With Firefox 4.0 hogging all the limelight, it’s easy to forget that most of the users are still using stable builds of Firefox 3.5 and 3.6. Earlier today, Mozilla pushed through a recommended security and stability update for both the trunks.

As many as nine vulnerabilities have been fixed in this release, including five critical ones. This update also fixes numerous stability and performance issues – 40 in Firefox 3.6.11 and 23 in Firefox 3.5.14 to be exact. For more information about the fixed vulnerabilities refer to the bugzilla thread for Fx 3.6.11 and 3.5.14.

[ Download Firefox 3.6.11 | Download Firefox 3.5.14 ]

Mozilla has introduced a new feature called "Crash Protection" in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4. Crash Protection runs using Out-of-process-plugins, which basically runs the plugins as separate processes from the main Firefox process. This allows Mozilla to recover from plugin crashes without freezing the entire browser.

However, not many users like this new feature and one of commentators recently asked whether it was possible to disable crash protection because it froze the browser. Well the answer is that, yes you can disable crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6, however, you will have to do so manually.

How To Disable Crash protection in Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.6

Step 1: In the browser location bar type "about:config" without the quotes and hit enter or return key.

Step 2: If you are doing this for the first time, you will see a warning saying "You may void your warranty!", you need to press the button "I’ll be careful, I promise" to move to the configuration for Firefox.

Step 3: Once you have clicked the button you will see a lot of strings out there which might not make any sense. Don’t worry about it. In the "Filter" textbox type "plugins" without the quotes and hit enter. The process is slightly different for Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4, follow the appropriate steps given below.

Once you perform the search, right click on the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled string and click "Toggle", you only have to do this if the value for the string is true, if it is false, the Crash Protection is already disabled.

With Firefox 3.6 you will also need to disable Crash protection for Individual items. If you want to disable Crash protection for Individual items, you can use the following mapping and toggle the respective values to false.

• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll (Microsoft Silverlight)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll (Apple QuickTime)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (Adobe Flash)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll (NPAPI test plugin)

That’s about it, using the above steps you can disable or enable Crash protection in Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4. Firefox 4 does not have options to individually turn the plugins Crash Protection off yet, but it may be added in the final version.

A few days ago Mozilla released Firefox 3.6.4 with Crash protection against plugins, however, it looks like they had to fix a few bugs with the release and have had to release Firefox 3.6.6.

According to the an update on the Mozilla blog, Mozilla has released the Firefox 3.6.6 update where they increase the amount of time for a plugin to remain frozen before they terminate it.

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.6.6 is now available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://www.firefox.com. This release makes a small change to the crash protection feature introduced in Firefox 3.6.4, increasing the amount of time that Firefox will allow a plugin to remain frozen before terminating it. For more information, see the Mozilla Blog announcement about the release.

You can always update the browser by going to help and using the Check for Updates option.

Mozilla has released a quick update to its flagship Firefox Browser. This release 3.6.3 fixes the security flaws exploited at the Pwn2Own contest. The security flaw discovered at Pwn2Own affected only Firefox 3.6and later versions directly.

The Mozilla Security Advisor had added this flaw to their website writing,

A memory corruption flaw leading to code execution was reported by security researcher  Nils of MWR InfoSecurity during the 2010 Pwn2Own contest sponsored by TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative. By moving DOM nodes between documents Nils found a case where the moved node incorrectly retained its old scope. If garbage collection could be triggered at the right time then Firefox would later use this freed object.

This flaw was address on April 1st, 2010 by Nils who also happens to be a security researcher. Mozilla has been quick in responding to this zero day exploit. The exploit of this flaw was a big challenge in itself, it being a zero day flaw.

To get the latest secure version of Firefox which has a fix for this flaw, go to Help -> Check for Updates and install the latest suggested release.

Mozilla has upped the ante to fix a severe security vulnerability in Firefox 3.6 which affects several users. The vulnerability in question, was reported by security researcher Evgeny Legerov last month.

