There are two main attack vectors on today’s Internet. First the programs that users make use of to connect to websites, and second user ignorance, carelessness and lack of security sense.

Inexperienced users fall prey to attacks at a much higher rate than experienced users. Even commonly known best security practices, like making sure that an Internet browser is updated when the developer releases a new security patch, are often run in a time frame that is giving attackers ample time to exploit those issues.

But it is not only the technology that is making attacks successful. It is also its users. Phishing for instance has been a problem for more than a decade on the Internet. One would think that users would learn to identify phishing emails by now, but that’s not the reality. People fall for phishing attacks on a daily basis. This article would go to far to look at the root causes for this, but it is likely that ignorance plays a large part in this.

Lets go back to the browser for a moment. Most users know that they have to upgrade the browser when a new version comes out. Most browsers come with automatic update checks and installations these days. Only Google Chrome updates without user interaction, the other browsers, at least for now, display the update notification and give the user the option to run the update. If users opt out, they leave their browser insecure if the update fixed security issues.

Do you want to know how your browser compares to others? Sites like Browserscope allow you to run tests and compare the results with other versions of the same browser and Internet browsers from other companies.

Lets assume you have got your browser updated to the latest version, and that you generally update the application immediately when a new version comes out. You are secure now, right? Nope, you are not. Why? Because it is not only about the browser software. Browsers make automatic use of other applications, commonly called plugins. Popular plugins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Java are attack vectors as well, and successful ones too.

If you fail to update the plug-ins that are enabled in the browser, you are still prone to attacks. That’s why companies like Mozilla have started to integrate plug-in checks into the browser to inform the user about updates.

But you are secure when you update your operating system, browser and plugins whenever they are updated, right? Wrong again. Two attack vectors remain. First the user and second software vulnerabilities that have not been discovered or fixed yet. (There are actually more if you consider the local network as well. The computer could have a virus for instance that could render all browser security pointless. Another vector are local area network attacks)

A browser cannot help a user who enters his credit card number, verification code and social security number in a web form on a site like paypal.com.sxrixxree.cn. Browsers could block the web address if it has been previously identified as a phishing website, if it was not, it is up to the user to come to that conclusion.

Browser developers are trying to automate security as much as possible, especially for users who do not know a thing about it. But even with all that automation, it boils down to the individual user in the end. Tech savvy users know that everyone should have at least a basic understanding of security to avoid the dangers on today’s Internet. The reality on the other hand looks grim, and it does not look like it is going to change anytime soon.

How do you cope with the dangers on today’s Internet? Do you try to educate family and friends, or have you given up on that?

Those who are interested in the features that Opera 11 has to offer can read on to find out. The most dominant addition to Opera 11 are extensions which we have already reviewed in earlier development snapshots of the browser. Extensions work a lot like they do in the Chrome browser, as they can be installed and uninstalled without browser restart.

Companies and users have already ported several popular extensions, like the Last Pass password manager, to Opera and it is likely that the pace will increase with the final release of Opera 11.

But extensions are not everything. Four additional new features in Opera 11 are the following:

• Tab stacking, which can be used to stack tabs on top of each other to group them and save space at the same time. There is more to tabs than meets the eye. Opera comes with native support for protecting tabs for instance or saving sets of tabs.
• Improved address field, which now displays additional information on first glance.
• Visual mouse gestures, allowing the user to control some features of the browser, like moving back and forward in the history, with the mouse at any position in the browser.
• Mail Panel. Opera comes with an email client built-into the browser, and the new mail panel offers better ordering of items for instance.

Not to mention that the browser is one of the fastest web browsers available these days.

Opera Software has released a video to celebrate the release of Opera 11.

Interested users can take a look at the features page over at Opera for in depths information about the web browser’s features.

The profile creation takes some time but the individual tests complete very fast so that it becomes difficulty to read the test descriptions on the pages that are automatically loaded.

The profile of the web browser is then displayed next to the top browsers that have been used to complete the test before. Browserscope displays the name of the web browser and its version, the number of tests performed with that web browser on the site and the results for the individual modules that have been tested.

