Meet Firefox Hello Video Chat & Firefox Marketplace In The New Firefox 35

This came out a while ago in Firefox 35 (now up to 44) , but it is still an exciting development.  Mozilla’s Firefox, one of our favourite web browsers, brings some nifty new features in its latest update. Firefox 35 introduces a cross-platform video chat service called Firefox Hello, lets users beta-test the new Firefox Marketplace, and also bakes in social sharing on the web.




One Click To Call Them All: Firefox Hello


There are plenty of free alternatives to Skype, but few have the ease of Firefox Hello. It’s so simple, anyone can use it. You click the Hello icon, start a new conversation, and copy-paste the link to anyone whom you want to video chat with. No sign-ups required!



Firefox Hello will remember your conversations and keep those links alive until you delete them, so you can give each chat window a unique name for the people you call often. And yes, you don’t need Firefox to use it, it will work on any web browser that supports WebRTC, like Chrome or Opera.


You can choose to mute the audio or stop the video at any time. Sign in with your Firefox ID and you can import contacts from other services.
That said, Firefox Hello is still missing a few features. Most importantly, you can’t start group video chats, it’s one-to-one conversations only. Also, you can’t share your screen, like with Google Hangouts or Skype. For the same no-signup experience, Appear.in still seems like the most convenient video chat service. But Firefox Hello is pretty nifty for regular one-on-one chats.

 

One Button To Rule Them All: Firefox Share

Browsing and sharing are intertwined, integral parts of the web surfing experience now. Firefox wants to make it easier for you to share content without cluttering up your toolbar. Firefox Share integrates several popular social networks and bookmarking services into a single button.
So whether you want to share an item on Facebook or Twitter, you click the same button in the Firefox toolbar, which will auto-load the content of the page you are viewing. Firefox Share also supports Gmail, LinkedIn, Tumblr and several others. Check out the full list of services—but be warned, some of these are activated in the sidebar (and you’ll see a note for them).
Cleaning up a cluttered toolbar is a great idea, but Firefox Share doesn’t really do a better job than existing services like Buffer. The Buffer extension for Firefox is great for sharing, and you can cross-post to multiple networks simultaneously too. Plus, not all services get compacted into the Share button. For example, the awesome bookmarking service Pocket appears as its own extension icon, defeating the purpose.

 

One Site To Download Them All: Firefox Marketplace

 

Back in 2010, the Chrome Web Store integrated Chrome apps, extensions and themes in one place. Mozilla’s answer is the Firefox Marketplace, currently in beta.
So if you want one of the best Firefox Add-ons, you now have to go to the Marketplace instead of the old Add-ons page. The biggest benefit here seems to be collections of web apps and extensions, like a suite of productivity apps or a curation of “hidden gems” on Firefox. Who knows, you might just discover some more great Firefox extensions that no other browser has!


Get Going With Firefox 44


Firefox 44 also includes built-in support for H.264 (MP4) video on Mac OS X, a new search UI, better performance while resizing high-quality images, and some other improvements. The Android version has improved geolocation services and the Download Manager can now keep track of downloaded files.


Download Firefox 44 for Windows, Mac or Linux


Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/meet-firefox-hello-video-chat-firefox-marketplace-new-firefox-35/

The Ultimate Guide to Making Firefox Faster

If you’ve been using Firefox for a long time, you may have noticed it getting slower as time passed. Maybe it takes a few seconds to start up or takes a bit longer loading webpages. You might start noticing that it takes a second or so to switch between tabs or that the menu option doesn’t pop up instantly.
If your installation of Firefox runs slow or freezes more than you’d care for, there are a lot of different ways to speed things up a bit. In this article, I’m going to go through all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years to keep Firefox fast and efficient. Depending on your operating system and system configuration, some tweaks might give you more of a boost than others.
Note that some tweaks require changing the browser settings in about:config. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read my previous post on backing up and modifying the about:config configuration in Firefox.

