MOZILLA REVEALS PLUG-INS THAT SLOW DOWN FIREFOX

Mozilla has put a great deal of time and effort working speed improvements into the latest version of its Firefox browser but sometimes all that hard work is for naught due to slow add-ons from third-party developers. In an effort to raise awareness and to push developers to optimize their plugins, perhaps, Mozilla has published a list of the add-ons that slow down Firefox the most. Among the worst offenders are FoxLingo, AniWeather, FoxyTunes and Xmarks Sync. In a bit of irony, an add-on called “FastestFox” that is supposed to speed up browsing by simplifying repetitive tasks is No.8 on Mozilla’s list. If you’ve been experiencing some slowness in Firefox and are wondering which add-ons might be the culprit, click here for Mozilla’s complete list.

MOZILLA BLOCKS SKYPE TOOLBAR BY DEFAULT DUE TO CRASHING

Mozilla has added the Skype toolbar to the blocklist it uses to block add-ons by default. The Skype toolbar gets automatically installed when the user installs or updates the main Skype application.

The issue with the Skype Toolbar for Mozilla is the fact it is creating two rather large problems in the Firefox browser. The first is that it makes Firefox crash a lot as the Mozilla blog entry about the toolbar explains:

The current shipping version of the Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week.

The second problem is that is causes a major performance hit for the browser:

The methods it uses to detect and re-render phone numbers can make DOM manipulation up to 300 times slower, which drastically affects the page rendering times of a large percentage of web content served today (plain English: to the user, it appears that Firefox is slow loading web pages).

Mozilla does not want users to experience slow loading web pages and have a browser that crashes unexpectedly. So it has been decided the Skype Toolbar is being blocked by default for the time being.

Mozilla has made this a "soft" block, so users can still install the toolbar by overriding the block. Mozilla and Skype are talking to work out a resolution to the issues.

SPRINT ADDING NEW ADD-ON DATA CHARGE TO ALL SMARTPHONES ACTIVATED AFTER JANUARY 30

In a vaguely worded press release, Sprint announced that it would “increase its postpaid rates by applying a $10 per month Premium Data add-on charge to activations of smartphones beginning Jan. 30.” The company notes that smartphone users, on average, use “10 times more data than users of traditional feature phones.” As the press release reads:

Sprint defines smartphones as devices with robust operating systems that deliver a rich wireless experience by bringing the full function of mobile applications and programs to life, including Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, and the Instinct family of devices. The Premium Data add-on charge previously applied to HTC EVO 4G, HTC EVO Shift 4G and Samsung Epic 4G devices.

Sprint,who until recently has been bleeding subscribers, will not be making many friends with this move.