TechAirlines: Technology Tips

Over a month ago, we covered Firefox 3.6.4 Beta. While this may seem like your average minor update with some security, stability, and bug fixes, Firefox 3.6.4 features Lorentz, the highly anticipated OOPP (Out-of-Process-Plugin) feature. This isolates plugins like Flash and Silverlight into a separate process so if they crash, only the plugin goes down and the user just needs to refresh the page to... 

Ever wanted Firefox to have an isolated plugin environment similar to Google Chrome? When plugins like Flash, Silverlight, and Quicktime freeze, do you really want the entire browser to go down? Of course not. Mozilla Lorentz is Mozilla’s much anticipated OOPP (Out-Of-Process-Plugin) feature. Finally, plugins will be run as their own process and if they crash, users can simply reload the page... 

Plugins are a major cause of browser security problems due to vulnerabilities especially with older versions. Just recently, a critical security vulnerability has been uncovered in the Java Deployment Toolkit browser plugin, a component of Java. The vulnerability is caused due to an input sanitation error in the Java Deployment Toolkit browser plugin. This can be exploited to pass arbitrary arguments... 

WordPress has many contact form plugins. The one I use here at Tech Airlines is called Contact Form 7. It’s extremely flexible and easy to use. However, the one thing that has always bugged me was that its 3 scripts (Ajax and 2 jQuery scripts) load on every single page regardless of whether or not its required and only 3 of the pages on this site require it. This can significantly slow down the... 

Mozilla has recently introduced their Plugin Check site to allow users to automatically check for outdated plugins. Outdated plugins can increase the risk for the system being infected by malware since updates often fix security issues as well as bug fixes. Adobe has released Adobe Flash Player 10.0.42.34 on December 8. The version I currently have is 10.0.32.0, which is the previous version. However,... 

How many unique online passwords do you have? If your answer is one or two, you either need to get out on the web more, or the more likely answer, you are using the same password for everything, a very poor but popular security practice. Users, myself included, often use the same password for everything because they are afraid of forgetting them. That’s when password managers come in. Most modern... 

Don’t have Photoshop and need to open PSD files? Are alternatives like GIMP too slow and heavy? I recommend Paint.NET as a great free alternative to Photoshop because its lightweight and fast. Unfortunately, it does not support PSD files. Luckily, thanks to a free plugin, it can open and save PSD files. Simpy download the zip file and extract Photoshop.dll. Place this file into the FileTypes... 

An “important” automatic Windows Update pushed out to all users by Microsoft last February had caused some outrage among some Firefox users. This update had added a .NET Add-on that adds ClickOnce support and also installed a plugin named “Windows Presentation Foundation” to Firefox without the user’s consent or knowledge. Not only that, but without doing some registry...