How did we ever get buy without tabbed browsing? Think back to the days of OS 9 and IE 4. Ugh.

JimD at creativebits has shared a cool trick (Firefox and Safari) for quickly returning to a previously visited website in a new tab, thus preserving the site you're currently browsing.

This got us thinking of some of our favorite browser tricks, like this one. If you've got several tabs open, you can move from one to the other with keyboard shortcuts. In Firefox, it's Command-Option plus the arrow keys. In Safari, it's Command-Shift plus the arrow keys.

Quickly jump to the address field with Command-L (both Firefox and Safari). It selects the full text, so you can either just start typing or hit Command-C to copy the url. Of course, Safari 3 lets you grab Web Clips and turn them into Dashboard widgets.

Have you got a favorite browser trick to share with newcomers to the Mac?

Phishers -- in their sinister attempts to bilk you out of your time, money, and personal information with bogus emails -- are becoming more and more clever. Luckily, with a little critical thinking and up-to-date software, you can keep yourself safe.

Typically, to avoid falling victim to phishing, check the URL that the email is asking you to click. Does it look right? One popular façade for phishing attempts is PayPal, and there's a new technique that makes it look like the request is coming, securely, from paypal.com. For the technical among us, it exploits a flaw in one of PayPal's screens that allows a phisher to include a redirect URL in an address that begins with https://www.paypal.com. Sneaky. Thankfully, Firefox blocks it on the rebound.

Also, emails that ask you to verify or enter account information (that you've already entered) have a high degree of poopiness about them. Reader Allan noted that because Apple is in the process of switching people to Mobile Me, some phishers are using the confusion to send people emails asking them to enter new billing information for the new service. That, of course, isn't necessary, and if you get that kind of email, you should delete it.

Another good way to protect yourself is to use an up-to-date browser. Firefox includes protection against known phishing sites, and warns you about them before letting you proceed. Safari, currently, does not, but 1Password does, and it works seamlessly with Safari. Installing one of these options is especially important for parents and grandparents that may not be as familiar with these attacks as their kids.

Lastly, there's a great overview at macphishingprotection.com, which notes, "Phishers win even if you make only one mistake." Truer words never spoken.

Thanks, Allan, Fernando and Aviv for the heads-up!

If you think Firefox could run a little faster on your Mac, then you might want to download one of BeatnikPad's custom builds of Firefox 3. "Minefield" (previously known as BonEcho for pre-3.0 releases) is Neil Lee's custom build of Firefox. He is currently offering custom builds for:

• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for Intel
  
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G5
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G4

Neil Lee has been offering custom builds of Firefox for many years now. They can make Firefox run a bit faster and smoother on older Macs. You can download them for free (though donations are accepted) from the BeatnikPad website.


[via IGM]

The graphic above says it all -- Firefox 3 Download Day was a success, with 8,002,530 downloads in 24 hours. Amazingly, this happened despite all of the initial download glitches that happened on Download Day. The Mozilla team is reporting that 29,116,621 copies of Firefox 3 have been downloaded as of 1:13 PM ET today.

If you signed up for Download Day notifications, you'll receive this email as well and you can get your own cheesy certificate, suitable for framing (or not).

Since I downloaded Firefox 3, I've been enjoying some of the plugins that are now residing at the bottom of my browser (Twitterfox and the Accuweather Forecastfox plugin). Firefox 3 seems faster to me, and I like the way it displays sites that are using certificates by putting a wide, clickable banner in the address bar. What are your opinions about Firefox 3?

Joining in on the conversation about tonight's .Mac outage, reader Chad sent us a link to a page he discovered on .Mac. He said that while trying to access his .Mac service on his iPhone, he was redirected to a MobileMe browser requirements page. One of the suspicious things on the page is the fact that "calendar" is spelled wrong (i.e. "calender"). You can see a screen grab of the page after the break.

Neil Lee has updated his optimized Firefox builds for Firefox 3. The architecture-specific versions of Firefox 2 had been dubbed BonEcho, but Firefox 3 brings a new moniker: Minefield. I'm unsure as to the intended implications of the name (it sounds like the perfect way to refer to an alpha release), but I've been running the Intel version with great results.

If you were a user of BonEcho, you were used to the icon being visibly different than the standard Firefox icon. The icon for Minefield, designed by Adam Betts, is a slight variation on the standard icon and not immediately discernible as a deviation from the original. This has confused a few people, but it's definitely a less jarring transition. You still get the title "Minefield" wherever Firefox would have shown up in the interface, so you know what you're running.

As far as performance, I haven't run any solid benchmarks but have noticed what seems like a significant decrease in initial load time and and improvement in general responsiveness when comparing clean installations (no addons) of Minefield to the standard Firefox 3 build.

When I went to grab Minefield, I also discovered a link to the GrApple theme. It's designed to look like Safari and, being a Safari fan, I've fallen in love with it. If you're not overly attached to the default Firefox 3 look (which I didn't mind to begin with), there are great screenshots of the multiple versions available.

Minefield is currently available in G5 and Intel flavors. Neil is also working on a set of instructions for building your own optimized Firefox builds at home for the DIY speed enthusiast.

Clarification: As pointed out in the comments, the name "Minefield" has been used for Mozilla builds for a while. These optimized builds use the codenames so as not to infringe on any Firefox trademarks.

Ralf Herrmann recently took a look at the new typography features found in Firefox 3, pitting them against what's been available in Safari 3 for a while. The results show some major advances, and some major problems. The current OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography features in Firefox 3 include promising features like basic ligatures, which is exciting to those who live and breathe typography, but it fails in some non-English languages. Overall, it seems there are a lot of would-be nice new features that don't quite provide enough detail to be universally helpful. But it's a step in the right direction.

