Frequent Firefox Updates.. (Solution Use Firefox ESR)

Are you bugged with Firefox update just happening too frequent. I am one of the people who actually uses the option that notify me for updates and I update software when I am not really not working up on something.. I believe in minimalistic things as far Operating systems and Application are concerned. Operating Systems and Applications are there to help you do the work - be it booking a movie ticket/Paying a bill or a full fledged coding work. I belong in second category.

Things important to me:
1. All security patches updated for browser.
2. A Working fast browser

Not important to me. (or things that don't work for me) :
1.  Bloating of software with new features - none of them i would use.
(I actually cant remember any major feature given by Firefox that adds to my productivity - its same browser capabilities that i need)
2. Continuous bloating of the software when running in memory. as of now firefox when used with 1 new tab still uses 150mb of active paged memory.


Other day i found solution to this.
Firefox ESR. [Extended Support Release]

Firefox maintains multiple release channels - Beta update, Release channel and this is one another channel ESR. This channel receives security updates and nothing else for 9 iterations of Firefox release channel updates.

eg. Firefox 17.0 will continue with series 17.0.1(includes security updates in Firefox 18) and .2(includes security updates in Firefox 19) and so on with finally upgrading to Firefox 24.0.2(which would be equivalent to Firefox 26 security updates). Now this numbering can change if there are out of turn important fixes but still these won't be botheration as you can choose when to install and these security updates i have seen to be in Kilobytes at max.

Link to download Firefox ESR in your language/platform here.

You would be surprised to see that this is part of Firefox charter to not offer this release channel directly from there home pages. see last point in here :)


Let me know if this helps or you have found other solutions to this.

Fed up of web Advertisements! Block them all.

Really fed up of Advertisements, go to any forums, or news site and you will find whole lot of ads, even the Yahoo mail has an irritating flash ads all the time coming, and similar is the case with Hotmail and aol. Google itself has adsense service and other sites like Zedo, yahoo and doubleclick do provide web advertising services.... which actually pay the owner of site too... I don't say that its bad that site owners are getting money, But many a times it becomes irritating to read the real stuff. I have seen sites which had over 13 ads on a single page. Moreover these ads can eat up bandwidth who have limited broadband bandwidth connection( ie 1GB per month etc.)

Mozilla Firefox provides with a very good solution for it. Adblock plugin which can be downloaded here can block a whole lot of ad service pulled ads. After installation it shows up in bottom-right corner in firefox. Though initially there are no settings and you have to build your own filters over time, But here is the filter file that has been updated as I browse over Internet. right click the bottom right corner adblock icon and open preferences, and then adblock options -> import filter upload the filter file and you are done.

Disclaimer: this will block the google adsense and you won't see them, if you like them, you can remove that from preferences :).

Finally your eyes are spared from seeing all the crappy ads.