Firefox Just Got Better

by: Burk Pendergrass

The safest most secure app for browsing the internet currently available just got better and has more improvements on the way. Are you ready for the latest Mozilla release? Firefox 3 Beta 4 is available for download, but before you go running off like some half cocked Microsoft groupie notice the "beta" tag.

Hello!! The internet is a dangerous place. The Remote Helpdesk 1 Team continues to be amused (we can no longer say amazed) at people who would not dare to venture into certain parts of a city but who seemingly rush into the internet's dark corners and dimly lighted streets ill prepared.

Before you sail into a storm baton down the hatches, and before you cruise into hacker, virus, trojan, and criminally infested areas of the world wide web at least darken the windows and arm yourself. Not to take appropriate precautions will assure your computer a visit to the infectious disease controls center if not the hard drive morgue.

Firefox developers have thus far proven themselves to the best at incorporating necessary safety features into their browser while preserving user options and cruise speeds. Online PC Repair folks feel they owe a lot of their success to getting their loyal users involved in the development and testing process. These folks, like The Tennessee Mountain Man, have helped keep the programs on track and the applications minimal. For instance, if a client wants twenty-five cents - give him a quarter like Mozilla tends to do rather that twenty-five pennies as Microsoft is famous for.



It takes a lot less resources to process one coin than it does to count twenty-five. Mozilla recognizing this has given the new "beta" release a lot of new features and improved compatibility while freeing up resources. The end result being a more nimble and faster overall browsing experience. At the same time they have enhanced Firefox's security.

Released to the public via the Mozilla website Monday, 10 March 2008, Firefox 3 Beta 4 is in the beta stage of any software's life cycle. Firefox 3 Beta 4 loudly proclaims that it is "for testing purposes only" therefore it is not for everyone. It you are a newbie or maybe even an intermediate internet user, the suggestion of the Computer Man would be that you use Firefox 2.0.0.12, the latest most stable full release until Firefox 3 is out of beta.

If you just can't wait for a better browsing experience Mozilla reports "the new release includes more than 900 enhancements from beta 3, including drastic improvements to performance and memory usage, as well as fixes for stability, platform enhancements and user interface".

But that is not the half of it... not by a long shot. "Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 31 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 12,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers improvements.", according to Mozilla.

Enhancements like these reported on the Mozilla website:

"More Secure

* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to. (Try it here!)
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. (Try it here!)
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!)
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate. (Try it here!)
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
* Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with Vista: Firefox now has Vista-specific icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and spell-checker in web forms and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
* Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline
browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

* [Improved in Beta 4!] Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in significant improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 4, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
* [Improved in Beta 4!] Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 Beta 4 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
* Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes."

Mozilla provides Firefox 3 Beta 4 for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in forty different languages, and reports it can be removed without losing your bookmarks, web browsing history, extensions and other add-ons. Best of all - it is FREE ! Just download, install, and enjoy a whole new faster browsing experience if your computer meets one of the following system requirements.

Windows
Operating Systems

* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows Server 2003
* Windows Vista

Minimum Hardware

* Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended: Pentium 500MHz or greater)
* 64 MB RAM (Recommended: 128 MB RAM or greater)
* 52 MB hard drive space

Mac
Operating Systems

* Mac OS X 10.4 and later

Minimum Hardware

* Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 or PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
* 128 MB RAM (Recommended: 256 MB RAM or greater)
* 200 MB hard drive space

Linux
Software Requirements
Please note that Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements.

* Linux kernel - 2.2.14 or higher with the following libraries or packages:
o glibc 2.3.2 or higher
o XFree86-3.3.6 or higher
o gtk+2.0 or higher
o fontconfig (also known as xft)
o libstdc++5

Minimum Hardware

* Intel Pentium II or AMD K6-III+ 233 MHz CPU (Recommended: 500MHz or greater)
* 64 MB RAM (Recommended: 128 MB RAM or greater)
* 52 MB hard drive space

And, if you still have not tried Mozilla Thunderbird,

get ready to kick Outlook Express to the curb!

About The Author

Publication of Burk Pendergrass, J.D., a Cherokee Indian and Viet Nam Vet specializing in website design at http://computermanwebsitedesign.bravehost.com/ and http://remotehelpdesk1.com/ specializing in online web based computer repair.

