Link Safe

                 Uncover new ways to make web browsing easier and safer on your PC or tablet

Do you ever let colleagues and acquaintances use your phone or tablet to check something online? If so, you could be revealing passwords, browsing history and even your most private emails. In the latest version of Firefox for Android (https://play.google.com/Firefox) you can quickly launch a Guest Session that keeps all your personal browsing data private when someone else uses your device. Open the Firefox app, tap the options icon in the top-right corner, select Tools, New Guest Session then Continue. Th is creates a completely new browsing session, while hiding all your information and login details.

It can be tiresome flicking back to Facebook for updates and notifications while you’re browsing other sites. The handy Facebook Messenger add-on for Firefox solves this problem. On your desktop PC, go to https://www.facebook.com/Firefox in Firefox and click Turn On. A Facebook Messenger bar will appear on the right. If asked, log in using your Facebook details. Regardless of which website you’re on you’ll be able to chat with friends and see any notifications. To turn it off , go to Firefox, Options, Add-ons, Services and click Disable or Remove next to Facebook Messenger.

Annoyingly, Firefox for Android doesn’t let you set a custom homepage, so you’re stuck with the default one. Th ankfully, there’s an add-on called Home Changer that lets you set whatever homepage you want. In Firefox for Android go to https://addons.mozilla.org/Home-changer/, tap ‘Add to Firefox’, then Install. Th en tap the options icon, Tools, Add-ons, Home Changer and, next to Preferences, tap Open. Enter the web address of the site you want as your home page (including http://) in the text box. Now, when you start Firefox the first tab will display your homepage.

The latest version of Firefox for Android can make long articles easier to read on your phone and tablet. Navigate to a story, then tap the small icon in the address bar that resembles an open book to get rid of all the clutter on the webpage. You can change the font size by tapping the Aa icon at the bottom of the screen. Tap Dark to change the page to white text on a black background; tap Light to make it dark text on a light background.

Firefox keeps a record of just about everything you do, so you can find out some interesting facts about your browsing habits. Type about:healthreport into the address bar and press Enter. You can see the amount of time you’ve spent using Firefox that month, how many times it’s crashed and the number of add-ons you’ve enabled and disabled. Th ere’s also a graph that shows you how long it took Firefox to start up each time you opened it. If you’re not happy with Firefox collecting this information, click the green button in the top-right corner next to Data Sharing ON to turn the feature off . Health Report is also available on Firefox for Android – tap options, Mozilla then ‘View my Health Report’.

Th e new versions of Firefox are always released for testing before everyone gets their hands on it. You can get new versions of Firefox for desktop and Android early by downloading the beta editions.

Even though the software is still being tested and may contain some bugs, it’s still perfectly safe to download and use beta versions of Firefox. Go to www.mozilla.org/firefox/ beta to download the desktop PC version. To download Firefox Beta on Android visit https://play.google.com/Firefox_beta. The Android beta has an improved password manager, while the desktop beta now asks your permission before running any browser plug-ins-such as Java-on webpages.