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By far, I find the mouse gestures extension to be the greatest addition to Mozilla. This borrowed feature of Opera will certainly and permanently change the way you browse websites.

any article about firefox that doesn't mention adblock and the best filters to use is seriously lacking.

You can always download the MNG extension. (If you can install it?)

The reason the motherboard started smoldering? The CPU maxed when he tried to load one of that site's webpages. It's impossible to pick out any actual content on that page amongst all the adverts, links, and folderol.

The ad-blocking lizard is your friend.

IMO, that's a bit irresponsible. I'm pretty sure you don't read 100% of those articles and knowing that they're having problems with their servers, one should attempt to stress them as little as possible.

Rather than doing that, you should have an easily accesible bookmark. What I do is to have my browser to launch a static html page with my most visited and favorite sites. Some middle-button clicks on them and I have them all opened in different tabs.

Also, instead of going directly to the wikipedia homepage to do a search, I use google (from my googlebar, of course):
whatever_i_want site:wikipedia.org
and that does a good job.

What? No mention of Googlebar? For shame, forevergeek!

preferential.mozdev.org is a good source for hidden Mozilla and Firefox preferences.

You can add Wikipedia to your search bar. Pretty convenient when you know it's going to be better than Google :).

Of course, they key is to get them to NOT use IE for everything else once it's loaded :P. If I don't think they are bright enough to figure out what they are doing, I just don't give 'em that extension. I will reiterate, once you show them tabbed browsing, they don't want to use IE unless they need to anyway.

Well, if you fancy lerning XUL &co you can use mozilla for more-or-less anything you like, just look at all the "extensions out there. You couldn't do that so easly with Netscape 3.

Nah, I really doubt that the single reason people are moving to Mozilla FF and Opera are for tabbed browsing. I surf daily and probably at greater lengths than the average person and I don't find tabbed browsing to be my #1 concern.

I wanted to reply to this in the main thread, but this place seems the best.

There are a couple of very nice features in Mozilla and Firefox which are OFF by default or not installed by default.

I will talk about Firefox since that is the browser I use:

1. Options -> Web Features -> Enable Java Script -> Advanced.
Here you should disable everything except for the last. Not disabling them allows sites to move your windows around and mess with your status bar (for example to hide link targets). You don't want this.

2. Advanced -> Accessability -> Find as you type. Enable, but DON'T enable "for links only".

3. Advanced -> Accessability -> Browsing.
Autoscrolling and Smoothscrolling. Autoscrolling makes the middle button scroll like in IE, I prefer it OFF, as middle button for me is gestures (explained later). Smoothscrolling makes the scrolling supposedly smoothing, in my eyes its horrible, keep this OFF.

4. Type in the url bar the word about:config . This will open a very strong way to edit options which don't appear in the menus. Type to search for middlemouse.contentLoadURL and set it to false. This option, if set to "true" makes clicking the middle mouse button in a place other than edit box try to load the text in the clipboard as a URL. I find this annoying. Off by default on windows, on by default on linux.

5. Options -> Web features -> Block Popups. Exactly what you think it is. It works flawlessly.

Some useful functions:
1. Tabbed browsing. This is obvious. Middle button to open links in new tabs. ctrl-pgup/pgdn to go through them with keyboard (if you don't wanna move to the mouse all the time). ctrl-w to close a tab.

2. Find as you type. Very simple, click on the page to focus it, now start typing something your want to search for. It'll hightlight the first occurance of the string, then u click another letter and it'll go on in the search. To go the next result, click f3, like in every other program that has searching.

3. Right click on the menu area -> customize. Allows you to customize the appearance of your browser in terms of buttons. There isn't much what to customize right now, but potentially various extensions will be able to dock like this.

4. Fullscreen. With f11 you move to full screen mode, incase you want to read a long site or view an image more clearly.

Useful extensions:
1. Mouse Gestures. To get here. For best results, set the button to the middle button. Very useful gestures are the obvious prev,next,close tab. And also "open all links hovered on in new tabs".

