- Friday, 10 July 2009
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America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between. - Oscar Wilde
Firefox adds Porn Mode
IT SEEMS THAT even on the Internet, people want to see a change they can believe in. According to new stats by Net Applications, that change means switching to Firefox, with the Open Sauce browser crossing the 20 per cent market share mark for the first time.
The browser actually attained the 20 per cent mark the week starting October 5th and has been flitting back and forth over it ever since. Mighty-Soft’s Internet Explorer seems to be steadily losing ground according to the same Net Applications data, dropping to 'just' 71 per cent.
Ken Kovash, Mozilla's metrics chief, overcome with joy, gushed " Congratulations to the Mozilla community for reaching this historic milestone!" in a company blog post.
When it comes to tech-related websites, Firefox does even better, lingering around the 50 per cent mark.
Features like today’s newly-released 'porn mode' in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 could help swing the tide even further in the browser’s favour.
"Private Browsing aims to help you make sure that your Web browsing activities don't leave any trace on your own computer," noted Firefox programmer Ehsan Akhgar in another blog post.
The 'Don’t Leave A Trace' feature, as it’s being dubbed, was seen as being especially critical for version 3.1 as Google’s Chrome browser, the Vole’s IE8 beta 2 and Apple’s Safari all already have it.
But, warned Akhgar, "Private Browsing is not a tool to keep you anonymous from websites or your ISP". Neither is it a tool which can protect users from spyware. Instead, clarified Akghar, “Private Browsing is only about making sure that Firefox doesn’t store any data which can be used to trace your online activities, no more, no less.”
Let’s just hope it manages to do a bit better than Google Chrome's privacy mode, Incognito, which was slammed by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog the other day for being not nearly private enough.
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This strikes me as extremely useful for people who use computers besides their own for personal activities (email checking, banking, online shopping).

Imagine checking your email from a friend's house only to have your login information stored... and then your friend's curiosity gets the best of her.

Of course, this assumes that private browsing mode automatically discards all such data in addition to cookies and history data.
Private browsing is "Old Hat" for us mac users. Safari has had it for years.
The article describes Firefox as Open Sauce.

Did you mean Open Source?!
@Jay: But this is an Open Sauce browser, you'd have to compile your own executable on your friend's PC and use that to be sure she hadn't done just that herself and made the menu item do nothing (or indeed turn on a keylogger or some such)! But then, even if you did compile your own, you'd have to use your own compilers in case she's hacked hers to insert code ... aaaggghhh, is it never ending??
Do you have autism?
I take it you've very recently discovered The Inquirer?
Well at least NOW men can safely visit online profiles of other women seeking sex and be able to get away with it.

I mean there was that one story long ago about how insecure firefox was that the wife found out and divorced the sucker.

Then again it means women can do it to, ah well.

Most definitely a useful piece of software for internet cafe's, laptops (in case they get searched at the border, or stolen) and other places with open access to the internet.
Do you ever read the inq... Open Sauce, The Vole, Jesus Phone... all common terms to inq readers
If you browsed all your porn in this mode, how would you know the good sites you have been to? They would be lost forever ;( 

Only for us mac users? What about canadien, french or german ones? For years means 3.
You can however manually set Firefox to not accepts cookies, store passwords, save history or cache. For years that is.
Go and whine on some mac forum next time. Why are you reading Firefox articles anyway.
Not such a bad thing these days - He may well be ineligible for extradition according to some!

Shonky.
... from the Option under Privacy to "Always clear my private data"? Check all the blocks and set it to clear on FF shutdown and it's all gone. Poof!!

Of course I run Crap Cleaner and Eraser every now and then just to be sure dontchaknow.