Image via Wikipedia

Google had retired its “Google Browser Sync for Firefox” long back. It was quite expected with the Chrome coming into the playing field. Google has been constantly updating its browser(at least the developer channel) which is gong to be the basis for its future operating system dreams.

The recent dev build (4.0.201.1) released, has bookmark synchronisation which syncs your browsers bookmarks to Google Docs (read Google Drive) and not Google Bookmarks as one would expect.

So do you want to try the new feature ? First join Google Chrome’s dev channel, which includes a buggier, feature loaded and less polished version of Google Chrome.

Start Chrome with the “–enable-sync” flag. You will find a option in the Tools menu called “Sync my bookmarks…”. Login into your Google Account and the process should start immediately.

The synced bookmarks are placed in Google Docs in “My Folders”.  This interface could be a precursor to GDrive which could act as online storage device.

Related articles

• Bookmarks Here, Bookmarks There, Bookmarks Everywhere
• Google Chrome: Now with Bookmark Syncing (for the Brave) (mashable.com)
• Race To Data Portability: Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Weave (readwriteweb.com)
• Google Chrome Adds Bookmark Sync Support (techie-buzz.com)
• Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive (mt-soft.com.ar)
• And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync (techcrunch.com)
• Google Docs hints at GDrive… maybe (downloadsquad.com)
• How to Enable Bookmark Syncing in Chrome, Without an Add-on [Google Chrome] (lifehacker.com)

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

There was no “Download Day”, no server downtime, no record to set… It all happened without much fanfare. Just a small statement in the most visited page in internet. “New! Download Chrome (BETA) – the new browser from Google”

Google calls it Chrome, People call it “Google OS”, Open Source Community will have its “Chromium”, IE would call it “Nightmare come true”, Opera would cry “copy cat”, Apple would say “Just another Safari“, Privacy Advocates will cry “Foul”, Some call it start of “Web 3.0″ or “Web 3.0 beta”, FireFox is just recovering from the “shock” and I just call it “cool“…

Imagine the simplicity and minimalistic colours of Google in a browser and you got “Chrome”. The way you had imagined and used tabs are going to change. The tabs are going to the top floor instead of being below the address bar. You can still switch tabs! You can kill the tab from the tab strip or from the process manager. When you kill the tab, you see a “sad tab.” If you reload the page, Google Chrome will even remember the scroll position.

New tab page shows most frequently visited page, most frequent searches, bookmarks, and recently closed tabs. You can choose whether a bookmark strip follows you as you surf (in case you want to save screen space).

Geeks, use the Task Manager to get details about a specific process running in Google Chrome, or to force a misbehaving tab or application to close. You can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Esc to quickly open the Task Manager. For each active item in Google Chrome, you can monitor the amount of memory taken up, the amount of CPU used, and the network activity (bytes sent and received). To force a misbehaving webpage or application to close in Google Chrome, select the web page, then click the End process button. For those who need to go the extra mile, you have “Stats for Nerds”

More news for the techies, Google Chrome uses WebKit, not a new rendering engine to the web. It renders just like Safari. It multi processes all its tabs with separate threads making it more stable and resource efficient in long run. Chrome uses V8 virtual machine to execute javascript. According to one source, “V8 executes JavaScript much much faster than current technologies.” Chrome is open under a BSD License. The name of the project to open-source Google Chrome is Chromium.

The official Google blog announced the Chrome project being available to general public from today. For now only Windows users. Mac and Linux users watch out for updates. You can also check out the comic book explaining Google Chrome from Google.

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The fancy name for this feature is “InPrivate”. When activated, InPrivate won’t store new cookies, but still allows existing cookies to be read. Additionally, new history entries, search queries, form data, passwords and temporary web files will be purged at the end of the internet session. It is basically a step forward from the IE7 tool ‘Delete Browsing History’, which didn’t allow data – such as cookies from often-visited websites – to be retained if the user wanted the option. According to Micro$oft’s IEBlog, the features related with privacy would be

• InPrivate Browsing: This lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data.
• Delete Browsing History: This helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited Web sites.
• InPrivate Blocking: This informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it. InPrivate Blocking will also warn users of third-party content which gives others information about browsing habits without using cookies, and offer to prevent communication with this type of content.
• InPrivate Subscriptions: This feature allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of Web sites to block or allow.

So, if you are asking when you can get this amazing kinky feature, the next beta is expected in November by some sources…

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“No software is free from bugs” and that statement holds true for the mighty Firefox too. Yesterday the Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 3.0.1, the first update for Firefox 3.0, patching some of the known vulnerabilities. It mainly addresses several security and stability issues. A update was also released for Firefox 2.0 users upgrading them to 2.0.16.