2. Pie menus, from the same location as above. This changes your standard menu into a pie shaped menu, to minimize the length you need to move your mouse to reach a function. Set to right mouse button. Many people don't like this one, as it takes a while to get used to, but I can't live without it!

3. Statusbar Download Manager. Get from here.
By far the best solution for a download manager. It places a non-obstructive line above the status bar which shows your downloads, with progress meters and simple interaction. When the bar is empty, it hides itself. Much better than the built in download manager.

4. Keyconfig. To get from here.
It allows to use set up the key bindings in a simpler way than editing config files. I don't use it for much, except for one thing. For some reason, on windows, Mozilla/Firefox binds backspace to return to the previous page. This is very annoying if you click it by mistake when not in a edit box, or when using FindAsYouType. Set backspace to do nothing.

5. Tabbrowser extensions. Get from here.
This gives the tab browser MUCH more power than by default. It allows you to customize it more than you need. I use it for these

I wanted to reply to this in the main thread, but this place seems the best.

There are a couple of very nice features in Mozilla and Firefox which are OFF by default or not installed by default.

I will talk about Firefox since that is the browser I use:

1. Options -> Web Features -> Enable Java Script -> Advanced.
Here you should disable everything except for the last. Not disabling them allows sites to move your windows around and mess with your status bar (for example to hide link targets). You don't want this.

2. Advanced -> Accessability -> Find as you type. Enable, but DON'T enable "for links only".

3. Advanced -> Accessability -> Browsing.
Autoscrolling and Smoothscrolling. Autoscrolling makes the middle button scroll like in IE, I prefer it OFF, as middle button for me is gestures (explained later). Smoothscrolling makes the scrolling supposedly smoothing, in my eyes its horrible, keep this OFF.

4. Type in the url bar the word about:config . This will open a very strong way to edit options which don't appear in the menus. Type to search for middlemouse.contentLoadURL and set it to false. This option, if set to "true" makes clicking the middle mouse button in a place other than edit box try to load the text in the clipboard as a URL. I find this annoying. Off by default on windows, on by default on linux.

5. Options -> Web features -> Block Popups. Exactly what you think it is. It works flawlessly.

Some useful functions:
1. Tabbed browsing. This is obvious. Middle button to open links in new tabs. ctrl-pgup/pgdn to go through them with keyboard (if you don't wanna move to the mouse all the time). ctrl-w to close a tab.

2. Find as you type. Very simple, click on the page to focus it, now start typing something your want to search for. It'll hightlight the first occurance of the string, then u click another letter and it'll go on in the search. To go the next result, click f3, like in every other program that has searching.

3. Right click on the menu area -> customize. Allows you to customize the appearance of your browser in terms of buttons. There isn't much what to customize right now, but potentially various extensions will be able to dock like this.

4. Fullscreen. With f11 you move to full screen mode, incase you want to read a long site or view an image more clearly.

Useful extensions:
1. Mouse Gestures. To get here. For best results, set the button to the middle button. Very useful gestures are the obvious prev,next,close tab. And also "open all links hovered on in new tabs".

2. Pie menus, from the same location as above. This changes your standard menu into a pie shaped menu, to minimize the length you need to move your mouse to reach a function. Set to right mouse button. Many people don't like this one, as it takes a while to get used to, but I can't live without it!

3. Statusbar Download Manager. Get from here.
By far the best solution for a download manager. It places a non-obstructive line above the status bar which shows your downloads, with progress meters and simple interaction. When the bar is empty, it hides itself. Much better than the built in download manager.

4. Keyconfig. To get from here.
It allows to use set up the key bindings in a simpler way than editing config files. I don't use it for much, except for one thing. For some reason, on windows, Mozilla/Firefox binds backspace to return to the previous page. This is very annoying if you click it by mistake when not in a edit box, or when using FindAsYouType. Set backspace to do nothing.

