We had a feeling that Mozilla wanted to get into the mobile OS game when they announced two Firefox handsets last month, the Keon and Peak, so it came as no surprise to us when they said at MWC that they are working on Firefox Mobile OS.

What we love about this is how the underdog will be a rival to both Android and Apple, along with Microsoft, although they are not as big of a target.

Mozilla has said that they already have plans put in place that will see their Firefox OS launch on several devices on 18 carriers around the globe, one of which will be Brazil.

The reason we have emphasized Brazil is because this is the country that can legally build and sell an iPhone since Apple lost a recent legal dispute.

In Brazil you can get an iPhone (nothing like Apple’s) that runs on Android, but we have to wonder if we could soon see their version of the iPhone Neo One powered by Firefox Mobile OS instead?

While this may sound like a pretty reasonable assumption, one can only imagine that Apple is regrouping their efforts to appeal the case to put a stop to Brazilian company, Gradiente, selling a smartphone with the name iPhone.

Going back to the main news though, we already know that Mozilla has already spoken to Alcatel, Huawei, LG and ZTE, although Huawei will release their Firefox OS handset later in the year while the other three are said to be launching theirs pretty soon.

CNN has been speaking to Mozilla’s Jay Sullivan, where he said that the response they have had from mobile phone carriers is pretty impressive, but personally we feel that a little skepticism is needed.

Okay, so we know that a new mobile OS will be very welcome, but Mozilla need to get this right. However, if they are to concentrate their efforts in developing countries then this could be a perfect way to take some market share away from Android and Apple who always seem to concentrate more on their other markets.

For a few years now we have been hearing rumors of a Facebook phone, but every time there’s a Facebook event the phone is a no show. However, we’re not even sure why anyone would want such as device, but a Firefox OS phone is a different thing entirely. People have been asking for this phone for a while now because of the ability to have a handset that runs on a different browser and not usual suspects.

Thankfully, Mozilla has announced that they are to release a Firefox OS phone, but for developers only. That’s not all, there are to be two versions of this handset, the Keon and Peak, which as you would imagine vary by their hardware. However, both are designed to help develop Firefox OS for mobile devices.

Mozilla want developers to be able to use a mobile device that will give them a better experience, rather than develop for just Android, iOS and Windows. Firefox Mobile is said to render at the highest performance and does not have any barriers like other mobile operating systems. The system is said to be very light so you can run apps more smoothly, which in turn will give more battery life.

The main specs for the Firefox OS Keon phone is 1GHz Snapdragon S1 CPU, 4GB ROM and 512MB of RAM, 3-megapixel camera and a 3.5-inch display. The Peak has only a few minor improvements, such as 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 CPU, 8-megapixel camera, 4.4-inch screen and a more powerful battery. The full details can be found here.

While this is not the full on phone that we had been hoping for, these two Firefox OS Developer Preview phones are certainly welcome by devs.

According to Mozilla’s official press release Firefox 7 manages memory much more efficiently than before, this will obviously improve overall performance – but it will be very noticeable for people out there whose computer is lacking in terms of RAM. But that’s not all, we are also told that clicking on menu items, opening new tabs and general navigation should be faster than before.

If you take your web browsing a little more seriously or you are a developer there are some noticeable changes ‘under the hood’, we are told that HTML5 games and animation should load faster thanks to hardware-accelerated Canvas speeds, also Firefox 7 supports W3C navigation timing spec API – this is a valuable tool for developers who want to ensure page load times are acceptable across different connection speeds. Finally we must mention Telemetry, this sounds complicated, but it is pretty simple – to cut a long story short it allows users to anonymously send browser data to Mozilla’s team to help with future development, don’t worry, it’s secure.

For those of you already running Firefox you will probably get a notification telling you that the update is available for install, if not open up Firefox, go to ‘Help’ and then ‘About Firefox’ – as long as you are running a pretty recent release Firefox should tell you that Firefox 7 is available, follow the on-screen instructions and soon you will be running Mozilla’s latest stable Firefox build.