Green modules indicate passed tests while red ones failed tests. The overall score is displayed next to the name of the browser. Google Chrome 5 is for instance leading the security test with 12 out of 13 tests passed. Firefox 3.6 passed nine, Internet Explorer 8 eight and Opera 10.50 seven.

Google Chrome is also leading the rich text category, Opera the selectors category, Firefox the network tests and Google Chrome and Opera the Acid 3 test with a perfect score.

Visit Browserscope to test your web browser and see how it fares against the other browsers.

It is a pretty solid walkthrough that unfortunately lacks images to go along with the article. The tips and tweaks are divided into these five subjects:

• Give tabs more space
• Prevent unwanted close
• Change tab logic
• Use hotkeys
• Show tabs in full screen mode

Most of the tips and tweaks describe Opera settings and options that can be changed to make it easier and more convenient to work with many tabs in the Opera browser. Probably the most useful tip for a “minimal user interface” type of user like me is the description of how to remove interface elements from the toolbar to provide more space for the tabs.

The article is worth a read for all users who work regularly or partially with the Opera web browser.

Twitter is basically a way of posting short messages on the Internet comparable to SMS but publicly visible and permanent. It is possible to follow people so that their messages get automatically displayed in Twitter. That’s the basic concept which proved to be very popular.

Nested Twitter Replies [link]

Twitter users can post replies to messages which are by default just displayed like any other message meaning that they are not grouped together. The Nested Twitter Replies userscript takes care of that by grouping the original message and the replies together.

Twitter Trends Explained [link]

Twitter trends are topics of public interest that are displayed in the right sidebar of the profile page. This covers a wide variety of topics from technology to politics and environment. There is no explanation on the topic by default which is changed by Twitter Trends Explained.

Endless Tweets [link]

Twitter displays a limited amount of messages per page. Users need to click every time they want to view additional messages. The Endless Tweets userscript will automatically load the next batch of messages when the user reaches the end of the page.

Twitter Search Results on Google [link]

Displays Twitter messages in Google Search results effectively combining Twitter messages in Google Search.

TinyURL Decoder [link]

The TinyURL Decoder supports dozens of different url shortening services that are being used by Twitter users.

Twitpic Thumbnailer [link]

Many Twitter users post images to Twitpic and link to these images in their Twitter messages. This userscript allows Twitter users to preview the thumbnails of those images.

Twitter Live Updater [link]

The Twitter message pages do not get updated automatically which means that users need to refresh them manually to check for new messages. The Twitter Live Updater will refresh the Twitter pages automatically periodically.

Twitter Friends Bio at a Glance [link]

This userscript displays information including the bio, followers and following count that are usually only visible on a user profile page

Twitter2FB [link]

Updates the Facebook status with the Twitter status.

Verdict: The userscript’s website lists hundreds of Twitter scripts that have been designed to change, add or modify functions and features on Twitter. They can really enhance the Twitter experience for users who regularly write and read messages.

Opera Unite is modularized and comes with so called services that can be installed to extend the functionality. This may remind many users of Firefox add-ons but it is actually a completely different technology that requires more than just clicking on an install link. Currently seven services are offered, they are:

• Media Player – Accessing the music collection from anywhere on the Internet.
• File Sharing – A way of sharing files directly between users.
• Fridge – A note leaving application that other people can use to leave notes on a computer system.
• Web Server – Hosting a web server from the local computer system.
• Photo Sharing – Share photos without uploading them first.
• The Lounge – A chat interface hosted on a computer system.

The Opera team has created a user guide to get users started with Opera Unite. Opera Unite is available as a separate preview release which can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the Opera Labs website. The download will actually replace the current version of Opera 10 if the user decides to install it in the same installation directory.

Opera Unite is then available in the left panel after installation. Starting the actual home server requires an Opera account. A homeaddress is assigned to every user signing up for Opera Unite in the from “http://computername.username.operaunite.com/” with the user selecting the computer name. The username will be the Opera username.