5. Tabbrowser extensions. Get from here.
This gives the tab browser MUCH more power than by default. It allows you to customize it more than you need. I use it for these

I wanted to reply to this in the main thread, but this place seems the best.

There are a couple of very nice features in Mozilla and Firefox which are OFF by default or not installed by default.

I will talk about Firefox since that is the browser I use:

1. Options -> Web Features -> Enable Java Script -> Advanced.
Here you should disable everything except for the last. Not disabling them allows sites to move your windows around and mess with your status bar (for example to hide link targets). You don't want this.

2. Advanced -> Accessability -> Find as you type. Enable, but DON'T enable "for links only".

3. Advanced -> Accessability -> Browsing.
Autoscrolling and Smoothscrolling. Autoscrolling makes the middle button scroll like in IE, I prefer it OFF, as middle button for me is gestures (explained later). Smoothscrolling makes the scrolling supposedly smoothing, in my eyes its horrible, keep this OFF.

4. Type in the url bar the word about:config . This will open a very strong way to edit options which don't appear in the menus. Type to search for middlemouse.contentLoadURL and set it to false. This option, if set to "true" makes clicking the middle mouse button in a place other than edit box try to load the text in the clipboard as a URL. I find this annoying. Off by default on windows, on by default on linux.

5. Options -> Web features -> Block Popups. Exactly what you think it is. It works flawlessly.

Some useful functions:
1. Tabbed browsing. This is obvious. Middle button to open links in new tabs. ctrl-pgup/pgdn to go through them with keyboard (if you don't wanna move to the mouse all the time). ctrl-w to close a tab.

2. Find as you type. Very simple, click on the page to focus it, now start typing something your want to search for. It'll hightlight the first occurance of the string, then u click another letter and it'll go on in the search. To go the next result, click f3, like in every other program that has searching.

3. Right click on the menu area -> customize. Allows you to customize the appearance of your browser in terms of buttons. There isn't much what to customize right now, but potentially various extensions will be able to dock like this.

4. Fullscreen. With f11 you move to full screen mode, incase you want to read a long site or view an image more clearly.

Useful extensions:
1. Mouse Gestures. To get here. For best results, set the button to the middle button. Very useful gestures are the obvious prev,next,close tab. And also "open all links hovered on in new tabs".

2. Pie menus, from the same location as above. This changes your standard menu into a pie shaped menu, to minimize the length you need to move your mouse to reach a function. Set to right mouse button. Many people don't like this one, as it takes a while to get used to, but I can't live without it!

3. Statusbar Download Manager. Get from here.
By far the best solution for a download manager. It places a non-obstructive line above the status bar which shows your downloads, with progress meters and simple interaction. When the bar is empty, it hides itself. Much better than the built in download manager.

4. Keyconfig. To get from here.
It allows to use set up the key bindings in a simpler way than editing config files. I don't use it for much, except for one thing. For some reason, on windows, Mozilla/Firefox binds backspace to return to the previous page. This is very annoying if you click it by mistake when not in a edit box, or when using FindAsYouType. Set backspace to do nothing.

5. Tabbrowser extensions. Get from here.
This gives the tab browser MUCH more power than by default. It allows you to customize it more than you need. I use it for these

I wanted to reply to this in the main thread, but this place seems the best.

There are a couple of very nice features in Mozilla and Firefox which are OFF by default or not installed by default.

I will talk about Firefox since that is the browser I use:

1. Options -> Web Features -> Enable Java Script -> Advanced.
Here you should disable everything except for the last. Not disabling them allows sites to move your windows around and mess with your status bar (for example to hide link targets). You don't want this.

2. Advanced -> Accessability -> Find as you type. Enable, but DON'T enable "for links only".

3. Advanced -> Accessability -> Browsing.
Autoscrolling and Smoothscrolling. Autoscrolling makes the middle button scroll like in IE, I prefer it OFF, as middle button for me is gestures (explained later). Smoothscrolling makes the scrolling supposedly smoothing, in my eyes its horrible, keep this OFF.