As you can see Mozilla’s devs seem to believe that in terms of design Firefox is fine, however now they want to concentrate on refining their web browser’s performance and make it more appealing to web developers – we can’t help but think this is because of the strong competition which Google Chrome brings to the table.

Have you installed Firefox 7? If so, have you experienced any annoying issues since updating?

The powers that be at Google have been doing their own research, and have found that exponential growth in the browser industry has made it unnecessary for them to carry on support for the Firefox 5 version of their very own branded toolbar.

Browsers these days are powerful enough without the need for clutter such as a toolbar, and if you use Google Chrome or many of the latest browsers these days, you will know what we mean. Browsers are clean, easy to use, navigate and search without the need to have a toolbar now, and most of what toolbars can do can be acquired via other means of browser-addons and widgets.

However, if you are still using an older version of Firefox, support will still continue for versions prior to version 5. More good news that we have also found out is that a few clever internet moguls have worked out how you can bypass the Firefox 5 rejection. To find out, check out this page here. Obviously this is not supported by Google or Firefox, so anything you do is at your own risk.

For the rest of you, who think it is time to move on away from the clutter of the Google Toolbar you can uninstall it in 3 easy steps. When Firefox is running click the little arrow next to the spanner icon. Then select Uninstall from the drop down menu. Thirdly, click the Uninstall button. Alternatively, you can go to the Control Panel by clicking the Windows Start button, going to Add or Remove Programs (Classic View), and then highlighting Google Toolbar for Firefox and finally clicking Uninstall.

So does this start the ball rolling for more and more toolbars to be removed from existence? As we stated, the need for toolbars has become defunct in the new age of internet browsing, and all they seem to do is cause clutter and take up unwanted space.

Do you use Google Toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter? What are your thoughts on browser toolbars?

So what are these features we here you ask? We have not had a chance to try all the new features, but one of the main issues is with the Touchpad. Earlier this morning we discussed how to could turn off Inverted Scrolling, but you will see a few other features in there. At first when we tried them all, we assumed that there was an issue with the install but these features do not work on my MacBook Air or iMac.

The first feature that we are unable to see working correctly is Look up, now this works fine in Safari, but will not work when you are using Firefox. Three zoom in or out is another that will not work for us; again we tried this in Safari and it worked fine but not with Mozilla’s OS.

With Three finger drag you are meant to be able to place three fingers on your Trackpad and then drag a program around on your desktop to place it where you want; this feature will not work at all. Also with rotate, you should be able to rotate an image slowly by placing two fingers on the Trackpad and moving them in a circular motion; instead it just moves round at 90 degrees at a time.

These are currently the only features that we have not seen in action, and it is a shame, as these will be ones that most of us will use on a daily basis. It is not all bad though, as Apple has included a number of new multitouch gestures within Mac OS X Lion, and we have to say that we are very impressed so far.

We are not the only ones having an issue with this, as you can see on Apple Discussions that a few other Lion users are experiencing the same issues. There are some gestures that are set to a different amount of fingers to what is shown on the video when you hover over each gesture, but they do not apply to those missing above.

Update: Something strange is happening, as one or two features have now decided to work.

Over the past few weeks we have noticed that Firefox 4 was becoming too demanding, and would take up more of its fair share of system resources. This has been an issue with me, as I currently have a 2009 MacBook Air with just 2GB or RAM. The fan on the MBA would run for long periods of time, but after installing Firefox 5 and updating to the latest Flash Player all is quiet.

However, we have no doubt that the fan will fire up again once we watch a video or two. Then again, I am sure I can hold our a few more weeks, as the rumored new MacBook Air will be in my Apple basket before there is even time to write about it. Anyway back to this latest browser from Mozilla.

The first thing that we noticed when the download was complete was just how small it was compared to Firefox 4, but all we care about is how well it performs. The early signs are very promising, and currently is both fast and very solid. So why should you download this latest update instead of jumping ship and going over to the dark side?