 

 

Enable HTTP Cache

There is a new HTTP cache option that can be enabled in Firefox, which will help reduce UI glitches and various other browser crashes. Open about:config and search for the following entry:

browser.cache.use_new_backend

Double-click on it and change the value from 0 to 1. You can then simply close the about:config tab and continue browsing. There is no need to restart the browser or computer, etc. The new cache will be enabled and you should get a speed boost and a smoother browsing experience.

 

 

Refresh Firefox

Firefox has a really cool feature that basically performs an automatic tune up on your Firefox installation. However, you only want to do this after you understand exactly what it does. Firstly, it will keep your browsing history, bookmarks, passwords, cookies, website auto-fill info and personal dictionary.
It will delete extensions and themes, website permissions, added search engines, download history, security settings, plugin settings, toolbar customizations, user styles and social feature. To get to it, you have to type in about:support in the address bar.




Click on the Refresh Firefox button at the top right to get started. I have used this feature a several times and it works great. It does take a bit of time reinstalling a few add-ons, but I’ve found that it helps me get rid of the add-ons I never used in the first place.

 

 

Enable Safe Mode

Firefox has a nice feature called Safe mode that disables extensions and themes in order to determine whether an extension is causing problems. Since Firefox is all about extensions, you’ll definitely run into some with poorly written code that can cause a lot of grief.
If you find that browsing in safe mode is super fast compared to normal browsing, then you can almost guarantee that it’s an extension causing the slowdown. You can restart Firefox in safe mode by clicking on the menu icon and then clicking on the help icon.





Now choose Restart with Add-ons Disabled to get into safe mode.



Safe mode will also turn off hardware acceleration and will reset toolbar and button customizations. Everything will go back to normal when you restart Firefox normally so don’t think you’ve lost any customizations you might have made.
Also, when you restart, it’ll ask you to Start in Safe Mode or Refresh Firefox, which is the the other tip I already mentioned above.





It’s best to disable all add-ons and then enable them one by one to see which one is causing Firefox to slow down, freeze or crash. You can see all the add-ons and plugins by clicking on the Firefox menu and clicking on Add-ons.





The more add-ons and plugins you disable or delete, the faster Firefox will run. Some plugins will be set to Ask to Activate, which is ok. You want to check all the ones that are set to Always Activate and see which ones can be switched to Ask to Activate.

 

 

Minimize Memory Usage

Firefox has quite a few of these built-in performance tricks and another one is to minimize the memory usage. Go ahead and type in about:memory into the address bar and you can get detailed memory usage information about Firefox.





You’ll see a button under Free Memory called Minimize memory usage. Click on that and it will try to free up memory immediately and therefore make Firefox run faster. This is a good option to use if you had a bunch of tabs open in Firefox and you recently closed out a lot of them. Any memory being previously held by those tabs and still being used by Firefox will be freed.

 

 

Clear Cache

Another easy way to make Firefox faster is to periodically clear the cache. By default, Firefox will cache the contents of most websites you visit, so that they load faster when you visit them again. In the short term, this works well and does speed up browsing, however, once the cache becomes very large, it can start to slow things down.
If you click on the Firefox menu, click Options and then click on Advanced, you’ll see a Network tab that lets you clear the cache.





I don’t suggest clearing the cache very often, as that will slow down browsing. The best thing to do is to check every few months or to check the Override automatic cache management box and set the value depending on what type of hard drive you have. Since this cache is accessed via disk, it can be pretty slow if you have a slow hard drive.
However, if you have an extremely fast SSD drive, then using the cache can be more beneficial. So keep it small (<250 MB) if you hard drive is slow and leave it alone if you have a very fast hard disk.

 

 

Firefox Pipelining

If you have used Firefox for a long time, you have probably come across this hack on many blogs. Pipelining is a feature that basically lets Firefox open multiple connections to a server, theoretically loading pages faster. I’ve had mixed results with this setting, so it’s best to test it yourself first to see whether it’s worth keeping enabled.
There are different views on what value should be set for the max number of connections, but the consensus from most diehard Firefox fans is 8. In order to enable pipelining, go to about:config and type in network.http.pipe in the filter box and you’ll see several settings.





