Windows 10 Redstone 4 Feature Update Review, Part One

How to Use and Tweak Firefox for Your Web Browsing

Here’s how to take advantage of the best and brightest features in Firefox.

Though Firefox may have lost ground against rival web browsers, it remains an effective web browser, especially with the release of Firefox Quantum in November, which boosted speed and performance. Firefox is my favorite browser and the one I use as my default. I like the Firefox interface for its simplicity and power. And I find it easy to customize.

To squeeze the most out of Firefox, you’ll want to tweak its different features and options. You can modify the toolbars, select your search engines, and tighten your privacy and security. You can sync your bookmarks, passwords, and history list across different devices. And you can enhance Firefox by installing any of thousands of different add-ons. Let’s see how you can best use and tweak Firefox.

First, make sure you’ve updated Firefox to the latest version to grab the performance boost from Quantum. To do this, open Firefox, click on the Help menu. (Don’t see the menu bar at the top of the browser? Right-click on any empty area at the top and then select the option for Menu bar.)

From the Help menu, select About Firefox. The About Firefox window either tells you that you that Firefox is up to date or downloads the latest update and then restarts the browser. Alternatively, click on the Open menu hamburger icon (the one with the three horizontal lines at the far right).

At the menu, click on the entry for Options. Scroll down the General page of the Options menu until you see the section for Firefox Updates and click on the button to Check for updates.

Here, you can also determine how you want updates to be installed: Automatically install updates, Check for updates but let you choose to install them, or Never check for updates. Choose either the first or second option. Then close the Options tab to return to your homepage.

Maybe you’ve been using another browser and Firefox is new for you. You want to import your bookmarks and other data from your other browser. Here’s how:

• In Firefox, click on the Bookmarks menu and then select Show All Bookmarks.
• At the Library window, click on the button for Import and Backup and select Import Data from Another Browser. Choose Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, or Chrome.
• Select the items you want to import. Click Finish when done and close the Library window.
• If you want to display your Bookmarks toolbar, right-click anywhere at the top of the browser and select Bookmarks Toolbar from the menu.

Next, you can customize the main toolbar by adding or removing icons for different features.

Right-click at the top of the browser and select Customize from the menu. You can now drag and drop icons away from the toolbar onto the main window to remove them, or drag and drop icons from the window onto the toolbar to add them. When done, close the Customize Firefox window.

Let’s go back to the Options window to find more settings to tweak — like your default browser preferences and default search engine preferences.

Click on the Open menu icon and select Options. At the General page, you can determine if Firefox should always check to make sure it’s your default browser (assuming you made it your default). You can select what page appears each time you launch Firefox.

Scroll down to view and tweak other options. Then click on the entry for Search. Here, you can set your search options. You can opt to use the address bar for search and navigation so there’s just the single address field for you to type both URLs and searches. You can choose your default search engine from among Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others.

Next, let’s fine-tune your privacy and security settings. Click on the entry for Privacy & Security. First, you can ask Firefox to remember your login credentials for password-protected websites. This spares you from having to re-enter the same credentials at these sites each time. If you’re concerned about someone accessing your computer and signing into one of these sites, you can protect this information with a master password.

You can tell Firefox to remember your browsing history or never remember it, the latter a safer option if you’re using a shared or public computer. You can apply custom settings to your browsing history to determine what information is remembered. Further down, you can clear your cached web content and site data, also recommended if you’re on a shared computer.

You can enable Tracking Protection, which attempts to block websites from tracking your browsing habits. You should turn on Tracking Protection for all sites or at least for sites that you open in private windows, which don’t retain any data about the sites you visit. You should also tell Firefox to send websites a “Do Not Track” signal that you don’t want to be tracked, either always or when Tracking Protection is enabled.

Under Permissions, make sure the options for “Block pop-up windows” and “Warn you when websites try to install add-ons” are both checked to protect you against potentially malicious websites. You can always allow pop-ups and add-ons on an individual basis.

And further down under Security, ensure that all three options for Deceptive Content and Dangerous Software Protection are checked.

If you use Firefox on multiple computers or other devices, you can sync your bookmarks, history, tabs, passwords, add-ons, and preferences across the board. Here’s how:

• Click on the entry for Firefox Account. If you already have such an account, click on the Sign In button, otherwise, click on the link to Get started to set up your account.
• Choose what items you want to sync, and the synchronization then automatically kicks off.
• If you no longer want to sync any items, then click on the Disconnect button for your Firefox Account.

Finally, you can beef up Firefox by installing an add-on. Here’s how to do that.

• Click on the Tools menu and then select Add-ons.
• View your existing add-ons by clicking on the categories for Extensions, Themes, and Plugins.
• To grab more add-ons, click on the entry to Get Add-ons. The initial page displays a few recommended add-ons. Scroll to the bottom of this page and click on the button to See more add-ons. You can now browse add-ons based on category or topic or search for a specific add-on by name or keyword.
• When you find an add-on you want to install, just click on it and click on the Add to Firefox button. Follow the prompt to add the program.

Your new add-on is now accessible from the add-ons window and usually from an icon on the toolbar.

Windows 10 Redstone 4 Feature Update Review, Part One

Now that it’s been released to the public, it’s time to take a closer look at the fifth major feature update to Microsoft’s latest operating system.

This feature update has been in development since July 2017 and there have been 27 public development builds released to testers over that nearly nine-month period.

Microsoft never formally named this feature update like they have done in the past with monikers like Anniversary, Creators, and Fall Creators Update.

