I recently discovered that I had two explorer.exe processes running. Odio posted a comment under that article where he mentioned that on his PC 2 plugin-container.exe processes were running instead. If you do not know anything about plugin-container.exe you can check out the informational article about it that I wrote in 2010. Plugin-container.exe basically is [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

When I look under plugins in the Firefox add-on manager I notice many plugins there that I never use. Among them illustrious plugins like Google Update, iTunes Application detector, Microsoft Office 2010, Windows Activation Technology or Windows Live Photo Gallery. To be honest, I sometimes do not even know what purpose they have. Google Update [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

One of the most annoying things in Firefox is that third party software can install add-ons and plugins without the user’s consent. That’s a big no-no from a security standpoint obviously, and it remains a mystery why the developers have never bothered to fix that flaw by adding a confirmation dialog whenever a new plugin [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Firefox users with eagle eyes might have spotted a new process that pops up from time to time when they are running the web browser. The process plugin-container.exe appears and disappears sporadically depending on the websites visited. Regular Ghacks readers might already know the answer. Mozilla has added so called out-of-process plugins to the Firefox [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Firefox 3.6.4 has just been released by the developers after a longer than usual wait time. The new version of the web browser comes with out-of-process plugins enabled. This feature basically runs plugins in their own process to increase the stability and security of the browser. By default, only Silverlight, Flash and Quicktime are making [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Firefox 3.6.4 has been in the talks lately because of the intention of the Mozilla developers to add out-of-process plugins to that version of the web browser which basically means that popular plugins run in their own process instead of the main browser process. This is beneficial in case of a plugin crash as it [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are doing it, so why should not the Firefox web browser? Running plugins in separate processes adds much to a web browser’s stability as a crash in a plugin could, and usually would, result in a browser crash as well if everything was handled under one process. With out-of-process [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Many Firefox and Thunderbird users feel that Mozilla has not added enough protection in the software to avoid automatic plugin installation. A recent change in Firefox 3.6 made sure that third parties were not able to make use of the components directory to add their plugins to the web browser but it did not solve [...]

Categories: Browsing, Email, Firefox

Yesterday’s incident (read Microsoft Silently Installing Windows Presentation Foundation Plugin For Firefox for pointers) brought up a question on how the plugin that caused the problems was installed it first place. Mozilla Firefox users with the Microsoft net. Framework 3.5 SP1 had the plugin installed without them accepting the installation of the plugin. This can [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox, Security