inside Firefox.

Robots welcome you

Tying about:robots in the address bar makes this show up:

View the credits

Typing about:credits will give you a list of everyone involved in the development of the browser in one way or another. The list is long.

Mozilla has released the first update to the new Firefox 3 browser: 3.01. It promises better security and more stability.

Several security issues were found in the original Firefox 3.0. One critical flaw was stated by Mozilla this way:

Vulnerability can be used to run attacker code and install software, requiring no user interaction beyond normal browsing.

Obviously, not good. So, 3.01 fixes this and several other issues. In fact, 3.01 is nothing but a maintenance release, as the release notes show.

It is recommended that all users upgrade ASAP. If your browser has not yet automatically prompted you to upgrade, you can select “Check for Updates” from the Help menu.

Not everybody uses Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox is a very popular alternative.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.

One of features which makes any email client (either an application installed on your computer or a web product) more complete is a calendar. Email and calendar applications go hand-in-hand as the actions or events in one commonly lead to an action in the other. If Thunderbird is your email client of choice and you want add the calendar functionality, take a look at the Mozilla Lightning project.

From their web page:

Lightning brings the Sunbird calendar to the popular email client, Mozilla Thunderbird. Since it’s an extension, Lightning is tightly integrated with Thunderbird, allowing it to easily perform email-related calendaring tasks.

Nothing revolutionary here, nor does it need to be. The benefit here is your email client of choice becomes more ‘complete’ with the addition of calendar functionality.

Honestly said I wasn’t all that excited about FF3 but decided to go ahead and download it anyway.

There were only 2 things I wanted to know about this release:

1. Did they (Mozilla) fix that oh-so-stupid memory leak?
2. Did the zoom improve?

Per no. 1, I can tentatively say yes. I’m noticing it’s not eating up as much resource as version 2 did. And hopefully the mem usage will stay down like it’s supposed to.

Per no. 2, I can absolutely say yes.

Here’s an example using YouTube:

(click image for full size)

Looks ordinarily, right? Wrong. This is YouTube zoomed in several times on a full-screen 1680×1050 monitor. And it looks perfect. This is how zoom is SUPPOSED to work. FF3 has now nipped this in the bud (thank God).

Foxmarks works just fine in FF3 and the one other plugin I use carried over okay as well, so no complaints.

I like it and recommend you get it if you like FF.