Mozilla Thinning the Add-On Herd »

If you haven’t checked Mozilla’s add-on site lately for new Firefox or Thunderbird goodies, you better get over there before Monday. Mozilla has announced that it will re-launch the always popular add-on site Monday and there will be some pretty big changes.

They are going to reduce the roughly 2,000 Firefox and Thunderbird add-ons down to a few hundred. Mozilla plans to get rid of some of the less popular and the ones that are no longer maintained and updated by their creator.

They are also going to setup a plan where users can nominate extensions for inclusion in the main add-on listing. That sounds like a pretty cool idea. Some add-ons don’t exactly work perfectly or they have little glitches like memory leaks . Since the developers create the add-on and make it available for free, understandably they do not always have time to update their work or fix these little glitches. So, it seems like this voting system will ensure that only the best are available.

Mozilla users love the ability to add special functionality to their web browser or email program a few clicks of the mouse. That is one of the things that makes Mozilla products so great and made them the hottest around! Hopefully, this add-on re-launch will only enhance that warm & fuzzy Mozilla feeling .

Internet Explorer 7 Installations Reach 100 Million »

According to Tony Chor of Microsoft, on January 8, 2007, Internet Explorer was installed on its 100 millionth machine. Probably, if Mozilla forced asked people to install its browser, Firefox would have an even larger share of the Internet Browser pie.

At any rate, IE7 is the second most used web browser behind IE6. As expected, Chor believes IE7 usage will continue to increase as more people download it and after Vista is released (cough) on January 30, 2007 (it is part of the Vista package).

As I alluded to in the first paragraph, I think the numbers are somewhat misleading. If you are running Windows XP with automatic updates turned on, you automatically installed IE7. You did not really have an easy choice. Although, you can uninstall it and rollback to IE6 if you want.

Additionally, we installed IE7 on our machines, but that is only so we can test web designs in different browsers. Our browser of choice is still Mozilla Firefox, followed by Opera.

Don’t get me wrong, IE7 made a lot of progress, but it is only now reaching the level of customization and security that has already existed in Firefox and Opera. Additionally, Firefox has already released the Alpha version of Firefox 3, so they are certainly not sitting back.

If you want to check out Firefox, here is a link for all the details. If you are interested in Opera, click here. If you are interested in IE7, you are probably already running it and don’t need a link .

Opera Web Browser Vulnerabilities »

Secunia is reporting two vulnerabilities found in the Opera Web Browser.

Secunia has a nice little tool called Software Inspector. Testing your system with this tool will tell you if you are at risk for this vulnerability or any other known software vulnerability.

EDIT: One sign of a developer passionate about how their product is viewed is how he/she responds when someone points out a flaw. I got an email from Rijk in response to this post. He wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the best way to avoid this vulnerability was to update to Opera 9.1. Upgrade to the latest version and you will have no problems.

This is something that I neglected to mention in my original post and I am glad that he took the time to point that out to me. Great job Rijk. Thanks for clarifying!

Mozilla Makes Nice Profit »

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could create a product, spend little or nothing on marketing, give it away for free and still make $53 million? That is exactly what Mozilla is doing. Their “bread and butter” product, Firefox, is the hottest Internet browser around and a big reason for Mozilla’s popularity.

But Firefox is free? How does Mozilla make money? The big reason for the company’s revenue is what is termed “strategic search engine relationships”. I will give you a hint who that is: it starts with a “g” and ends with an “oogle”.

The two are partnered together like peas and carrots. Plus Google is another one known for giving away freebies and still making money.

Our Blog Readers Are Foxy »

I check the server logs daily (sometimes several times per day) to get a pulse on the blog. One of the statistics I monitor is what browsers our visitors are using.

Most “web experts” say that 80% of Internet users prefer (probably more likely that they do not know they have other options) Internet Explorer and about 13.5% use Firefox. However, that is not the case on this blog. Here is our breakdown:

• 47% – Firefox – 47%
• 38% – Internet Explorer
• 15% – Opera, Safari, Netscape, Camino

This shows that our readers are Foxy! If you don’t use Firefox, we still love you too! But, if you want to join the collective, click here and check out Firefox