However, the developers of all those browsers haven’t been very active (or successful) in one type of improvement that could potentially bring some massive results: going from 32-bit to 64-bit.

Why 64-bit?

Why is going from 32-bit to 64-bit an important step? Virtually all computers that you can find today are capable of running 64-bit operating systems. 64-bit operating systems enable you to use more than 3.25 GB of RAM, and increase the performance of your system in certain cases.

Memory management is also improved in 64-bit systems. In order to make use of this 64-bit capability, not only does the operating system need to be compiled for 64-bit machines, but the individual applications need to be as well. While 64-bit operating systems are capable of running 32-bit software (this is mainly the case for Windows; on other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux, it’s also possible but highly frowned upon), you won’t get the benefits that 64-bit software would provide.

The Windows 64-bit Situation

On Windows, there are no official 64-bit builds of any browser except Internet Explorer. Even then, IE is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors in order to be more compatible with plugins, which back then were primarily 32-bit only. However, the major plugins are now available in the 64-bit flavor, so browsers now have some motivation to crank out some 64-bit builds of their own. This seems to be taking a while though with a number of hurdles to overcome.

Firefox has finally come out with a 64-bit nightly, but it’s nowhere near ready to be called stable. Instead, the developers of the Waterfox project have been working hard to get an unofficial build of 64-bit Firefox out and making it fast. While Waterfox began as an unofficial project, Mozilla is now supporting it and may start incorporating it sometime in the future to release official, stable builds of 64-bit Firefox.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Waterfox beats Chrome in the SunSpider benchmark, whereas Chrome usually beats regular Firefox.

Downloading and Installing

Getting and installing Waterfox is just as easy as with Firefox. Simply head over to their website’s download page, and scroll a little down to get the latest version. The page also states that you need to have the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64) installed, but this is not an issue for Windows 7 64-bit users, but rather for those on previous Windows 64-bit versions. Additionally, the page lists links to the 64-bit version of the most common plugins so that you can have a smooth Web experience with your new 64-bit browser.

Easy Transition

Waterfox is also very helpful when transitioning from regular Firefox because it uses the same Firefox profile as the 32-bit flavor. Therefore, any passwords, history, preferences, and add-ons that have been installed in regular Firefox will be instantly available upon first launch of Waterfox. As that implies, all add-ons made for regular Firefox also work 100% in Waterfox. The amount of work necessary to switch to the 64-bit Firefox browser is pretty minimal. To review, all you need to do is the following:

• Install Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x64) if necessary
• Install 64-bit version of plugins if not already done
• Install Waterfox

Conclusion

Waterfox really is a great browser, making the Firefox we all know (and some of us love) a little faster and happier in its 64-bit environment. Mac OS X and Linux users don’t need to be too jealous that Waterfox is a Windows-only project, as those two operating systems have had official 64-bit builds of all major browsers for a relatively long amount of time.

What do you think about this project? Is there something you’d like to add about 64-bit systems? Let us know in the comments!

User Agent Switcher is simple, yet powerful. It adds a toolbar button that you can use to toggle between different user agent strings. User Agent Switcher overrides Firefox’s default user agent, tricking websites into thinking you’re using a different browser.

What’s a User Agent?

Your browser sends its user agent, which contains the browser’s version and operating system, whenever you connect to a website. Websites can detect the browser you’re using and serve different content — this is why iPhone and Android users see special mobile websites when they browse the web.

Getting Started

Like most Firefox add-ons, User Agent Switcher is available in Firefox’s add-ons gallery. After it’s installed, you can right-click your toolbar, select Customize and put the User Agent Switcher button anywhere you like.

Crash Internet Explorer’s Party

It’s happened to all of us, although it happens less often these days. You click a link expecting to see a web page, but you’re locked out. “This website requires Internet Explorer,” it says. Does it really require Internet Explorer? Not usually. With the User Agent Switcher extension, you can disguise Firefox as Internet Explorer and slip right in.

Here’s a website from the IE-only hall of shame:

Yuck. Let’s click the User Agent Switcher menu and pretend to be Internet Explorer.

Now we can slip right in. As far as the website is concerned, we’re using Internet Explorer.

Remember to switch your user agent back after you’re done. You wouldn’t want to inflate Internet Explorer’s usage statistics by pretending to be IE everywhere, would you?