The two critical patches deal with remote code vulnerabilities and command line URLs spawning tabs when Firefox is not running. MFSA 2008-34 is the first critical patch. It was reported via TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative, and centers on issues with Mozilla’s internal CSSValue array data structure. An attacker can create a large number of calls to common CSS objects, triggering a crash of the browser when it attempts to free the CSS object while still in use. The resulting crash could be used to execute code on the system.

The second critical issue comes from Billy Rios, who reported that, “if Firefox is not already running, passing it a command-line URI with pipe (“|”) symbols will open multiple tabs. This URI splitting could be used to launch chrome:i URIs from the command-line, a partial bypass of the fix for MFSA 2005-53 which was intended to block external applications from loading such URIsi,” Mozilla explains. The vulnerability in MFSA 2005-53 remains patched however.

“For example, web browsers normally handle file: URIs themselves, or block them from web content altogether, but this flaw enabled attackers to pass them from another browser into Firefox. In Firefox 2 scripts running from file: URIs can read data from a user’s entire disk, a risk if the attacker could first place a malicious file in a guessable location on the local disk. Rios demonstrated that the so-called “Safari Carpet-bombing vulnerability” could be used for this, as well as other techniques that do not rely on that now-fixed Safari vulnerability,” the advisory added.

Internal testing on Firefox 3.0 also showed that Rios’ research can be combined with various vulnerabilities to trigger code execution. “In Firefox 3 scripts running in local files have limited access to other files, almost entirely mitigating the file: attack. However, combined with a vulnerability which allows an attacker to inject script into a chrome document the above issue could be used to run arbitrary code on a victim’s computer.”

Firefox 3.0.1 Updated

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Pressing [Ctrl]+[Tab], brings up a thumbnail preview of the tabs, and repeated presses of [Tab] proceeds in the order of tab usage. Releasing the [Ctrl] selects the particular Tab window. Holding the [Tab] makes the scroll faster. Press [Shift] to make the scroll in the reverse order.

For those who want to see all the tabs present in the present Firefox session, just press [F4] or the List all Tabs button in the right end of Tab bar to bring up a grid view of all the tabs. There is a filter option also thrown in for the hardcore Tab addicts.

I am using this add-on in Firefox 3 and really recommend all to try it out for yourself. It’s worth the effort.

Download Ctrl-Tab

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Mozilla Foundation had conducted its PR greatly but the execution was poor. First the time of release was not officially announced and all the eastern hemisphere netizens had to guess the whole day when Firefox 3 was getting out and finally it dawned that it would be midnight for most. The time came and when I went will all anticipation, all I got was server time outs and after a few reloads and refreshes,  I was met with this sweet outage page.

OK this was not a great surprise since everybody was trying, the Mozilla servers were melting with the load. But the real surprise was when after nearly an hour of reloading the browser, I finally met with a page to download Firefox but alas it was Firefox 2. The page design was for Firefox 3, but the release was 2.0.0.14

So after another disappointment, I got back to reloading, refreshing and after nearly another one hour got the sweet link for a download and installed it finally. Did another download in my other system and finally got it also up and running.

So after doing my duty to the Mozilla’s Community decided to check out how the Download day was going on. The total downloads till 00:45 GST on 18th June 2008 was 1,861,546 downloads. UAE – 1480, Afghanistan – 0, Iraq – 62, Mynammar – 0, Iran – 6422, Sudan – 54, Somalia – 0, Cuba – 414, Oman – 0, Mongolia – 0, North Korea – 0

For who needs to show around that they did their part on the download day, you can flaunt it here. You will get a certificate like this one below.

Update : The time is 10:30 AM on 18th June 2008, nearly 12 hours after the launch of Firefox 3 and the stastics for the downloads are as below

Total Downloads : 4,462,863

UAE – 2400, Afghanistan – 62, Iraq – 101, Mynammar – 211, Iran – 133,500, Sudan – 73, Somalia -  Still 0, Cuba – 557, Oman – 212, Mongolia -281, North Korea – Still 0, Chad – 0,

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I downloaded and tried it out today and I should say I am impressed. It is a potential Firefox beater. No wonder, Safari is termed as “fastest browser”. It is quite lite with all the basic features built-in. Right now I am blogging with Safari 4 and I do have a feeling that I might switch over to Safari 4 only for writing posts. It is quite responsive and even Firefox RC3 didn’t match with this performance. In two words — “Smooth Operator”

According to Apple fans, the javascript implementation of Safari 4 is 53% faster than the previous versions. Thanks to SquirrelFish, a open source javascript rendering engine. It replaces old WebKit 3.1 implementation. That makes this edition of Safari much better than the Firefox 3‘s SpiderMonkey engine.

The ability to save webpages as a desktop application is also a notable addition. So if you are a person who constantly saves webpages then Safari 4 is the thing for you.

