There has been a pretty cool update to Firefox in the past 24 hours.  If a plugin crashes or freezes, it will no longer affect the rest of your browser.  You will be able to reload the page, restart the plugin and try again.

So, the next time Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins give you trouble, Firefox has you taken care of.  Say your watching a video or playing a flash game in the browser, and the plugin crashes – rather than taking the whole browser down with it – you simply just refresh the webpage.

Here is a little more information from Mozilla:

Mozilla recognizes that third-party plugins provide important functionality in many of today’s websites. At the same time, plugins can lead to problems for users as they browse. With the ability to automatically alert users when they have out of date plugins, and now crash protection, Firefox 3.6.4 allows users to experience all the content they love without any of the hassles.

To get this new update, if it hasn’t downloaded already, just go to Help in your menu bar and then “Check for Updates”.  A more secure and stable browsing platform is coming your way.  Who doesn’t like that?

There will be no more updates for Firefox 3.0.x anymore, so if you haven’t upgraded to Firefox 3.6 – you had better hurry up and do so.  That was the official word from Mozilla on the topic in a recent meeting.

Now this might disappoint a handful of users out there, but it is nice to see Mozilla being more future focused – looking to get upgrades and updates out faster to the most recent Firefox versions.

Firefox 3.0 will be looked back upon with great admiration.  It was the version of Firefox that set the Guinness world record for downloads in a 24-hour period, after all.

So now the question is – are you still using Firefox 3.0, and if the answer is yes, let us know “why” in the comments.

The Google Reader Watcher add-on is handy to have, because it will check your Google Reader for unread new posts.  You can use this to keep track of how many stories you have yet to read.  Checking Google Reader with this add-on is much more practical than visiting the Google Reader web site several times a day, for those RSS feed addicts out there like me.

Next, I would have to say the Better GReader add-on for Firefox is fantastic for Google Reader fans.

This add-on for Firefox bundles several great Greasemonkey user scripts into one extension.  Better GReader adds useful extra features to Google Reader, like feed favicons, inline article previews, and unread counts in your browser tab.

Want to integrate Google Reader into the Gmail inbox?  If so, check out the Integrated Gmail add-on for Firefox.  It gives you Gmail, Google Calander, Googler Reader, and more all from within your Gmail account.  The most recent revision added:

• Significant Performance Boosts and Reduced Resource Dependence
• (Beta) Google Wave Support
• Native Google Tasks Support
• Schedule Once Meeting Scheduler Integration
• Support for Firefox 3.6

Last but not least, we have Google Redesigned.

Tired of how Google Reader looks?  Want to give it a massive redesign?  This add-on for Firefox gives you a complete redesign of all Google’s most popular services (including Google Reader).

Now, let me know your favorite Firefox extension to use in conjunction with Google Reader.  Is it one of these I mentioned, or do you have another favorite I have yet to check out?  Let me know in the comments.

Also, remember to subscribe to Firefox Facts in Google Reader – cause you’d hate to miss another great collection of tips like this one!

Need help watching your feed subscriptions in Google Reader? 

The Google Reader Watcher add-on for Firefox is here to help.  With this extension, you can be instantly notified when your favorite new source, blog or any other web site with an RSS feed is updated and ready to read in Google Reader. 

There is not a lot to  be said here.  Google Reader Watch (yes, the name does sound like it is having an argument with itself) simply checks your Google Reader for unread feeds and if you have, the plugin will display them on your browser’s status bar.

Now I usually only check my own Google Reader account once or twice a day.  However, if you want to stay on top of the latest updates this extension gets that job done.  For example, you could easily subscribe the your favorite Firefox blog, the greatest podcast about web hosting, and some guy named Mitch’s techie blog and find out all three were updated this morning.

You can pick up the Google Reader Watcher from the Firefox Add-ons web site.

Are you a webmail addict? 

Maybe you share a browser between family members, and you both use different webmail clients?  No matter the reason you need to use it – one thing is for sure.  This plugin is one of the best to make sure you stay up to date with your latest e-mails.

You can also use multiple accounts in a same host. The Web Mail Notifier currently supports:

• mail.google.com(Gmail & Google Apps)
• mail.yahoo.com (yahoo.com, ymail.com, rocketmail.com, yahoo.co.jp)
• mail.live.com(hotmail.com, msn.com, live.com)
• www.daum.net(hanmail)
• www.naver.com
• www.nate.com(nate.com, empas.com)
• and more!

You can pick up the Web Mail Notifier add-on on the Mozilla Add-ons web site.  By far one of the best webmail tools for Firefox.

You get instant access to recently closed tabs, personalized suggested sites and even shortcuts to your desktop applications. 

The most recent release also comes with 7 built in themes, so you have a few more ways to customize it to suit your needs.

