Firefox Saved Password Security (Beyond the Master Password) October 12, 2009

I don’t know whether or not Firefox even allows JavaScript access to the passwords automatically filled out when you visit a page, but I sure am not going to wait until some cracker finds a hole in whatever security Firefox provides and gets at my automatically-entered password.

So, this time around I’ve decided to require Firefox to wait until I’ve entered the username before the password is filled out. If I forget the username, I simply hit the down arrow in the username box and it gives me a selection.

The setting is located at about:config (for those who don’t know: type that into the address bar) and is called “signon.autofillForms”. I set it to false. Long may security prosper!

Firefox 3.0? More like Swiftfox! June 9, 2008

Firefox 3 is really what they say it is. Fast, efficient, and with a few new features to boot. Mostly the enhancements are under the hood with the revamped Gecko engine, making XHTML developers like myself uber happy.

The first thing that hit me was the speed. This little guy can really chew them pages up! I browse the GP32X forums, keeping myself up-to-date on the Pandora console, and speeds become an issue when you start opening 8 or more tabs at once. To demonstrate the difference (which is substantial), I’ve done up a little video. It’s nothing fancy, just the two browsers, one run after the other. The screen capture software actually makes my computer appear (and at times act) a little slower, so imagine a 110%-130% (guesstimation) speed increase as you watch this.

Firebug In Gentoo: Fixed! June 9, 2008

If you have the Firebug extension installed, and it fails to open no matter what buttons, menu items, or key combinations you push, you probably don’t have the mozdevelop USE flag enabled in Gentoo or Gentoo variants. Took me quite a while to finally figure this out, so I thought I’d share.