Lunascape makes use of all three major web rendering engines: Gecko (Firefox), Trident (Internet Explorer) and WebKit (Safari and Chrome). People who use the browser can instantly switch between the three different engine modes by right-clicking a browser tab or by clicking on the engine switch button that you’ll find at the bottom-left of the screen.

While this makes perfect sense for developers who need to see how their creations render on various browsers, the people behind Lunascape contend that their product is aimed at the general population. Their ultimate goal is to create a “unified browsing system” for everyone who is tired of having difficulties when switching between different browsers.

Let’s say an average computer user has Firefox installed on their home machine. They are comfortable with where they can find everything – from bookmarks to add-ons. When they go to work, they may be forced by the IT department to use a different browser, such as IE or Safari. Those people tend to get upset at having to learn how to use a new browser, where to find everything, and the like. Lunascape is hoping to simplify this process for users of every level – novice to expert.

There aren’t a lot of new features in this latest version. However, you will finally find support for Firefox Add-ons. An included wizard makes it easy for you to transfer all of your add-ons from Firefox to Lunascape. Sadly, there’s no support still for Chrome or Safari plug-ins, but hopefully that will change with the next release.

For those of you who are developers, I definitely recommend trying Lunascape if you haven’t yet. You can use a tab in any kind of window split viewing… comparing any web page you choose, rendered by the three different engines at the same time – within the same browser/window. This can save you a heck of a lot of time when checking your work, for sure!

For the rest of us, I sadly don’t see Lunascape becoming “mainstream” any time soon. I’ve tried it myself, and it works fairly well. There are small bugs, of course, just as with nearly any type of program or software we use these days. It’s fast, and being able to tab between different engines is kind of cool. However, it’s just not something I (as a non-dev) really need to do. I’ll stick with Firefox for now.

Have you tried Lunascape? What are your overall thoughts on the browser? Do you have recommendations as to how it could be better for the general computer user?

1. DNSQueries.com – A good looking, well performing site with unobtrusive advertising, and a wealth of IP, DNS, and domain tools. Multi-lingual, and a support forum is available. Here you’ll find the most often used tools.
2. iptools.com – Another very comprehensive site offering free IP and domain lookup tools, only lacking a DNS report. Ad sponsored.
3.  intoDNS.com – If you’re just looking for something similar to DNSreport this site offers it free, and ad free. The format should be familiar.
4. DNSsy.com – Another report very similar in form and function to DNSreport. The site also includes a couple other basic lookup tools. Not only free, but ad free.
5. FixYourIP.com is another site that offers a nice collection of lookup tools. Ad supported. 

…5 more sites that deserve a mention:

1. dnscolos.com – Another free and effective DNS report site. Advertising free.
2. checkdns.net – The final DNS report site. Some may prefer the more detailed output.
3. freednsinfo.com – Another multi-lingual domain, IP, and network tool site.
4. dnstools.iball.id.au – Not the easiest domain to remember, but a clean and simple tool site.
5. mydnstools.info – Last but certainly not least. Free DNS, networking, IP and domain tools.

One more bonus site. While some of the charts it creates and tools are cool, it can be slow. It also seems parts of it may not be working. Geeky enough that it had to be included: serversniff.net

The bottom line is that you may be able to find all the tools you need using free alternatives to DNSstuff. However, they won’t all be conveniently located at one site, and won’t all offer the speed and performance of dnsstuff.com. If you host a lot of sites, own a webhosting company, or are a frequent user of the tools dnsstuff offers, than $79/year may be a reasonable investment. If you’re like most of the rest of us, and  only need to access the tools occasionally, it’s nice to know there are free alternatives available.

Looking for spywareinfo.com and getting a GoDaddy parking page? Or, looking for the forums at forums.spywareinfo.com and getting a 404 error? You’re not alone. Try the new domain name, and you’ll find the old forum we’ve come to respect and admire. Why the change? Mike Healan the founder of the site has not been heard from in many months, and the spywareinfo.com name appears to have expired. However, the good people running the spyware removal forums didn’t want to let such a valuable resource die, so they planned ahead and registered a new name, spywareinfoforum.com. The change was actually made a couple of months ago, so most search engine results should point to the new domain. However, there are thousands of links from other sites to spywareinfo.com, and who knows how many bookmarks.

