Extending your browser Part I

A web browser, "out of the box" does quite a lot, but there are always some cool little extras that it would be nice if it did do, too.

Here are 2 add-ons that apply to both IE and Mozilla.

1) The Stumbleupon toolbar. This works on the idea that most people only visit a relatively small number of web sites, often on the recommendation of a friend. This tool bar suggests sites to you, and allows you to rate that sites that you visit - in time, the suggestions that it makes become more and more appropriate to your profile. (I find that I want to go back to around 70-80% of the sites that it kicks up!).
To get it, you go to the website, and click on the link - as simple as that, for both IE and Mozilla.

2) The Google toolbar. This adds all the functionality of the Google search engine to your toolbar, and then some. Extra features include News searches, pop-up blocking(!), search-within-page and site, search-term-highlighting, and integration with Blogger.com (this site).

You will need to download an exe file (a program that installs the toolbar) for IE. For mozilla, go to mozdev (The mozilla developer site), and select the link installation. This will take you to the page with the different versions on it. Select one, and choose install. This will install automatically, and become available when you restart Mozilla.

Web Browsers

Browsers are the pieces of software that we use for looking at web pages. (Point of order here: Web Pages, or the World Wide Web (www), represent only a part of what is know as the internet, which also covers email, usenet etc).

The first real browser was called Mozaic - this dates back to the stone age of Computing, as was a very basic, text based browser, suitable for viewing text based documents (The WWW was initially envisiaged as a way to let academics share papers, reports and other resources).

Mozaic morphed into Netscape, who produced a browser called Navigator, whilst Microsoft came from behind to produce Internet Explorer (IE) (A version of which we use at school). This triggered what became known as the Browser Wars - Netscape had the better product, but Microsoft had a dominant position in the market, and started giving away a copy of Internet Explorer free with every copy of Windows. This eventually went to court (but far too late for Netscape, who's product, despite being superior, became a minority browser).

Fast forward a few years: Internet Explorer is generally the default web browser, but some people aren't too happy. Microsoft has a habit of implementing open standards differently from everyone else - the upshot of this is that a page written for IE might not display properly in another browser.

Netscape decided to take a revolutionary step. They released the source code (i.e. the programming code that makes a programme) to the Open Source Community. (Open Source is a term given to software that is developed in a more open, non secretive enviroment, leading to faster development times, as anyone at all can join in, if they are good enough!)

A Community project called Mozilla was set up on the internet to manage the development of a new rendering engine code named Gecko (The bit of the browser that decides how a page is going ot be displayed).

After a year or so, Gecko was up and running: Because it was an open source project, Netwcape decided that they would use the Gecko engine in their newest version of Navigator (a significant improvement). Mozilla the web broswer was released into the wild, and feedback started to flow in.

Mozilla has now gone through a series of evolutions, and is now a fully featured, extendible and easy to use browser, ready to compete (mostly) with IE. Netscape has now been taken over by AOL Time Warner (There are even rumours that they will replace AOL's rendering engine (currently based on IE) with a Gecko variant). Safari, the Apple browser uses the Gecko engine.

The other main competitor to IE at the moment is called Opera. This is a versatile, feature rich browser, that is available in 2 forms - a free, ad-sponsored download, and a paid for, ad-free version.

Computer security

More and more, these days, it is neccessary for people to be very careful about what their computers are up to when they are not looking. Viruses, trojan horses, spy or mal ware, and scumware all do things that you might not want. This discussion is aimed at providing you with tools to prevent some of this happening.

First and foremost, it is essential that you have an anti-virus package running on your PC.
Examples of this are from Norton, or Sophos (which we use at school), or Kaspersky Labs. You can also obtain some freely available anti-virus packages, e.g. AntiVir personal edition However, you must ensure that you update it regularly, as there is little, if any, point in running an outdated virus scanner.

The next step is setting up a firewall. This is a piece of software that acts as a sentry to your PC, checking what software can access the internet, and what software can access your computer. This is especially important as Trojan Horse software can easily be installed by mistake, allowing hackers to route exploits through your computer!

Good, free firewalls are readily available: try Zone Alarm, or Kerio Personal Firewall

Finally, Spyware, Malware or Scumware. To quote Patrick Kolla:

"Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that [some] common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. "


The two main free spyware scanners are Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

As an example, Kazaa is well known for logging and sending back information on your file sharing habits! (However, Kazaa Lite does not).

Useful Links

Search more effectively: Use the Google advanced settings, or visit Google labs to find out some of the more interesting things that youcan do with asearch engine.
Check out the Stumbleupon toolbar, to find pages related to your user profile

Welcome to my Blog.

My aim for this Blog is to use it as a place to muse, post resources, links, ideas and other stuff for my students to use.

I won't be suggesting that you check out everything that I put up here, however, since I do tend to be a bit nerdy about IT, I am planning on using this to provide for you a feel of developments within the IT industry, and pointers towards interesting, curious or just plain wierd facts!