Why is there no security module in place in the browser for this kind of installations? A simple check to see if there are new extensions or plugins since the last use of the web browser, and a prompt that asks the user what to do with those extensions or plugins (install or ignore come to mind).

It is all nice and fair to appeal to companies to play by the rules and give users a choice, but my gripe with the situation is that companies have shown in the past that they prefer to bypass the user occasionally. And Mozilla should have reacted on that a long time ago by blocking those installations natively, giving the user the choice to install or block the extensions and plugins.

Instead of saying that this practice is not ok Mozilla should step in after years of passivity and start protecting their users from this behavior. Then it is no longer a question of ethics because the issue is back in the hand of the people that are affected: The Firefox users.

So please Mozilla it is really simple: Ask first! (before allowing new extensions or plugins that magically appear after starting Firefox)

The core option that the add-on provides is a menu that is displayed when user’s right-click on the bookmark star icon in the Firefox address bar (at the right side). A left-click on the icon adds the active page to the browser’s bookmarks. The right-click menu gives the user direct options to store the bookmark in a particular bookmark folder. The star option in contrast places bookmarks automatically in the unsorted bookmarks folder.

The bookmarks menu is expanded and offers way more comfort than the default one.

The expanded bookmarks menu will be displayed all the time. The add-on will also add a Add Bookmark Here option to all bookmark folders which is especially useful for those located in on of the Firefox toolbars as it means that it is possible to add bookmarks to a specific bookmark folder with just two clicks. It is possible to hide some of the features of the add-on in the options. It is for example possible to remove the Add Bookmark here menu from the bookmark folders or to place it at the bottom instead of the top.

Add Bookmark Here is an interesting add-on for users who bookmark regularly. (Thanks Roman for the tip)

The add-on will add a Cache Search option to the Firefox Tools menu. It will load a new window that contains a search form on top and two windows below which display the files that are found that include the search phrase and the source code of the page if one is selected.

Each page that has been found to contain the search phrase in the Firefox cache is displayed with information like its size, the times the search phrase was found in the file, the mime type, character and content encoding. Once a file has been selected the source code will be displayed in the second window. It will immediately jump to the first hit in the source code and highlight it so that it is easier to analyze it.

There are Next and Previous buttons that work in the second window that will jump forward and backward in the source code to highlight all the different hits in the source code.

One of the easiest ways to do that would be to compare the entered password with the correct password. To do that the entered password has to be revealed and that is what the Firefox password Revealer Show Passwords does. (another way to make sure the right password is entered is to type it the address bar in Firefox and copy paste it into the password field).

Show Passwords adds an icon to the Firefox Status Bar that will change the behavior of Firefox password forms when activated. Password forms are usually showing asterisks instead of the real characters, Show Passwords changes that behavior and turns the asterisks into visible characters again.

All that needs to be done to verify a password is to enter it, click on the button of the Firefox password revealer and compare it with the correct password. All password forms will show the real characters instead of asterisks from that moment on. Another click on the button in the Status Bar will change the behavior again to the default one so that asterisks are shown in password forms.

The release is a security and stability update. A total of nine security vulnerabilities have been fixed in the update including four critical vulnerabilities. You can access the list of security fixes at the Security Advisories page for Firefox 3. The release notes do not contain information about the stability updates but the full list of bug fixes mentions a few fixes that stop browser crashes.

Lastly language support and language related additions seem to have been a priority. Firefox 3.04 adds support for Thai and Icelandic as well as beta test releases for Bulgarian, Esperanto, Estonian, Latvian, Occitan, and Welsh.

There have also been several important bug fixes for the following annoying problems:

• Fixed an issue where some passwords saved using Firefox 3.0.2 did not work properly.
• In some cases, Firefox would not properly save proxy settings for protocols other than HTTP
• Fixed an issue where the IME input tool used to enter Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indic characters was covered by the “Add Bookmark” panel

Firefox 3 users are asked to update as soon as possible. All updates that had been installed on a test system were not affected by the update and it is unlikely that many will be. Let us know if you encounter problems after installing or updating to the new Firefox release.

Roman Sharp send in a link to the Firefox extension Launch Clipboard. The experimental add-on can launch multiple urls in Firefox that have been copied to the clipboard before. It differentiates between text links and html links and provides access to two keyboard shortcuts and entries in the right-click context menu to load those urls.

Using the keyboard shortcuts poses the fastest way of loading the urls in Firefox because the keyboard shortcut works everywhere. The context menu entries are only available when right-clicking the Firefox location bar which slows down that process quite a bit.

The extension identifies links properly that begin with http, ttp and h**p. It is furthermore possible to enable support for urls without protocol and multi-byte character strings in the extension’s options. There is however no way to add support for additional obfuscated links, for example links beginning with hxxp. That limits the usefulness for users who stumble upon links regularly that do not use a supported link scheme. The extension is also able to identify html links beginning with “a href” properly.

It would be really helpful if the author would get rid of the protocol limitations and add support for all kinds of protocol mistypes.

The alpha versions of Firefox 3.1 Shiretoko / Gecko 1.9.1 introduces several new features and performance improvements. It also addds support for the HTML5 video element, CSS properties and dragging and dropping tabs between browser windows. The major feature of the release will be the performance gains.

Interested users can take a look at the release notes and download Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 for all supported operating systems.

The Open Office developers are a step ahead of the Firefox development team. They left the alpha phase and have released the first release candidate of Open Office. The release notes of this release are available online. The download is available for all supported operating systems.