There is a slight danger that the domain name could eventually fall into the hands of bad guys. They might find a certain irony in using it to spread spyware, instead of remove it. Be sure to update your bookmarks to http://www.spywareinfoforum.com, and help spread the word.

Mozilla’s Firefox is funded almost exclusively by Google through a deal that runs through 2011. This agreement defaults Google as Firefox’s homepage, and search. While Mozilla ought to be worried, Google Chrome is an assault on the entire browser market. With 60% of the search market share, Google has plenty of opportunity to promote its own browser. This places not only Firefox, but also Internet Explorer, Opera, and other browsers in it’s crosshairs.

This surprise announcement, has also lead many to wonder if Google might also have its sights set on a bigger target. A Google operating system. Maybe Chrome is Google’s operating system?

Google’s vision of the future includes a cloud computer, where applications are run from the cloud, or Internet. This requires a less sophisticated client that could bypasses the operating system and require only a web browser. Google’s Chrome sets the stage for that scenario. One of the groundbreaking features of Chrome is that each tab is run as it’s own process. That sounds less browser like, and more like how an operating system works. When’s the last time you saw a browser with it’s own task manager? From Google’s Chrome announcement:

…we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

Is it a browser? Is it an operating system? Further evidence of operating system roots is their decision to rewrite the JavaScript engine. While they could have used the open source code that was already available, they wrote an engine that communicates directly with the CPU, hinting at bigger plans:

Today Chrome requires Windows to run. Linux and Apple versions are planned soon. Google’s Android phone is almost certainly going to run some flavor of it. Could the Google Chrome web browser be a Trojan Horse for Google’s operating system? How long will it be until we see a version of Chrome that boots on your computer without Windows?

The first thing that comes to mind upon hearing the word spam, for most people, is an email advertising certain enhancements to the male body, not the cheap pork brand – which is actually the source of the word. This is not surprising: in 2006, 40% of all e-mails sent – 12 billion per day – were classified as spam emails, and that figure continues to grow constantly as spam vendors evolve and develop their spamming practices.

Many people have had their personal email boxes completely flooded with spam emails – but just how massive is this phenomenon is in real life, for a real person? What websites send the most spam? How do your actions influence the amount of spam sent? Finding answers to these is just the purpose of the recent McAfee research, the results of which have been posted last June. McAfee took spam surveys on a whole new level. 50 volunteers from around the world have been given a computer and email accounts and participated in this research, creatively named Spammed Persistently All Month (SPAM). They have been asked to submit their email addresses to as many websites as possible, including ‘get rich quick’ plans, ‘work from home’ websites, ad clicking websites, and free giveaways: iPods, vacations, etc., and similar.

During the course of the experiment, the volunteers received hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails. Particularly, the research found that US citizens received the biggest amount of spam emails in course of one month: 22,233 per person (average). In contrast, volunteers from Germany and France got only 5000 emails, while the British took the middle spot with 10,000 emails. Besides the geographical aspect, men received more spam emails than women did. McAfee says this is because men traditionally have a larger income than women, and spammers are more interested in them, regardless of their sexuality.

The volunteers set themselves fake identities. Using them, they subscribed to various legitimate-looking work-from-home websites. Volunteers say these websites generated the largest percent of spam sent. Volunteers that gave away their real home address found out they were actually spammed in real-life: their mailbox was flooded with hundreds of printed spam. Then, they were asked to actually reply to these emails and click on various ‘Unsubscribe’, ‘Remove me from the mailing list’, etc. links usually found in spam emails. This led to a massive increase in spam emails, and the final figures were greatly influenced by this.

However, these emails weren’t only innocent looking spam. After confirming their email address by clicking on the various unsubscription links, volunteers received hundreds of 419 scams. Some redirected them to fake PayPal lookalikes. After providing their real PayPal details (of their fake identity, of course), volunteers found foreign IP addresses trying to access their PayPal accounts. Furthermore, most PCs were heavily infected with spyware by the end of the research, presumably by email attachments or scripts on certain websites – even though a McAfee Protection Suite has been installed on the computer.

