Man the Firefox development team is releasing new Firefox 2 versions like crazy. Firefox 2.0.0.16 is the latest Firefox 2 release and a recommended update for everyone that is still running version 2 of the popular browser.

The update is a security update that fixes two critical security vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution and the opening of multiple tabs if Firefox is not running. Take a look at the Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory articles here and here if you want to read up on the vulnerabilities.

The latest version of Firefox can be downloaded right from the Mozilla website which includes versions for all supported operating systems and languages. Automatic upgrades will be available in the next 24-48 hours as well.

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Everyone is used to access the tabs in Firefox just below the Firefox header that contains the navigation elements and address bar. While that seems to the the natural placement for now I remember times when tabs where accessible at the bottom of the screen just above the status bar instead.

And the Tab Sidebar add-on for Firefox tries to introduce another possibility by moving the tabs to the sidebar. This might have a positive effect on widescreen monitors that have lots of width. Many websites do not make use of a width wider than 1000 pixels anyway and those that use a dynamic width can adjust to different width anyway.

The main advantage of placing the tabs in the sidebar is the same why some Windows users prefer to move the taskbar from the bottom to the left or right side instead. The vertical alignment provides additional space that can be used to display additional information or more of the same kind. A vertical Windows taskbar for instance can display more folders with better information (folder names) than a horizontal taskbar can.

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If you are someone who does not want to leave Firefox for a simply local browsing then Firefly might be the add-on that you have been looking for. It adds a pretty comprehensive file manager to Firefox that can be used to view, open, edit, delete, move and rename files with ease. The installation file for the Firefox add-on is probably one of the biggest yet with a size of 1.4 Megabytes, that’s huge for an add-on.

A start page can be configured to contain any number of selected folders of local hard drives and other devices. Firefox tries to discover the available devices automatically at first start but all of them can be edited or removed from the list. Each device is listed with a system path, an alias and other information like type.

The user can then browse those folders and devices normally by clicking on them. The functionality is basically the same than that of Windows Explorer. Several file types can be previewed by hoovering the mouse over them. Most multimedia files can be played right in the browser

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I sometimes connect my Nokia N73 mobile phone to my Toshiba notebook to connect to the Internet and do some urgent stuff like checking and replying to mails, writing articles on my websites or doing research. I do not have a flatrate for the mobile phone which means that I had to chose between a time or volume based account. I decided to go for the volume based account which basically means that I’m charged for every Megabyte of data that I transfer in either direction.

Bandwidth is normally not a huge deal on my local computer and I do not pay that much attention to the amount of data that gets transferred which was a huge problem at first when I started using the mobile phone and notebook combination. It’s an unusual situation but I managed to adapt quickly.

I went on a quest to optimize firefox for low traffic volumes meaning that everything that was not necessary to grab the information of a website had to go. Here is what I changed:

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Internet Explorer users are a bit at the bottom when it comes to useful add-ons for their browser. Sure, there is IE7 Pro which is a fantastic add-on but can you name other ones? I’m not using Internet Explorer regularly and one factor that is playing a role is the lack of add-ons that add features to the browser. In addition I think that the Windows Marketplace, that is the website that stores add-ons for Internet Explorer, is rather complex. There is no way to display only free add-ons for Microsoft Internet Explorer for example.

Qpedia is an add-on for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 that adds Wikipedia Search to the browser. The function becomes available after selecting and right-clicking text in Internet Explorer. The new entry Wikipedia is added to that menu and a click on that entry opens a new Internet Explorer window that opens the Wikipedia page that corresponds to the selected text.

There are not any options to configure the add-on properly. There is no way to make the links open in a new tab. The search also uses the English Wikipedia website to search for the phrases. This add-on could be useful to some users who search Wikipedia regularly and use Internet Explorer.

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