Going back to Mozilla/Firefox

[BettyB]

A couple of computers ago I used Mozilla and loved it. Want to return...now I guess it's Firefox, right? So I'll find the official site and download...any tips? Is Ver 3 the latest? And do I want to wait for 3.1 or go for whatever came before 3?

What add ons are recommended? I never got the knack of adding those in Mozilla though so I'll have questions.

[davidh]

A couple of computers ago I used Mozilla and loved it. Want to return...now I guess it's Firefox, right? So I'll find the official site and download...any tips? Is Ver 3 the latest? And do I want to wait for 3.1 or go for whatever came before 3?

What add ons are recommended? I never got the knack of adding those in Mozilla though so I'll have questions. The Mozilla people just ceased support for version 2. So you probably should start out with 3.0.x, the current version. I think 3.1.x is still in beta release.

The NoScript add-on/extension probably gives Firefox significantly more security than what you can get with most any other browser. If you find the NoScript inconvenient, you can easily "disable" it or "uninstall" it. IMO, it's probably worth the inconvenience for the sake of security.
David H

[Judy G. Russell]

What add ons are recommended? I never got the knack of adding those in Mozilla though so I'll have questions.You'll want AdBlock Plus for sure.

[BettyB]

Thanks Judy. I'll be sure to click on AdBlock Plus.

[BettyB]

Thanks David, I'll go for the 3.0.x version. Although if 3.1 is close to release I might wait for it. (I'm a world class procrastinator)

NoScript add-on/extension... No idea what that is or does but will be sure to include it.

[Peter Creasey]

A couple of computers ago I used Mozilla

Betty, If you liked Mozilla you might prefer the suite that Mozilla became...called SeaMonkey. It is highly recommended for people wanting both browser and email capabilities (and composer, also).

SeaMonkey, of course, is Gecko based like Mozilla was and like FireFox is.

SeaMonkey Project (http://www.seamonkey-project.org/)

[BettyB]

Ummm... so what's the main difference between SeaMonkey and Firefox? FF is 'just' a browser (with add ons) while SeaMonkey includes an OE like mail thingie?

Don't remember using Mozilla's e-mail (doesn't mean I didn't, just that I don't remember). I'm not unpleased with Outlook Express and am familiar with it. (shrug) Unless there's some strong reasons for changing? Does FF not like OE?

[davidh]

Thanks David, I'll go for the 3.0.x version. Although if 3.1 is close to release I might wait for it. (I'm a world class procrastinator)

NoScript add-on/extension... No idea what that is or does but will be sure to include it.
NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java, Flash and other plugins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser.

NoScript's unique whitelist based pre-emptive script blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even not known yet!) with no loss of functionality...

You can enable JavaScript, Java and plugin execution for sites you trust with a simple left-click on the NoScript status bar icon (look at the picture), or using the contextual menu, for easier operation in popup statusbar-less windows.
Watch the "Using NoScript" video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKW5SMvMKtY) kindly contributed by John Wilkerson.

Staying safe has never been so easy!
Experts will agree: Firefox is really safer with NoScript!
http://noscript.net/
David H.

[BettyB]

Thanks again...for the explanation and for pointing me to John Wilkerson's installation notes.

I remember now that I became frustrated with Mozilla because I was so intimidated by the add-ons. I _will_ take courage in hand and jump back into the world of Mozilla etc.

[sidney]

I remember now that I became frustrated with Mozilla because I was so intimidated by the add-ons

The add-ons have become much easier to deal with. You find one you want at the Mozilla add-on site and click on the install button on the page to install it. When any of them has an update available, when you start up Firefox you'll get a window telling you which ones have updates and you can click the Update button to let the update go through, or skip it if you have some reason to. I've never had an add-on update not work.

The current Firefox has a useful feature that when you quit if you have more than one tab or window open it will offer to remember the state of your browser so that when you start Firefox again it will reopen all the same tabs and windows at the same URLs. It also has a much smarter address bar. You can type anything that you remember as being part of a URL and it will give you choices from its history. So you could get to the Tapcis forum by starting to type 'tap' and then selecting the appropriate URL from a dropdown list.

I recommend Adblock Plus as a most useful extension. The Adblock Plus version is a completely separate project from plain AdBlock and is the one I strongly prefer. It allows you to "subscribe" to different maintained lists of ad blocking filters which are automatically updated. With the proper subscriptions, Adblock Plus is almost a set and forget utility that just works.

The ad subscriptions I suggest are called "EasyElement + EasyList" that you can get as a single subscription (once you have Adblock Plus installed and don't accept the offer to subscribe to any one subscription during the installation) by going to http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions and scrolling down to the link where it says "Subscribe: EasyElement+EasyList" .

From there, scroll down some more to the Miscellaneous section and find the "Subscribe: Malware Domains" link. That adds a list of known domains that carry viruses, trojans, phishing sites, etc. It adds a few seconds when you each time you start up your browser while it updates the large list, but doesn't slow down browsing noticeably.