This won’t help if the website really is IE-only. Websites that use ActiveX controls are out; those only run in Internet Explorer. Try the IE Tab extension if you encounter one of those sites — IE Tab runs Internet Explorer itself in a Firefox tab.

Explore the Mobile Web

Select the iPhone user agent and you’ll appear as a mobile device. Websites won’t always function like they would on a real iPhone, but you’ll still see the mobile version of the website.

Here we have YouTube’s mobile site running on our “iPhone”:

And here’s Gmail on our makeshift iPhone:

This is a convenient way to test mobile websites, although you’ll still have to test them on a real device. If you have a mobile device, you can do the reverse and see full versions of websites in the palm of your hand.

See What Google Sees

Sometimes a website wants to force you to create an account. You’ll click a link, even from Google, and see a sign-in or registration page.

These websites don’t want to hide their content from Google, so they often allow full access to Google’s web crawler. You can select the Googlebot user agent string and Firefox will put on its best Google disguise.

It’s possible for a website to say “Hey, look at your IP address — you’re not really Google!” But, in practice, few websites do. You shouldn’t use this method to trick your way into accessing paid content, but it’s a good alternative to BugMeNot for getting past annoying registration screens.

Get More User Agents

User Agent Switcher comes with a few popular user agents, but you can get user agents for any browser or device you can think of. Use the “Download lists of user agents to import” link in the extension’s options window to find other lists of user agents.

After downloading a list in XML format, click the Import button and import the user agents from the XML file. Or, use the New button to add and customize individual user agent strings.

I’m sure there are other clever uses for the User Agent Switcher extension — what do you use it for?

A while ago, Mozilla implemented a feature called about:config into its applications. This feature allows you to edit every single one of Firefox’s internal settings manually, yes, even settings that can’t be accessed through the normal Options panel. Gaining access to these program settings is actually quite simple. All you have to do is go to the URL bar in Firefox and type….you guessed it, about:config! Then just start typing which setting you want to tweak and it will appear on the screen.

Keep in mind that it is possible to break Firefox if you grow too adventurous and fiddle around with parameters that you shouldn’t be fiddling with. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage you may cause to your browser or computer by exploring the following tweaks.

browser.ctrlTab.previews

Normally, when you use Ctrl + Tab to navigate through your current tabs, Firefox will just switch from tab to tab, rendering the page with each tap. If you set this setting to true, you’ll instead be shown a row of thumbnails that you can tap through. By default, this setting is set to false.

browser.taskbar.previews.max

In Windows 7, when you hover over the Firefox taskbar icon, you’re presented with a popup that shows a thumbnail preview of all the tabs you have open. If you like to have a lot of open tabs, this list can get pretty big and wieldy. Set it to 1 to minimize its intrusion, or whatever value you prefer. By default, this setting is set to 20.

browser.tabs.closeButtons

Do you hate having an X (the close tab button) on every single open tab in Firefox? Then tweak this setting to your pleasure. Setting it to 0 will only show the X on the currently active tab. Setting it to 2 will not display the X on any tabs at all. Setting it to 3 will remove the X from all of the tabs and create a singular X at the end of the tabs list.

By default, this setting is set to 1.

browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab

In a fresh-out-of-the-box Firefox browser, closing the last remaining tab will result in the entire browser closing. Some of you may not like this. Luckily, all you have to do is change this setting to false and you’ll be able to have an open browser without having any open tabs. By default, this setting is set to true.

browser.urlbar.trimURLs

This tweak is a small one, but some of you may desperately be wanting it. Have you noticed that sometimes the URL bar will truncate the http:// portion? If you want Firefox to stop doing that, then simply change this setting to false. By default, this setting is set to true.

browser.allTabs.previews

At the end of the tabs list, there’s a small button you can click to show a list of all the currently open tabs. With this setting, you can flip it to true and transform the tab list into a tab grid. You’ll see a grid of thumbnails that show all of the tabs you have open. This is very useful for quickly exiting out of multiple tabs.

This is probably one of the more unknown tweaks out there, but it’s a most useful one. By default, this setting is set to false.

Do you know of any other awesome Firefox about:config tweaks that people would find useful? Share them with us in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Encryption ensures no one can eavesdrop on your web browsing. Whether you’re searching on Google, browsing Wikipedia or sending private messages on Facebook, your information is sent in the clear if you’re not using encryption.

