It is safe to say that every company uses some form of Web browser. One of the most popular amongst all users is Firefox. It is particularly popular with businesses because it is free, and offers a incredibly wide variety of useful features, including plugins and add-ons. With the large amount of add-ons available, it can be a chore to pick the most useful. That’s where we come in.

At first look, Firefox is a fairly simple browser. Where it really shines though, is in the wealth of add-ons available for all users. If you were to compare different users’ browsers, it is highly doubtful they would look the same. There are some useful add-ons for small business users that can help make your life easier. Here are our top five:

Make Add-ons Compatible With New Versions of Firefox Firefox is on an aggressive update schedule. It feels like only a few weeks pass in between each new rollout, and this can pose a problem if the developers of the add-ons don’t keep their add-ons up to date. To solve this, install the Add-On Compatibility Reporter. This useful add-on will disable version checking, allowing the add-ons to continue working. If you have an add-on that won’t work, you can send a report to the developer. It is recommended that this is one of the first add-ons you install.

Speed Dial Speed Dial is an add-on that allows you to quickly access your favorite, or most visited sites. You set your bookmarks up to show via Speed Dial, which will show current thumbnails of the website. From there you can click on the thumbnail to go to the website. This is particularly useful if you have pages you visit on a regular basis and wish to navigate to them quickly.

OutWit Docs This add-on is for those managers who have a ton of documents on their computer and want to quickly find one without closing or minimizing Firefox. Think of having a version of Google for your docs - you enter a query into the search bar, and up comes the results with thumbnails so you can easily pick and open the document you were looking for.

Google Global An interesting add-on that allows you to see where your website, or any website for that matter, will show up according to the local Google page rankings. This is great for quickly viewing your presence in other regions or countries. However, this add-on will only work when on a Google search results page.

Screengrab If you are preparing a presentation or need to take a screenshot it can be a bit of a chore, especially on a Mac. With Screengrab you can take a screenshot of just the visible part of the browser or the whole page. This will save time from having to take multiple screenshots and then stitching the images together to gain one image.

These five apps are just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more on the Firefox Add-ons page. If you would like to know more about Firefox or other Web browsers, please contact us.

Many companies take security very seriously. The security of a company's technology has become major news in the past few years, with numerous companies having data exposed. Recently, the tides turned slightly — Google was caught bypassing the security settings of Safari, the default browser used by Apple’s products.

As many news sources are reporting, Google was discovered to have bypassed the security settings of Apple’s default browser, Safari. If you are to believe the many news articles, what Google has done is a big issue. But what did Google actually do, and how does this affect your business?

What Did Google Do? Google was caught using software to trick Safari’s security settings into allowing third-party cookies. The cookies placed by Google were used to track users’ internet behavior with the idea of providing personalized ads targeted to the users. Google stressed that no personal data was recorded.

Why would Google do this? Safari is set up to block all third-party cookies — cookies usually used by advertisers placed on a user’s hard drive that don’t have the same URL the user is looking at. Since the majority of Google’s ad services don’t operate under the Google URL, Google needs to use third-party cookies to track users. In other browsers, when a user signs into a Google Account, third-party cookies used by Google’s ad services are automatically placed. With Safari, the cookies are automatically blocked.

To get around the established security, Google took advantage of a known loophole found in 2010 by putting a form in some pages that tricked Safari into thinking the user had agreed to let Google’s Ad services track them.

What Does this Mean to Us? In all honesty, not very much. Google has said that they are removing the forms from the websites and cookies from the browsers. Apple has said they are working to stop all third party cookies, but no updates have been released as of March 1.

What Can We Do? To ensure that third party cookies are blocked in Safari, go to:

1. Safari - Preferences, or hit "Command" + ","
2. Select Privacy
3. Select which level of cookies you would like to block

You can also set your browser to never allow cookies. The downside to this is you will find yourself having to log into a site each time you go to it in a new window. Another strategy is to clear your cookies regularly. In the same tab you set your cookie preferences, select: Remove All Website Data

If you would like to learn more about protecting your organization, or if you have questions, please contact us.

For those of you using Google Mail or Gmail, chances are you're familiar with the "stars" feature, which serves as a visual reminder to follow up on certain messages or mark their importance. You may not know, though, that you can use different types of stars. To do so, click on the Gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen, click Mail Settings, and on the General tab look for the Stars section.

You will see many different types of stars that you can cycle through. Drag the stars between the lists that you want to use and in the order you prefer. Another neat trick is to use the name of the star to filter messages. Simply hover over the star to learn its name (i.e., "red-bang"), then use the "has" prefix to filter by star name. For example, typing "has:red-bang" in your search box will show all messages with that star name.

Lists are important part of any role in any company. Many lists are now composed in a word processor like Microsoft's Word. But have you ever struggled to create a numbered list in Word? Maybe lists start from one each time you enter a new one, or the numbers continue from previous list. This can be frustrating, but luckily there is something you can do to address it.

Below is an overview of how you can set up ordered lists to either continue numbered lists from where you last left off, or start at #1 with new lists.

Set up numbering for all future lists

1. Open a new Word document.
2. Go to the Home tab (Press Home at the top of the window)
3. Press the downward-facing arrow beside the numbered list button in the Paragraph group. (it's located on the right of the bullet point button)
4. Select Set Numbered Value... from the drop-down menu.
5. Click the numbering option you want from the pop-up window.
6. Press Ok.

When setting numbered values, you have three options to choose from:

• Start new list - If you select this option, new lists will automatically start at one.
• Continue from previous list - Selecting this option will continue numbering from previous lists in the same document. For example: If you have a paragraph and then a numbered list with three points, and type another paragraph then enter a new list, the list will start from four.
• Set value to: - Lets you set what number lists will start at.

Change the number value of individual lists If you have a document with numbered lists already in it, and want to change the number values of one list, you can do so by right-clicking on the first number of a list and selecting either Restart at 1 or Continue numbering.

Note that if you have a document with a continuous list that is separated by paragraphs and choose to reset one list to start at one, all subsequent lists will be changed to reflect the new ordering.