Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Make your Firefox faster, safer and stable with few mouse clicks

When did you looked last time in your 'Plugins' section of your Firefox browser?
Did you know that you have lots of garbage there? Many companies such us Microsoft, Yahoo and Google stealthily  install plugins that you don't want and without your permission. Some of them are of GREAT danger for your security. See these 6! articles about a Microsoft plugin:
Java installs also an EXTREMELY dangerous plugin, so dangerous that Firefox decided to automatically disable it!!!!!!!! See this:
Even if you have the upgraded version of that plugin, better disable it especially if you are not a Java developer!


Let's start

Click 'Tools -> Add-ons' and see how many crapware is there? Have you ever install all that crap? No? Then is time to clean it. 
I have done some research to see what is needed and what is safe to disable:

Disable:
  • Yahoo Application State Plugin - it may crash the browser if you have Adblock Plus installed
  • Microsoft DRM Plugin - both of them
  • Windows presentation foundation plugin
  • Google Talk Plugin - if you don't use Google Talk in your browser
  • Google Talk Video Accelerator Plugin
  • Google Update  Plugin 
  • Java development toolkit plugin - Extremely high risk!
Some plugins are adding huge overhead to your browser. After disable them my Firefox loads in only 2 seconds!

    The ONLY plugins that are useful are:
    • Mozilla default Plug-in  -  This is safe
    • Shockwave Flash plug-in  -  This may be unsafe; it has a nasty bug-related history also. Unfortunately we need that dreadful Flash plugin to see SOME websites.
    • Windows media player  -  Needed for some websites that have video content - Very unsafe
    • Java Platform - Needed rarely for some websites - Unsafe







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