4. Type in the url bar the word about:config . This will open a very strong way to edit options which don't appear in the menus. Type to search for middlemouse.contentLoadURL and set it to false. This option, if set to "true" makes clicking the middle mouse button in a place other than edit box try to load the text in the clipboard as a URL. I find this annoying. Off by default on windows, on by default on linux.

5. Options -> Web features -> Block Popups. Exactly what you think it is. It works flawlessly.

Some useful functions:
1. Tabbed browsing. This is obvious. Middle button to open links in new tabs. ctrl-pgup/pgdn to go through them with keyboard (if you don't wanna move to the mouse all the time). ctrl-w to close a tab.

2. Find as you type. Very simple, click on the page to focus it, now start typing something your want to search for. It'll hightlight the first occurance of the string, then u click another letter and it'll go on in the search. To go the next result, click f3, like in every other program that has searching.

3. Right click on the menu area -> customize. Allows you to customize the appearance of your browser in terms of buttons. There isn't much what to customize right now, but potentially various extensions will be able to dock like this.

4. Fullscreen. With f11 you move to full screen mode, incase you want to read a long site or view an image more clearly.

Useful extensions:
1. Mouse Gestures. To get here. For best results, set the button to the middle button. Very useful gestures are the obvious prev,next,close tab. And also "open all links hovered on in new tabs".

2. Pie menus, from the same location as above. This changes your standard menu into a pie shaped menu, to minimize the length you need to move your mouse to reach a function. Set to right mouse button. Many people don't like this one, as it takes a while to get used to, but I can't live without it!

3. Statusbar Download Manager. Get from here.
By far the best solution for a download manager. It places a non-obstructive line above the status bar which shows your downloads, with progress meters and simple interaction. When the bar is empty, it hides itself. Much better than the built in download manager.

4. Keyconfig. To get from here.
It allows to use set up the key bindings in a simpler way than editing config files. I don't use it for much, except for one thing. For some reason, on windows, Mozilla/Firefox binds backspace to return to the previous page. This is very annoying if you click it by mistake when not in a edit box, or when using FindAsYouType. Set backspace to do nothing.

5. Tabbrowser extensions. Get from here.
This gives the tab browser MUCH more power than by default. It allows you to customize it more than you need. I use it for these

Mozilla/Firefox still have the XPI interface, which is how you install AdBlock amongst other things. And yes, people have started trying to use it for scumware and such

Alternative browsers such as Mozilla or Netscape may not protect users, the agency warned, if those browsers invoke ActiveX control or HTML rendering engines

Did anyone RTFM from the Yahoo link. It says at the very bottom that Mozilla is vulnerable too. I use Mozilla myself but it appears that the real culpret is ActiveX which you can install on Mozilla. I don't think this plug in will work on platforms other than windows so it's really a platform issue.

Ok, I love Aqua. My main gripe about Firefox is that it uses GTK widgets and not native Cocoa widgets.

I've given both Camino and Safari their due attention and a very fair chance to become my default browser. Safari gets an extra point because I like the brushed metal. Camino gets an extra point because of type-ahead find. But so far nothing beats the AdBlock extention for Firefox.

If could get AdBlock type blocking on Safari I'd finally make the full leap.

Make Firefox look just like IE with the IE skin. The latest version works with firefox 0.9.

This has information on plugins like: Adobe Reader, Java Plugin, Macromedia Flash Player, Macromedia Shockwave Player, QuickTime, RealPlayer 10, Windows Media Player, etc.

This has information on plugins like: Adobe Reader, Java Plugin, Macromedia Flash Player, Macromedia Shockwave Player, QuickTime, RealPlayer 10, Windows Media Player, etc.

for those of you not running the separate googlebar extension for firefox, RUN do not walk and download the googlebar extension right now!

It already is. Enigmail is an excellent plugin which I have been using for about a year now.