The values you need to change are shown in the image above. I have also listed them below if it’s not clear.

network.http.pipelining – true
network.http.pipelining.aggressive – true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests – 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl – true

 

 

Other Settings

There are a couple of more obscure settings that could possibly speed up your Firefox browsing, but results are not guaranteed. It’s best to test these and see if there is any noticeable difference.

network.dns.disableIPv6 – true
browser.tabs.animate – false
browser.display.show_image_placeholders – false

Hopefully, your installation of Firefox is running a bit faster. I don’t recommend using add-ons like FasterFox because they only change the settings we have talked about above and adding more add-ons to speed up Firefox just doesn’t make any sense. If you have your own tip for speeding up Firefox, let us know in the comments. Enjoy!

Source: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/speed-up-mozilla-firefox/

How To Force HTML5 Videos Instead of Flash in Chrome and Firefox

It’s no secret that Steve Jobs hated Flash; he was singlehandedly responsible for its downfall. His reasons, all valid, can be read in this excellent essay. On the web, yes, Flash lost. HTML, CSS, JavaScript won. The web was no longer filled with ugly and slow splashes of Flash based websites. The web is a lot prettier than it used to be.

Flash is still prevalent when it comes to videos though. While front end languages were ready to take over the interactive elements of the website, HTML and video playback still weren’t best pals.

It’s much better now, with the HTML5 spec being finalized and browser support at a plateau. What I’m getting at is that while many websites still like to squeeze Flash videos down the internet cables, they really don’t have to. And though YouTube is moving a lot of its videos to the HTML5 format, we’re clearly not all the way there.
In this guide, we’ll focus on how to force HTML5 videos on websites like YouTube and Vimeo (as much as we can).

Why Would You Want To Do This?

We know Flash on the whole is bad, but why would you want to switch from Flash video to HTML5?

• HTML5 videos are less resource intensive. They load up faster.
• They don’t take nearly as much power to run, which means your laptop’s battery lasts longer.
• To me, and I have no scientific way of proving this, HTML5 videos look crisper played at 720p resolution on my Retina MacBook Pro.

And of course, there are downsides as well. For the most part, HTML5 videos don’t support 1080p resolution. If you’re addicted to full HD playback, this solution might not be for you. Again, in my opinion, the 720p HTML5 playback is really nice.

YouTube has its own HTML5 videos page: YouTube’s own HTML5 video page just states that whenever possible, it will load HTML5 videos but it gives no details about which ones.

Chrome Extensions

HTML5ify

HTML5ify will block Flash content wherever it can and replace it with HTML5. Besides YouTube, it will force HTML5 players in Vimeo as well (if you’ve viewed more than a couple of Vimeo videos, you know the built-in player is unnecessarily complicated).

HTML5 video for YouTube

HTML5 Video for YouTube does pretty much the same thing as HTML5ify, except it adds a strip of UI below every video. HTML5 support for high definition videos is still tricky. So you might have to make do with 720p resolution. The dropdown menu below the video player gives you options for selecting the quality.

Firefox Add-ons

YouTube ALL HTML5

YouTube ALL HTML5 adds a button that switches the current video to HTML5 format.

YouTube HTML5 Video

YouTube HTML5 Video is a simple add-on that inserts “&html5=1” at the end of each YouTube URL forcing the video to load in HTML5. If you’ve got 100% confidence in HTML5 videos and don’t want to click a button every time, use this add-on to basically automate the process.

YouTube HTML5 Player

YouTube HTML5 Player is much like YouTube ALL HTML5. It presents you with a button that when pressed, switches from Flash to HTML5 video.

Flash Or HTML5?