While this research hasn’t turned out anything new or surprising, it’s a good reminder to what spam really is – a criminal offense, directly relating to scamming and spyware. The numbers collected by the research are staggering, and prove the huge share of spam in online crime activities, which just keeps growing and take a massive part of our lives.

With this in mind, there are methods to prevent spam coming in the first place. Using them will help you keep a cleaner email box and by that, you will join the fight against spam & malware – which are like yin and yang to each other.

• Don’t give away your personal email address in websites. Set up a separate email account for keeping emails from websites. For especially shady-looking websites, use a free disposable email address – here is a handy list of 20 such services. Never give away your email address on an open forum, discussion board or blog. Spam bots constantly search the net for such addresses. If you really need to include an email address on a webpage, regardless how popular it is, make sure you write it so it doesn’t look like an email address (no ‘@’ sign). For example: don’t *at* spamme *dot* net. Alternatively, you can make your email address a picture.

• Don’t choose a ’simple’ email address. While this may seem tempting, easy email addresses are easy to guess. Some spam bots work with dictionary words and combinations of letters, for example: table at gmail dot com, and send messages to these addresses. To fool them, use an address like 2table29k at gmail dot com.

• Don’t open unknown attachments. Most email providers and/or clients will scan attachments for you, but virus vendors know how to bypass this – simply don’t open attachments from unknown senders.

• Never reply to spam emails. As proven by McAfee’s experiment: replying to spam emails only makes it worse. Just delete these emails. Replying or clicking unsubscribe is going to make it even worse.

• Never click on banking or finance links from emails, or links to websites that have your personal details. Even if you get an email that appears to have been sent from your local bank, and the link looks like the website address – don’t click on it. Scammers use different techniques to fool you into entering the username and password in their website. To prevent this, always access baking websites by typing their full address in the browser window.

• Never provide personal information through emails. Whether it’s an email from your bank, PayPal or your aunt in Florida – never give away passwords by replying to emails. Baking facilities are not authorized to request your password and sensitive data through email as it’s not secure and is open for scamming.

• Stay away from get rich quick, free gifts and free cash schemes. Some might even earn you a few cents, but they are not worth the effort. Most of them will spam your email box and send scams, and payout is high so you’ll need to wait several years to get your $10. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

• Use Gmail. Gmail is free and has nearly 7GB of storage, and has one of the best spam filters, even compared to paid solutions. You can also synchronize it with your Outlook, Thunderbird or any other major email client, using POP3 or IMAP.

• If all hell breaks loose… Start over. Fighting spam once it has taken over your inbox is impossible. The best way to fight spam is to prevent it from reaching your inbox in the first place – so just notify all your contacts and start over by opening a new mail address. Incorporate the tips in this article when opening it. Also, you might want to add an additional layer of security to your inbox by purchasing a paid solution such as Cloudmark. If you have a Security Suite, look for the spam filtering application. While some of these products don’t provide great protection, they do something.

Finally, remember that even if you follow all tips in this article to the letter – by no means this is a guarantee that you will not get spammed. Many malware infections harvest email addresses from infected PCs. So, just having your email address in the contact list, or email box of someone else’s infected computer – could get you spammed. However, following the tips in this article should prevent most spam. Good luck!

Since the first result on the search page is often for a topic in the malware removal forum of this site, some people even think we’re somehow responsible. While we’re not yet sure why these users are being redirected, we can tell you how to fix it.

• Download Trend Micro’s HijackThis
• Close your browser and Install HijackThis
• Open HijackThis, Select Do a system scan only button
• In the results, find this line:

O2 – BHO: Browser Address Error Redirector – {CA6319C0-31B7-401E-A518-A07C3DB8F777} – c:\windows\system32\BAE.dll

• Tick the checkbox next to that line, and select the Fix Checked button (DO NOT select any other lines without assistance).
• Restart your browser and navigate to Yahoomail. You should now be able to access it.

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris’ comment, it seems a number of people may be having this problem after Spybot Search & Destroy modifies their hosts file after using the “immunize” feature. Since editing your hosts file can be tricky for some, here’s an easy method to restore your hosts file:

Please download HostsXpert

1. Unzip HostsXpert.zip
2. Double click on HostsXpert.exe
3. Then click on “Restore Original Hosts” to restore your Hosts file to its default condition.
4. Click on Make Hosts Read Only to secure it against further changes.
5. Close program when complete.