Installing Wordpress Themes and Plugins

by: Tim Scullin

This is just a very quick overview of how to install all the fancy themes and plugins that make wordpress such a great blog platform.

Before you read this you should already be familiar with wordpress and be part way through setting up your blog. I would recommend you read the post "Blogs 101 The Essential Tips For Setting Up WordPress" on the TimScullin blog before you start.

You can download and automatically install a majority of the plugins direct from the WordPress Admin page by going Plugins>Add New. These directions are for installing the themes and plugins you find outside of the main Wordpress site. Installing a WordPress Plugin

All WordPress Plugins install the same way.

Download the latest version of the WordPress Plugin to your computer.

With an FTP program, access your site's server.



Upload (copy) the Plugin file(s) or folder to the /wp-content/plugins folder.

In your WordPress Administration Panels, click on Plugins from the menu at the top.

You should see your new Plugin listed. If not, with your FTP program, check the folder to see if it is installed. If it isn't, upload the file(s) again. If it is, delete the files and upload them again.

To turn the WordPress Plugin on, click Activate on the far right side of the list.

Check your Administration Panels or WordPress blog to see if the Plugin is working.

Installing a WordPress Theme

All WordPress Themes install the same way.

Download the latest version of the WordPress Theme to your computer.

With an FTP program, access your site's server.

Upload (copy) the Themes file(s) to the /wp-content/themes folder.

In your WordPress Administration Panels, click on Appearance from the menu at the top.

You should see your new Theme listed. If not, with your FTP program, check the folder to see if it is installed. If it isn't, upload the file(s) again. If it is, delete the files and upload them again.

Click on the theme you want to switch to and you will see what the new theme would look like.

If you are happy with your new look then click "Activate 'New Theme'" in the top right corner.

Check your WordPress blog to see how the new theme looks.

Easy as.

If you have any issues checkout wordpress support for plugins or themes jump on Google and see what people say, there is a lot of support for WordPress out there and I'm sure you will find what you are looking for.

Remember to check out http://timscullin.com/twitter/blogs-101-the-essential-tips-for-setting-up-wordpress

About The Author

Tim Scullin broke his neck in November 2009 in 6 places and will have a full recovery, but during the recovery time he has dived into the black hole that is web marketing. Now back in action he is keen to share his knowledge to help you build your online empire as he builds his. Check out his blog http://www.timscullin.com and add him on twitter http://twitter.com/teeskie

Get More Comments On Your WordPress Blog

by: Richard Day

Setting up your WordPress blog to accept comments appears to be easy. You might think you have set it up properly, but I have found that many new bloggers get this one wrong. How many times have you found that you cannot comment on a blog article?

The most frustrating aspect of this issue is that when you have taken several minutes to create, what you think, is a great comment, only to find out your comment isn't accepted. Everyone loses: The blog owner is cheated out of a valuable comment. Comments are incredibly significant to your blog's success.

An example:

I have a particular problem with a plug-in that says "How are you at math?" This plugin is frequently setup wrong.

You are supposed to add two numbers together and put that number in the box. You dutifully enter the answer in the box only to find that it blows up and says "You must have failed math!" That "blow up" will have you speaking in foreign languages as your anger takes control of you. (I have started highlighting whatever I write in the post and I hit control- c to copy it. That way, if it fails to take my comment, I have another chance at it. )

What went wrong?

Usually, the blog owner has committed some errors in the set up. It easy to make errors because there are several check boxes that work together. Here is one suggested way to set up your blog in WordPress. I am currently using version 2.5 of WordPress, but these settings are not specific to this version. It should work with every relatively current version.

Here's how: While logged into your WordPress blog, go to settings:



* Anyone Can Register - check the box
* Users must be registered and logged in to comment - DO NOT check the box
* New user default - choose "contributor"

You are not done yet: Go to Settings, Discussion: Email me whenever anyone:

* Posts a comment - check the box
* A comment is held for moderation - check the box - A very important box to check

Before a comment appears:

* An administrator must always approve a comment - check the box - Also, very important
* Comment author must fill out name and email - check the box

Let's explain these in order:

Anyone can register: You want to check this box because you want it to be easy for people to comment on your articles, don't you? There is no good reason to restrict who can register...remember, you will be able to moderate the comment before it is shown.

