Mozilla has been on a tear for data security and privacy lately, and we applaud that. Keeping your information safe from the prying eyes (and hacks) of others should be at the top of your mind every time you sign up for a new service or mess around on the web. And it's refreshing to see good news about browsers and new security initiatives, unlike other companies' efforts lately.

Browser extensions are fantastic but, as superheroes have taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. Malicious developers can hide bad behaviour inside useful extensions and when they slip through the screening process, the only option left to the likes of Mozilla and Google is to ban them. Mozilla has updated its blocked add-on list and it includes an extension the company itself gave the thumbs-up just this week.

There are many reasons you might want to back up your Gmail account, such as: It’s good to have a copy of your most-important data; you’re about to be fired from your job and you want to save everything you did; you’d just like a little extra protection in case someone hacks your account and takes it over (or deletes it).

As I mentioned earlier today, Mozilla rolled out two new apps the other day as part of its Test Pilot program: One for syncing passwords between your Firefox browser and your iOS device (and soon, Android), and another app (and extension) for synchronising notes between your Firefox browser and an Android device.

If one of the big tech companies says you're wrong, you might shrug it off. But when four of them — Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla — call you out, that's when you're in real trouble. This is the situation the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) found itself in after pulling some shenanigans with the next version of the Document Object Model (DOM).

It has been revealed that a marketing stunt has left many Firefox users thinking their computers had been hacked. An add-on, called “Looking Glass 1.0.3", has been officially installed with recent builds of Firefox. It's an AR game that lets people play along using clues from the hit TV show Mr Robot. But it's also a warning to software developers to not let marketing teams get too cute.

Mousewheel scrolling is a decent way of navigating a web page. If you know what you're looking for, a text search is faster. But what if you're not quite sure where the information you need is? If you're using Firefox, then Mathieu Pillard's Minimap Scroller might help.

We've grown accustomed to apps and even operating systems collecting data about usage and trends and sending it back to the appropriate mothership. What's more unusual (but very much appreciated) is when a company provides a heads-up about its collection plans, something Mozilla communicated last week for Firefox.

Browser vendors have made massive strides with JavaScript performance. Google kicked things off with its V8 engine, but since then, the likes of Mozilla and Microsoft have come back with snappy virtual machines of their own. But JavaScript can only take you so far. The next step is WebAssembly (wasm), which supports compilation from C/C++ and near-native performance in the browser. Both Chrome and Firefox now have wasm enabled by default.

Today, Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, has announced that it has acquired the popular bookmarking service, Pocket.

When browser vendors make breaking changes to developer APIs, it's left to add-on and extension creators whether they fix their offerings. Usually, if it's a small change, no problem. But what about massive overhauls? For Luís Miguel, responsible for a number of popular Firefox add-ons, Mozilla's switch to the WebExtensions API this year will signal his exit from the add-on scene.

Browsers now come with all manner of developer tools for debugging websites, inspecting code and even making live changes. HTML, CSS and XML are easily interpreted and presented in human-readable form, but just-as-important formats such as JSON still come out as a wall of monospaced text. Soon that won't be the case for Firefox.

Recent versions of Firefox come with Electrolysis, or "e10s" enabled, allowing the browser to launch tabs and add-ons in separate processes. What Firefox doesn't come with (for now at least) is a way to manage this new functionality, though one add-on developer has come to the rescue.

Firefox is still a strong browser and with Chrome getting heavier than ever, many are looking back to their old friend Firefox as an alternative. Plus, it’s still got one of the best, well-vetted extension libraries around. Here are the essential Firefox extensions you need to bend the web to your will.

The slow death of Adobe Flash marches on. Google has announced it will be blocking non-essential Flash content that runs in the background of webpages in September. Mozilla has already started doing this with its Firefox browser this month. Here's what you need to know.

Google has already committed to blocking almost all Adobe Flash content from its Chrome browser by the end of the year. Now Mozilla has said it stop certain non-essential Flash content from being displayed in the Firefox browser starting from August. Here's what you need to know.

Nothing lasts forever, including browser support and operating systems. Apple has already kicked OS X versions 10.8, 10.7 and 10.6 to the curb and in August this year, Firefox on these platforms will also be given its marching orders by Mozilla.

Reading, writing and maths are no longer the only essential subjects everyone should learn. Today's essential skills include navigating the web, writing code and engaging with others online. This web literacy map from Mozilla presents activities that cover these 21st-century skills.

We've already seen some consolidation in the browser space with Opera dropping its technology base and moving to Blink, Google's fork of WebKit and the meat behind Chrome. Would Mozilla ever consider such a move for Firefox? Not right now, but the company is happy to use the best tools for the job, even if those tools come from Google.