Picture a "test pilot" and you’ll probably imagine a dashing personality ready to risk life and limb in order to test the latest javascript:void(0)technology. The Mozilla Test Pilot program is a lot like that, except you don’t have to risk life or limb, and it might not give any great stories to tell at the bar. But you could help the project with very little effort, and isn’t that almost as good?

Want to help the Mozilla Project produce the best Firefox possible, but have no developer skills at all? Can you point? Click? Read instructions? Then you’re ready to suit up as a Firefox Test Pilot. Crashes not required.

If you’ve ever felt like you want to give back to the Firefox project, or if you feel like Firefox needs improvement, the Test Pilot project is the the easiest way to provide useful feedback to Mozilla and put those browsing hours to work.

The program is actually very ingenious. Typically, calls for testing are only somewhat effective because it requires users to see a call for testing and decide to participate. Then they have to set aside time to test a project, and then find time to report results in some way. Then you have to hope that the testers will join in again for the next round, but there’s usually not a good way to reach them.

The Test Pilot program puts Firefox’s add-on system to work for the project. By installing the Test Pilot extension, users become part of the Test Pilot program indefinitely. Or until they decide to leave, but it makes being part of the process much easier by not requiring the user to follow the Mozilla blogs and so forth.

Get Ready to Pilot
It should only take five or ten minutes to get started with Test Pilot. Just head over to the Test Pilot page and click the “Become a Test Pilot link. This will prompt you to install the Test Pilot extension.

After installing the extension, you’ll see the “Thank You” page for Test Pilot, and have a Test Pilot icon in the bottom right-hand corner. Click on this, and you’ll see the context menu with the current surveys and current tests.

That’s just what it sounds like. The first survey is to gather data about the test pilots. Very basic, you’ll be asked questions about how much you use Firefox and your skill level with computers. Once you’ve completed the survey it will disappear from the context menu until the next one starts.

Then you have tests. The current test is “A Week in the Life of a Browser.” Here you’ll find a page describing the test and a drop down menu that gives you the option of submitting your data automatically, being prompted, or never submitting data or being prompted about it.

After you’ve run the test for a while, it will display data about your usage and a nice little graph of your bookmarks and time that Firefox has been running or idle. It also has a link to show exactly what data has been submitted, and another link to opt-out of the test.

The Test Pilot context menu also has a link to the Mozilla Wiki and upcoming tests that will be run through Test Pilot. The current test runs through January 14th and repeats every 60 days.

If you want to do more than run tests for the program, you can also propose your own tests. The wiki has information on writing a test proposal and how to “champion” it.

The actual test proposal isn’t too difficult to create. You need a test case you’d like to see used, the goals, and what kind of data you’d need for the test. Users will be happy to know that tests must conform to the Mozilla Privacy Policy.

The Moz folks are very serious about privacy. The URLs you visit and bookmark, and search terms are not submitted back to the project, just data about how many bookmarks you have, how many hours you’re online (which may be slightly embarrassing in its own right…), and whether you were active or idle during that time. I feel very comfortable with the Mozilla Project’s privacy policies and practices.

I’ve run Test Pilot for a while now, and haven’t noticed any performance issues or problems that would seem related to the extension. It runs quietly in the background and it’s good to know that I’m helping the project by doing nothing more than browsing.

I’ve been using Firefox for more than 2 years now. The browser addon community and consistent addition of new addons is what amazes me the most. Not only is this the best browser but it is primitively known for consuming too much of RAM memory as well!

One of the reason why the memory consumption increases in Firefox is the integration of addons and to curb down the memory consumption in Firefox i.e, to tweak firefox performance – You have to install an addon (how ironic?) but this does work! Here is the detail.

The addon is Fasterfox although you can find tons of tweaks, but for me, this addon has considerably reduced memory hogging issues from the Firefox browser.

Fasterfox addon has different optimizing levels that can turbo recharge Firefox performance to a greater extent. The pic below shows the various tweaking features:


Result – After implementing Fasterfox, I must admit, there was a significant improvement in Firefox. My Firefox browser was consuming around 800mb and after the implementation of this addon, the consumption level was brought down to 200mb :) which is really cool!

Download Fasterfox Addon
Note that Fasterfox is in experimental stage. But you can still download it (runs smoothly on Firefox 3.5 version)

Download Fasterfox (Check the box and accept the terms to download)

Update
After blocking Microsoft's WPF plugin for Firefox due to what it believed was a security vulnerability, Mozilla has removed the block. The blocklist has been updated, but will take some time to propagate to clients, which will then be able to continue using the WPF plugin.

Original story
Mozilla has temporarily disabled Microsoft's WPF plugin for Firefox in order to protect users from a security vulnerability that was recently uncovered in the component. The vulnerability can be exploited when users visit malicious Web pages that contain specially crafted XAML content.

Microsoft issued an Internet Explorer patch to fix the vulnerability through its Windows Update mechanism on Tuesday. The IE patch is said to fully resolve the vulnerability for Firefox users in addition to users of Microsoft's own browser. Mozilla is concerned, however, that not all users have performed the Windows update yet. In order to protect users who are not yet patched, Mozilla has added Microsoft's plugin to its add-on blocklist, causing it to be automatically disabled by the browser. more detail: linux.com/....firefox

Just wanna share some thing funny and joy. It’s not about any kind of Instant Messenger or Chat or IM, It’s about facebook trick relating with background and animation effect. I would not give you any screen shot about this (I change my mind about this, just watch the screenshot below). I tested using Mozilla Firefox and got worked properly. Here are the tricks:

Over your mouse pointer to facebook background. Push and hold your mouse left button. Then while you hold the left button of your mouse, push your arrow key on your keyboard like this: up up down down left right left right, push b then push a, then enter.



Now click or roll over your mouse, or type something in your comment or status message. you’ll see a “magic” happen.

Then the animation would be like this:


If the trick works normally, you’ll see the konami code with circles and blink of star that shining out (twinkle twinkle little star :D ) from your facebook background (see the picture above).

You can double the animation by repeating the trick, and if you wanna close of disable the animation just open a new page on your facebook page. Done.