One reason is what we just covered above, the fact that although it is a small download, it is a fast one as well. PC World tells us that there are over 1,000 improvements – not sure we want to dig around and list them all. All we know is that they all work together to give the user a more enjoyable experience.

More often than not these browsers seem to compromise over security when it comes to making things faster, but not Mozilla. Firefox 5 is more focused on security than any other version before it, which is thanks to the hard work supplied by you the user.

Although Firefox 5 is a vast improvement we cannot help but think that Mozilla has not gone far enough. OK, we know that we cannot have everything at once, but with Google Chrome breathing down their necks Mozilla had better hope that Firefox 6 has even more to offer.

The Release Candidate is the final test version of the software, which is intended for developers to demo the new build in case any bugs are found before the next version, which generally turns out to be the full version providing any major problems are not present.

Even if you’re not a developer you can still download this software if you’re interested in getting a personal preview of what’s in store for version 4.0. Confirmed new features include a resigned Chrome-like UI, HTML 5 support and updated support of certain Javascript engines, according to ZDnet.

If you’d like to try out Firefox 4.0 RC, you can download the PC version here. For Mac users, you’ll need to visit this link. Download it now and let us know your thoughts on it. If you discover any problems whilst installing or using the new version, get it touch with us below.

You may want to check out additional information on the Firefox 4 RC on the official Mozilla Wiki page here.

Most of you may be aware that Mozilla launched Firefox some time before Google Chrome, so how come they are at version 9 and Mozilla’s browser is just getting to 4? The answer is that Mozilla do not roll it over to yet another new number for minor updates, instead choosing to go down the 2x, 3x route etc, unlike Google.

PC Pro explains that Mozilla has now decided to follow Google’s path, so it will not be that long before version 5 will be ready to download. We do not know how Firefox users will react to this, as they might think that they are getting a major update – when in fact it could just be a minor one instead.

However, what we can expect is for Mozilla to update Firefox on a more regular basis, as instead of major updates they will offer a number of small ones, such as patches, security fixes etc. Having been a user of Firefox for a number of years, I still cannot get over how much resources it requires. Surly in this day and age the likes of Mozilla is able to make this browser less resource hungry?

Do you think that Mozilla has made the right choice with Firefox by copying how Google launch Chrome updates?

In a post by Zdnet, they say that Mozilla are calling out for programmers to develop plug-ins for the new final product. This is the statement was given by Mozilla “We are working closely with the community of add-on developers to ensure their Firefox Add-ons are ready to customize the features, look and functionality of Firefox 4 Beta.”

Some of the new features that are promised with the web browser’s release are improvements in general stability, performance, and compatibility (Improved plugin compatibility with hardware acceleration enabled). There is said to be increased performance while viewing Flash content and the Firefox layout has undergone some changes.

All these changes sound pretty promising, however many are frustrated with the endless release of Firefox 4 betas, since the first-ever Firefox 4 beta over 70,000 bugs have been patched, therefore it is nice to see that Mozilla’s developers have been working hard, but we first heard about Firefox 4 back in May 2010, which means that we have almost been waiting a year, many see this as a long-time to wait for a new-version of an established web browser.

The beta is available today and can be downloaded from Mozilla’s website.. Have you used the Firefox 4 beta 12? If so, is it impressive?

The easiest solution is to maintain common sense, try not using an open network, if you have to then try to choose one that has a password. However, Ian Gallagher from Security Innovation has said to Computerworld that the blame is down to the lack of security from these social network sites – something that has been a huge problem for Facebook in the past.

A security adviser for Sophos has sad that one way to protect yourself against Firesheep is to use a VPN (virtual private network). This is something that most businesses use, but not so much the consumer, but maybe it is something that needs to be considered to stay safe?

However, we have to warn you that VPN is not a complete solution; this takes us back to social networks once again. Why should the user spend time, effort and money trying to ensure that their details are not stolen when it is not their job to do so?

For more details and other ways to protect yourself against Firesheep attacks visit Computerworld