Perhaps Mozilla is finally seeing the light. There is a story circulating around that Mozilla will be providing better tools to deploy and manage Firefox within the enterprise. According to a PC World article that sources Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla Corp:

Through the program, which will start sometime soon after Firefox 3.5 is released at the end of June, companies can use a Web application provided by Mozilla to specify certain customizations for the browser -- such as bookmarks to certain sites or corporate intranets or portals, he said.

Companies also can brand the browser through technology called Personas that allows them to code a skin across the top of the browser with a company's logo on it, Beltzner said.

Once the custom browser is developed, the application then will send it to the company and give it an installation program that makes it possible to install the browser across all desktops in the company, Beltzner added.

As one who has deployed Firefox and Thunderbird in an enterprise environment, one of my biggest criticisms with Mozilla has been that Firefox and Thunderbird is not enterprise-ready software. It's not that there hasn't been a push by some in the Mozilla community to provide enterprises with the tools they need to deploy Firefox and Thunderbird. It's just without official backing by Mozilla Corp, those tools never really seem to fully materialize in a way that is needed in large organizations. Hopefully, this time will be different.

Story found via Matt Assay.

Mozzila released the final version of Firefox 3.0 today and you can download it at Mozilla.com.

Available today in approximately 50 languages, Firefox 3 is two to three times faster than its predecessor and offers more than 15,000 improvements, including the revolutionary smart location bar, malware protection, and extensive under the hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser.

While I've been talking about Firefox 3 since late 2006, I have to admit that I haven't been into Firefox 3's development as much as I did with Firefox 2.  While there were some bumps on the way with the alphas and betas, Firefox 3.0 is definately a well polished product (I'm using it as I write in this post).  My first two impressions of Firefox 3 is that it is fast and that I don't quite get the awesome bar .

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available.  The update is a security and stability release and this explains why Firefox users might have been seeing more crashes than usual.

Fixes for security problems in the JavaScript engine described in MFSA 2008-15 (CVE-2008-1237) introduced a stability problem, where some users experienced crashes during JavaScript garbage collection. This is being fixed primarily to address stability concerns.

I knew something wasn't right with my favorite Web browser.  You can download the latest Firefox (and Thunderbird) at Mozilla.com.

I am saddened by continued reports that support for Mozilla's email client, Thunderbird, continues to diminish. From DesktopLinux:

The Mozilla Foundation's press release focused on the Firefox 2.12 security fixes.
The Foundation also reported, though, in its MFSA (Mozilla Foundation
Security Advisory), that these same bugs had been fixed in the
fictitious Thunderbird 2.12...

...Still, it is upsetting that
Mozilla reports that these problems have been fixed in a version of
Thunderbird that doesn't exist. The latest version of Thunderbird is
2.09.

Mitchell Baker posted last September the transfer of Thunderbird from Mozilla to a yet to be seen Mailco organization. Just as DesktopLinux mentioned in their article, I've seen little information about what we can with regards to Thunderbird's future. Perhaps, I'm just not looking in the wrong places?

Mozilla's Firefox 3 Beta 1 has been released. The announcment from Mozilla Developer News:

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download.
This is the ninth developer milestone focused on testing the core
functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform
scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed
at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Improved security features such as: better presentation of website
  identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages,
  anti-virus integration in the download manager, and version checking
  for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier
  add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading,
  full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows
  Vista and Mac OS X.

As we mentioned more than a month ago, Firefox 3 is expected to sport a new look. Some of the more popular online magazines are starting to take notice and helping to fan some excitement on the new look. On a blog at Wired a Firefox 3 related post can be found, Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3's Sleek, Sexy New Digs.

Some of the changes planned for the final release of Firefox 3
include a complete visual makeover with platform-specific skins
designed to integrate the look of Firefox into your OS of choice.

Alex Faaborg, one the interface designers for Firefox, has been
posting mock-ups and soliciting feedback from the community for some
time (see our previous coverage) and he’s back with a series of wireframe sketches that show some of the progress in the interface redesign.

The blog post focuses on the visuals for the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, but also directs users to an Ars Technica article for those interested in Linux. The article of interest is A first look at the Firefox 3 visual refresh for Linux.

Alex Faaborg has some mock-up images on his blog of what Firefox 3 will look like on both Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's Mac OS X.  I have yet to see any images for what Firefox 3 may look on a Linux box and many of those commenting are also not happy Linux was left out of the picture.

You can see the mock-ups yourself by clicking here.

The visual for Firefox 3 on Vista looks very nice but I'm not so sure about the the visual for the Mac.  The Mozilla bloggers are giving a lot of reasons for why Firefox on the Mac will look the way it does...and that worries me.  The more effort someone spends trying to convince me of something, the more evident it is to me that the idea isn't selling itself.

Michael Kaply is starting a new series on the use of Mozilla's Firefox as enterprise software.  In Part 1 he discusses the obstacles for Firefox to to be adopted in the enterprise.

As Firefox gains marketshare, there comes a point where increasing that marketshare depends on the adoption of Firefox in large enterprises. This article investigates what type of issues arise when supporting Firefox in a large enterprise, and what can be done to solve those issues.