It’s your turn now. Flash or HTML5 – which is your preferred online video playback format? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: http://www.guidingtech.com/35075/force-html5-videos/

Six Alternative, Useful Browsers Based On Google Chrome

Chrome is the most popular browser around, but even with its large extension library, one size does not fit all. Thankfully, there's a treasure trove of web browser brilliance built on Chrome's solid, open-source foundation—from browsers aimed at the security conscious to the multimedia hobbyists. Here are four Chrome-based alternatives worth checking out.

Why Switch to a Different Chrome?

If you're already using Chrome, chances are you're pretty happy with it and don't feel any urgency to switch. And if it's a basic browsing experience that you're looking for, there may not be any massive need to swap over.

When developers start climbing its open source Chromium framework, they generally aren't looking to create another Chrome, however. Each one has its own particular nuance, and if that purpose aligns with your net-surfing preferences, you'll find yourself with a browser that gives the web a delicious new flavor.

The good news is that, being from the same code as Chrome, you can still sync your profile and use all the same extensions and add-ons as Google's original, so you'll never be giving anything up by testing out one of these great alternatives.

And hey! There are no rules that say you can only have one of these installed a time. Why not combine them depending on what you're doing on the net today?

For the Privacy Conscious: SRWare Iron

Like most browsers, and pretty much anything else with an Internet connection these days, Chrome sometimes comes under fire for privacy issues. Not that it's giving your data away, but it might not always camouflage it as much as you'd like. So SRWare created the Iron web browser as a privacy-conscious alternative.

Much of Iron's privacy tactics are derived from removing Chrome functions, rather than adding to them, which at first glance may appear like you're getting a reduced experience. However, it's mostly working to stem the flow of information from your computer to Google's. For example, it doesn't deliver suggestions direct to the address bar, nor does it contact Google for automatic updates or error reporting. There's even a built-in ad-blocker. (You can check out a full list of differences here).

A nice side effect of this streamlined Chrome alternative is that it also runs noticeably faster, since it's not using up brain power reporting every little click and search back to Google, and instead dedicates itself purely to shepherding you around the net. This is a good option for anyone who wants to retain the Chrome experience in an app that works straight out of the box, but is using a low-speed net connection and/or has growing concerns about online privacy.

There aren't any bells or whistles about this browser, so don't expect a feature-rich experience. To some this might sound a little off-putting, but many will appreciate its minimalist, safe approach. This is the browser I've actually settled on lately, and it's fast, cheerful and rock solid. We've become very firm friends.

Update: A lot of you have noted that Iron's features are not as privacy-conscious as they would have you believe, and that its developer's intentions are less than noble. This post does a good job of summing up some info on the subject. So if you want a browser focused on privacy, you can likely skip Iron and go with Chrome or Firefox.

For the Security Focused: Comodo Dragon

Targeted more toward the tech-savvy, experienced surfer, Comodo Dragon comes to us from security collective Comodo. As you'd expect from the Comodo Group, which has its entire corporate focus on web security, this web window offers a frontline defense as you wander the digital wilds.

Your home computer can probably handle the occasional kick in the ribs from a bit of malware, spyware or even a semi-malicious piece of code, but a business or work computer can't always dismiss those risks so lightly. When you first install Comodo Dragon, it gives you the option of routing your web browsing through Comodo's highly secure DNS servers. Indeed, if you're particularly paranoid, it'll even help you route all your traffic through these servers.

Additional checks are performed on SSL digital certificates and the browser reports back to you on how strong it feels secure websites really are. There's also an on-demand site inspector that checks pages for malicious code before you saunter into digital quicksand. On top of all this, it offers some similar privacy blocks as Iron, and has its own update system built in to keep you on the latest version.

It's not perfect, of course. There are times when Dragon feels to be toeing the company line a little too hard, pushing you toward Comodo's products and services by way of light (and mostly well-intentioned) scare tactics. You'd be forgiven if this eventually turned into a deal breaker for you, but this level of built-in paranoia could prove to be your savior if you frequent the darker corners of the web.

Oh, and if you're a Firefox fan rather than Chrome, Comodo offers much the same features in its IceDragon package.