Getting the Extension

You won’t find HTTPS Everywhere in the official Firefox add-ons gallery; you’ll have to get it directly from the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s site. Just go to the HTTPS Everywhere page and click the big Install HTTPS Everywhere button.

Taking a Tour

HTTPS Everywhere adds a button to Firefox’s toolbar; you can click the button to view its status and change its settings. Let’s head over to MakeUseOf with HTTPS Everywhere installed and see what it does.

HTTPS Everywhere is enforcing encrypted connections to many services we use on MakeUseOf, although many may use encryption by default. With HTTPS Everywhere, you don’t depend on the webmaster to set up their site properly; you get encryption everywhere you go — with every service that supports it, of course.

Plug a search into the Google search box included with Firefox and you’ll go straight to Google’s encrypted search page. Any searches you make with Google’s HTTPS site are encrypted before they’re sent to Google, so no one can eavesdrop on them. Without the extension, people on public Wi-Fi networks can see all your searches.

Sure, you could head over to encrypted.google.com and start your search from there, maybe even install a search plug-in for Google’s encrypted search engine and use that instead. But HTTPS Everywhere does everything for you.

Click a link to Wikipedia and you’ll see the same thing. HTTPS Everywhere turns every Wikipedia link on the web into a link to Wikipedia’s secure, encrypted site.

What It Really Does

So what does HTTPS Everywhere actually do? We can sneak a peek at our web browsing traffic with WireShark and see for ourselves.

Let’s plug “super secret search” into Google’s normal, unencrypted search engine. With Wireshark capturing our traffic, this is what we see:

There it is. Our super secret search is being sent in plain text for all the world to see. On an open Wi-Fi network? People around you can see your super secret search. Now imagine you’re sending a private message on Facebook and you’ll see why this is important. Facebook has a secure browsing option, but having HTTPS Everywhere installed will automatically enable it for you. You won’t have to worry about finding the option on every website you use.

Now let’s turn on HTTPS Everywhere and perform the search again. HTTPS Everywhere automatically uses Google’s encrypted search engine.

Our communication with Google is happening over HTTPS now. An eavesdropper can see we’re contacting Google’s servers, but that’s all they can see — they don’t know the specific page we’re using or what type of data is getting sent back and forth.

Tools like Firesheep do the same sort of thing, but with an easier-to-use interface. You don’t have to understand networking to snoop with Firesheep.

Configuration

HTTPS Everywhere has a pretty barebones configuration screen. You can see the list of websites it supports and disable them if you encounter problems. You can also enable rules that are disabled by default, possibly because they break certain features on a site.

Want to add your own HTTPS Everywhere rules? You can’t do that from this window, but the EFF has a guide for doing that yourself. Bear in mind that you can only enable HTTPS for a site if that site has an HTTPS version that isn’t used by default. HTTPS Everywhere includes most popular sites that have HTTPS versions, so you probably shouldn’t have to create any rules yourself.

Other Web Browsers

Like the idea, but use another web browser? No other browser has the extensions framework that makes HTTPS Everywhere possible. Google Chrome is closest to getting there, but Internet Explorer and Safari users are out of luck.

If you use Chrome, you can try KB SSL Enforcer, which we’ve covered here. KB SSL Enforcer doesn’t work as well as HTTPS Everywhere; it fetches the HTTP page before the HTTPS page. The EFF promises to release HTTPS Everywhere for Chrome when Chrome’s extension framework evolves to make it possible.

HTTPS Everywhere is definitely a compelling reason to switch to Firefox if you use another web browser — or is it? Do you prefer another browser anyway? Let us know in the comments.

From reading to custom user scripts; downloading to privacy; shopping to speeding up the web; Firefox can do it.

Today, we’re introducing a new page to our Best Of family — The Best Of Firefox Addons.

Comprising of just over 50 Firefox addons, the page lists only the best Firefox plugins to help you with your daily workflow and contains plugins for just about every use. Check out our The Best Of Firefox Addons and discover new plugins!

Have you been using Firefox without the help of addons? Then our The Best Of Firefox Addons page is the best place to start. Remember to bookmark it — we’ll update it frequently.

Also, if you don’t see your favourite plugin on the page, please let us know by submitting a comment.

Lastly, don’t forget to share the page with your friends! Use the social sharing buttons right there on the page itself.