The primary areas I will address are:

• Release Lifecycle
• Service and Support
• Business Value
• Third Party Applications
• Intranet Applications
• Deployment issues

In my own organization we have used Netscape/Mozilla products for years especially on the e-mail client side (with Thunderbird currently on every desktop in the office).  However, in today's enterprise environment you need something more than just a good browser or e-mail client on your people's desktop.  IT needs to be able to control, secure, and deploy software much more easily then what Seamonkey, Thunderbird, and Firefox currently provide.  Originally, I had hoped that Mozilla would make better use of the Microsoft Installer (.MSI) and deliver better integration with the Windows Active Directory/Group Policy scheme but such features and abilities never really seemed to surface.

Read more at the Open Source Community...

"JavaScript is not something the general consumer works with or even understands. Many may not know of it or understand why it matters. But JavaScript is a fundamental element of the web. It's fundamental in human interaction with the web. Updating JavaScript's capabilities updates the power of the web itself. Updating the web through open standards and through open source like Mozilla moves the web forward in a way that is accessible to all."

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Mozilla's flagship e-mail client, Thunderbird, is now available under version 2.0. I've been running the Thunderbird 2.0 nightly development versions for almost six months without any problems. I expect Thunderbird users will have little problem with upgrading from version 1.5 to version 2.0. Straight from the release notes I've listed at the bottom of this post are the new features users will find in Thunderbird 2. None of the new features are earth shattering for e-mail clients but I do find comfort that Mozilla can always teach its software new tricks.

One of the new features that is listed for Thunderbird 2 is the use of Nullsoft Scriptable Install System as the new Windows installer. The message reads that the new installer "resolves many long-standing issues". For anyone that might know, I'd be curious as to exactly what the long-standing issues were? Were the issues merely technical or were there some political open source issues involved with the decision? Just curious as I haven't had the time to dig through some of the developer blogs/notes for the advantages of using the Nullsoft installer.

"One of the most important tools we use at Mozilla for day-to-day work is Bugzilla. Bugzilla is an open source bug tracking system that was created back in 1998 by Terry Weisman at Netscape, to support mozilla.org (see the Wikipedia article for more background).

I wanted to share my experiences as a non-developer (read “token marketing guy”) at Mozilla who’s come to appreciate how useful Bugzilla is for exposing problems, inviting community input, and tracking tasks through to completion."

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Michael Kaply has been writing a series of articles on how to deploy Firefox 2 within the Enterprise.  I wrote last year that one of the difficulties of deploying Firefox and Thunderbird in the enterprise was the lack of tools Mozilla provided for deploying the software.  I'm happy to say that   Kaply's articles do a fairly good job on providing some solutions for those organizations that need to manage a large network of clients.  Kaply's original intent is to cover the following topics regarding deployment of Firefox 2 within the enterprise:

1. Building a custom version of Firefox
2. Adding Enterprise specific customizations to Firefox
3. Creating a Firefox installer
4. Setting up your own update server to deploy Firefox patches

Currently most of his articles can be found on Kaply's blog under the "enterprise" category.

Yesterday, InfoWorld posted an article on the yet-to-be-released Firefox 3.  The article is titled, "Firefox 3.0 opens door to Web apps, Mozilla says".

If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right now being souped up by an anxious group of gearheads.

When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

Mozilla's Firefox 3 is still a few months away so it's exciting to see some of the mainstream IT news sites such as InfoWorld take an interest in the browser.  In fact, Firefox 3 is only in alpha 2 under the code name of Gran Paradiso and recommended only for test purposes.   While I've  blogged a little about about Firefox 3 here at CMS Report, it is always nice to be able to read about Firefox in the general news media.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10 were released on Friday, February 23rd.  The update release are mainly security and stability bugfixes for the Firefox 2.0.x and 1.5.x   versions of the browser.   According to the Firefox 2.0.0.2 release notes new changes also include:

• Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista are included along with the following caveats.

• New Languages: Beta releases for several new languages are now available for testing.

• Permissions Bug Fixed: In the German (de) locale on Windows and Linux, resolved a problem with certain files tagged as read-only.

If you are planning on using Firefox with Windows Vista, be sure to read the contents shown when clicking on the "following caveats" link.  If I had Vista on my desktop I personally would wait to use Firefox until a few more bugs are shaken out.   That's just my opinion, of course.

As should be expected, fewer "new features" arrive with Firefox 1.5.0.10.  According to the Firefox 1.5.0.10 release notes Mozilla is not recommending Firefox 1.5. for Vista.

"The Netscape 9 announcement includes a small screenshot (the menu bar indicates that it's based on Firefox 2) and states that the browser will feature Live Bookmarks (a Firefox feature that was dropped from Netscape Browser 8). It will also include the Netscape Friends' Activity Sidebar and the Netscape Sitemail Notifier, two extensions previously released for Firefox. Other extensions that integrate with Netscape.com will also be built in. New information about Netscape 9 will be released every Tuesday; the first such update was the announcement that the browser will be cross-platform, coupled with a screenshot of a stylish new FTP view."

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