Once that has been setup the service that has been selected by the user gets setup. Setup of the file sharing module for example requires the selection of a directory on the local computer that will be used for that purpose. Each service that has been activated can then be accessed from the created homepage if the user accessing it has sufficient rights to do so.

The file sharing page on the server is for example protected by a password by default which can be changed in the root home directory. It offers three different access rights which make it possible to allow public access (everyone can access them), private access (only the root user can access the files) or password protected access.

Verdict:

Opera Unite offers something that web browsers do not offer out of the box. The usefulness of the service on the other hand depends largely on the user’s system configuration. If the user runs an home server then it might not be needed to run Opera Unite as well. Users who prefer to access everything from one program might find Opera Unite helpful especially if the developers and users begin to add new modules to the service. Not really a reinvention of the Internet but a nice service nevertheless.

A full list of all 50 bug fixes is available at the Bugzilla website. Cautious users might want to wait until the update has been distributed to all mirror sites so that it can be downloaded either from the official Mozilla website or through Firefox’s check for update functionality. The public release is expected soon.

The changelog lists many improvements and additions that have been implemented into Opera 10 including a new auto update mechanism that allows Opera to automatically update itself. This feature has to be enabled in the opera configuration. Easiest way to do is to enter opera:config#snapshots into the browser’s address bar and hit enter. The parameter needs to be enabled for the automatic update mechanism to kick in.

Opera 10 comes with a new user interface and several enhancements and customizability options. This includes Speed Dial customizations including the addition of background images, different speed dial layouts or hiding speed dial completely.

Other additions include:

• HTML 5 Support
• Opera Tab Bar thumbnails (displays website thumbnails when hovering over the site’s tab)
• Opera inline spelling checker
• Opera crashlogging tool

It is probably best to check the changelog mentioned above to get a full overview with descriptions of the changes.

Google Chrome 3 has been published on the dev channel from where it can be downloaded and installed on a computer system running a Microsoft windows operating system. The web browser will update existing Google Chrome installations on the system to the latest beta 3 version of it.

There are not many exciting new features in the release despite the jump from version 2 to 3. The release notes list 16 changes to Google Chrome 2.0.180.0 which has been released about two weeks ago. The most notable changes are multiple crash fixes, support for the video tag and fixes to user interface elements drawing improperly on the screen.

Users who are thinking about installing the latest Google Chrome dev release should be extra careful as this release is not intended to be run in work environments. The list of changes do not really make it a necessity to install Google Chrome 3 yet either.

The latest version of the Google browser can be downloaded directly from the official Google Chrome website at Google. Users who prefer to use the offline installer to install the Google browser can download the executable here. The web browser comes with several improvements that are not spectacular but useful nevertheless.

The three additions that are highlighted in the announcement are full screen support (with F11), an option to automatically fill out forms on websites and the ability to delete thumbnails in the new tab page which displays the most visited websites.

Speed and stability of the Google browser have also been increased according to the Google Chrome blog. It does seem though that extension support has not been added to the final release of Google Chrome which would mean that it is still only available in dev builds.

A new Internet Explorer 8 session can be created from the Internet Explorer menu toolbar which might be hidden on your computer system. The fastest way to create a new session if the menu bar is not shown is to press the keyboard combination [Alt f] [i] [enter]. This will open a new Internet Explorer 8 window in a new session. Opening a new tab or window in contrast would share the cookies in Internet Explorer 8. It is furthermore possible to start a new session from the command line by launching iexplore.exe with the -nomerge parameter.

Internet Explorer 8 sessions are a very effective way of accessing multiple accounts at the same web service at once. Microsoft should think about placing that option more dominantly in Internet Explorer 8 as its current position will most likely not be noticed by many Internet Explorer users.

There is not any comparable option in the other Internet browsers yet. Firefox users can use the Gmail Account Manager to manage multiple Gmail accounts but there does not seem to be a feature available that would allow users to log into multiple accounts at all web services.

