Firefox Plans to Develop a New Privacy Tool

Most know their movements are tracked while they surf the web (primarily for advertising reasons) and some of us even use additional software tools to help reduce of that tracking.   One of tools I use is Firefox (instead of Internet Explorer). With Firefox, I have a little more contrrol over my privacy and advertising.

For those who don't know what Firefox is, it's an internet browser (like Internet Explorer). I've been using it for years, but only started recommending it to my clients in past couple of years.  Before Internet Explorer 7 was released, Firefox confused a lot of people.  But now that Microsoft has copied Firefox (with the release of IE7), more and more people are comfortable using it.

The new "Do Not Track" feature (when enabled) will basically tell web sites that you've opted-out of online advertising behavior.  In response, they're not supposed to track your movements through their site for advertising purposes.

No doubt, some sites will try to counteract  this feature by posting messages that some features of their site may not function properly with the "do not track" feature enabled.  My response .... ignore the messages. As long as you're seeing and doing what want a web site, there's no reason to disable the feature.


For more information about the "Do Not Track" privacy tool in Firefox, click here.

How to Make Text Larger on the Internet

I've been sharing this tip with my clients for years, and thought it a good idea to share it here too.  Some of us are visually challenged and find it difficult to read the text on many web pages.  Even more frustrating is that the text size varies from web site to web site. 

The cool thing is that there is a keyboard trick you can do to easily increase or decrease the size of text on any web page you're visiting.  And this trick works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox (as well as other internet browsers).

To make text larger, hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and then hit the + sign.  You can keep hitting the plus the sign while the CTRL key is held down to zoom in a couple of times.  

To make text smaller, hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and hit the - sign (minus key to the left of the + sign).  Again, as long as you are holding down the CTRL key, you can keep hitting the minus key. 

Using this little trick, you can quickly and easily change the text size of web pages so they're easier to read.

Unable to Play Games in Firefox?

One of my clients recently had a problem playing facebook games using Firefox.  The funny thing is that only some games had problems, while others were fine.  Inconsistencies like this make troubleshooting a problem difficult.

But while going through the normal steps to correct the problem, I came across a small note the other day on the Java website that mentioned a compatibility problem with the latest version  of Java (6 update 18) and Firefox (version 3.6).  It's a tricky issue, but in short, before upgrading to the latest version of Firefox, you have to have an older version of JAVA on the computer.

People like me, who always uninstall older versions of  software before installing newer versions, are the ones who primarily seeing this problem.

Without going into too much technical mumojumbo, if you're having trouble playing games on Facebook or other JAVA based games, you might want to try these steps to resolve the problem.

1. Uninstall Firefox completely (through Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs)
2. Uninstall JAVA completely (through Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs)
3. Download and install an older version of JAVA, click here.
4. Reinstall Firefox

Hopefully,  your problem is now fixed.  Give the games another try.

Configuring Firefox to Open to Your Home Page

It's no secret that I love Firefox and encourage all computer users to use it instead of Internet Explorer. That's because Firefox is a safer and more secure internet browser. It also allows you add a lot of cool user-friendly plug-ins which make your internet experience more enjoyable.

The other day, I learned something new about Firefox and I wanted to share it here in case others experience what at first appears to be a problem - but really isn't.

Regardless of what browser you're using, when you open it, the first page you see is called your "home page". For many users, it's the MSN page or Google search page. While those are great pages, many of us like to configure a different home page. For example, I have a Google home page which allows me to configure it anyway I want (and I do). When I open the internet, that is the page I want to see first. Configuring a home is easy and you can read the instructions for setting up a custom home page by clicking here.

However, even after configuring firefox to use a custom home page, you may notice that each time you open Firefox, it may open the last internet pages you visited instead of your home page. This can be frustrating. But the good news is that fixing this problem is a simple configuration change.

Here's how you change it:

1. Open Firefox and on the menu select TOOLS and then OPTIONS ( a window will pop up)
   
2. On the new window, look near the top for the words "When Firefox Starts"
   
3. Click the Pull-down arrow and select "SHOW MY HOME PAGE".
4. Click OK at the bottom of this window.

That's all there is to it. Firefox allows you select multiple options for start pages so feel free to experiment with the others to see if you prefer any of the others.