July 2015

Do you know which programs and processes access the Internet on your computer and why? While it is easy enough to tell for programs that won't really work without Internet, web browsers for instance, it is often the case that the sheer number of system processes and programs that connect to the Internet is surprising.

Most online password managers require that Internet servers are being used for most of its functionality. Wile that is certainly beneficial at times, to access the password vault from any device and location for instance, it should raise security concerns as well.

Considering that the password database is stored on remote servers that users don't have full control over, it makes the database vulnerable to attacks that a local solution is protected from.

Mozilla introduced Garbage Collection in Firefox 38 that improves memory management of the web browser as part of the organization's ongoing effort to bring memory usage of the browser down and optimize it as best as possible for all use cases.

Classic Theme Restorer is a popular extension for the Firefox browser. Initially created to undo the Australis redesign of the web browser, it is now offering settings and switches for a variety of elements and features of the browser.

When you open the options the extension ships with, you get a massive list of preferences sorted into groups.

NoScript is a powerful security add-on for the Firefox web browser that blocks the execution of scripts on websites and includes additional security features that improve protection on the Internet.

NoScript users may whitelist sites temporary or permanently, and the difference between the two is that temporary permissions are revoked while permanent remain across sessions.

Mozilla published a blog post about a week ago on the official blog of the organization which was entitled "what to look forward to from Firefox". The article was rather disappointing from a user point of view as it revealed nothing but fluff at that point.

Thousands of sites on the Internet offer free wallpapers which make dedicated wallpaper programs for operating system something that most users don't require to find and set new wallpapers on their systems.

Wallpapers Bot is a free program for Windows that offers access to more than 30,000 different wallpapers currently that you can browse, download and set using the application.

Sumo, the Software Update Monitor, is a popular program when it comes to running automatic checks for software that is out of date on machines running a flavor of Microsoft Windows.

We mentioned it several times already on ComTek4u, for instance when we compared software updaters to find out which one is providing the best functionality.

Sumo 4 has just been released which is a major release according to the program's author.

As a Firefox user, you known probably that you can display the browsing history or bookmarks in a sidebar in the web browser.

This is a built-in feature of Firefox which you can quickly activate with the Ctrl-H and Ctrl-B shortcuts.

It is not something that new Firefox users necessarily know of thanks to the decision to hide the menu bar at the top by default which displays the option in the menu as well as the shortcuts you can use.

WhoisCL is a free portable program for Windows that you run from the command line to look up Whois information of domains.

While you can use web services for that as well, you may find the program useful in some situations, for instance when services go down or when they require that you fill out a captcha before information are displayed.

The program supports a large number of whois servers that it queries for information. You can check out the full list here on this page on the Nirsoft website.