The spell check along with Grammar check is a must tool for a blogger. One of the major reasons why I would be using Safari for my posting. Other features include more options for new windows and tab, full page zoom and other unexplored features.

You can download your copy of developer preview of Safari 4 from Apple Developer Center if you are a registered developer.

Source : [macnn]

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The entire community living in the eastern hemisphere of the globe have to wait a little longer to taste the final release of Firefox 3. According to the Mozilla blog, the record attempt will start at 10:00AM PDT [05:00PM UTC] [10:30PM IST] [09:00PM GST] on June 17th 2008 CE. But do remember you have entire tomorrow also to download.

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Shiretoko is a minor update to the Gran Paradiso which would be running the Gecko 1.9.1 Engine and most of the features that didn’t make in time to the 3 release.

• One of the major feature would be visual Tab switching. For now Ctrl+Tab extension serves the purpose in Gran Paradiso. This feature would be integrated into the browser along with Tab searching and filtering.
• There are lot of features for Tagging which include bulk tagging, tag autocomplete, lightweight tagging UI, Advanced Search UI.
• In the add-ons divison there would be enhanced compatibility checking during upgrades which means we might have to really wait till the developer makes the extension compatible than we doing it ourselves

The entire feature list of this release can be obtained from the Mozilla’s planning center for Firefox 3.1. The nightly builds of alpha release 1 can be obtained from Mozilla’s FTP servers here. It will be installed under the name of Minefield, the codename for Mozilla’s testing builds.

Source : [Mozilla Wiki]

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The loading time is awesome, nothing compared to Firefox or Safari. But again there is no plug-ins or widgets added in Opera, whereas my Firefox is loaded with extensions.

The 9.5 version has a great address bar but somehow my honeymoon with Firefox’s address bar is yet to get over and Opera didn’t get anywhere near to take me away from it.

One of the features which really turns your head is the Bookmarks Sync. You can achieve this in Firefox with extensions but Opera has a built-in feature. This feature is a useful one for somebody who has Opera in their Mobile also. It saves you a lot of trouble.

Regarding the Malware protection in Opera 9.5, didn’t get much chance to test it. But the online reviews already place Firefox to be better in this department. Opera has to do a lot in this if it needs to be taken seriously.

Lifehacker’s Browser Tests proves the Opera’s Unbeatable launch time and also Firefox’s low memory consumption. Also complete list of changes in this version can be seen here in Opera’s Website.

Even though this browser is lite, standard compliant, fast it is yet to drag me away from Firefox because of the lack of extensions and it is not Open Source.

Source : [LifeHacker, Opera]

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There has been no significant changes in the layout or any new features in this release but still for those who jumped the wagon with Firefox release candidates and had been handicapped without this, it would be a relief.

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Finally the word is out… The Download day or the day IE get its a$$ kicked is 17th June 2008. It is celebration time at Mozilla Community as the market share is steadily growing for Firefox and every other news service is covering this huge event. My Google News alerts for Firefox is flooding with the release news. Also another reason for the Mozilla Foundation to open the cork would be the 10th anniversary of its launch. On March 31st 1998, the first Mozilla Code became publicly available under the Open Source License and Mozilla Foundation took shape.

So for the people who are joining this party late… Please download your copy of Firefox on June 17th from here

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I am certainly not very anxious for this release. For now Firefox seems to take care of my browsing requirements.

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1. Go to Firefox’s Profile directory ( Press [Win]+[R], and type “%APPDATA%” to go to your apps directory and you will find a directory called Mozilla and then navigate to your profile directory inside)
2. In chrome folder, there might be a file called “userChrome.css“. If not you might have a example file and even if that is not there then create one using notepad.
3. Inside type the following based on which version of Firefox you are running.  Please change the height variable according to your needs. 54px worked out for me. Then save the file and restart Firefox to have as much bookmarks as you want in your toolbar.

For Firefox 2

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar */
#bookmarks-ptf {display:block !important;}
#bookmarks-ptf toolbarseparator {display:inline !important;}

and sometimes you might need to add this also

/* Sometimes you may need this */
#PersonalToolbar {max-height: none !important;}

For Firefox 3 (this worked out for me)

/* Multi-row bookmarks toolbar for Fx3b5pre*/
#bookmarksBarContent
{display:block !important;}
.places-toolbar-items
{display:block !important;
height: 54px !important;
overflow-y:auto !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent toolbarseparator
{display:inline !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent .bookmark-item
{visibility: visible !important;}
.chevron {height: 0px !important;}

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So after spending some time with Google, I got lead to gHacks who had a detailed article on it. So here is how you disable this feature, type “about:config” in your Firefox’s address bar and run a search filter for browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone and change the parameter value to false which will disable the automatic scanning.

via [gHacks]