PaulSpoerry.com

There’s a little known feature in GMail that can help ensure you account is not being hacked called Account Activity.

Recent activity includes any times that your mail was accessed, using a regular web browser, through a POP client, from a mobile device, etc. You’ll see a list of the IP address from which the access was made, as well as the time and date.

Here’s a screenshot from my GMail account:

(FYI… the reason my GMail is in grey is because I’m using the Better GMail 2 FireFox Extension, which adds all kinds of cool functionality (including some cool themes to GMail)

Clicking the Details link next to the Last account activity line at the bottom of any Gmail page shows information about recent activity in your mail.

The sweetness is that if at some point while you’re logged in someone else logs into your account the bottom line will change to something like:

This account is open in 1 other location at this IP (xx.xx.xxx.xx)

Again, clicking the detals link will provide a much more granualar level of detail about when, where, and how your account has been accessed.

Here are 3 things you should pay attention to:

1. IP Address - If you usually signin to Gmail using a single computer then your IP address should be the same. Or at least have identical first two sets of numbers (ex. 212.10.xx.xx).

2. Access Type - This column displays the way your account was accessed. For instance if you read your email ONLY from browser (Firefox, IE, Safari etc.) but one of the entries showing POP or IMAP access, there is a good chance your account is compromised.

3. Concurrent Sessions - If your mail is currently being accessed from another location, you’ll see it here.

In the example above you can see that I have Browser, Atom, and IMAP. The IMAP access is Outlook connecting to GMail, Browser is…well FireFox access it. Atom may look strange but that’s my GMail Counter Vista Sidebar gadget.

If you’re concerned about any concurrent access, you can sign out all sessions other than your current session by clicking Sign out all other sessions.

Image via Wikipedia

To view the passwords associated with any site, go to the log-in page and right-click anywhere on the page. Select View Page Info, and then the Security tab. Click View Saved Passwords. Another window will pop up showing the usernames associated with that site. Click Show Passwords to see the passwords for each username.

If you want to view all of your saved usernames and passwords, open Options under the Tools menu and select the Security tab. Click Saved Passwords to open a list of every site you’ve ever saved a password for. Again, click View Passwords and the list will display all of your passwords. You can’t print this list, but you can just as easily take screenshots if you want to print out your passwords for safekeeping. Isn’t this a huge security hole?, you may ask. Why yes, it is. Knowing how easy it is for anyone with access to your PC to view all your passwords, maybe you’d like to password-protect your passwords. In the Options | Security tab, click Use a master password and enter a password. Now this password will have to be entered any time you or anyone else tries to view saved passwords. You’ll be asked to enter your master password every time you open Firefox; without it, Firefox won’t automatically enter saved passwords for you. Make sure you don’t forget this one!

A Windows only experimental Firefox extension called FoxTab introduces a new tab switching interface to Firefox. FoxTab comes complete with five different thumb nailed views and man is it awesome.

FoxTab provides a new fascinating and elegant method for finding and selecting a tab in the browser.
FoxTab is designed to be suitable for many types of users, those with only few tabs opened and
those out there (like me) who usually have tons of opened tabs to select from.
The idea behind FoxTab is to provide new visual methods for quick tab switching.

We already know that FireFox 3.1 will have a new tab switching interface. But why wait, this thing is awesome. Take a look at these screenshots:

Read the rest of this entry »

FireFox has always been a good browser, but as of the latest release has become THE browser that I use daily. FireFox extensions make it wickedly powerful. As a web developer I find many of the extensions invaluable. Here’s the best of the best…

Web developer`s toolbar

Web Developer`s tool bar probably will become one of the best plugins You`ve ever seen. It comes with his own tool bar that gives many useful tools for analyzing, validating and optimizing web-pages. The great thing about this plugin is that it’s on a few different browsers, so if you switch between them you will be able to use the same plugin on all.