By the way, here is a useful Getting Started with Adblock Plus (http://adblockplus.org/en/getting_started)

[BettyB]

Thank you for all this info. It all sounds a bit scary but once I get into it am sure it will be fairly painless.

[Peter Creasey]

so what's the main difference between SeaMonkey and Firefox?

Betty, SeaMonkey is a suite that can handle browsing, email, and composing... basically the same thing Mozilla did. SeaMonkey is considered by many people to be a bit faster and more nimble than FireFox.

[BettyB]

To all of you who have offered advice and explanations...

Downloaded FireFox and AdblockPlus. Playing around to see how things look and work and what changes from defaults I'd like to make plus what other add ons to grab. So much to re-learn. (sigh)

[Judy G. Russell]

So much to re-learn. (sigh)And it'll take you far less time than you may expect.

[MollyM/CA]

I've been using SeaMonkey for quite some time now -- since I read about it on this forum, about 5 minutes after the announcement that Mozilla wouldn't be upgraded any more was made.

I didn't like the FireFox interface and it didn't seem to perform as well as Mozilla (translation: I just wasn't comfortable with Firefox?). SeaMonkey has the look and feel of Mozilla, accesses all the plugins and all or most of the addons (like the Google Toolbar) that Mozilla/Netscape used. BUT like the old Mozilla it's constantly being upgraded and patched for security and performance (which in this case does NOT equal bloat). Lots of people like the Mozilla e-mail a lot -- I had Pegasus (freeware) first and find it more convenient. (Nearest thing to Tapcis mail I could find, when I left CS) Composer, the HTML editor (I guess that's the right name for it), is quite handy for paring down downloaded Web pages; I'm too dumb to use it to construct a page.

I use Outlook's Contacts but don't have it hooked up for e-mail -- it used to be much too large a target for trojans and the like, and had stupid defaults like automatically opening links in e-mails though I think that's long past. I find Pegasus much more flexible and logical (also faster and simpler to use), and the SeaMonkey mail is a close second -- very nicely organised with all the parts on view.

SeaMonkey might be even a little more user-adjustable than Mozilla was -- has the same approach to allowing you to handle cookies any way you want, and you can set a default for opening links (automatically in a new window or new tab or the same tab), and furzIremember the keystrokes are the same.

m

[earler]

Sidney, if you have 2 firefox windows open, each with several tabs, I don't see how you can close firefox and keep those 2 windows and those tabs so they will open when you reinitialize the program other than by using task manager to close firefox. Or, is there some trick?

[sidney]

if you have 2 firefox windows open, each with several tabs, I don't see how you can close firefox and keep those 2 windows and those tabs so they will open when you reinitialize the program

It should be automatic if you have the correct preference settings.

In Tools:Options:Main - "When Firefox starts:" make sure it is set to either "Show a blank page" or "Show my home page". Counter-intuitively , you should not have it set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time."

In Tools:Options:Tabs, enable the checkbox setting "Warn me when closing multiple tabs"

With those two set, when you quit and multiple tabs are open Firefox should open a dialog asking if you want to quit or save the current session and quit. If you select the latter, it will change your startup page preference to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" for just the one time that you next start up Firefox.

I haven't played with enabling the startup setting to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" to see under what circumstances Firefox will always save and restore the session with no prompting. You probably can find a combination of settings that will do it.

If you happen to select the "Do not ask next time" checkbox on the Quit / Save&Quit dialog and now can't figure out how to get it back, try entering in the address bar about:config to get the advanced options settings, and then set browser.warnOnQuit to true. However, I think that the preference settings I mentioned above will allow you to get to where you want without having to resort to the about:config method.

[earler]

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I have 2 windows open, each with several tabs. If I close one window and I select the option to save the current option, then close the 2nd window and select the same option I'm afraid I'll only get the 2nd window when I restart firefox.

What I do now is use task manager to end the firefox session. I also make a backup of the entire firefox folder every so often, just in case. As is happens, the other day I did have a nasty crash of firefox such that only one of the 2 windows started up. Since I had a recent backup, I just replaced the firefox folder with the backup one.

[sidney]

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I have 2 windows open, each with several tabs. If I close one window and I select the option to save the current option, then close the 2nd window and select the same option I'm afraid I'll only get the 2nd window when I restart firefox.

Oh, if you close one window out of two, then you are not ending your session, you now have a session that has one window open. So if you quit Firefox after that and it saves your current session, it is saving a session with one window.

What you would have to do is exit Firefox using the Quit Firefox menu option (or Exit, or whatever it is called in Windows) so the session that it saves contains both open windows.

However the best solution for you might be Session Manager Add-on (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2324) which gives you the ability to save and restore sessions at any time, as well as on exit and on startup.

[earler]

Thank you. I'll take a look at that add-in. I did have it running a while back but then stopped, god knows why.