You install Firefox on your freshly minted computer. Everything is great for a while. Firefox loads up in seconds, web pages open in a snap, and everything works. But then, over time, Firefox starts acting up. It gets slower and slower. Things that used to work stops working. Sudden freeze-ups and crashes begin appearing. I am sure this is something many of you have personally experienced. As our Firefox profile begins accumulating clutter, the performance and stability of Firefox takes a hit. This might be due to a toolbar you unknowingly installed, or some extension that has a memory leak bug. The thing is that finding out the root cause is both time consuming and frustrating.

In order to make things simpler, Mozilla is adding a magical reset button to Firefox. The new option will be available under about:support (accessible via Help –> Troubleshooting Information). Clicking on this button will create a new profile with default settings, which will hopefully solve your performance issues. Firefox will also copy over your browsing history, cookies, saved form history, saved passwords, and bookmarks. This means that you will essentially have a fresh install of Firefox, but with all of your personal data intact.

The biggest drawback of the reset feature is its location. It’s buried deep within Firefox, and is practically impossible to discover. To counter this problem, Mozilla is currently thinking about prompting the user to reset Firefox after it crashes for the third time. It is also exploring the possibility of giving Windows users this option when they are reinstalling Firefox.

Since most tech security threats come from the Internet, a user’s web browser is often the first line of defense when it comes to keeping viruses and other malware off a computer or corporate network.

So which browser does the best job at blocking attacks from malicious websites? That depends on who you ask. All major browsers include features designed to warn users before they go to sites that may harm their computers and to isolate the threats before they can do any harm.

The question, “which one has the most effective security features?” is often the subject of debate. For example, a recent study released by security firm Accuvant claimed Google’s Chrome to be the most secure browser, followed by Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. That ranking was based on factors such as the quality of the browsers’ URL blacklisting, how often updates and patches are released, and how well the software “sandboxes” threats, or keeps them from affecting the rest of the user’s system.

But there is one catch. Though Accuvant published the details of its analysis to show there was no bias, the study was commissioned by Google, so many observers don’t trust the results. Shortly after the study was released, Microsoft launched its own website, yourbrowsermatters.com, to test browser security. Not surprisingly, the company’s own Internet Explorer 9 gets a perfect score, while the most recent releases of Chrome and Firefox come in second and third place, respectively.

So which web browser is the most secure? The real answer is that each piece of software has its own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to security. But whichever browser a person or organization chooses to use, one thing is clear: They must make sure the browser is kept fully patched and updated.

One study conducted in 2011 found that 40% of all web traffic came from outdated browsers – including 10% from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6, which is ten years old. That’s a problem, because those old browsers likely contain many security vulnerabilities that put a computer at risk.

More important than the individual browser a user chooses, experts say, is keeping the browser and all of its plug-ins up-to-date.

About the Author: Sam Narisi writes about the latest business technology news as editor in chief of IT Manager Daily and recently authored the Business VOIP Resources Guide.

Mozilla designers have been pretty busy in the recent past. Mozilla introduced a significant user interface overhaul with Firefox 4, which received somewhat mixed reviews. Since then, Mozilla has periodically tweaked the interface to address many of the complaints. Now, a little more than a year after Firefox 4 was released, Mozilla is gearing up for another significant redesign.

Mozilla’s Stephen Horlander is working on a new design called “Australis” that will unify Firefox’s appearance across platforms and form factors. This includes Firefox for desktop (Windows, Unix, and Mac), Firefox for Android (phones and tablets), and Boot2Gecko.

The most distinctive features of Australis are soft textures, smooth curves, and a streamlined experience. Here’s how Firefox is expected to look in Windows, Mac, and Unix respectively.

As you can see, the tab strip has been redesigned in accordance with Australis’ design principles, and the menu button has been overhauled. It has now been merged with the address bar, and features a completely reworked layout.

Firefox for Mobile already looks a lot like the Australis mockups. It will be tweaked further to bring it in close alignment with its desktop counterpart.

We also know that Mozilla is working on a Metro compatible version of Firefox for Windows 8. Development on that still has a long way to go, but the mockups suggest that Firefox for Metro will look a lot like Firefox for Android tablets.

Although the frequent redesigns might irk some users, it’s hard to not get excited about the Australis mockups. The new design is modern, beautiful, and minimal. You can get a taste of the new Firefox design with the Australis theme that is already available in the Firefox add-on repository. Don’t forget to chime in with your take on the planned Firefox redesign.

SPDY has seen a major push yesterday, with Firefox finally making the move to SPDY. The latest beta of Firefox 13 arrived with SPDY enabled by default and this makes SPDY a primary candidate in the world of application layer protocols. Besides Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are the two major browsers by market share. While Google Chrome has shipped with SPDY for a long time now, although Firefox had SPDY present from version 11 onwards, it was turned off by default. Finally, after a series of bug fixes, SPDY has made it to the latest beta of Firefox 13.

Apart from SPDY, Firefox 13 will have major behind-the-scene changes and some long-awaited UI changes too. The latest release of Firefox version 13 brings the much awaited speed dial, which is a necessity for any modern browser. Firefox 13 will also turn on smooth scrolling and on-demand tab loading, when opening tabs from a saved session.