Check out the post at Ralf Herrmann's Typography Weblog for a very complete overview and comparison.

If you switched to Firefox from another browser like Safari that supports in-line PDF viewing (that's the ablity to look at a PDF in the browser instead of downloading it), then you might have been disheartened to learn that Firefox does not support this feature natively. However, you will find Firefox-Mac-PDF to be a useful plug-in.

Firefox-Mac-PDF allows for the same in-line PDF viewing that can be found in Safari. This plug-in requires Firefox 3 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher. You can download the plug-in for free from their Google Code page.

To install the plug-in, just open the Add-ons panel by going to Tools > Add-ons. Once there, drag the downloaded ".xpi" file to the Add-ons. You will be asked if you wish to install the plug-in. Once you restart Firefox you'll be able to view all PDFs right within Firefox.


[via Lifehacker]

Given the fact that lots of folks are downloading FireFox 3 as of late, I thought this might be a good time to highlight MultiFireFox 2.0. MultiFireFox 2.0 lets you run up to 5 versions of FireFox side by side.

Why would you want to do this? If you're a web developer you probably want to check your work in FireFox 2 as well as 3. MultiFireFox also lets those of you who don't want to jump into the new version of FireFox get your feet wet with the new hotness (or should that be the 'new wetness?'), but keep FF2 close at hand.

MultiFireFox 2 is free, so you can't beat the price and runs on OS X 10.4 and above.

Promised at 10 a.m. Pacific time (1 p.m. Eastern), Mozilla was eager to set a one-day world-record for the release of Firefox 3. With most of the day already gone for much of the world, and nary an update to be seen, it's looking bad for June 17.

Getfirefox.com alternates between being entirely down and cheerfully offering up the latest and greatest version of Firefox 2.

"Check for Updates" inside of Firefox (eventually) returns a "AUS: Update XML File Malformed (200)" error reading the XML file that would normally contain information about Firefox updates.

When will we see an update? "Shortly," according to the Mozilla Blog. They are also careful to point out that the "official" 24 hours of record-breaking will commence the moment the software is released, and not from their original 10 a.m. estimate.

Thanks everyone who sent this in!

Update: 3:05 p.m.: We did it! TUAW single-handedly provided the schadenfreude necessary to get the server running, and getfirefox.com is serving up Firefox 3.

Just a reminder, as Robert hinted half an hour ago today is "Download Day" for Firefox 3. If you haven't yet downloaded the official 3.0 release, be sure to do it today! Firefox is trying to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours. At 10 AM PDT (1:00 PM EDT) head over here to get your official download. Note: Only downloads from Mozilla's official site count towards the record.

It's not all about Mozilla's pride, really! Firefox 3 will bring many changes for all Mac users (mostly good), as this is the first release of Firefox that is built primarily using Cocoa for the underlying Gecko 1.9 engine (a project that's been in the works for years). Along with better redraw speed (CoreGraphics vs. the older QuickDraw API) and improved memory handling, the new engine provides the groundwork for a pure-Cocoa, 64-bit clean version of Firefox in the future. Firefox 3's UI is more Maclike now, with Aqua-style widgets improving the view. You can read more about the architectural changes to Firefox 3 and Gecko 1.9 at developer Josh Aas' blog.

So head on over to Spread Firefox, we're sure you can't go wrong! If you're in the mood to party with the Firefox launch day crowd, check Mozilla's party site for activities near you.

For those of you who aren't looking forward to Firefox 3's default new look today, might I suggest an FF2 theme called GrApple Yummy, from Aronnax. It makes Firefox a dead ringer for Safari. In fact, Aronnax claims it looks three times more beautiful than Safari. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

GrApple Yummy is available in two flavors, blue and graphite. Blue contains three-color window controls, while graphite, as you might imagine, has gray window controls.

Both themes are donationware.

Mozilla announced Wednesday that it plans to release the final version of Firefox 3 on Tuesday, June 17, less than a week away.

"After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we're proud to announce that we're ready," Mozilla said in a post on its Developer Center blog.

You can help Mozilla meet its goal of breaking the Guinness World Record on June 17th, becoming the most downloaded software in a single day. Over one million people have pledged so far to download the software in the first 24 hours it's available.

In related news, Mozilla also published Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 on Wednesday. There was one fix, and it was for Mac users on 10.5.3 -- a correction for unkillable hangs related to the VerifiedDownload plugin. Glad they got that cleared up!

Firefox developer Josh Aas has an interesting technical discussion about what's new in Firefox 3 for Mac OS X. Chiefly, he talks about Gecko 1.9, the updated rendering engine for Firefox 3.

The most significant change, he notes, is that Gecko 1.9 is now written in Cocoa instead of Carbon. Also, Gecko 1.9 uses Core Graphics and ATSUI instead of QuickDraw. QuickDraw is deprecated and the writing is on the wall for Carbon, so moving to newer APIs was a priority for the Gecko team.

Firefox 3 release candidate 2 3 is available in over 45 languages. Mozilla has not yet announced when the final release of Firefox 3 will be available.

Update: 6:00 p.m.: Release Candidate 3 is now available due to a bug related to Mac OS X 10.5.3. Check out the Macworld story for more details.

The Firefox team would like to invite the world to join in their quest to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. How do they planning to do this? They want as many people as possible to pledge to download Firefox 3 within 24 hours of its release as part of Download Day 2008.

While the release day is still unknown -- sometime in June is as much of a hint as we're getting -- pledging signs you up for updates about the imminent release of Firefox 3. You can also use your favorite social networking group (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter) to follow the journey of Firefox to a world record.

When I wrote this post, 356,554 people had pledged to grab Firefox 3 on Download Day 2008. The US is leading with 58,862 pledges, with Brazil in second place with 23,030. Wherever you reside, be sure to participate in this fun event!