Other highlights of the release include Mac OS X Lion support, with Firefox for OS X now featuring a two-finger swipe gesture for navigating between websites. Also new for the Mac version is an enhanced Lion-friendly user interface, which also makes surfing the web with multiple monitors more straightforward.

Android users will also see an update to the browser’s mobile edition, with the latest release taking advantage of tablets and their increased screen size. The browser has now been optimized for tablet devices, with support for swiping, a tablet-friendly UI and new HTML5 form validation.

The desktop version has been given plenty of tweaks under the hood as well. Detecting a user’s Do Not Track preference using JavaScript is now possible and support for CSS, HTML5 and MathML has been improved. For the full list of changes, check out the Firefox 9 release notes.

Download: Firefox Desktop (Windows, Mac & Linux) @ Mozilla.org
Download: Firefox for Android @ Android Market

Source & Image: Mozilla Blog

Installing those little helper applications to do everything from search to security is always a temptation. The numbers keep stacking up and ultimately we are forced to look beyond manual means to a few automatic ways of add-on management.

So, let’s check out a few add-ons that are sure to help out the average Firefox user as well as the user who installs a lot of add-ons.

Restartless Restart

We wish we didn’t have to restart our browser every time we installed a browser extension. Something like the system in Chrome would really help with productivity. Firefox has a few add-ons which do not need a browser restart and it marks them out as such. But if you keep on adding add-ons and uninstalling them, Restartless Restart is the first add-on you should install if you ever have to manually restart your browser. The 12KB restartless add-on works very simply by adding a restart option in the right click menu and a CTRL/CMD + Alt + R hotkey to restart Firefox or Seamonkey. With its help, you don’t have to search for the Firefox start icon every time.

Add-on Compatibility Reporter

As a long-standing Firefox user, you probably don’t wait around for the final release version of the browser; instead opting to try out the alpha and beta releases. That creates a few compatibility issues with your current set of add-ons. The Add-on Compatibility Reporter helps by letting you try out your add-ons with the current version of the browser and test if they fit. If they don’t work as expected, you can send a report to Mozilla that says – This add-on no longer works. You can also let Mozilla know if the add-on does indeed work. This add-on turns you into an add-on tester and helps to ensure the development of your favorite add-ons.

Is It Compatible?

This is a very simple add-on that displays the compatibility versions for each add-on in the Add-ons Manager window. This add-on helps you to make informed decisions about avoiding upgrading the browser immediately or sacrificing a few of your favorite add-ons with an upgrade.

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension)

This add-on is a one-click solution for all your backup and restore needs. It can help you backup your extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies, and any other file or folder. Then, it gives you the option to selectively restore the ones you want. You can schedule your backups and store them in date stamped folders. All backups can also be uploaded to a Box.net account automatically. For the guy who installs a lot of extensions, FEBE also backs up all or specific extensions and saves them together in a single, installable xpi file.

CLEO ((Compact Library Extension Organizer)

CLEO works like an extension packager. It’s really useful if you have lots of add-ons and want to keep them together. CLEO packages them all in a single installable file which can be kept as a backup, exported to someplace else, or used across multiple computers as a single installable package. CLEO works with FEBE as a multiple add-on packager and installer.

I was a bit surprised that browser extensions to manage add-ons weren’t that large a tribe. In fact, these are the best I could find, with a few others being either incompatible or getting some not-so-hot remarks from users. Of course, I would like to put in a good word for the Mozilla Firefox Add-on Collector. I did a full review of this tool last year. It still remains relevant if you want some help managing your extensive add-on collections.

Do you have a Firefox add-on in mind that you like to include here? At last count, how many add-ons do you have installed?

But Firefox is not perfect (it’s OK, neither is Chrome). So why not make it better? Here are 5 excellent add-ons, which when combined, will revolutionize your Firefox experience. You can, of course, try only one or two, you’re still bound to feel the difference.

Mar Mod

Mar Mod probably deserves an entire article of its own. This is an enhancement add-on that tweaks so many things, it might take you a while to remember all that it’s doing. Remember or not, you will feel the difference right away.

Just from this screenshot you can see that the orange menu has turned into a nice icon, a “Restart” option has been added to the menu, along with a new “Addons” menu which lets you access individual add-ons quickly and easily.

Another cool feature is the online translator. Choose your language, and translate any text you choose with two clicks. It’s really useful if you need to translate just a sentence here and there, and not the whole text.