If you have any questions, or need further assistance, please read our malware cleaning guide.

Everyone knows the importance of keeping good backups of your computer data, especially anyone who’s ever lost data due to a hard drive crash, natural catastrophe, or any other reason. Many people, however, don’t back their data up regularly; it can be a time-consuming process that’s not always easily automated. This is one of a series of articles we’re doing on ways to backup your data. Read our previous article for an overview of different backup strategies available.

As mentioned in the referenced article, an online storage site (OSS) is one option for performing backups. I like the idea for several reasons. First, you have access to your data no matter where you are, as long as you have access to a computer. Secondly, while using a home server or external hard drive will give you the ability to recreate your data if your PC should crash, what if a natural disaster, for example, prevented you from accessing your backups? Floods, earthquakes, or tornadoes could hinder you from reaching your backups, even if only temporarily. With an OSS, your data will be safe and accessible, as long as you have access to the Internet. Even in the event that the OSS is hit by a catastrophe, any good OSS will have redundant sites, with multiple copies of your data at each site. An OSS is a viable solution only if you have fast internet access, though; dial-up or slower speed access would render this type of backup unusable.

How it Works: Once you’ve signed up for the service, you’re provided with your own website address, i.e., username.sugarsync.com, which is what you’ll use to gain access to all your files. To begin the process, you download the Sugarsync Manager, which is a small program that is used to access and manage the data. This is downloaded onto each PC you wish to sync, which I’ll expand on later.

When you first install Sugarsync on a PC, you configure options for it. These include picking an icon and setting up which folders you want to sync. In the above screen, you’ll see the Work Dell PC, with a panda icon, and a list of all the folders to be synced.  Once you’ve configured these options, Sugarsync will automatically copy all the files from your PC to your webspace. This is actually a very dynamic process – I used an external hard drive to copy a number of files to my new Vista PC, and they synced to Sugarsync simultaneously. This is one of the very neat features of this program – the backup process is automated.

You can add and edit your sync folders at any time through this interface. Once you’ve added a folder for syncing, the process takes place automatically. You can choose to sync an entire folder and its subfolders, or only choose certain subfolders. Within Pictures, for example, I’ve chosen not to sync the Microsoft Clip Organizer, as it’s not something that I typically change or care about backing up.

This basic syncing service by itself is a great feature.  Backup solutions typically require some sort of manual effort (such as CDs and external hard drives), or at least a schedule for the backups; Sugarsync’s ability to keep files in sync as the changes are make this an enticing product for any situation in which multiple files change throughout the day.  This just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the features Sugarsync offers, however.

The Magic Briefcase is another unique feature of Sugarsync. This is a neat little way to keep documents organized and synced between multiple PCs. For example, say you’re in the middle of preparing a presentation for work. You need to work on it that evening from home, but you don’t have a laptop. There’s no need to copy it to a USB drive or email it to yourself, because you have SugarSync installed. Simply put it in the Magic Briefcase. When you get home, you can retrieve it and continue working on it. SugarSync will keep it updated, and when you return to the office the next day, you’ll have the most up-to-date version.

Sugarsync Manager is also used to restore data in the event of any catastrophe.  By installing it on a new PC or harddrive, you can then use the sync feature to restore all the data.  Because it’s done automatically, there’s no need for tedious copying of files from one location to another.  While I fortunately did not need to restore due to any emergency, I did use this feature to get my data from an old PC to a new one, and found it much less time-consuming.

SugarSync also provides access from your mobile phone to its mobile website, which is m.sugarsync.com.  They have a mobile version of Sugarsync manager. Once you log in, you can see your files and photos online, and you can also choose to import the photos on your phone. If you have a document viewer application, this is yet another way to easily access your files.  The mobile photo management is an area that needs work still. I had two issues with this feature.

