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The latest version of the Firefox 3.5x branch is currently being distributed to all official Mozilla mirror servers around the world. Some are already hosting the latest version Firefox 3.5.2 for all supported languages and operating systems while others are only showing the directory structure but no files yet. It is likely going to take at least a few hours, maybe even more than a day before all servers are populated with the latest version and the release can be officially announced on the Mozilla website. It usually takes between 24-48 hours before the automatic update checker in Firefox picks up on the new release and offers it for download as well.

Ghacks readers can – as always – download the US-English version of Firefox early from a free file host. The new version of Firefox is hosted at Mediafire. Downloads for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux are provided as a courtesy to my readers.

The beta release notes of Firefox 3.5.2 mention several security and stability issues that have been fixed in the new version. This makes it a recommend update for all Firefox 3.5x users. A issue with images with ICC profiles has been fixed as well which now render properly on all computer monitors. The full list of bug fixes and issues can be accessed at Bugzilla.

Please be advised that there might be last minute changes to a release which would then not be covered in this current version of Firefox. While it is usually safe to download and install these releases it is advised to stay away from them if you are a cautious user. Wait for the official release announcement then.

Users who download regularly from the popular file host Rapidshare usually use a download manager like JDownloader or Cryptload to do so. These download managers provide several benefits over downloading files from Rapidshare in a web browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer. The most important benefit being the ability to queue an unlimited number of files in the Rapidshare Download Manager which are then download sequentially without further user interaction.

Rapidshare AutoWait is a userscript that can be loaded in the Firefox Greasemonkey extension. It brings most of the benefit that is provided by download managers to the web browser. In short: It allows a user to open multiple Rapidshare links which get then downloaded sequentially without user interaction.

The script will automatically perform all required actions on the page after it has been opened in Firefox. It will also detect if a download is already in progress to loop the other Rapidshare downloads which are then started at a later time.

The script does detect network problems and handles other possible errors like expired sessions or the 15 minute limits as well. It is not a problem for the script to handle 10, 20 or even 30 tabs that all point to a file on the Rapidshare website. The only step that the script will not do is to close the tab once the download has been finished which is not that much of a problem though.

AutoWait is a very interesting option for users who download files regularly from Rapidshare. Check out our Rapidshare Search article for pointers on how to find links at the the file host. It is possible that the script will also work in other web browsers that provide userscript support such as Opera or Safari.

The latest developer release of the Google Chrome web browser introduces two important changes to the extension and theme support of the Google browser. You might remember that Google Chrome users had to enable support for the extension engine by launching the Google browser with the –enable-extensions command line parameter. This has been changed in the latest version of Google Chrome, which is currently 3.0.195.4. This basically means that the extension engine is enabled by default which makes it easier to install extensions in the web browser.

The second important addition is about theme support in the web browser. The developers have again turned the rather complex process of installing new Google Chrome themes into a much simpler process. Users who wanted to install themes in the web browser had to replace a file in the Google Chrome directory. The problem with this approach was that it would overwrite the default theme which could cause all kinds of troubles especially for users without backup.

Theme support has now been added officially to the Google browser which means that themes can be directly installed from within the web browser. A basic theme manager is available in the Google Chrome options allowing users to revert back to the default theme after installing a new theme. There is unfortunately no way of displaying the installed themes right now which is something that the developers surely plan to add in a later development stage.

A get themes button is also available in the same menu. This button opens a website that is currently unavailable but is most likely the address of the official Google Chrome theme repository. Two test themes have been created by the Google Chrome developers which can be accessed at the Chromium website. Camo and Snowflake are currently not accessible as well but were earlier on.

Webupd8 have posted screenshots of the Camo theme and the prompt that appears when pointing the Chrome browser to a theme location.

The two changes to the extension engine and theme support are definitely important steps for the Google browser. It is now much easier to work with extensions and themes in the web browser. Future builds will surely continue to improve on that and provide access to a theme manager and working websites where the themes can be downloaded.

A reader recently posted a comment asking whether it was possible to download old releases of Thunderbird. The situation was that he switched to Thunderbird 3 beta 3 and noticed that some of the add-ons that he had installed were not working anymore. The official websites that provide downloads of Firefox and Thunderbird only offer the latest version of the software programs. This is done to protect the users from downloading outdated, insecure or unstable versions of a software.

It is therefor usually not a good idea to download and install an old version. It might be different during beta testing but it is generally recommended to figure out other ways of coping with a problem.

There is however a very easy way of downloading old versions of either Thunderbird or Firefox. Just point your web browser to ftp.mozilla.org and visit the ftp repositories for either program. The ftp server not only lists the latest version but also all other releases that have been created in the past. Here are the direct links:

* ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/
* ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Again: It can be highly problematic to install old releases. Make sure you backup the data before installing an older version of Thunderbird or Firefox.

Opera 10 Beta 2 was released earlier today by the Opera development team. Users who are already using a version of Opera 10 should consider upgrading to this new release which brings it one step closer to the first release candidate. The changelog lists many changes for this release especially for the Opera user interface, mail, chat and news, display and scripting, security and network. The Windows changelog alone lists more than 100 items that have been added, changed or fixed in Opera 10 Beta 2.

Many users in the Opera forum are reporting problems with the new beta release. The developers are actually warning users stating that it “may have severe known issues, including crashes and data loss situations”. That’s not very encouraging and it is therefor suggested to try the web browser in a test environment and not in a productive environment to ensure that it is working without problems.

Opera 10 Beta 2 can be downloaded directly from the Opera homepage for all supported operating systems. The changelogs are available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Probably the most important changes (besides the interface changes) are a fix for the high memory use of the web browser related to the disk cache on huge torrents, improved anti-spoof checking, fixes for several scripts and services at Facebook, Wikipedia and Yahoo, enabled torrent downloading with Opera Turbo enabled and fixing the problem that sessions where not saved correctly on some systems when closing the web browser.