Mar Mod does much more. From adding navigation to the context menu, to changing your icon set and controlling favicons, to adding download file size. It even offers backups.

This is a truly marvellous add-on, and one avid Firefox users will much appreciate.

Restartless Restart

If you often need to restart Firefox, but don’t want to tweak the hell out of it with add-ons like Mar Mod, you’re going to love Restartless Restart. This add-on adds only one new functionality, but a sorely missed one. The option to restart.

Besides adding it to the Firefox menu, the add-on also lets you set a hotkey. Now you can restart Firefox without even using the mouse. This is really useful if you tend to install and uninstall many add-ons. Restartless Restart doesn’t require a restart itself, which is an added bonus.

Desktop

Desktop is an add-on which lets you create a custom speed-dial page where you can place sites you visit a lot and use them as clickable bookmarks complete with folders. You can even add a Google search widget to your page.

With Desktop, you can either add thumbnails, which are just a miniature form of your favorite website, add a custom image to the thumbnail to create icons like the ones for Facebook and Twitter you can see above, and also create folders. Folders are simply links to other “Desktops” where you create more custom widgets.

The idea behind this add-on is really good, but its not yet perfect. For example, I couldn’t find a way to name my folders. I also encountered some wallpaper issues. Despite this, Desktop is a useful little add-on and will help you create a unique starting page for your Firefox.

FindBar Tweak

If you have to search webpages a lot, you might feel exasperated with Firefox’s native find option. If this is the case, you should try FindBar Tweak. This handy little add-on makes searching webpages so much better, you might find yourself doing it just for fun.

To start, you can tweak the find bar to open AND close on Ctrl+F. You can move it to the top of the page and change the button layout. You can make the search live, and add a counter for the number of times the word appears on the page. And this is not all!

FindBar Tweak also lets you decide what the highlights will look like. You can choose colors, decide whether all the matching words will be highlighted or not, add a highlights grid to the scrollbar and more.

In short, all the things Firefox’s Find has been missing come together in this helpful little add-on.

CleanupTabs

If you suffer from the “too many tabs” syndrome and self discipline doesn’t seem to cut it, CleanUpTabs is the add-on that will put you right. With CleanupTabs, you can set a maximum number of tabs you can have open, and the add-on will automatically close the unused tabs. Sounds harsh, I know. But don’t worry, you can tweak it some.

Aside for setting the maximum number of tabs, you can also specify websites that will never automatically close (adding too many is cheating, though!). You can also set it to never close tabs you haven’t viewed yet, and have it number the tabs (so you can keep track) and sort your tabs by most recently viewed (as opposed to most recently opened).

If you use it wisely, it could mean the end of 30 open tabs and sluggishly slow browsers. Give it a try!

Final Thoughts

I actually feel happy about Firefox 8. Load times are better, it’s responsive, and many of the reasons I switched to Chrome have been fixed. With some good add-ons, user experience can become truly excellent.

So do you know of some more such add-ons we should try? Please share them in the comments!

Now, only two months after the first launch of the service, Firefox is officially supported. This is great news for Kindle users who are loyal to Firefox, because sometimes a computer with a web browser is the only way to get access to your book library. I can’t imagine what caused the delay, but none the less, the wait is over, so all Kindle users who support Firefox can join the rest of us in reading our favorite books.

At this point, Internet Explorer still isn’t supported, and neither are many other mobile devices such as the BlackBerry PlayBook. However, because of the adaptability of HTML 5, it shouldn’t be long before Amazon adds support for these as well.

Source: The Next Web

To download the latest build of Firefox, simply click here. The files are stored on Mozilla’s FTP server, so as I said before, you don’t need to worry about any bad stuff hidden away in there. To download the file, click the folder that goes with your system. It is available on Mac, Windows and Linux.

The new version of Firefox doesn’t bring anything too groundbreaking, but it is good to see them sticking with their plan to release a major new version every six weeks. The first feature is that Firefox now handles third party software to protect you from security problems caused by less than reputable extensions.

In addition, Firefox now has the ability to search Twitter posts right from the browser’s search bar. This is a nice feature, and makes finding all that important up-to-the-minute stuff you can only find on Twitter a little bit easier.

The last change is bug fixes, which come standard with pretty much every new software version ever.

Source: Lifehacker