firefox

Remember when you could read a Facebook message and ignore it, without thinking twice about replying? Then Facebook rolled out read receipts for Facebook Messages, thus forcing your hand to reply. Luckily, there's now a browser extension to disable the "Seen" notification on messages you've read, as reported by The Next Web.

The browser extension is called Chat Undetected, and was developed by Crossrider. It's compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. I was unable to install the extension in Safari, even though The Next Web report lists it as a compatible browser.

To install … Read more

Although speed is a major factor in browser choice, many people don't want to know why their favorite browser is fast -- they just care that it is. But the standards and tests used to determine how we measure a browser's speed can be varied, so Google has set out to further define the playing field.

This doesn't appear to be a case of the tech giant stomping all over open standards, though. Octane v1 is a revamp of Google's V8 benchmark and adds five tests to the eight current ones, the company said today in … Read more

For more than three years, Skype has worked to improve online audio through involvement in a project now called Opus. But perversely, Skype's new owner, Microsoft, is undermining Opus just as a Web standards effort is poised to carry it into the mainstream.

Opus is an audio "codec" -- technology to encode and decode media streams for efficient transmission over the Internet or storage on computing equipment. Opus backers besides Microsoft's Skype division include Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

Opus has a lot of potential to improve online audio, something that's increasingly important as more communications … Read more

Web Search Pro from Captain Caveman offers an innovative way of doing Internet searches. The free Firefox extension allows the user to determine beforehand how the search is to be conducted. In essence, it is like instructing the browser where to look. For example, typing a particular topic and telling it to look in Wikipedia will bring you to a specific Wiki page on the topic.

Sadly, there is no Help file to aid the new user. This would have been helpful in explaining the Drag & Drop Zone functionality of the application, which is probably its best feature. It … Read more

If you use the Google search box in Firefox or the address bar in Chrome, which doubles as a Google search box, for Web searches, you will notice that the results page opens in the tab you are currently viewing. If you are conducting some extensive online research, you might find it easier to keep track of your search results if each time you searched the results opened in a new tab. For Firefox, you will need to get into the inner working of your browser, while Chrome requires an extension.

For Firefox, open the browser and type about:config … Read more

Ah, the Olympics. We get three weeks of athletic prowess, medal counts, moving personal stories, and slow-motion replay of swimmers touching the side of the pool. If you can't stand yet another headline about sporting glory, turn to the Olwimpics browser extension for relief.

Olwimpics' sole purpose in life is to expunge the Olympics from your browsing experience. It's available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It thoughtfully covers up keywords with Olympics-color blocks, though it doesn't make the accompanying images disappear.… Read more

Mozilla took a big step toward the coming conflict between native apps and Web apps as it introduced Web app support to Firefox 16, which moved to the the developer's Aurora channel last Friday.

The Web app support in Firefox 16 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, for Linux, and for Android) means that when the Mozilla Marketplace opens to the public -- likely to be sometime before the end of 2012 -- people will be able to run Web-based apps through any iteration of Firefox. This is part of Mozilla's "Kilimanjaro" project, syncing up the … Read more

Firefox users who've installed a custom theme may bump into trouble if they upgrade to the latest version of the browser.

Released earlier this week, Firefox 14 offers a few enhancements, including better security. But it comes with one gotcha -- lack of support for a lot of existing themes.

Many Firefox users probably know that they can change the style of their browser by installing one of many custom themes, available at the Themes section on Mozilla's Add-Ons page. You can choose from among hundreds of different themes to customize the look and feel of Firefox's … Read more

A plethora of changes land in Firefox for Android 15 beta, as its desktop counterpart moves its memory management improvements up a notch.

Firefox 15 beta for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), brings the memory management improvements developed in Mozilla's MemShrink project one step closer to the stable version of the browser, this time focusing on long browser sessions and how add-ons affect Firefox. Nicholas Nethercote, a developer at Mozilla, wrote on his blog that Firefox 15 beta is likely to be "drastically" faster than Firefox 14, in some cases.

The changes in the beta … Read more