Part of the problem is the basic interface; pictures are large, phone upload speeds are not that fast. Therefore, it takes a while; this is not the fault of Sugarsync.  The issue is that there is no message or indication on your phone that this process is taking place.  If you attempt to close Sugarsync, you will get an error message that the process will be canceled. but that’s the extent of the notification.  The first time I tried, I had 4 of 11 pictures transfer.  The second time, they all transferred, but it was at least 20 minutes, if not longer, before it completed. If you need to get pictures from your phone, you’d be better off using your USB connection and whatever your phone-PC management interface is, and then letting your photos sync to Sugarsync that way.

The other issue I had was that it removed the pictures from the phone. I was using one as my background, and I ended up having to download it from Sugarsync to my PC, then use the Blackberry Desktop Manager to put it back on my phone.   They do exist in a cache directory, but that’s a link to the Sugarsync site.  I expected the photos to actually sync, not be deleted.

To Sugarsync’s credit, they were responsive to my questions regarding these issues, and did acknowledge the problems.  According to the engineer with whom I corresponded, a future release will not delete the pictures, and they’re working to improve the interface so as to provide more information during the photo transfer process.

Web Archives is a static storage place. This is for files that you don’t want to sync. I’m currently using this area to store some older files that don’t need synchronization, but that I want to keep.  This lets me free up that space on my hard drive, but I still have access to the files.

So, now that you have your computers synced, what if you’re not home and you need to access your data?  Simply log in to your personal Sugarsync website, and you have access to all of the PCs you’ve synced.

If I click on the Documents folder, I’ll get the file management view, which looks like this:

I can select any or all of the files and choose to zip them, send them, or perform any other actions shown in the menu above. I could create or import an address book to simplify the act of sending files to others.

What I really liked about the online site is the Photo Gallery, which is all the pictures you’ve synced. If, like me, you have your photos in folders for different events, such as your vacation to the Bahamas, then that is now an album. You can share the albums with anyone you choose. If you share an album, you’re asked to enter the email address of the recipients(or use the Address Book to select recipients) . You can write a brief message to be included in the email. The recipient can click on the link in the email and view all of the photos in that shared album. If they try to go anywhere else, they’re asked for a login, so your other data is safe.  This is a great way to share pictures with others.  I’ve had people send me links to online photo album sites, but some of them make you create a login in order to see the pictures, and you have to get your pictures up there to begin with.  Why not let Sugarsync do it for you, and know that you have a backup at the same time?

If you’re looking for a backup solution, what would make you choose Sugarsync over other options? Flexibility, redundancy and security, support for multiple PCs, dynamic syncing, and multiple pricing/storage plans.

Flexibility: Because Sugarsync is available from any computer with internet access, you can always get to your data. You have multiple options for how you’d like to store your data, i.e., as an archive or as dynamically synced files; you can choose to share picture albums with other people; you can maintain copies of your data in multiple places and always have the most recent version.

Redundancy/Security: If you’re going to trust your data to an OSS, it’s important for the OSS to provide physical redundancy of your data. This means multiple copies in multiple physical locations. According to Sugarsync’s site, they provide two redundant data centers to backup all the copies of your data. They use SSL (secure socket layer) encryption for all data transfer, and 128-bit AES encryption once the data is stored on their servers.

Multiple PC Support: Do you have multiple PCs in your house that need to be backed up? Do you have the need to sync files between PCs at different locations? This is a very good option for that situation. I really found it simple to set up on all the PCs I have, and once it was done I didn’t have to do anything.  I could also manage multiple PCs from one interface, which simplified things.

Dynamic Backup: One thing I liked about Sugarsync is that it is a dynamic backup. A home server may backup on a given schedule, but if it backs up at 3 am and your PC crashes at 5 pm, you’ve lost a day’s work. Sugarsync will have synced your files throughout the day, so you’ll have the most recent version of whatever you’ve done.

Multiple Pricing/Storage Options: Sugarsync offers multiple plans to meet your needs. The Starter plan gives you 10 GB of storage for $2.95/month; the other increments are 30, 60, 100, and 250 GB, and range from $4.99/month to $24.99/month.

What are the negatives of this service? Well, the obvious one is transfer speed. The initial syncing can take quite some time if you have a lot of files or a lot of large files, such as pictures, video, etc. The ongoing syncing is virtually instantaneous on my FIOS connection, but my daughter’s PC, with several years worth of pictures of her and her friends, etc., took several hours to fully sync the first time, although it was happening while multiple other computers were connected to the internet. Performing this function at night would have been a better option. If you’re on dial up, however, I would think even the ongoing syncing would be too slow to make this a good solution.