Peacekeeper is a new Internet browser benchmark by Futuremark which are probably best known for their video graphics benchmarks 3DMark and PCMark. The benchmark is compatible will all web browsers that support Java and JavaScript. It will extract general information from the computer system including its cpu, computer memory and operating system before starting the benchmark.

The benchmark itself is a series of tests that are conducted in the same browser window. The result is displayed in the end which would not make that much sense unless there would be some sort of comparison available. Probably the most interesting aspect of the Internet browser benchmark is the chart in the end that is displaying the performance of several web browsers when run on four different computer systems.

The chart displays the performance of ten web browsers, including both final versions like Internet Explorer 8 or Safari 4 and beta versions like Opera 10 or Firefox 3.1b3, on four different computer systems. Two Intel computer systems running the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E8400 and Intel Core i7 Processor 920 plus two AMD systems running the AMD Athlon 64 3800+ and AMD Phenom II X4 940. It is therefor possible to analyse the performance of a web browser running on a local computer system with those run by other users who took the benchmark.

1. Resources Pane

Webmasters that use Firefox usually have the Firebug add-on installed which gives them access to information about a website’s source code but also about the elements on a page including their load time. Google Chrome provides these information out of the box. A simple right-click on a fully loaded website and the selection of Inspect Element will open the site inspector. The tab Resources displays the loading time and size of all elements on that specific webpage. Resources are further divided into categories like scripts, images or documents. The total loading time and transfer size is shown that is also divided by the categories. This gives an immediate overview over the elements that slow down the page loading time the most.

2. Resizing Text areas

Text areas on websites are usually placed to give visitors the means to interact with the website or its owner. Contact and comment forms make use of text areas which allow the user to enter text into them. Some websites implement rather small text boxes which makes it unnecessary difficulty to enter a comment or message. Google Chrome offers a feature to resize text areas on websites by simply clicking in the right lower corner and dragging the text are to a larger size.

3. The Task Manager

The task manager of the Google browser provides information about the memory, cpu and network usage of every open tab, the browser engine itself and plugins that have been loaded. The overview is interesting as it gives the user information about high resource sources directly in the web browser. Plugins with a high resource usage can be identified and uninstalled from the web browser or computer system. Even more interesting is the option to kill one of the web browser’s tabs from the task manager window. The tabs work independently from each other which makes it safe to delete tabs.

4. Using Incognito Mode to log into the same service twice with different accounts

Incognito Mode is already available in other web browsers. Those that do not have implemented it already have announced to (likely) add it into one of the future builds. While its primary focus is privacy it can be used to log into the same service with a different account at the same time. This is possible because the active cookies and information do not carry over when starting incognito mode. It is therefor possible to log into services like Gmail twice. First normally and then the second time by starting Incognito mode (Ctrl+Shift+N) and logging into the service again.

5. Browser History

The shortcut [Ctrl H] will open the browser history in Google Chrome. The history is sorted by date. Websites are listed with their favicon and title on the main page. The search form can be used to find terms in the history. These result terms look a bit different. Google Chrome displays dates, titles, descriptions and thumbnails while Chromium displays the same information but the thumbnails.

Short films are not for anyone but they surely will reach a small but influential audience which like these kinds of promotions and ideas. Yes, the approach is pretty unique but will it really help to gain market share from competitors like Mozilla or Internet Explorer? That is highly doubtful. What it certainly does is to spread the word about the Google browser. And yes, some of the short films are nice to watch although it comes down to taste in the end.

You can watch all 11 short films about the Google browser over at the browser’s Youtube channel. If you do let us know if you like the idea.

Next step would be to open Youtube, enter the search term and check the results. Youtube It on the other hand makes the whole process easier as it requires less user interaction. The add-on for the Internet browser Firefox adds an entry to the right-click context menu of the web browser. A search for a specific term on Youtube can be initiated by marking text on a website, right-clicking afterwards and selecting the Youtube It link. This will open a new tab in the web browser that is opening the Youtube search results page.