I disagree. I was a big proponent of PGP back in the old days (mid-90's). Back then, it was more cumbersome than complicated. Regardless of the effort to set it up, it still required too much effort on my part to encrypt or sign or decrypt each and every message. My circle of co-workers, contractors, and friends gave up on it after a short while.

Recently, I have begun using Enigmail with GPG. It integrates quite nicely with Thunderbird, and I assume it would with Mozilla as well. We use it companywide, with Macs and PCs (ie OSX and Windows), and we convinced a contractor that uses Linux to use it as well.

While the initial configuration did require some degree of effort, it was not too tough. Encrypting, decrypting, signing, and verifying is almost automatic now, requiring very little effort per message. My PGP (I mean GPG) password is queued for 15 minutes, so from time to time I have to re-enter it. All my messages are signed, and if the recipients are in my keychain, it is encrypted as well.

I think if it is set up by a Slashdot-type person (and let's face it-- that's what most of us are paid to do), an "average" user should have no problem with it.

No bills neccessary. Save your court costs. Download: GNU PGP and Enigmail.

Plugger is mainly for NS4 and hasn't been actively developed for a couple of years. Mozplugger is an actively maintained fork for gecko browswers.

1. On Win (which I must still use sometimes), ffox is the slowest of the 3 (especially re-draw), even though I'm always on the latest release.

2. I can't get the other browsers to do the simplest, stupidest things I can do in IE, e.g.: drag/drop shortcuts between address-bar & folders, or File=>Send=>Shortcut To Desktop, or drag a link from a page to the address-bar (a sure-fire "use the same window, dammit"). I dunno, maybe I just didn't RTFM.

3. I make genuinely productive use of toolbars (e.g. Google) unavailable on other browsers.

4. I don't grok the excitement of tabbed windows. I much prefer being able to position pages independently in separate windows. And if one of those windows crashes or hangs, I don't lose the others (or their back-traces).

As for security, I do quite well with the combo of common sense, frequennt AV updates, SpyBot, AdAware, WebWasher, and very aggressive/paranoid firewall settings. (I love Agnitum Outpost, which lets me control cookies, ActiveX, JavaScript, etc. -- each *separately* -- on a per-domain basis.)

Use PrefBar

I recommend wget. After all: why write a plugin for an unsecure, platform dependent browser when there are existing GPL download tools?

Better, yet, AdBlock

IE View

Try going to this Adblock forum link:

What adblock filters should I use??

...because i'm running ff0.9 w/ adblock right now and it works like a charm.

;just because it isn't on the extensions download site, doesn't mean it doesn work. if you had looked it up, you may have found that many others are using Adblock 0.5 d2 nightly 39 without any problems....

;treehead

Adblock is an independent project and it's still somewhat buggy. Tremendously useful, yes, but it's not mozilla.org/Firefox's fault that the old version didn't work properly with the new extension manager.

Also, in case you haven't seen it yet, there's (finally) a new version of Adblock out at its mozdev home.

HTH.

MC

The nightly builds of AdBlock seem to work fine for me under FireFox .9 and .9.1.
(Although I did run into the "please wait while Mozilla finishes installing your extension" bug when upgrading from a previous version of AdBlock on my Mozilla .9 install -- but .9.1 fixes that issue)

Get the AdBlock nighly builds at http://adblock.mozdev.org/dev.html

Kormac

Actually I think you might be the only one not viewing the site in Mozilla / Firefox with adblock installed.

Look at all these great sites you could block:

• http://*.falkag.net/*
• http://*.bluestreak.com/*
• http://*.tangozebra.com/*
• http://*.maxserving.com/*
• http://*.speedera.net/*
• http://*.mediaplex.com/*
• http://*.fastclick.net/*
• http://*.advertising.com/*
• http://*.pointroll.com/*
• http://*.msads.net/*
• http://*.atdmt.com/*
• http://verio.co.uk/*
• http://*.googlesyndication.com/*

I just wish adblock came with these as defaults :o)

1) Ability of running any Windows shortcut or folder within the browser or explorer.

