McAfee provides a nice add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer called Site Advisor. I used to run McAfee Site Advisor v2.8 until recently. It identifies whether a site or a search result is safe to its knowledge or not and is one of the best add-ons to use in a cyber café.

Do not make the mistake of installing it or upgrading it now.

Firefox’s “Find Updates” in Tools –> Add-ons could not find the latest version 2.9 just like the Mozilla Add-ons website couldn’t recommend it because Site Advisor is not your normal .XPI add-on. One has to download and install a .EXE through the Site Advisor download page.

The latest version is about 3.0MB large, takes a lot of time to install, asks for a reboot, and even then creates annoying problems post-installation until you disable it. The problem is that every time you open Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, a popup asking you about post-installation settings appears again, asking you to Accept or Decline their EULA. The annoyance stops only after declining.

I tried this (by mistake) on a friend’s and my laptop and the problem was persistent. On one of the two, the pop-ups stopped but McAfee Site Advisor no longer had its search bar and it wasn’t showing whether a site is safe or not. That is because one has to “Decline” to get there in the first place.

I couldn’t find any fixes online yet. Let me know if you have any.

Image Source: McAfee Site Advisor Screenshots taken on my laptop.

Ways to run web services through desktop apps are constantly explored especially for oft-used ones. Desktop apps are preferred to web services because they tend to use less resources. Today, Gmail can be run as a desktop application through two means: Google Gadgets and Mozilla Prism.

Gmail With Google Gadgets: To run the official Gmail Google Gadget, you will need Google Desktop 5 or above installed on your computer. The gadget is tiny (79KB) and offers all the basic features of Gmail including reading, sending, searching and starring messages; keyboard shortcuts; and contact auto-complete. But it doesn’t yet have the sound notification for new messages received. The gadget has been released only yesterday and is bound to have bugs though I hope they are fewer than in iGoogle.

Gmail With Mozilla Prism: Mozilla has been working on a project called Prism (add-on) which can be used to convert any website into a stand-alone desktop application outside the browser. Prism is available as a Firefox add-on, and is easy to use. You can read my opinion on Prism in greater detail here and let me know if you need any help with creating your own desktop app of your favorite website. I’ve tried this five months ago, so there is a good chance that the technology has gotten better.

Jason tells us that Firefox turned 4 yesterday. Mozilla Firefox as an alternative web browser to Microsoft Internet Explorer has been a blessing. A web browser is perhaps the most used PC tool. Consider this: Would you be willing to use a PC which is incapable of connecting to the web?

While Internet Explorer still has over 70% market share, and while there is no straight answer to which web browser is the best, there are several reasons why users are preferring Firefox: open source, security, speed, and add-ons. In fact, the last factor is the most weighing factor for a majority of the users.

Following are a few Firefox add-ons that I depend quite a lot on:

Streaming videos from hundreds of youtube-like websites is easier thanks to DownloadHelper.

FireGestures enables mouse gestures. Customizable mouse gestures.

Flash ads are some of the most annoying critters on the Planet Web. Flashblock blocks all Flash content by default, replacing it with a simple ‘f’ icon. It costs an extra click when you want them running though.

Security is increasingly a concern when online. McAfee SiteAdvisor warns you immediately if a site is a dangerous destination. It gets its data from McAfee’s large dynamic library of websites and their statuses.

URL Fixer trusts our capability of typing erroneously and automatically fixes them for us, making us get used to the typos.

There are add-ons alternative to almost all these, and more. You can get them from the addons home page on Mozilla. If you’re new to Firefox, and are lost about finding and installing add-ons, let me be of service.

Which Firefox add-ons do you use?