Privacy & Security:Network (Web host) security has become a very
Privacy & Security:Network security has become a very big issue foreverybody connected to the Internet. Although the typically nontechnicalmedia often sensationalizes this issue, security should still be a considera- tion for all users of the Internet. Every time you send an e-mail or click aWeb site, you re exchanging information across a network. Although youdon t need to lose sleep over it, you should be conscious of every requestyou make on the Internet. Even though completely securing your informa- tion is impossible, you can feel reasonably confident that your exchangedInternet information is safe because of the default options that Mozilla hasprovided. See the Popup Windows portion in particular for how to keepthese annoyances from cluttering your screen! Advanced: This category provides options that affect the entire Mozillauser environment. Options include whether you want to enable Javaapplets or XSLT Web pages. This area is also where you can flush yourcache your browser s memory of what you ve been doing and whereyou ve been, but not your bookmarks and establish your proxy set- tings in the Cache and Proxies submenus. (If you ve never before beentold to use a proxy, you don t need one.) Them dad-gum browser plug-insDo you ever get irritated at those Web sites that insist that you download aplug-in,or additional piece of software, just to view the site? The differencebetween a plug-in and an external program is this: A plug-in displays the resultsin the browser, and an external program runs outside the browser. Althoughthese plug-ins are annoying if you re just looking for some basic information, they can provide some pretty cool stuff, such as streaming video and musicthrough your Web browser. Plug-ins provide browser capability extensions,which are programs that inter- face with the browser to provide nonstandard features, such as sound andvideo. The digital age is still in its infancy, so the industry hasn t yet adoptedthese multimedia formats as standard. In turn, the developers have chosennot to build support into the Mozilla browser. Rather, the plug-in architectureenables software developers to innovate without requiring the supportingbrowser to know what to do with newly emerging media formats. Chapter 12 explains how to add the popular plug-ins (like Macromedia s Flashplug-in) to your system for each of the distributions covered in this book. You may also be interested in is helper applications, (programs Mozillalaunches to handle particular types of contents, like PDF viewers) which youcan configure in the Preferences dialog box by opening up the Navigatormenu and choosing Helper Applications. This section lets you tell Mozilla172Part II:Internet Now!