Thumbnail Previews

New tabs now offer Thumbnail Previews for quick access to sites you visit the most. It’s similar in nature to a quick dial feature. While it’s not a groundbreaking new feature for browsers in general, it’s a nice addition to the already existing Tab Grouping and Pin Tab features. Note: In order to benefit from this feature, you must have History preserving enabled. If you’re not sure what that means, then the feature will work fine.

To add sites to your Thumbnail Previews new tab page:

1. Open your bookmarks library by either clicking the bookmarks button or by clicking the Firefox menu, selecting Bookmarks, then Show All Bookmarks.
2. Drag any bookmark to one of the Thumbnail Preview boxes.

To make a site permanent in its location just click the pin in the upper left hand corner of the Thumbnail Preview box.

To remove a site from Thumbnail Previews, click the X in the upper right hand corner.

Firefox Homepage

Along with Thumbnail Previews comes a new Firefox Homepage. It’s still bland, but adds some shortcuts to make getting to Firefox tools a bit quicker. The new shortcut links include:

• Downloads
• Bookmarks
• History
• Add-ons
• Sync
• Settings

Users can access the new homepage by typing about:home into the address bar. To use this page as your new homepage, simply click and drag the Firefox logo from the address bar and drop it on the Home button icon. If done properly, you will be asked to confirm the new homepage.

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The post Firefox Adds Thumbnail Previews And Homepage first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

Google has released the latest stable version of their browser, Google Chrome 12. While normally we would not make mention of new software versions or releases, in this case we are making an exception. Google Chrome 12 stable release is not exactly going to light the world on fire but it does have some new features such as safe-browsing protection against malicious files and manageability of Flash cookies as well as other features and security fixes. However, the real reason for this blog entry is the importance of safe-browsing.

Safe-browsing

The use of a secure, up-to-date browser is the single most effective thing users can do to protect themselves from infections and attacks online. Whether you are using Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or any one of the many other browsers out there, you must keep it up-to-date. Updates ensure security holes are patched, new features are available and that online viewing stays sharp and exciting.  If you haven’t updated or aren’t sure if an update has been performed recently, now is a great time to check.

Internet Explorer 9

For Internet Explorer users, version 9 (IE9) is the latest stable release from Microsoft. It is their best attempt thus far at a secure and web standard compliant browser, so please get the update if you haven’t already.

Our Recommendations

We at GeekITDown use several browsers across several platforms, but we realize that is not the most ideal situation for the average user. While IE9 is a much better offering from Microsoft, we still recommend Firefox or Google Chrome as the browsers of choice. Both provide a higher level of security and can get locked down tight with add-ons and both are ahead of the game when it comes to web standards and functionality.  Plus, the GeekITDown Blog is best viewed in Firefox, so why not try something new!

You can download the most recent version of Firefox at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/fx/ and Google Chrome 12 from http://www.google.com/chrome.

The post Browser Safety first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.