Firefox did release a release candidate yesterday, but due to criticality of the bug they have released the final version today.

Mozilla has accelerated its timetable and released Firefox 3.6.2 ahead of schedule. This release contains a number of security fixes, including a fix to Secunia Advisory SA38608 which was previously discussed on this blog when we were first made aware of and were then able to confirm the issue.

If you are a Firefox 3.6 user, go to the help menu and click on "Check for Updates" to update to the current version, if you need any help check our earlier post on how to update Firefox.

Users can also update their Firefox to the latest version by visiting the Firefox Download site and downloading the latest version and installing it.

Mozilla is preparing to release Firefox 3.6.2, which will address a critical security vulnerability present in Firefox 3.6. The vulnerability in question, was reported by security researcher Evgeny Legerov last month. However, his initial reluctance to directly communicate with Mozilla prolonged the development time for the patch.

The vulnerability has been rated by Secunia as highly critical and can by exploited by hackers to execute arbitrary code on the user’s system. It is not known if there are any in-the-wild exploits for this vulnerability.

Firefox 3.6.2 is scheduled to be released on March 30. Until then, security conscious users can download a nightly build from Mozilla’s FTP server. Firefox 3.7 Alpha 3 (or newer), as well as older versions of Firefox (pre 3.6 releases) are also not affected.

Late last week, Mozilla started pushing update alerts to Firefox 3.5 users to upgrade their browsers to Firefox 3.6, looks like those alerts have borne some fruits, because Firefox 3.6 is now the most used Mozilla browser according to the recent stats.

As of today, Firefox 3.6 is used by 43% of users as compared to 23% before the push. According to the Mozilla metrics team, around 75 million users made the switch to Firefox 3.6 since the past week.

As of today, almost 186 million people have downloaded Firefox 3.6 since it’s release on January 21st 2010, which is definitely a huge number, however, this is bound to grow in the next few weeks, when more users upgrade to FF 3.6.

Another interesting fact is that Firefox 3.6 has had the most early adoption trends as opposed to Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3, this is most likely because Firefox 3.5 has had a lot of problems and crashes, and FF 3.6 provides a much more stable version of the browser.

It has been a while since Firefox 3.6 was released, and Mozilla has delayed prompting users to upgrade from Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 3.6. However, starting today Firefox 3.5 users will be prompted to upgrade to Firefox 3.6.

Users will get this prompt only if the browser has been in idle state for 10 minutes or more. Users can also upgrade to Firefox 3.6 manually through the help menu.

If you are not too keen to upgrade to Firefox 3.6, the upgrade prompt will give you an option to deny the upgrade, however, you can always upgrade Firefox manually.

For the stats junkies, Firefox 3.6 has been downloaded over 115 million times, if you are not one of them, go ahead and upgrade to Firefox 3.6 right away.

Firefox 3.6 was released a week ago and it has already been downloaded over 21 Million times. It is a great update with lots of new features and more efficient processes. One of the new features of 3.6 is the opening of new tabs when you click on a link. By default now, these new tabs will open next to the tab in which you click the link, hence, making it more relevant in position.

However, if you do not like that and want to go to the old way of opening new tabs on the far right, here is a little tweak to achieve that:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config on a new tab.

2. Filter the field type by typing browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent.

3. Double click the entry to select it.

4. Change the value from True to False.

5. Restart Firefox to implement the changes.

Your new tabs will now open on far right. Remember, you can also see other tweaks for Firefox 3.5 tabs and read about other features offered in this latest version.

[Via FFExtensionGuru]

For all you people who like to live their computing life out of a flash drive, Firefox 3.6 is now available as a portable software, courtesy PortableApps.com.

Portable Apps have released the latest version of Firefox just a day after it was officially released. The portable version of the Firefox 3.6 can be installed on any portable flash drive and allows you to take your browser, bookmarks, settings and extensions and use it on the go.

Firefox 3.6 portable is available in 15 languages including Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Russian and Spanish (Spain and International).

Download Firefox 3.6 Portable