Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, just announced that they are looking to block in-page popups (also known as overlays). These are the kind of things that commonly interrupt you to ask you to sign up to newsletters or to 'Like on Facebook'. In-page popups are very different to the traditional (and much more intrusive) popups which all popular browsers now all block, something that isn't at all controversial.
Creative Commons announced this week the appointment of Ryan Merkley to the position of chief executive officer. Ryan was recently chief operating officer of the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit parent of the Mozilla Corporation and creator of the world’s most recognizable open-source software project and internet browser, Firefox. At the Mozilla Foundation, Ryan led development of open-source projects like Webmaker, Lightbeam, and Popcorn, and also kicked off the Foundation’s major online fundraising effort, resulting in over $1.8 million USD in individual donations from over 44,000 new donors.
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.
Mozzila released the final version of Firefox 3.0 today and you can download it at Mozilla.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
