firefox

Recently, when I tried to buy hosting space from Godaddy, I landed up in a page stating, “There was a problem authorizing your credit. Please verify your payment information or use an alternate form of payment.” after I provided my credit card information.

There was no further information on the reason this could have happened. I have been using the same card on GoDaddy and have made at least 10 purchases and my credit limit was still more than $800.

I googled this issue and found that similar issues have happened with people using paypal but not credit card. Anyone who has had similar issues please let me know.

Update: After five interactions with various GoDaddy support engineers none was able to help me out. Instead they mentioned that my credit card had an issue and to get in touch with my bank. [HSBC]

Guess what? It turned out that the issue was a Firefox issue. I used IE and the transaction completed smoothly. Please try using IE. I still love Firefox though !!

Google wants to get a larger pie on the browser market too with its Google Chrome or to say Google is getting greedier day by day. Remember once Google stated that it would not do anything to bring down Mozilla? Remember how it copied and used most of the successful open source components and codes that Mozilla used? Remember how Google promoted Chrome as an affiliate program until quite recently? Now its just doing the opposite. It just wants to move ahead in position with Mozilla and take up its market share.

Speaking to The Times, Google’s Vice President for Product Management, Sundar Pichai mentioned that Google Chrome would come out of its Beta cloud early next year. And not just that, he has plans to promote Google Chrome as a preinstalled product on computers as how Microsoft is promoting its Internet Explorer and its Live Search on HP systems worldwide.

Speaking to Murad Ahmed, he further mentioned, “We will probably do distribution deals,” he said, adding, “we could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed.”

On questions to how Google is planning to market it, he mentioned, “We will throw our weight behind it. We’ve been conservative because it’s still in beta, but once we get it out of beta we will work hard at getting the word out, promoting to users, and marketing will be a part of that.”

The new Safari 3.2 now has the most wanted protection on its browser. The phishing protection would help avoid fraudulent phishing websites and better identify online businesses. The version is available for both Mac and Windows users.

Though search engines like Google have been reporting fraudulent phishing sites and alerting with a window before you access the website, browsers have also been actively participating in fighting fraud websites through various updates. Safari badly needed security features and the phishing protection is a welcome update.

Safari also boasts that it can load pages up to 1.9 times faster than what an Internet Explorer 7 can and 1.7 times faster than a Firefox 2. Safari also claims that it can execute JavaScript 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and in Firefox 2 upto 4 times faster.

After Google betraying Firefox with its Google Chrome, there is some good news for Firefox community. Firefox user base has increase during October having 20% of the browser market share. This would mean out of every 10 internet users, two use Firefox. This is a great achievement and a remarkable milestone.

A recent report by hitslink states that, Firefox usage share has topped 20% on two different weeks during October.

Week of Firefox Share
10/05/08 20.00%
10/12/08 19.90%
10/19/08 19.89%
10/26/08 20.06%

With Google Chromes market share still at 0.74% and Microsoft Internet Explorer ruling at 71.27%, Firefox has emerged as the second closest competitor.

The new Firefox is impressive, fast, simple and user friendly. You just get addicted to it. You just love it and then Internet Explorer just becomes a thing to avoid. The new Mozilla Firefox 3 has:

1. One-click bookmarking to search and organize your websites quickly
2. Instant Web ID to prevent online scams, unsafe net transactions and different kinds of forgeries
3. Full zooming feature
4. Smart location bar to find your favorite sties by just entering a term

The product highlights include:
1. Anti-Malware
2. Parental Controls
3. Anti-Virus Software
4. Cool Add-ons
5. Anti-Phishing
6. Password Manager
7. Clear Private Data
8. Customized Security Settings
9. Automated Update
10. Pop-Up Blocker

However, there are serious threats to its growing popularity as Google is coming up with high marketing plans for its own browser Google Chrome. Google once which promoted Mozilla Firefox is now a serious competitor and wishes to replace Firefox with Chrome in the current popularity rankings.

Firefix – Mozilla Firefox Addon

Firefix is an Addon from Mozilla for Mozilla Firefox browser which can learn and correct misspelled web addresses typed in your address bar. Your Mozilla Firefox browser version should be 0.8 or more.

The new Mozilla Firefox 3 has:

1. One click bookmarking to search and organize your websites quickly
2. Instant Web ID to prevent online scams, unsafe net transactions and different kinds of forgeries
3. Full zooming feature
4. Smart location bar to find your favorite sties by just entering a term

Yes, this is true. Google Inc., the search giant has planed to release a new browser called Chrome today. This would be a serious treat to Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Google has intensified its battle against Microsoft as the new IE8 can block ads from Google. The beta version of Chrome will be released to more than 100 countries today. The Google browser is expected to be faster and safer than Internet Explorer.

Google stated, “On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go,” in one of its blogs yesterday.

The beta release would be available initially only for Windows users. However, Google has planed to release for Mac and Linux. “This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust” said Google.

Google Chrome would be in direct competition to Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.0. Both the browsers have brought in many updates and enhancements to their browsers.

Internet Explorer 8.0 also has the functionality to browse the web without being traced or tracked down.This is a serious threat to Google as Google uses the tracked down information to display related advertisements.

Google controls the internet search by over 75%. However, Microsoft dominates Internet browser industry by 75%. This move by Google is considered a head-on collision with Microsoft.

The smaller browsers or the less popular browsers like Opera and Apple’s Safari would face extinction with this release.

However, it is not assured that all Google brands will succeed. There is a possibility that Internet Explorer may still dominate browsing and Google might have popularity similar to Firefox.