When Google announced SPDY for the first time, it was unclear whether it would catch up with the well-established HTTP protocol. SPDY was invited to be a part of the new HTTP standard and things were off to a promising slow start. However, Google has also taken the alternate path, by marking a presence on major browsers first, and then creating a lock-in situation so that it ends up as a web-standard anyway. Nevertheless, to survive the competition with a rapidly developing browser like Google Chrome, Firefox has to improve on speed, and SPDY will be a good start.

The release notes for the latest beta can be found at this page.

One of the coolest features of Chrome for Android is its ability to sync tabs with its desktop counterpart. You can start researching a topic on your desktop, leave for work, and continue researching from your phone while in the subway. Now, Google is taking this feature to its logical next level. The latest Google Chrome beta supports tab syncing across multiple operating systems and devices.

The new beta makes all of your tabs from one system available on all other systems. You can simply click on the “Other devices” link in the “New Tab” page to access open tabs from any system on which you are logged in with your Google account. This feature was first spotted in the bleeding-edge versions of Chrome (including the Dev Channel, Canary, and recent Chromium snapshot builds) by Geek.com. Now, Google will be gradually rolling out the “Other devices” menu to Beta channel users over the coming week. If you want to take tab syncing for a spin, download the latest Chrome beta from here.

Google’s Android phones have come a long way within just 3 years. With the introduction of the Gingerbread Android platform and the new upcoming Ice Cream OS along with high speed 4g connectivity more and more people are surfing the web. So, it is only natural that Android users are in search of browsers that render pages faster, load up quickly and offer user friendly features. Let’s get right down to it and review the Top 3 Android Browsers based on Android Market Place downloads and customer satisfaction.

Skyfire Web Browser New 4.0
This Browser has been downloaded over 143,000 times on the Android market place. Obviously, it’s a user favorite. Its main focus is social media integration within its browser. For example, users have access to Facebook like button on demand for every website or webpage that they come across. Skyfire’s has many other user friendly features as well which include:

Flash Video
Quickview for Facebook
Quickview for Twitter
One Touch Search
Google Reader
User Agent Searching
Popular Pages
Facebook Like Button
Complete Twitter Integration

Dolphin HD Browser
it is one of the most popular browsers for Android devices with over 400,000 downloads listed at the Android Marketplace. It has received Cnet’s Top 100 Android recommendation and many other rewards as well. It is extremely user-friendly and offers simple and effortless touch screen interaction. This browser is my personal favorite. List of features include:

Dolphin Webzine
Bookmark to SD Card
Dolphin Ebay Search
PDF viewer for Dolphin
Web to PDF
Dolphin Password Manager
Dolphin Youtube Search
Dolphin Screen Cut
Complete Twitter Integration
Complete Facebook Integration

The list of features goes on and on. Dolphin also gets updates often from the Android Market so you are always on the cutting edge of technology when you surf the web.

Opera Mini Browser
With over 230,000 downloads, this browser has a super-fast rendering engine which loads websites in record time and many other useful features which will make surfing the web fast, fun and enjoyable. Opera Mini’s main features include:

Speed Dial Showing The List Of Favorite Websites At A Glance
Address Bar And Toolbar That Adjusts Automatically
High Encryption For Security
Multitask With Opera Tabs
URL Auto Completion Engine
Auto Zoom Capability
Full Social Media Interaction
Advanced Download Manager
Off-Line Webpage Reader

Which browser is best you ask? The answer is dependent on each and every user’s needs. As I stated before, my personal favorite is Dolphin HD browser, but that’s just me. There are many people who praise Skyfire and Opera Mini. Since all three browsers are free to download, feel free to go to the Android Marketplace and download each browser. Test and see which one suits your needs and like the most. One of the key components of surfing the web fast on any of these browsers is to make sure you have 4G capabilities on your mobile device.

==== About the Author =====
Rick Sarouk is a telecommunication blogger who writes about emerging technology within the telecommunication industry. Currently, he writes for AT&T and their uverse offers. See all AT&T coupons by going to Att Uverse Coupon site.

With all the recent changes in the web technology stack and the advancements in web-browsers, third-party plugins are becoming a thing of the past. A decade ago, Adobe thrived on a business, which was based around providing an extra layer on top of the web. Adobe provided us with PDF readers and flash for web. However, with HTML 5, videos do no need a flash container to run inside a browser. When it comes to PDF files, Google Chrome has already devised a way to display PDF files in a web browser and now, Firefox has deployed its own solution to display PDF files in the browser.

PDF.js is a well-known script that renders PDF files with HTML and JavaScript successfully. It can be installed as an extension. However, the good news is that the latest nightly version of Firefox 14 ships with PDF.js built in. This is a major improvement as it adds a default PDF support in Firefox. Although the PDF rendering from Pdf.js is not as smooth as Adobe Reader, it is worth the freedom.

