add-ons

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that's especially true when it comes to spyware; wouldn't you rather protect your system than spend hours trying to rid it of malicious visitors? SpywareBlaster is a simple program that provides protection from ActiveX-based software and unwanted cookies for both Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

SpywareBlaster has a simple interface that will be easy for even novices to navigate. The main screen shows the protection status for Internet Explorer, restricted Web sites, and Firefox. By default, protection is disabled for each of these, but you can easily … Read more

If you're not a fan of relying on browser add-ons and plug-ins, you'll probably want to enable a feature that can help you ditch at least one of them. Firefox now has a built-in PDF reader, and while it doesn't offer all of the same features that Adobe's version does, it's more than sufficient for most uses.

Before you get started enabling the PDF viewer, make sure you have the latest version of Firefox and you've disabled the Adobe PDF viewer.

To check the version: click the menu at the top left-hand corner and … Read more

The new tab screen in Chrome normally displays a thumbnail grid of your most visited sites or a list of your Chrome apps. But how often do you really make use of either of those screens? If you're a weather junkie, you might like a Chrome extension called Currently. It's a very simple extension that displays the current time, date, and weather forecast.

You can still access your old screens by clicking on the icon in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. If you don't like the dark color, you can change it to light (gray) or … 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

SAN FRANCISCO--Tugging on Chrome's coat tails, the popular Dolphin browser has announced alongside the Google I/O developer conference a new framework for developers called Dolphin Garage.

Garage is an open API program for extending the functionality of Dolphin. Powered in part by Adobe Phonegap and Dolphin's own HTML5 framework called Engine, it will include the release of more than 150 APIs, which will allow developers to create their own add-ons for the browser.

Engine has proven to be a big boon for Dolphin, explained David Dehghan, technical architect at Dolphin. While at a W3C Web standards meeting … Read more

The bottom line: Sync remains the killer Firefox for Android feature, but the revamped interface, fast page-load times, and tabbed browsing make it much more usable than before.

Review: Firefox for Android used to be a must-use mainly for Firefox fans. It was good at what it did, but it wasn't great, and the competitive field of Android browsers surpassed it on many levels.

As a reaction, Mozilla spent the better part of a year redesigning the browser from the ground up. The new Firefox for Android brings an interface powered by native code, competitive page-load times, and Flash … Read more

Facebook is a place for sharing (and sometimes oversharing) information between friends and family. As of the last few months, more and more "social reader" apps have been making their way to your Facebook timeline. You'll see that a friend watched a video on something like SocialCam, and when you go to click the video, you're asked to grant the service access to your Facebook.

Instead of authorizing a bunch of social-reader apps to post on your Facebook wall or gain access to your information, you should try Unsocialize. With this Web browser add-on you can … Read more

Earthquakes can seem like isolated, uncommon events, but the truth is, multiple earthquakes occur around the world every day. If you want to keep track of this fascinating -- and sometimes terrifying -- natural phenomenon, try eQuake Alert. This Firefox extension can instantly alert you to earthquakes occurring anywhere in the world.

eQuake Alert installed easily and was ready for action after we restarted Firefox. The extension is highly configurable; you can select the frequency with which eQuake Alert checks for new earthquakes, whether to display a status bar message with the location and magnitude of each quake, and how … Read more

Mozilla may not have a dedicated in-house search engine division the way that Google and Microsoft do, but it does have a new partnership with alterna-search Blekko.

The Blekko add-on (download), developed by Mozilla Labs' Prospector team, aims to cut down on the repetitive search behaviors of many Firefox users. Mozilla says that its research indicates that people often search for the same term, not because they're looking to find it again but because they're attempting to navigate elsewhere. This add-on, like Google's Instant search feature, cuts down on the extra steps by pre-caching sites, showing preview … Read more