Web Developer Toolbar

Firebug

Firebug is pretty similar as web developer, but it comes across with few different powerful options. You have an ability to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript right in any web page.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s Chrome browser has sure raised some eyebrows. I have to admit the speed at with it run JavaScript intensive pages IS pretty impressive. But it’s still very beta, and lacks all the addons/extensions and goodies that FireFox provides. But if you fancy the look of the Chrome browser (ie, tabs on top) you can now snag a FireFix extension to make FireFox looks just like Chrome.

The Chrome package is really two extensions (an extension and a hack of the Chromifox theme) to enable Google Chrome lookalike mode in FireFox and according to the developer “this is just the beginning”.

Grab the Chrome Package here.

With so much being said about Google Chrome’s performance (I’ve played with it… it IS fast), everybody started wondering about FireFox’s reaction. After all, it has been the golden boy as of late. The question on everyone who’s a follower of FireFox beta’s is how does the new beta Google Chrome browser stack up against the beta 3.1 FireFox release in JavaScript performance. Note… BOTH of these are beta releases.

Here are the results from head-to-head SunSpider on Windows XP on a Mac Mini and Windows Vista on a MacBook Pro, testing against last night’s Firefox automated build and yesterday’s Chrome beta:

The entire results of the test are worth looking into as they provide where V8 (Chrome) excels versus TraceMonkey (FireFox) in JavaScript performance.

Get the full scoop here.

The Acid test,  tests how well a browser complies with a given set of Web standards. Acid2 tests a variety of web standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Harrison Hoffman, co-founder of LiveSide.net and contributor to the CNET Blog Network is reporting that Google’s Chrome browser is outperforming the latest “stable” builds of both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 in the popular Acid3 test. All the browsers tested pass the Acid2 test. However, the only currently released browser to beat Google’s Chrome browser was Opera, which scored an 83. FireFox scored 71 and IE scored 14, whereas Google’s Chrome (which is still beta) hits a 78 out of 100.

Developer builds however, including Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (91), and Safari 4 (100) do beat out Chrome.

Read the full details over at CNET.

Google announced it will release a brand new open source web browser called Google Chrome. Yesterday a site went up, and has subsequently been taken down at http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en (as of this morning clicking this link take you back to regular old Google).

According to Crunchbase the features include:

• Tabbed browsing where each tab gets its own process, leading to faster and more stable browsing. If one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t go down with it
• A distinct user interface that places tabs on top of the browser window instead of right below the address bar
• An “incognito” mode that lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity
• A new JavaScript engine built from the ground up for speed
• Malware and phishing lists that automatically update themselves and warn you of bad websites
• A default homepage that displays your most commonly used sites and other personalized information

Read the rest of this entry »

If you visit a website with either an expired or a self-signed SSL certificate, Firefox 3 will not show that page at all. Instead, the browser shows the “customs officer” graphic and an error saying the website may be dangerous. Apparently this is seen as an issue by some people (I dig it.. and you can always override it).

Of course, excuse or no, according to Netcraft, as many as 18% of the Fortune 1000 websites have expired SSL certificates. That means the odds are pretty good that Firefox 3 is going to block you from accessing some legitimate sites.

I’m gunna say thumbs-up to FireFox for doing us all a favor. People like my mom have no idea what an SSL Cert even is… if it stops here from hitting some bogus self-signed site in error then kudos to the FireFox team.

Read more at WebMonkey

Stephen Colbert gave Firefox 3 his “Colbert Bump” on the day of Firefox 3’s launch.  You can watch the video here.

Download Day was a wild success, and the Firefox guys were happy to share some thanks and credit with Stephen.  However, a few questions naturally arose, e.g., what was the direct impact of the Colbert Bump? and could the effect be precisely measured?

Here’s what they did:  they looked at downloads of Firefox 3 by users within the U.S. – and then drilled down to a minute-by-minute view to see what, if anything, could be detected.  At minute 23 of the broadcast, Colbert said, “Firefox 3 just got the Colbert Bump.”  What happened next?

A big spike in downloads exactly one and two minutes later:

There is other scientific evidence proving the Bump’s effect.  If you’re interested in that previous study by James Fowler of the University of California at San Diego, you can read the complete version here.