If you’re still using Internet Explorer, it’s primetime to upgrade your browser. Mozilla Firefox is about to release its 3rd edition of their web browser, with many enhancements, new features, higher security and more. If you’re looking to get the most out of your web experience, Mozilla Firefox 3 is -the- best browser to surf the net.

Using the internet should be fun, not a hassle. It’s only going to get better from here. Lets take a look at some of the new features of Firefox 3:

From lifehacker: The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla’s finally made a feature-complete release candidate available, so it’s time to spotlight the biggest improvements that will make “Gran Paradiso” the browser to beat. Nearly everything in the open-source app has gotten a second look from the minds at Mozilla, from back buttons to bookmarks, address bars to add-ons, passwords to performance, and the changes will make Firefox 3 worth the upgrade come its official release date, slated for sometime next month. Let’s take a look at the 10 best upgrades in Firefox 3, and how they’ll bolster your browsing, after the jump.Note: Firefox 3 hasn’t been officially released yet—a public preview release is available and intended for testers only. While it’s a very stable preview, only use it if you’re willing to deal with bugs and instability as the Mozilla teams ready the official release.

That said, our favorite Firefox 3 features include:

10. Souped-up Add-ons manager

A big part of what makes Firefox so special to power users is its extensibility with extensions, add-ons, plug-ins and themes, and Firefox 3’s Add-ons dialog got the attention it deserved. The Fox’s Add-Ons menu is more robust and intuitive on at least two fronts. You can search and install extensions and themes right from the pop-up box, no browsing required. Also, a new plug-in manager lets you enable and disable third-party helpers like Flash, QuickTime, and anything else that makes content work (and causes you grief).

9. More intuitive interface overall

Mozilla tweaked and updated a whole lot of little things here and there throughout Firefox 3, which amounts to a big overall boost in usability. Most noticeably when you first switch, the Back button only appears on the address bar if there is a page to go back to, and when it does, it’s bigger and easier to click. Users who want to make sites with small text more readable permanently are in luck; Firefox 3 can increase the size of images and text, or just the text, on hard-to-read sites. In addition, Firefox 3 applies favicons more consistently to bookmarks, you can click a site’s favicon to get extended site identification information, you can resize the search box to hold more than two words, and the find-on-page search box automatically grabs the currently selected word, just to name a few new UI improvements.
In the long term, once webapps catch up, Firefox 3 will let you do really neat stuff in your browser, like register your favorite webapps to open certain file types, and access your online data even when you’re not connected to the ‘net. To get a taste, see how you can configure Firefox 3 to launch Gmail for mailto links.

8. Stronger phishing and malware protection

Firefox 3 has stronger filters and protection against malware, phishing sites, cookies, and other tools that compromise privacy and security. A malware warning shows up when you visit sites known to install malicious software, Firefox 3 doesn’t show the content of knock-off sites (like PayPal “Update Your Account” phishing scams) by default, and Firefox 3 checks against Google’s ever-growing blacklist of phishing sites. Now you can feel even better switching your less tech-aware relatives over to the open-source browser.

7. Improved download manager

Never wonder where a download came from, or went to, again. Gran Paradiso’s download manager lets you search through recent files, resume big downloads after a crash or restart, and lets you keep an eye on your transfers in the status bar.

6. Native looks for every system

Your browser is a serious part of your computer time, so having it look like nothing else on your system can be seriously annoying. Firefox’s designers made system integration a priority with this release, and it shows—even Windows XP’s and Vista’s button layouts have subtle differences in color and shading. There’s differences at deeper levels, too, with Cover Flow-type styling in the add-ons manager for OS X, transparencies in key places in Vista and OS X, and other tweaks that make your browser feel like a natural extension of your system.

5. Streamlined “Remember password” handling

No more guessing whether you’re saving the right password or clicking “Cancel” on unnecessary pop-up requests. Gran Paradiso only asks you to utilize its password-saving function once you’re already in and sure everything worked, and it won’t block you from seeing the logged-out version of a page if you don’t want to sign in.

4. Smart bookmarks

Much like iTunes’ Smart Playlists, Firefox 3’s new Smart Bookmarks function can analyze your browsing habits and create lists of links based on it. The default bookmark toolbar only comes with three standards, “Most Visited,” “Recently Bookmarked,” and “Recent Tags” (more on that later), but it’s none too hard to make your own.

3. Places Organizer replaces the Bookmark Manager

Previous versions of Firefox’s bookmark organizer have been pretty utilitarian affairs that make you drag and drop your links around nested folders. With Firefox 3’s new Places Organizer, those with reams of URLs can find them using boolean rule searches and multi-column results, as well as keep them better organized with a tagging system. Better still, you can save those smart searches for when you next need them.

