I have noticed that with the upcoming Firefox 32, which is currently in Nightly state, the browser will use Google's safe browsing database to check files you have downloaded from the Internet. For every executable file you download, Firefox will perform a check against the online database which is provided by Google. The current version of Firefox 31 also ships with a similar option, but it uses a local database and does not send any request to Google's sites. Firefox 32 will continue to use the local database, however, if the downloaded file isn't found in the local database, Firefox will send the information to Google. You might be interested in disabling this behavior due to privacy concerns. Here's how you can turn it off.
Category: Firefox
Several useful Firefox hotkeys everyone should know
Firefox is a very powerful browser which supports a number of plugins and has lots of settings and tricks. Like every other powerful tool, it supports hotkeys to improve usablity and speed up regular browsing activities. I would like to share my list of must-have hotkeys which can be helpful in almost all browsing scenarios.
How to paste as plain text in Firefox without third party plugins
By default, when you copy some text from a web page in Mozilla Firefox and paste it into a text field at some discussion board, forum or a WordPress post, it will be pasted with all the source page markup and formatting intact. Links, headers, bold and italic text - all these elements of text appearance will be preserved in the pasted content. If you wanted to paste what you copied as plain text, this can be annoying. There are several add-ons available for Firefox which implement the 'paste as plain text' feature, but in this article we will look how to paste as plain text using Firefox's built-in options, without using third party plugins.
Fix: YouTube and Google Drive are broken in Firefox Nightly
I always use the Firefox Nightly build as I have mentioned in the past in order to stay abreast of the latest developments. If you use the Firefox Nightly too like me, you may have noticed that YouTube videos no longer work after the latest update to the Nightly branch. Also Google Drive does not work correctly. Additionally, some Russian sites stopped working properly for me, mostly those that use modern client-side JavaScript libraries. If you faced this issue, here's how to fix it.
How to start Firefox in safe mode quickly
The safe mode in Mozilla Firefox is a really useful way to troubleshoot issues related to stability and performance. Safe Mode is a special mode where important browser settings are temporarily reverted back to their defaults and all add-ons are disabled. It is easy to figure out what might be causing problems by comparing Firefox behavior in normal mode to its behavior in Safe Mode.
How to enable YouTube HTML5 video support in Mozilla Firefox
While Mozilla Firefox has good support for HTML5 standards, you might have noticed that it does not support all features required to play videos on YouTube without having Adobe Flash Player installed. It supports the required HTMLVideoElement, but some videos do not play anyway. Those videos require the Media Source Extensions feature which is disabled by default in Firefox. By default, this option is off in Firefox, so the browser is not able to play some HTML5 video streams. If you prefer HTML5 videos over the Adobe Flash Player, you might want to enable Media Source Extensions to get advanced support of HTML5 videos in Firefox.
How to reset Mozilla Firefox settings
If Mozilla Firefox crashes for you or is giving you slowdown issues like consuming excessive amounts of CPU, then you can try the Reset function of Firefox. It's a useful but rarely covered feature. Resetting quickly solves any issues caused by damaged or incorrectly configured settings, and saves your time. It can resolve issues related to unexpected Firefox behavior, e.g. recently I removed a malicious user script running in my friend's Firefox profile using Reset. Let's see how to use the Reset Firefox feature.
Two Firefox extensions to tweak the Find Bar, enable Highlight All, number of matches and other tweaks
In any browser, the Find bar which appears by pressing Ctrl+F is very useful to quickly locate any word or phase on the page without manually searching for it. Mozilla Firefox's Find Bar has been severely lacking in some key functions, especially in more recent versions of Firefox. Let's look at two extensions which add essential functionality to the Find Bar.
Firefox plans to show ads: what are Firefox alternatives?
Besides the new Australis UI coming soon to Firefox, Mozilla now plans to show ads on the new tab page of Firefox as a revenue source required to support the browser. These changes are very frustrating for those users who are used to having a customizable and ad-free web browser. Although Mozilla will most likely make those ads unobtrusive, many Firefox users may want to stop using the vanilla Mozilla Firefox build. Let's see where you can migrate and try to analyze what the alternatives are to Firefox.
Access Firefox extension/addon options from a menu
We always say that the best feature of Firefox is the unrivaled customization the browser offers. Even if you don't like the UI and default look of Firefox, addons, themes and personas can change it. Accessing extension options in Firefox is cumbersome today. Firefox opens a separate addons page in a new tab to manage them. It takes several clicks to access extension options and then you have to close the Add-ons page every time. This is where an extension called 'Extension Options Menu' helps.