It was a tad easier to create website desktop shortcuts in the Firefox web browser before the Mozilla team decided to change the default behavior when dragging and dropping tabs from Firefox to an empty space of the computer desktop. This would have created a website desktop shortcut in previous versions but will spawn a new Firefox window with that url in the first ab instead now.

It is still possible to create shortcuts by dragging and dropping the favicon to an empty space on the computer desktop or one of the folders on the computer. A more versatile option is the Deskcut add-on for the Firefox web browser which adds a right-click option to the browser that allows a user to create a shortcut on the computer that points to the selected website.

Deskcut comes exactly with the set of features that one would expect from an add-on like this. It adds the option to create a website shortcut to the right-click menu which will create a shortcut of the website in the active tab. The user can either manually select the name and location that shortcut should be saved in or edit the options once to set a permanent location and name for the shortcuts.

The add-on can generate the filename of the shortcut from the page title, page url or prompt the user to enter a name. It is furthermore possible to add data or time to the filename and strip, encode or replace invalid characters from the shortcut name. A path can be set once so that all shortcuts are automatically saved in that location.

The main advantage of using the Deskcut add-on over the manual drag and drop solution is that the add-on works in fullscreen mode as well. It is more comfortable to create the shortcut from the right-click menu than to resize the Firefox window to be able to drag and drop the favicon to the computer desktop. It would even be more complicate if the shortcut should be saved in another folder on the computer’s hard drive.

It takes some time for Internet Explorer 8 to open new tabs on my computer system even if the tab is a blank tab in the beginning. Observant users will notice the “Connecting” message in the tab when this is happening. This is really frustrating and one of the main reasons why Internet Explorer 8 is only used sporadically. Internet Explorer 8 does however provide information in its interface that make it possible to find out why the tabs are loading that slowly. These information can be looked at in the Tools > Manage Add-ons menu in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft not only lists the installed toolbars, plugins and add-ons but also their loading time. This loading time is added on top of the normal tab loading time in Internet Explorer. It is now easy with the tools at hand to analyze the toolbars and plugins that increase the tab and window loading time in Internet Explorer the most and find ways to deal with the situation.

A right-click on any toolbar or plugin in the add-on’s menu provides the option to disable it right away. Internet Explorer 8 will automatically search for related add-ons giving the user the choice to disable them as well. The loading time of some plugins and toolbars is not displayed in the manager. Disabling these can also have a positive effect on the tab and window loading times in Internet Explorer.

It has been only a few days ago that the Mozilla Firefox team released an update for Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 3.5.1 that would close a recently disclosed critical security vulnerability that allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on the attacked computer system. Earlier today another Firefox vulnerability was disclosed to the public that affects the latest version of Firefox. The vulnerability can be remotely exploited and uses an stack based buffer overflow that is triggered by an overly long string of Unicode data. It can lead to remote code execution or to crashes, freezes or the allocation of a lot of computer memory.

A proof of concept has already been created that demonstrates the vulnerability. No patch has been made available yet. Firefox users are encouraged to disable JavaScript until a patch is issued to avoid leaving their computer system vulnerable for the attack.

Users working with security add-ons like NoScript might consider their Firefox installation safe without disabling JavaScript. It is however theoretically possible to compromise websites that are in the whitelist of the add-on (if the whitelist is used) which would make the system vulnerable to this kind of attack.

JavaScript can be disabled in the Firefox options in the content tab.

Google has added extensions support to dev versions of the Google Chrome web browser (Google Browser). The feature is still not finalized and the only way to enable the extensions engine is to add a command line parameter so that it gets loaded during the start of the Internet browser. Google has made available several official extensions but the majority of extensions that have been created so far have been developed by enthusiastic users.

Probably one of the most popular extensions right now is the Google Chrome Gestures extension which adds mouse gesture support to the web browser. A userscript that is offering mouse gestures was available for some time and the extension developer has decided to create an extension for the Google browser that mimics the functionality.

Users who want to install the extension need a development release of the Google browser and the command line parameter that enables the extension engine.

–enable-extensions

The easiest way to start the Google browser with extensions enabled is to add the parameter to the program shortcut. You simply need to add the above parameter (with a space between the ending ” of the path) to the target field.

All that it takes then is to start Google Chrome and visit the website of the extension to install it. A click on the extension will open a popup asking the user if the extension should be installed.

Support for the extension is available in the official support forum. The help file can be displayed by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse Up -> Right -> Down -> Left -> Down.

You have quite a few possibilities at hand if you want to bookmark a website in the Firefox web browser. You could click on the star icon in the address bar to add the page to the unsorted bookmarks folder. It is also possible to press CTRL D to bookmark a page, drag and drop the url from the address bar to a folder or toolbar or to use the bookmarks menu to bookmark it. The Add Bookmark Here add-on for the Firefox web browser makes bookmarking just a tad easier for most Firefox users.

Probably the most interesting option that is provided by the add-on is that it displays the bookmark menu when right-clicking on the star icon in the Firefox address bar giving users the option to avoid the unsorted bookmarks folder and place the website in a different folder. The bookmarks menu is expanded and offers way more comfort than the default one.

The expanded bookmarks menu will be displayed all the time. The add-on will also add a Add Bookmark Here option to all bookmark folders which is especially useful for those located in on of the Firefox toolbars as it means that it is possible to add bookmarks to a specific bookmark folder with just two clicks. It is possible to hide some of the features of the add-on in the options. It is for example possible to remove the Add Bookmark here menu from the bookmark folders or to place it at the bottom instead of the top.