I’d like to see some improvements with the mobile interface, as noted above. They were smart enough to create a very simple mobile site, so it loads quickly, but the big push on their site for the mobile feature was for syncing photos, and that’s just not working well. I would use the file interface, but the photo interface is too slow. I also found that if I left the application open on the phone, as I did while writing this, I would get a message telling me that I didn’t have network coverage, so the interface was closing. Since I usually have all 4 bars on my phone, and have no issues with accessing other web sites, I’m not sure why this seemed to happen so frequently.

Overall, I was very impressed with this service.  With 4 computers in my house, the ability to sync all of them with no intervention from me, other than the initial setup, made this a great solution.  After you’ve installed and configured the Sugarsync Manager on each PC, it’s also easily managed, because you can do it all from one computer.   While I was using for personal use, I can also see it being a good solution for a small business or home business, as it provides an easy means to have offsite, secure backup of your data.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Over the last few years, Mozilla has taken quite a large slice of the internet browser market.  Its community-developed Firefox, is now already in its 3rd version, which has been released today.  Firefox has been praised for its security features, and often declared safer than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer by security experts. The new Firefox boasts, in addition to a comprehensive redesign of its looks and a host of new features, several new security enhancements which promise to make it even more secure.

But Firefox isn’t the only player in the web browser game. Another recent player is Opera. Actually, it’s not new, per se. Several years ago, before Firefox’s breakthrough into the market, Opera was a paid browser. Later, Opera released an ad-supported free version, and then finally released a fully free version, without any advertising whatsoever, in order to try and capture a larger market share. The release of various beta versions of Firefox 3 took most of the attention of the media, however, and the news about the release of the new 9.5 version of Opera was overlooked. Along with an update of its appearance, the addition of several new gadgets and features, and speed optimization, Opera added a security feature which is very similar to one offered by Firefox 3; both of these enhancements will be described later in this article.

So, is Opera a real player in the browser scene? Can it beat the unbeatable? Let’s find out.

Firefox 3 is a major update to the successful Firefox 2. The interface has been redesigned, and even with the default skin it looks pretty good, and has sleek animations. Notable interface updates include: a redesigned Download Manager that includes an information bar in the browser window; the ability to tag bookmarks; the ability to save open tabs for the next session; Add-On download manager (download add-ons without visiting Mozilla’s site); and many more features. Also, it has undergone tweaking to enhance its speed, and Mozilla claims that it’s now twice as fast as Firefox 2 when loading applications like Gmail. However, I didn’t notice any visible improvement.  Major new security features include complex anti-phishing tools – Firefox 3 will hide the content of web pages that are suspected forgeries and warn you when entering pages that distribute malware, using an online database of known sites that was created by Google and StopBadware.org. Also, Firefox 3 gives you easy access to SSL certificates (which are presented in an easy-to-read manner) by clicking near the address bar with your mouse.

Firefox 3 with its new History Search feature, which searches addresses by keywords.

Opera’s new feature list is not as impressive, but it does offer several new features and gadgets, such as the Quick Find, which allows you to search for a website that you have visited over the last few days.  Other new features include the ability to swap links and favorites between your Opera cellphone browser and your PC Opera, and a new browser engine that’s supposed to be much quicker than the old one. Opera also added a major security feature, which is similar to that offered by Firefox: the Fraud & Malware protection uses an online database to find a list of ‘bad sites’ and protect you from going to them. Unlike Firefox, that list is maintained by HauteSecure, which is a professional company, and the database is supported by the user community (description of ‘bad sites’, addition of new entries, etc).

But how do previous versions of Firefox and Opera rank against current versions, in terms of security? You’d be surprised by the results. According to Secunia, as of May 2008, Firefox 2.x.x has 23 security vulnerabilities, out of which 3 remain unfixed. Compared to this, Opera 9.x has 14 security vulnerabilities, with all fixed. Internet Explorer ranks last, with 9 out of 28 vulnerabilities that remain unfixed.