For Extra Conveniences: CoolNovo

You may remember CoolNovo from back when it was called Chrome Plus. Its name has been changed for obvious legal reasons, but the end product hasn't been altered in any way, other than some great new updates and added features.

This browser is all about convenience, and works hard to make your online experience as simple and seamless as possible. It's still got some privacy tweaks like we've seen in the others, so safety hasn't been sacrificed in the name of CoolNovo's functionality, but it's more focused on enhancing your digital journey. It's becoming less and less of an issue, but there are still one or two sites that still work better with Internet Explorer. With one click, you can load the page in "IE Mode" right in a CoolNovo tab.

Similarly, it adds things like automatic translation, customizable mouse gestures, and other shortcuts like double-clicking a tab to close it. Top this off with a range of file download tools and "Super Drag," which lets you open links just by dropping the text onto the window, and you've got a great browser that's packed with operational extras.

This is a community-run project, however, and support for CoolNovo is sketchy at best. It's mainly based out of China, so there are one or two cultural and language barriers that stand in the way if you find yourself having any difficulties. So long as it works straight out of the box, you've nothing to worry about. But it could be put to the sword pretty quickly if you ever encounter any problems.

For the Multimedia Guru: Torch Browser

As the web becomes more and more a place where we store our files and find entertainment content, web browsers need to keep up with the increasingly busy two-way street of multimedia consumption. Torch Browser makes a significant move into this realm by lighting a fire under Chromium's sharing, downloading and multimedia functions.

One of the first of such features you'll come across is its tile-based drag-and-drop interface. This is a very unique and powerful feature that lets you simply drop a link, some text, a photo or whatever else you want to share (or search for) onto a relevant tile, and Torch Browser takes care of the rest. This might be Facebook, for example, or YouTube, and whatever you threw onto the browser window is automatically put to that particular tile's purpose. It also has a built-in torrent client.

Similarly, it also has a media grabber built-in, which saves embedded music and videos as a file on your computer. Downloading from the web is given a shot in the arm by way of the browser's download accelerator, which you can turn on and off as required. It even has Hola built-in, so you can access region-locked music and videos.

Ultimately this Chrome alternative targets the heavy social and multimedia user with pinpoint accuracy, all while delivering Chromium's usual smooth and user-friendly browsing experience. But no matter how we dress it up, there's no avoiding Torch Browser's likely appeal to the more...pirate-like among us, which might switch some people off if it begins to weigh on their conscience. For the rest, its interface may be a little cluttered, but it's got a good amount of useful tools built-in if you're willing to explore it.

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These aren't the only browsers based off Chrome, of course, but they're some solid ones worth looking at (many of which you guys have mentioned before). If you've got needs Chrome can't service out of the box, they might be worth a look.

Title image remixed from pixelparticle (Shutterstock).Source: http://lifehacker.com/four-alternative-useful-browsers-based-off-of-google-c-1558525397

Source: http://lifehacker.com/four-alternative-useful-browsers-based-off-of-google-c-1558525397?commerce_insets_disclosure=on&utm_expid=66866090-48.Ej9760cOTJCPS_Bq4mjoww.2&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com

An honorable mention: Chromium


Chromium - Open Source




The first place to start is the one closest to home. The open source core of Chrome, Chromium is what the browser is before Google adds its branding and integration features. These include things like user metrics (the sending of browsing stats back to Google), crash reporting, the built-in Flash player and PDF viewer, multimedia codecs (MP3, AAC), and the auto-updating system. Folks who lambast Google over privacy issues often recommend using Chromium, which lacks the user tracking features they dislike in Chrome.
Browsing in Chromium is virtually the same experience as using Chrome itself, in big part because many of the missing pieces are made up for in other ways. The lack of the internal Flash plug-in isn't a problem, for instance, because Chromium can make use of whatever copy of Flash is already installed in Windows.
One potential hurdle is that Chromium isn't distributed in the same manner as Chrome itself. There are automated builds of Chromium in the maze of directories for Google's Chromium site, and anywhere from four to five builds a day are created automatically from the latest source code. But because Chromium doesn't have Chrome's auto-updater, you need to upgrade Chromium manually.
Another problem is Chromium's inherent instability. If you simply pick a build, there's no guarantee it will run properly, so you may have to do some research ferreting out a reasonably stable one. Fortunately, some people have done a little of this legwork for you. For instance, the CRportable project repackages reasonably stable Chromium builds in the PortableApps format, so you can run the browser from a USB key or portable hard drive.