Dr. Andreas Gal, the Director of research t Mozilla writes about the benefits of the PDF.js extension, saying,

The traditional approach to rendering PDFs in a browser is to use a native-code plugin, either Adobe’s own PDF Reader or other commercial renderers, or some open source alternative (e.g. poppler). From a security perspective, this enlarges the trusted code base, and because of that, Google’s Chrome browser goes through quite some pain to sandbox the PDF renderer to avoid code injection attacks. An HTML5-based implementation is completely immune to this class of problems.

Adobe plugin have attracted security vulnerabilities for too long, and with Flash losing ground, finally, we are moving towards a truly open web without any proprietary layers on top of it. The PDF.js project is developed openly and can be found on Github.

Microsoft, which has been making a lot of noise about the “no-compromise” development mantra of Windows 8, has been forced to make another compromise. Realizing that the new WinRT APIs are too restrictive for modern web browsers, Microsoft has created a special application class for web browsers.

WinRT or Windows Runtime is the new programming model that Metro apps will be using. WinRT applications can be developed using Visual C#, C++ etc. as well as web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. WinRT is a sandboxed API that is more secure and power efficient than the classical Win32 API. The expectation is that WinRT will go a long way towards solving Windows’ malware problem. Unfortunately, Microsoft has already been forced to make compromises for the sake of practicality.

Windows Phone, which has received widespread critical acclaim, has had a very visible influence on Windows 8. Unfortunately, not everything that works in a smartphone is conducive to a desktop OS. The restrictive nature of Windows Phone has deterred developers such as Opera from supporting the platform. No one made a big fuss about it since Microsoft has a fairly small smartphone market share. However, if Windows 8 were to do the same thing, anti-trust proceedings would be all but certain. Moreover, Microsoft itself executes Internet Explorer Metro with elevated privileges.

The solution proposed by Microsoft is far from ideal, but compromises never are. The Metro version of a browser will be dependent on the classical version. Hence, a user will have to download and install the browser through a classical installer package. This means that third party web browsers won’t be available in the Windows Store. This is a fairly significant limitation, since ARM devices will only support the new Metro interface, and sideloading of apps will be disabled. Another restriction is that only the browser that the user sets as default will be able to run in the new Metro mode.

Firefox had already confirmed that it intends to release a Metro-fied edition. Now, a Google rep has informed Mashable that Chrome for Windows 8 is also under development. “Our goal is to be able to offer our users a speedy, simple, secure Chrome experience across all platforms, which includes both the desktop and Metro versions of Windows 8,” the rep said. “To that end we’re in the process of building a Metro version of Chrome along with improving desktop Chrome in Windows 8 such as adding enhanced touch support.”

After managing to remain unscathed for four consecutive years, Google Chrome has finally been breached, and Google is rewarding the hacker with $60,000. Google Chrome’s security features were bypassed successfully by hackers in both Pwn2Own and Pwnium.

Pwn2Own is an annual hacking fest sponsored by HP, which challenges hackers to breach fully patched web browsers and operating systems. Google Chrome was the only browser that couldn’t be hacked for the past four years. This year, it was the first to fall. A team from the French security firm VUPEN, lead by its co-founder and head of research Chaouki Bekrar, managed to take complete control of a fully patched 64-bit Windows 7 (SP1) machine within five minutes by using two zero-day exploits. VUPEN also claims to have zero-day exploits for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

This year, Google is also running its own competition called Pwnium, which has a total bounty of $1 million. Google decided against sponsoring Pwn2Own, since its new rules don’t compel hackers to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities to the software developer. VUPEN itself intends on selling the exploits to its clients. Sergey Glazunov, a Russian university student, managed to bypass Google Chrome’s sandbox feature in Pwnium.

The breaches mean that Google will no longer be able to tout its clean record. However, Chrome developers aren’t mourning. While announcing the contest, Chris Evans and Justin Schuh from Chrome’s security team had explained that they have a big learning opportunity when they receive full end-to-end exploits. “Not only can we fix the bugs, but by studying the vulnerability and exploit techniques we can enhance our mitigations, automated testing, and sandboxing”.

Adobe Flash creates an extra layer of content on top of the open web. No wonder it is loathed by all open web enthusiasts. It is full of security vulnerabilities, requiring patches after every few days. However, there are some things it does really well (think flash video). With the advent of HTML 5, all the reasons to use Adobe Flash are dying fast, and Adobe can sense it too.

In its roadmap for Flash runtimes, Adobe made it clear that it is not going to develop Flash for Linux anymore. Flash Player will not be available for a direct download from Adobe. Instead, Adobe is relying on Google Chrome to release Adobe Flash bundled with their browser product.

Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single, modern API for hosting plug-ins within the browser. The PPAPI, code-named “Pepper”, aims to provide a layer between the plug-in and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations. You can find more information on the Pepper API at http://code.google.com/p/ppapi/.

Google Chrome already runs Adobe Flash in a sandbox, and the Pepper API will allow it to go cross-platform with its plugin support. Moreover, the Pepper API will provide Flash for both x86 and x64 installations, although Adobe killed Flash for x64 Linux desktops back in June 2010.

Google Chrome will start including the peppered Flash Player later this year. The canonical version of the code for Pepper API has already been moved to the Chromium subversion repository. However, with the size of the Google Chrome bundle already being an issue, I wonder how bloating it further will help anyone.