As for performance, previous versions of Firefox were known for their heavy resource usage, especially when operating with many extensions. Load times took literally tens of seconds, and the memory consumption often went above the 100mb mark on my machine. Firefox 3 claims to have improved this, but in fact, I had higher memory consumption than I had in Firefox 2. With 5 open websites (in tabs) and not a lot of extensions, Firefox 3 takes up more than 160mb of memory, which is a significant amount. With the same pages open, however, Opera used only 98mb of memory.

So, Opera proves to be a better performer than Firefox, and it feels faster while loading pages, too. To confirm this, I ran 2 different tests to check the rendering speed of web pages (that is, how fast a browser processes a certain type of code). First, I ran the CSS Benchmark Test by nontroppo. I ran the test 5 times on each browser. Firefox 3 took an average of 269ms to complete the test, while Opera excelled at 178ms average. Internet Explorer came last with 434ms average. Next, I ran the Javascript test by Celtic Kane. Again, I did 5 tests with each browser – Firefox again was second with 303ms, Opera first with 203ms, and Internet Explorer last with a whooping 1931ms, which is almost 2 seconds. On startup, Opera felt a bit faster than Firefox, but that wasn’t too big of a difference.

Opera’s interface, with the new Quick Dial feature.

When it comes to interface, it’s very much a personal choice. Opera doesn’t have community developed extensions, but many extensions that are common on Firefox, such as Adblock, are already built into Opera, which contributes to its speed. I also liked some of Opera’s cool features, such as the Speed Dial feature (when opening a new tab, instead of a blank page you get a choice of 9 of your most favorite pages to choose from), and the built-in IRC client.

In summary, unless you are an extension addict, you should give Opera 9.5 a try. It will surprise you. It’s faster and lighter than Firefox, and promises to be more secure. Unfortunately, unlike Firefox, Opera doesn’t have the huge database of community-made extensions, which is one of its only drawbacks.

Both browsers now have mechanisms that enlist the help of your web browser to prevent a malware infection from known malicious sites, or fraud from known phishing sites. While browsers have offered phishing protection for a while, malware protection is something new.

How does it work?

Attempting to access a site with Firefox 3 that’s known to infect visitors with malware will offer a warning like this:

Accessing a known malware site with Opera 9.5 offers this warning:

The warnings are similar, and both serve to warn you’ve been blocked from a potentially harmful site. They allow you to continue, or return to your default homepage (malware sites will often break the back button functionality).

Opera partnered with Netcraft as the source of their advisories. Firefox partnered with Google (via stopbadware.org) for their advisories. One nice feature of Firefox’s warning is that you can get more technical information about the advisory by clicking the “Why was this site blocked?” button. An example below:

Warnings when attempting to access known phishing sites are very similar in both browsers.

Firefox 3 phishing warning:

Opera 9.5 phishing warning:

Again, both browser use a different source for their advisories, but display similar results. Except, in this case Firefox 3 does not display specific technical information about the site being blocked, but instead offers general information about phishing protection. While Firefox provides a distinctive warning for malware and phishing sites, in my tests Opera’s warnings were identical except for the URL.

How well do they work?

Through our work with malware removal in the forums, we have access to a lot of bad sites. My non-scientific testing involved trying to visit sites known to install the Zlob trojan, and known phishing sites. 

Overall, I preferred Firefox’s solution better. The warnings were more obvious and offered more information. They also offered different warnings for malware and phishing sites. Opera fared better in blocking recent phishing sites in my test, but both performed horribly in blocking recent zlob trojan sites. In fact, I had to look hard to find sites that they would block. Much like virus and anti-malware scanners, the protection offered by these browsers is only as good as their databases.

While I commend browsers for recognizing that web sites have become an increasing source of fraudulent information and malware, modern infections and phishing groups change their URLs so often that I’m afraid their protection is more fluff than substance.

What’s your experience?

If you use one of these browsers, and have had a site blocked site, please tell us about your experience in the comments. Do you think browsers should offer protection against known malware sites?

Update: more comparisons between Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5.

Today the Live Search blog announced Search and Give.

After you sign in you simply select a charity or school. They will receive a donation of one penny each time you search the web. According to my web history, I’ve totaled 20,039 searches this year. Had my searches been through Search and Give, my charity or school would have received $200. Not bad!

http://www.searchandgive.com/