Firefox and Thunderbird: Beyond Browsing and Email

Foreword

There was a time when the Internet was a much more enjoyable place—before all the viruses and spyware and phishing scams; before all the pop-ups and pop-unders and spam. Over the last few years, the Internet (email and the World Wide Web) has become much more capable and, no doubt, more of a necessity for all of us. Unfortunately, though, it has also become increasingly difficult and considerably more dangerous to use. It was these concerns that pushed the Firefox founders to build a new kind of web browser, one that would both protect people from the dangers of the modern Web and make all the tasks people wanted to accomplish on the Web faster and easier.

How did the Internet become so difficult and so dangerous so quickly? It’s pretty ...