Do you have an Extended Validation Certificate?
Are you using Firefox 3? Cool, me too. See where the favicon is for this site up there in the address bar? Did you know it’s clickable?
That area now presents security information about the site you are visiting. Firefox is calling it the Site Identification Button, and it’s taking the old padlock icon to the next level. No longer will you be able to just see if the site you are visiting is secure, you’ll be able to learn more about who the site owner is. Identity will be shown via three icons. If you see a red icon, leave the site immediately.
The gray button says that the site doesn’t give out any identity information. The blue button shows the site you are visiting is encrypted and the domain has been verified, but the actual owner of the domain has not been identified. A green button shows the site is encrypted and the site has fully verified ownership.
I used this tool on one of my secure domains and here’s what it showed:
As you can see, we haven’t (yet) put an Extended Validation Certificate into place for our site. This will complete the identity process and ensure site visitors we are who we say we are.
This extra certificate isn’t just for Firefox. If you have this extra certificate in place, users will also see a green address bar in Internet Explorer.
These new EVC’s are available from a variety of vendors and it will be interesting to see how fast they are adopted and what their use rate will be in higher education. Dria.org has more about these certificates and the new security features of Firefox.
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Firefox Add-Ons I Use
Continuing from Heidi Cool’s post about Firefox plugins, I wanted to talk about some that I use. Then, we’ll jump back into web videos.
YSlow
Yslow is a Firebug addition that helps you examine the technical nature of your site. It gives you a “performance report card,” and recommends actions that you can take to improve the performance of your site. This includes things like making less HTTP requests, using a content delivery network and adding “expires” headers to your files. It’s been a great resource for me in trying to eke out every bit of performance I can from my sites. That second or two of improvement will probably never be noticed by my users, but it makes me feel better knowing I’m doing all I can to give them information quickly.
S3Fox
S3Fox gives you access to Amazon S3 directly in Firefox, so you can work quickly to add files, delete files, or change permissions. Sometimes you just want to make a quick fix and you don’t want to open another program, like an FTP client, to do this.
NoScript
The Noscript plugin gives you protection against javascript and flash if you desire it. It’s well developed and easy to use. You can whitelist certain domains you trust, and access info about the scripts running on any page by clicking the icon in the status bar.
Extension for Amazon EC2
EC2UI is only important to you if you regularly run EC2 instances and need an easy way to control them.
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