Users must be registered and logged in to comment: You don't want to check this box because unless you are running a membership site or some other exclusive site, you wouldn't want to put a comment creator to such effort. Don't do it.

New user default: Here is where you CAN get into some real trouble! I know, first hand, what can happen here. I had chosen the new default user to be "Author", not "Contributor". I wanted it to be easy for people to comment on my work. I also, like many bloggers, was naive and I let them post without my moderation first.

This worked fine for about a year or so until one day I visited my insurance blog to find some of the most disgusting, pornographic pictures I have seen. What a way to make a great impression on your readers. I don't have any idea how many hundreds of people must have seen those pictures.

It was interesting how they accomplished it. Robots were employed to find blogs that were susceptible to placing comments. They register as a user without posting anything at all. . .a week later or so, then you get the "motherlode" of porn.

I went in and deleted the "comments" and banned those spammers from ever "contributing" to my blog again. I then changed the new default user to contributor not author. Read farther to see what else I had to do.

Email me whenever anyone posts a comment. I want to know if I have received a comment. If it is a good comment, I want to approve it immediately. If it is trash, I would like to know, too.

Another reason for wanting to be emailed is so that you can click on their comment and it will take you to their website from within WordPress.

I make every effort to return the favor of a comment to anyone who comments on my work. That is a good habit to follow. You will make some quick friends and get people posting more comments. In a sense, you are building a community.

Before a comment appears an administrator must always approve a comment. This may be the most important control you have. The spammers have stayed away from my blog since they cannot get their trash published.

By the way, you can set up a blacklist in that same area where you ban certain words, urls, email address, IP addresses and the lot. You must TEST your settings

Yes, I know, you think that you did it right. But did you? The best way to test it is to have a friend visit your blog and ask them to create a comment. If they can enter a comment, not being an administrator or logged in, then anyone can do it.

I am working on a Camtasia video to help you see how these settings are changed. The video is the best way to learn this detailed information, but some people just need to see it written down.

What stories do you have? Did you get spammed? Did you understand the significance of the settings you chose? Let me know your thoughts.

About The Author

Have fun and make money with your blog. Set it up properly to accept comments and the search engines will reward you. Learn how to get targeted website traffic to your website. Visit http://www.TrafficBumper.com

Here is another article that may help: Is Your WordPress Blog a Google Magnet?
http://www.trafficbumper.com/?p=96

Top 3 SEO Tips of 2008

Since 1998 I've spent the first several months of each year looking for the very best search engine optimization (SEO) tips of the previous year's end. This year I've come across the best SEO tips yet.

SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy

Google Alerts is a great way to let the world's biggest search engine be your personal online spy. This takes search engine optimization insider info to whole new level. Here's an excerpt straight from Google....

"Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:

* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams"

As you probably guessed, it's the second one we care about most, "keeping current on a competitor or industry."




Here's how it works... Each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic you request you will be sent an email with the details. This is like having an online spy to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.) It's also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or even when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It's the easiest way in the world to stop competitors' dirty tricks and identify trends that you can take instant advantage of.

It's fast, free and works every minute of every day. Let Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) do your most time consuming legwork while you reap the rewards!

SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your 404 Page and Always Be Found

"Error 404: Page Not Found" is a blessing that most Webmasters curse. Why? Getting a visitor on any page of your site is fantastic! Don't blow the opportunity. Not only can you make your "404" page a valuable sales tool, you can use the following search engine optimization techniques to attract customers in droves.

A.) Use your main keyword in your title, add a "pipe" (usually above the Enter key) and then use your secondary keyword. Here's as example for an SEO site "SEO - Search Engine Optimization Tips"

B.) Add some keyword rich content using one to two keywords for the page. If you have less than 250 words on the page, just use one keyword and use it no more than three times total. Bold the first use and italicize the second or third use. Keep in mind this is an "inactive" page so simply tell the visitor what your site is about and whet their appetite with a good description. Something like this works well... "Thank you for visiting SEO (bold) Group, Inc. We are sorry you landed on a missing page but don't worry, if you're looking for the very best search engine optimizations tips (bold), you're at the right place..." This will go on for a couple paragraphs or as long as you'd like then end it with something to the effect of "Please Click Here (link) to visit our site map or click any link to the left."

