There needs to be a safe active x alternative built in to firefox if possible because some users of Ubuntu have job related websites that they go to and some of the features of the websites require ActiveX and I absolutely hate windows so that feature of the website will just have to be an empty link for now!

Based on idea 5321, by Eldmannen (about removing yahoo).

We should remove ebay from the default installed searches, because:
- It reduces competition with other auction sites.
- Recently there was a uproar about changes in ebay which make in some case make it unfair. I agree!
- Ebay VERY heavily pushes Paypal, which is acknowledged by many to be very dodgy. A lot of people know someone who has been screwed by ebay. And here in aus, I had to upgrade my account because they had a bug which prevented me accessing my money (which is very unprofessional). The freenet Project owner was also screwed by ebay (and it demonstrated they don't research at all claims made against customers), and another friend of mine was charged 2x the amount he was supposed to be receiving because someone used a stolen credit card against him (so seems they profit from illegal credit cards).
- If ebay was a bank, they would have a 24/7 riot outside their building by customers who were screwed.
- Ebay doesn't exactly listen to feedback. If are a typical large company, where you have no way of providing feedback (if you scream at them over the phone, maybe they will let you speak to a manager). But they clearly dont care much (no forums).

Its to our advantage to promote competition within the auction sites. More competition means lower costs for us, and better payment methods. We should try to encourage the development of a world wide auction site that is more consumer/seller friendly, that actually promotes active feedback and improvement.

There is nothing stopping a patch being applied to the firefox code to prevent ebay being a default search engine (and it shouldn't be hard to do).

It was my opinion that firefox used a bit too much screen space in the netbook remix. Together with the gnome panel on top, the bookmarks bar and status bar, it takes up a lot of the limited vertical resolution of a netbook screen.

The main goal I would like to achieve with this is to give the user by default a browser that is much more usable within the tiny space of a netbook screen. I feel that tweaking the Firefox interface is almost as important as the custom taylored menu screen people see when they start their operating system, since the web browser is probably the single most used application. I believe it would add greatly to making a functional and pleasant to use netbook distribution.

It seems that email is a very very unsafe mode of communication. Although I don't have any world domination plans as yet, I would like to keep my things private from intruding governments as well as companies.

I've been looking a bit around and it seems that there is a lot possible, but that it's just very fragmented; GPG and FireGPG together with some extra functionalities would help us get started.

What if you created one package out of Seahorse/GPA/KGPG and FireGPG which after installation had the following functionalities for for example gmail (more email programs should follow);
- The first time you start it up, a key-pair is being made for your email address. The public key is automatically uploaded to the PGP Global Directory which then verifies the email adres with a verification email.
- When you send an email it automatically looks in the Global Directory whether the person you send the email has a public key and if it finds one, it automatically encrypts and sends the message. Also it automatically signs the email using your private key.
- When you receive an encrypted message, it automatically unencrypts it and checks the signatures using the Global Directory.

Using a system like this would get many people to use it since it is not so complicated anymore and just one package. The more people post public keys, the more it gets accepted by other email programs while it doesn't interrupt the current flow of emails since you can still send normal emails as well.

If you think intruding governments are taking a bit too much away from our privacy these days, please vote UP!

Links:
http://www.getfiregpg.org/
http://www.gnome.org/projects/seahorse/
http://www.gnupg.org/gpa.html

[....]

Firefox 3 has done away with the useful security feature in Firefox 2 whereby secure encrypted connection were indicated with a visually prominent yellow addressbar.

This feature is really useful in quickly determining if a page into which I enter my personal info (login name, password etc.) is secure. Now I have to be alert enough to always keep an eye on some small icons which don't come to attention easily.

This feature can be restored, but its not straightforward and needs some tweaking of internals. Please bring this feature back, at least on the Ubuntu version.

It's not an option for now of course, but everyone who use it saw the real speed web surfing that we need!

1) May be as a first step - use it i Ubuntu mobile (now I see Firefox is too heavy for it)
2) Chrome in Ubuntu

Some tests: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10030888-92.html

This idea is far away from trivial, and may not belong here, but when I got it, I actually didn't know where to share it.
As an ubuntu user this idea may be inspired by ubuntu itself, so I end up here.

I do think that nowadays, the web without a reliable search engine, would be close to useless, and I'm also aware that google and wikipedia are my most visited pages.
So great! wikipedia is already open, but what do we do with google (or bing, or yahoo, or...)?
I do think that as we DO have something like ubuntu for our desktop, we should have something similar for the web. The same philosophy: a search engine where I could see for example ,something as simple as, what is the order of the results based on.
Google nowadays is the door to the internet, I would like to know how such an important door was made, or how it works.

My second option was to knock at google's door, and ask them (with extremely good manners) to go totally open source :)

Consider a new user of Ubuntu who wants to communicate with his friends on Windows Live Messenger. He might try visiting the Windows Live Messenger website to download a client, not realizing that a.) Microsoft's client won't work on Ubuntu and b.) Ubuntu comes with Pidgin, an IM client which can connect to Windows Live Messenger.

It would be helpful if, when the user visited the Windows Live Messenger site, an information bar appeared at the top of the page informing the user that Ubuntu includes an IM client, with a button to click to get more information. The informational window could even have the ability to start Pidgin and set it up to connect to the user's Windows Live Messenger account.

What I am proposing is a Firefox plugin which would be equipped with a list of URLs meeting one of the following criteria:
a.) The URL links to the download site for an application which is available in the Ubuntu repositories
b.) The URL links to the download site for an application which does not run on Ubuntu but there exists an equivalent application in the Ubuntu repositories (i.e. Windows Live Messenger, iTunes)
c.) The URL links to instructions for accessing a service which could be assisted by the plugin (i.e. configuring Evolution to connect to a Gmail account)

The plugin would monitor the sites a user visits and pop up an information bar when the user visits a URL on the list. Clicking the information bar would provide the user information on installing or configuring the relevant application, and possibly give the user the option to let the plugin start or configure the application as required.

In a nutshell:
- Use multiple different internet connections to download files in parts (For example two mobile broadband connections).

I've been working on this for days and I now have it working, but still needs to be automated more. It would be great if this worked straight from Ubuntu desktop or something :) I'm not aware of any easy-to-use solution for any OS.

There are many websites that don't work in Ubuntu. Users need to have an operating system (including web browsing) that "just works".