The possibilities and uses are again manifold. It can be used on Amazon to check out a DVD or CD before buying it, on hardware review websites to find videos of the hardware in action or on gaming sites to find trailers and other related content more easily. Youtube It is an interesting add-on for users who use Youtube regularly.

Downloads have already been pushed to the update mirrors and the Mozilla homepage has been modified to show Firefox 3.0.10 as the latest available version of the web browser. Users can also initiate the download from the Firefox menu by clicking on Help > Check for Updates. The release notes only list the two fixes mentioned in the first paragraph.

Our new software updates notification site appnews broke the news more than 4 hours ago. Make sure you check it out if you have not been there before ;)

TidyRead is a brand new add-on for the Firefox web browser that extracts the main content from a website and displays it in an overlay window on top of the original website. It can do that automatically or manually but more about that later. The window will usually display the title, text and additional information like information about the author, date and comments on the page. It basically strips away all the non-content elements like sidebar links, advertisement or widgets that can break concentration easily.

A total of four different themes are available that use the color schemes white, black, yellow and green. The very same options can be used to increase or decrease the text size on the screen and to change the width of the layout from wide to normal and narrow. There is also an option to print the extracted contents.

The add-on will perform the task automatically by default which can be a bit nerve wrecking after a while. The settings can be changed in the extension’s options so that the process can be initiated manually by clicking on the add-on’s icon in the status bar. It is also possible to create a whitelist and blacklist. Sites that match strings in the whitelist will always be displayed using the add-on while those blacklisted will not.

The default color scheme, font size and margin can be defined in the options as well plus there are settings to disable the add-on for https pages, forums and homepages.

Visualizing secure SSL connections might be exactly what users need to avoid phishing websites but also services that are careless about sensible data (that is do not use SSL to protect the connections). Safe will color all tabs that make use of a secure SSL connection so that users of every level can identify them on first glance. It will furthermore draw a visible border in the same color around the screen to make it even easier to identify a website that is using SSL to increase the security of their users.

That visualization of a secure SSL connection should be reason enough to install it. The add-on is very handy for users who feel insecure on the Internet giving them a visual confirmation if they visit a secure website.

The extension offers a second feature that seems to be a bit buggy in the current version. It will display a status bar icon that is supposed to change color when hoovering over a form submission button that is using the SSL protocol. This means it should display a yellow color when hoovering over the login button at Gmail or PayPal.

It should also be noted that the border that is drawn around the screen will reduce the screen estate for the website. This can be problematic for users that run low screen resolutions.

Lets take a look at the default Youtube screen that appears when a user without the script opens a video on the portal.

And now the same page after the script has been installed in Firefox:

The script changes a lot directly on the screen. The video gets resized automatically to fit the screen. Ads and other unwanted elements on the page are removed including watching now, character counter or video annotations. Options to download the video in flv, mp4 format are available directly beneath the video. A click on the video title will also initiate a download of the video directly from Youtube.

The configuration options provided by the script contain several interesting features as well. The user can change the design of the Youtube website drastically. It is possible to remove additional elements from the Youtube page, display none or up to 500 comments on a page, prevent autoplay or autodownload, bypass the age verification (logged in users only) and select the default video format and flash player quality.

Firefox users can download the userscript here while Opera users have to go here instead.

YousableTubeFix is a great userscript for Youtube addicts and users who want Youtube to automatically use a specific video quality and page layout.

Default Browser is a small software program that has been designed for Windows XP users who prefer to have more choice when selecting the default internet browser. The software application basically allows each user of the Windows XP operating system to select a personal default internet browser

The application will displayed a list of supported web browsers after start and also display the current default internet browser of the computer system. Supported are a wide range of internet browsers including Firefox, Firefox portable, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and several additional web browsers. There is even an option to select a internet browser by browsing the computer’s hard drive and selecting an executable manually.

The portable application has to be executed by every user of the Windows XP operating system wanting to select a different internet browser than the system’s default.