Kelly's Tech Nexus

The newest versions of Firefox (3.0.14 and 3.5.3) now test for outdated (potentially vulnerable) versions of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in.

This week, Mozilla has released updates versions of Firefox versions 3.0.13 and 3.5.2.

In version 3.5.2, there were 10 vulnerabilities, all but one ‘critical,’ and in version 3.0.13, all the same issues were patched, along with one additional bug unique to the older version related to the installation and removal of PKCS11 modules.

These new versions are the first to include technology to test for outdated versions of Adobe’s Flash Player.  Mozilla have announced that in version 3.6 this technology will be expanded to test for outdated versions of Apple QuickTime, Adobe Flash, Shockwave and Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Silverlight and Sun Java.

via iTWire – Firefox wants to update Adobe Flash Player.

For a while now, I’ve been using a utility called Offline Update for updating clients computers. It will update Microsoft Windows 2000, XP 32/64, Server 2003 32/64, Windows Vista 32/64, and Server 2008 32/64, including the latest Service Packs, the DotNET framework 3.5, and depending on your Windows version, Internet Explorer 7 and 8. It updates Microsoft Office 2000, XP, 2003, and 2007, including the latest relevant service packs and file format converters. Continue reading »

Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk — both enterprise and consumer versions — are now out of beta. “Beta” will be removed from the product logos today, but we’ll continue to innovate and improve upon the applications whether or not there’s a small “beta” beneath the logo. Indeed, today we’re also announcing some other Google Apps features that we think will appeal to large enterprises: mail delegation, mail retention and ongoing enhancements to Apps reliability.

via Official Google Blog: Google Apps is out of beta (yes, really).

As promised, the Mozilla foundation has released Firefox 3.5 on schedule today, June 30. Get it here at GetFirefox. For reference, the file size is the same as the Firefox 3.5 RC3, so it’s very likely that this is the same installer, just renamed. No matter, the main thing is that it’s here! Now to wait for the plug-ins to be updated to work with it. Adblock Plus is compatible, as far as I can tell. I don’t use many more than that, so I can’t vouch for anything else.

From my admittedly limited use of it since it’s final release today, it does seem faster at both the initial program launch and rendering pages than Firefox 3.0.X. This has been one of my long-standing complaints with the Firefox 3.0 series, is the sluggishness both on initial program launch and to an extent, page rendering. It seems the performance improvements Mozilla has incorporated are paying off. Memory usage seems on par with the previous version at around 64 MB when idle. Time will tell if the supposed “memory leak” with several tabs open for hours has been squashed yet. All in all though, it seems to be a very worthy upgrade. Happy installing!

Continue reading »

The release of Firefox 3.0.11 has eliminated eleven vulnerabilities in 3.0.10, with four of the vulnerabilities classified as critical out of the nine problems listed in the security advisory. One of the critical issues in the advisory actually covers three issues which can at least crash the browser and could allow for arbitrary code to be executed. The developers, to be on the safe side in such cases, classify the set as a critical vulnerability.

via Firefox 3.0.11 closes critical holes – News – The H Security: News and features.

Mozilla has announced the release of Add-on Collections, groups of add-ons that all relate to a particular topic. Subscribers to an Add-on Collection are automatically notified when new modules are published to the collection. Users can follow the collections by clicking the “Add to favorites” button, subscribing to the collections RSS feed, or by using the Add-on Collector extension from Mozilla.

via Mozilla Add-on Collections for Firefox – News – The H Open Source: News and Features.