Instead, they have chosen to simply call it the Windows 10 April 2018 Update. It will also be known under its official name of Windows 10 Version 1803 (OS Build 17134.1).

If I were providing suggestions for naming this feature update, then I would recommend calling it the Productivity Update. The key additional features in this package of updates really can help you be more productive. This release makes significant changes in how you access the data across your ecosystem of Windows 10 based devices.

This is the first of two articles assessing the new productivity features in depth; the second part will run on Thursday. Today, we look at the following features: The timeline, nearby sharing, continue on PC, storage settings and new font settings.

Timeline

People’s computing experience spans multiple devices, and the cloud has made it much easier to have access to all your data on these devices. Timeline is a re-working and expansion of Task View, a feature which just showed all your open apps/programs.

In Windows 10 Redstone 4, you will now see the new Timeline data displaying the sites you have visited on all your Windows 10 devices. This data syncs across machines so you can pick up what you were doing including visited websites, documents, and some apps.  The activities are in chronological order, and you can expand views on each day’s activities and even search for keywords, app/program names, etc. to find what you are looking for.

Now when you access Task View either through its button on the Taskbar or using the WINDOWS + TAB keyboard shortcut you will get a new view of things.

As the header image for this section shows, you still have a thumbnail representation of your open apps/programs and a shortcut to create a new Virtual Desktop.

For those of you concerned about privacy, there is a new set of controls for this in the Windows Settings > Privacy > Activity History settings so that you can turn the feature on, off, and delete current Timeline data. I will highlight those elements later when I discuss privacy and related updates for Windows 10 Redstone 4.

Nearby Sharing

Nearby Sharing

Sharing images, documents, and even website links among devices in a home network is very handy. We can use cloud services like OneDrive to easily sync some of these items back and forth, but what about quick system-to-system sharing?

That is where Nearby Sharing comes in so that you can make direct transfers to other devices running this version of Windows 10. The transfers are made via Bluetooth so your devices must have that capability.

If your desktop does not have Bluetooth there are multiple options to add a slim USB based Bluetooth transceiver to your system. This will then allow you to enable Nearby Sharing.

Nearby Sharing must be activated on your system as it is turned off by default. There are further controls in Windows Settings > System > Shared experiences so that sharing can be done with any Windows 10 Redstone 4 device in your vicinity or only with devices using your Microsoft Account.

Every transfer using Nearby Sharing is permission-based so the request must be approved by the destination machine. No drive-by downloads are possible using this feature.

Continue On PC

Your ecosystem around Windows 10 continues to expand with Redstone 4. The Microsoft Edge apps on Android and iOS now can send items from those devices to your Windows 10 machines. This allows you to easily continue browsing a website from one device to another.

Microsoft has also released updates to the Edge browser on both platforms that allows you to see your mobile browsing on your desktops Timeline feature. This enables you to easily pick up where you left off on your mobile device.

Storage Settings – Disk Cleanup

Above: Old Disk Cleanup Program

Above: New Disk Cleanup in Windows 10 Redstone 4

Windows has always had a desktop utility for cleaning up different aspects of the operating system. This program, known as Disk Cleanup, helped keep unnecessary files at bay and was a good step in the process of conducting system maintenance for Windows.

Now, the old-style program is still around but it can now be fully replaced by the Windows Settings > System > Storage > Free up space now options.

The standard areas for cleaning up your system will already be marked for removal and then there are some other areas you can include as well. If you prefer not to run this manually just turn on Storage Sense at Windows Settings > System > Storage > Storage sense and it will be handled according to the settings shown under Change how we free up space automatically options.

The default settings should work just fine but if you want you can tweak how often Storage Sense runs and how it handles your Downloads folder.

Focus Assist (Formerly Quiet Hours)

In previous versions of Windows 10, Quiet Hours simply muted alerts and notifications in the Action Center. There were no options for scheduling the muting during certain hours or the ability to allow critical alerts and notifications to bypass Quiet Hours, so they could be brought to your immediate attention.

In the Windows 10 Redstone 4 feature update, Quiet Hours becomes Focus Assist. This is also more than just renaming a feature. Focus Assist delivers on the functionality Quiet Hours was missing.

As you can see in the Windows Settings > System > Focus assist options above, multiple options have been added to the feature.

• Three levels of what notifications you will see (Off, Priority, and Alarms only).
• Customization of your priority notifications include options for calls, texts, reminders, People, and apps.
• Set of Automatic rules for specifying the hours only priority alerts should be allowed through (you pick the time frame), alarms only when duplicating your display, when you are playing a game, or when you are at home.
• A summarization of what you missed while Focus Assist was activated.

Previously I always kept Quiet Hours turned on. This resulted in all alerts being subdued. Now, with Focus Assist, I can control things at a much greater level and let some alerts through as necessary.

Fonts in Microsoft Store/New Fonts Settings

The Redstone 4 feature update continues the slow transition from the legacy Control Panel to the modern Windows Settings app.

You will now find a list of all the fonts installed on your device along with a graphical representation of the fonts appearance plus an uninstall link at Windows Settings > Personalization > Fonts.

In addition, new fonts for Windows 10 will not be carried in the Microsoft Store where they can be downloaded and installed.

As you can see some of the fonts will be offered at no cost while others will be available as paid additions to your Windows 10 device.

This wraps up a look at five new updates to Windows 10. The tour of the Productivity Update continues on Thursday.