There is no reason why, these days, your new tab should be empty and bland.  With the New Tab King add-on for Firefox, you can make the new tab page and the Firefox browser even more functional than it was before.

Silvermel

Gradient iCool (Blue)

Noia 2.0 (eXtreme)

NASA Night Launch

Vista-aero

myFireFox

Chromifox Extreme

MidnightFox

Phoenity Reborn

Kempelton

Has your favorite Firefox theme been updated yet?  If so, let me know what it is and how much you like it in the comments.  If not, then it might be time to write a very polite, yet persuasive, e-mail to your favorite theme author to ask him or her to roll out an update.

This year I hesitated to download any of the release candidates, because they always seem to spoil some of the surprise.  So, like many of you, I am anxiously awaiting Mozilla’s web site update that says Firefox 3.5 is ready for download.

9:43 AM CST – Firefox 3.5 is out via Mozilla’s web site!

Go here to download.  Be sure to add a comment and leave us your first impressions of the newest version of Firefox!

8:16 AM CST – Looks like we figured out a hacked-up way to get Firefox 3.5 from Mozilla.  Go to this address:

• http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-US

FileHippo.com also boasts about having Firefox 3.5 ready for download already too.  Why/how is Mozilla letting all these other places jump the gun and beat them to the punch?

7:00 AM CST – Softpedia is claiming to have Firefox 3.5 Final, haven’t tested it yet.  Also, even the president of Brazil seems to be getting into the Firefox 3.5 release party mood:

6:07 AM CST – Nothing much to be seen yet.  I saw on Lifehacker they do have a confirmation that Firefox 3.5 will be released today.  Mashable also has a nice post on what’s on tap for Firefox in 2010 that should hold you over.

More news coming soon!  Keep checking back for more!

Might also be a good time to remind you to subscribe to Firefox Facts via our RSS feed.  Join the over 6,000 happy followers of the feed for free.  You can subscribe by e-mail too!

Keep coming back throughout the day, and we’ll have more coverage that you can shake a stick at.  If you have any well wishes for the Mozilla team, Firefox 3.5 feedback or anything else you wish to share – be sure to leave a comment and join the party!

Mozilla Minefield: Yes, It’s Fast. Really Fast.

There’s been some talk around the blogosphere about Mozilla Minefield, the superfast and super cool-sounding browser by the folks who bring us Firefox. I decided to give it a whirl and see what it was really about.

Drag & DropZones Turns Right-Clicks into Gestures

Drag & DropZones is a clever interface tweak that allows you to perform nearly any action or search by dragging any page element—a link, email address, image, or page itself—onto a transparent grid you set up.

Turning Bookmarklets into Commands for Ubiquity

The main problem with bookmarklets is that they don’t provide a scalable solution for accessing their functionality. You can only have so many buttons on the toolbar before they become an unusable outbreak of pimples that clutter the browser’s interface.  With a new utility function in Ubiquity, it’s now trivial to turn any bookmarklet into a Ubiquity command.

(Firefox Add-on Developers) It’s that time again…

With the release of the first beta of Firefox 3.1 today comes everyone’s favorite release-time festivity: extension compatibility updates!  If you’re an extension developer using a maxVersion of 3.0.* or less, please test your extension before declaring 3.1b1 compatibility. Some of the changes for extension developers are listed here.

Mozilla releases Mobile Firefox Alpha – For Mac, Windows and Linux?

Mozilla has released the first Alpha version of Fennec, the mobile web browser which currently runs on the Nokia N810 internet tablet, and which will soon run on Windows Mobile. Fennec is just a code name. Eventually the browser will probably be called something like Firefox Mobile. And there’s a good reason for that. If you can view web content in Firefox, you can pretty much view it in Fennec.

Here are the benchmarks thus far:

Be sure to check out Brendan’s Roadmap Updates for more.  Also here are a few handy links from John Resig on the testing:

• SunSpider, 1.83x faster (released by the WebKit team)
• SunSpider ubench, 22.5x faster (released by the WebKit team for testing Squirrelfish)
• Image Manipulation Demo, 6.46x faster (Change the contrast and brightness of images dynamically)
• Matrix Manipulation, 6.26x faster (with the Sylvester JavaScript library)

So the big question is, will Firefox be able to make Firefox 3.1 even faster in the area of JavaScript?  If you have the nightly build of Firefox 3.1 installed, you can turn TraceMonkey on by going to about:config and then toggle the javascript.options.jit.content setting from false to true.  For the rest of us out there though, this is just one more surprise to look forward to once Firefox 3.1 gets rolled out to the public.

For more info, be sure to check out Firefox 3.1 to Get More JavaScript Speed Optimizations – as the CyberNet team had done a good in-depth look into this and has done the best job at making it make sense to everybody.