You absolutely do not want this. The mingling of file browser and web browser are what cause a huge number of IE security holes.

You could probably just set up a helper or something, but you don't want to. Really. Mozilla is not a file manager.

2) Autologin of websites (form filling-username, pass)

Exists, and I've seen it, but I don't know what plugin to use. IIRC Mozilla has this built-in.

3) Make your own search engines (like if I want to add yahoo maps and all i type is the destination)

Firefox rocks at this. Do a search, bookmark it, and replace the query text in the address field in the bookmark's properties with "%s", and then give it an alias (say, "gg"). If I did this with a Google search, I can just type "gg foobar" to Google for "foobar". I have imdb, google, and tons of other databases usable through Firefox directly. Absolutely wonderful.

4) "Groups" of websites that open in tabs at the same time

Create a folder in your bookmarks, and choose the menu item "open in tabs" for that folder under the Boomarks menu in Firefox.

5) In-line Flash/Advertsing blocks (I noticed one of Achilles' Heels of FF is that it eats
cpu like crazy when flash is used on the page)

You want Click to View.

Just as a note, Flash Click To View is now known as FlashBlock.
Now there's good news and bad news about it. The bad news is, it hasn't been updated for v0.9. The good news is, it still works with 0.9 flawlessly (i'm running it right now). The only problem is it won't show up in your extensions menu, so disabling or removing it could be a pain.
Now I say could be, because if you grab a little gadget known as Show Old Extensions, FlashBlock and any other pre-0.9 extensions you have installed will appear in the extension menu just like magic (cue angels singing). Hurray!

Gotta love open source communities. Solutions for everything! :)

to complete the answers you have so far

3. see here for documentation on how to make your own Mozilla search plugins.

5. Besides the already-mentioned Adblock plugin, use Flash Click To View to replace flash with a button you can 'click to view'.

"Is there an IE theme available for Mozilla or better yet Firefox?"

Of course, it's very famous. As with all famous things, a google search reveals it as the first result:

http://themes.mozdev.org/themes/ie.html

The theme works for Mozilla, Netscape, and Firebird. All that's left to do is change the Windows icon (use the one from iexplore.exe), and if you want to be really compatible, turn off popup blocking and tabbed browsing ;-)

There is one here.

MOJI

Other people have pointed out the solution to your first problem, so here's the solution to your second: ieview. If you ever visit a page that won't behave in Moz/Firefox, just rightclick on it and click "View this page in IE." No need to hunt down the shortcut and copy/paste over the address or anything.

Base: An up to date host file. This can probably block 95% of web nasties, regardless of source, yet is overlooked by most people.
Second: Proxomitron. The second browser-independent tool, it's a relatively little-known local proxy that filters the crap (including more ads than virtually every other solution) from a webpage before feeding it to your browser. Also handily removes most of the ActiveX and Javascript that causes these exploits. I simply cannot recommend it enough. In addition, it's fully configurable, and there are plenty of people out there who will write custom filters to get rid of any sort of ad that slips through.
Third: Firefox. I hesitate to suggest Opera because I don't feel it's as high a quality a product, and is closed-source, meaning it could be almost as susceptible to this stuff as Internet Explorer, should the bad guys aim their sights on it.
Fourth: In-browser plugins such as Adblock, which probably won't do much to stop this particular problem, but are nice to have around regardless.

I can't operate without the google toolbar, which has no complete mozilla equivalent.

Um, what exactly is the mozilla google toolbar (http://googlebar.mozdev.org/) missing that you can't do without?

Remember, it doesn't need popup blocking (Mozilla does that itself).

Here is a zero dollar investment - install this with this extension.

Adblock for Mozilla is not as powerful as proxy filters like privoxy but it's really easy to hide images/flash/iframes with regexp patterns

Have you tried the fairly-similar Googlebar? It runs on Mozilla and FireFox.

What's wrong with this one? Works fine for me on Linux and Windows.

Don't need the code for that
http://googlebar.mozdev.org/