C.) Add your site's standard navigation system (bar, column, etc.) as mentioned above.

D.) Make the look and feel of the customized 404 page match your main site as closely as possible with a template, matched palette, cascading style sheets, etc.

E.) Create a link to the site map page if available, and make the link easy to find. You want your visitor off the 404 page and into your main content as quickly as possible.

Setting up a custom 404 page link usually takes less than five minutes on most major Web hosting companies like Godaddy.com. But whatever it takes, it's worth the effort.

SEO Tip #3: Get (Even More) Serious About Linking

I saved the most important for last. If you want to do well on any search engine, especially Google, linking is THE single MOST important thing you can do. It's that simple.

Here are the five things you MUST do to make your site #1 on Google:

A.) Find the highest page rank sites linking to your site AND your competitors' sites.

B.) Run monthly link campaigns and snatch up the best of the above identified Web sites.

C.) Run regular checks on what pages are still linking back to your site. Alsomake sure they did not move you from a high page rank page to a lower one (don't get cheated!)

D.) Eliminate any penalized sites you link to; ASAP!

E.) Check your search engine ranking AND your competitor's for each of your keywords every week. Do this, at the minimum, for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista.

Inside Tip: Keeping up can be a lot of work so a lot of SEO Consultants (myself included) use SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) to do all the most difficult and time consuming work.

One last thing to know is that Google was originally a college student's project created for the sole purpose of defining a Web site's value by the sites that link to it. Twelve years later this is still it's main job. Linking is EVERYTHING to Google.

These few SEO tips are the very best of the best so use them wisely. Best of luck!

About The Author

An original founder of one of the first internationally established SEO companies (DotCom Pirates); Scott Jason is a highly successful SEO Copywriter and renowned researcher and the founder of http://BestSEOCopywriting.com .

What Exactly is Web 2.0?

by Llewelyn James & Euan Agnew

What Exactly is Web 2.0?

Network marketing and online businesses and websites are everywhere on the World Wide Web and a big part of their success is due to the valuable platform called Web2.0. However, for as many people that are using Web 2.0, there are an equal number of people that don't truly understand what Web 2.0 is and the possibilities and opportunities it can open for them. Many individuals are already using Web2.0 on the internet in different ways without even realizing it. Some of the more popular internet applications that are using Web 2.0 include Flickr, YouTube as well as many different Yahoo sites. So, as you can see, you are already using Web 2.0 without even being aware of it. But, do you really know what Web 2.0 is?

Web 2.0 consists of different parts, which when all put together, give the user a fantastic web experience in which they can integrate many different functions and applications. One part of Web 2.0 is RIA or rich internet applications. Two examples of RIA are Ajax or Flash, which are interrelated web development techniques which allow you to retrieve data from another site without it interfering or affecting the current page you're working on. RIA allows you to bring something from your desktop into your browser such as data, graphics, etc by means of "copy and paste", "drag and drop" or whichever method you prefer.

Another part of Web 2.0 is ROA or service oriented architecture. Some examples of ROA that may be familiar to you or you may have heard of include RSS (really simple syndication), feeds, mash-ups and web servers. The best and easiest way to describe what ROA does is that it takes web applications along with their different functions and allows them to be easily integrated in such a way that their functions can all work together with other applications to develop one dynamic website with various functions.

The third important part of Web 2.0 is the Social Web. In Web 2.0, the end user will interact with the different web applications with methods such as blogging, tagging, using podcasts, etc. In actuality, the end user is also the participant in Web 2.0 by using these different social web methods. By the use all three of these important parts of Web 2.0, you web application is going to be very "user-friendly" with many functions.

Do you remember when you first began using the internet and were trying to navigate through a page only to have it disappear as soon as you clicked on one of their links? If it didn't disappear, it would freeze or lock up, making it inoperable and almost the only way to get out of it was to reboot. Good News! Web 2.0 allows you the opportunity to use many websites by integrating the many functionalities they each have.

With each new number added after an application or software (e.g. Web1.0, Web 2.0), the world is being given a new and upgraded version of a software. Web 2.0 is offering a new and better version of the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 offers us functions and features we never thought possible in the past.

Learn more about we2.0 at: http://web20trafficbuilder.com

About the Author

Llewelyn James & Euan Agnew are founders of the Internet Millionaires Online Club