Chromium

Okay, Chromium isn’t technically based on Google Chrome — it’s the other way around; Chrome is based on Chromium. Chromium is the completely open-source version of Google Chrome. Chromium lacks many features found in Chrome, including the Google Updater, the bundled Flash plugin, the service that optionally sends usage data to Google, and non-free codecs like MP3 and AAC. Without the update service, you’ll have to update Chromium yourself.

Google doesn’t release stable builds of Chromium. If you want to use Chromium, check out the Chromium Portable website.

By Martin Brinkmann on September 6, 2013 in Internet 27

Epic Browser is not the first nor will it be the last Chromium-based web browser that aims to improve user privacy. When Google Chrome was released years ago, third party Chromium-based browsers appeared shortly thereafter that offered most of what Chrome had to offer, but without several of the tracking or privacy-invading features that Google's browser shipped with.
The majority of those browsers are still around, and Epic Browser will have to compete against them and Chrome, and probably other web browsers as well.
The homepage of Epic Browser focuses on privacy, first explaining how you are being tracked on the Internet, and then how Epic Browser helps you protect yourself when you are browsing the Internet.

 

Epic Browser


According to that page, it fixes 11 potential leaks that may reveal information about you and your browsing habits to Internet companies such as Google.

1. No address bar suggest
2. No URL checks
3. Auto-translate has been removed.
4. No URL Tracker
5. Installation ID removed
6. RLZ-Tracking number removed
7. Default Updater removed.
8. Installation time stamp removed.
9. No alternate error pages.
10. No navigation error suggestions
11. No error reporting

In addition to that, it more or less defaults to private browsing mode by preventing the recording of history, caches, passwords, pre-fetching and other features that may reveal information about the user.
That is however still not enough. It clears all browsing data on exit by default, making sure that any information that were needed during the session are removed from the system in the process.
As you may have noticed, this may impact how you work with the browser as you cannot make use of features that you may have come to rely on.
The developers of Epic Browser have added features to the browser that neither Chrome nor Chromium ship with. This includes a one-click US proxy server (powered by Spotflux) that users can make use of to hide their original IP address when they are browsing on the Internet (yes, this includes access to US-only services such as Hulu), integrated ad blocking and tracker blocking, automatic blocking of third party cookies, and automatic use of https versions of websites if provided.
It is interesting to note that Epic will enable the proxy by default on Google to prevent the tracking of your IP address on the site. What more? It blocks the sending of the referral header when you use the search engine so that third party websites do not know what your search term was that led you to their website.
Another interesting feature is the umbrella icon that you can use for quick access to several core features such as ad and third party cookie blocking.

Downsides

You are probably wondering about downsides of using the browser. The first thing that comes to mind are the features that you cannot use, like spell checking, auto-translation or session restore. Some features are left for the user to decide, like the saving of passwords in the browser, while others cannot be altered in any form or way.
The address bar search provider is set to epicsearch.in. According to the developers, revenue generated here is used to support the browser and services it provides. They furthermore state that the ads displayed here are only based on a user's search query and a rough location check.

Closing Words

It is too early to tell if Epic Browser will make a big splash or remain a niche browser that appeals to a privacy-focused audience.
I wish it would provide users with choice in regards to some of the features as it would improve the browser's usability. It would then be the user's decision to sacrifice some privacy for convenience.
The developers have promised to release the source code of the browser soon. For now though, it is not available.
Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2013/09/06/epic-browser-privacy-focused-web-browser-based-chromium/