2. Smart Location Bar learns how you browse

Like a personal assistant who telepathically knows when you’re going to need just the right phone number (or Starbucks fix), Firefox 3’s address bar, now dubbed the Smart Location Bar, helps you get to your frequently visited, or recently discovered, sites in super-quick fashion. That application you just read about on Lifehacker, but can’t remember the name? Type “li” into your address bar, and Firefox instantly pulls the relevant sites from your history. The bar also learns through repetition, so the next time you start searching with “li,” it knows you’re looking for Lifehacker, not Linux.

1. Insanely improved performance

It’s not flashy, and it doesn’t have any social networking features, but Firefox 3’s actual performance is the best reason anyone should consider upgrading, or making the switch to the ‘fox. Firefox’s engineers claim that their third major release is 9.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 in JavaScript performance, and 2.7 times faster than Firefox 2. This means snappier browser performance when you’re using webapps like Gmail, Remember the Milk, and more. Even more important, especially for Mac users, is the improved memory usage and more than 15,000 improvements that make for a less crash-prone browser. I’ve seen noticeable speed-ups in page loading in Linux, XP, and Vista, but the real reason I’ve switched over to using Release Candidate 1 is that I haven’t had to cross my fingers every time a Flash-based video loads. Graphed comparison of memory use amongst browsers in Vista courtesy of John Resig.

As you can tell, we’re completely geeked out about the upcoming Firefox 3 release. For more about the new version of the browser, check out our continuing coverage:

• The Complete Field Guide to Testing Firefox 3
• Make Your Extensions Work with Firefox 3
• Firefox 3 Robots Easter Egg
• Set Firefox 3 to Launch Gmail for mailto Links
• Firefox 3 RC 1 Portable Edition Now Available

Source: Lifehacker

On May 2nd 2008, Delaware Web Designers Inclind, Inc launched Blue Waterfront Properties, a website geared at selling Delaware real estate on the waterfront, bays, rivers or ponds.

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User security is a pretty big deal these days, and as I prep my follow up to Avoid Identity Theft I had another thought to write about.

One of my favorite things to do is guess someones password. Why? Because I can usually guess it. After analyzing someones intelligence and technical prowess, you can gauge how difficult their password probably is. Pete likes to throw random accounts at me and I’ll guess the password for fun. Usually get it on the third or fourth try. Ask Kevin Howett, I could regularly guess his AIM/MSN Zone passwords quite regularly back in the day.

Here’s the scary part. Most users in the real world day to day business use passwords that are far too weak to even have any use. You would be surprised how many people use ‘password’ or ‘name123′ or just ‘name’ as a password. Tons. Or their birthdate, car, dogs name, or sports team name. This won’t protect you against anything, and choosing a password you can remember does not give you the benefits of a password at all. By just being a regular word like ‘toyota’ or ‘bill123′ any skilled cracker/hacker is going to get into your account no sweat.

Why? Well, they will tell you that choosing a password is hard. I don’t disagree with them. Having to think of something no one else is expected to discover is hard. There are services that can assist you with this.

A good password is one no one can guess, and one that would hinder even the best hacker or brute force app out there. That is why I am recommending to you to use Good Password. It will assist you in generating a password randomly or from a phrase of your liking.

While these may be hard for you to remember, don’t be discouraged. This is for your (and the company you work for) protection. I would suggest, if you must, to write them down and keep it in your wallet, or a place no one but you has access to.

RSS is one of my favorite technologies on the internet. It allows me to quickly gain and overview of the newest articles at my favorite sites like CNN, Tech-Crunch, Digg, Slashdot and others. Today is RSS Awareness Day.

What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favorite websites without having to visit them. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content.

From this, I can access these news feeds at any time from my PC, iPod Touch, or Treo. I am able to stay informed of the days news as it happens, without all the distraction or clutter of advertisements, slow websites, snarky comments and the like.

Back in 2005 5% of the Internet users said they were using RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online (according to the Pew Internet Project).

Feedburner recently reported that they track around 60 million RSS subscribers. Even if we bump that number to 70 million RSS users (counting people that use RSS with other applications or platforms) this would still convert to a meager 5,4% of the Internet users around the world, as of today.

What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits, and that number is growing slowly over time.

By creating the RSS Awareness Day and celebrating it every year we should be able to get the general public exposed to this format, hopefully increasing the usage of RSS feeds and related applications among Internet users.

More information: http://rssday.org/spread/

Some of the best examples of using RSS feeds to enhance your productivity and general ‘awareness’ of whats going on can best be experienced on a ‘Start Page’ site like Netvibes or PageFlakes. You can add multiple RSS feeds to your page and view many at once, instead of crawl through each site individually, which would take a lot longer. This way you get a bigger overall picture and can zero in on the news stories that pique your interest rather quickly.