Mozilla

Michael Kaply: Deploying Firefox 2 within the Enterprise

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:

Firefox 3 getting some press time

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 Firefox 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10 Released

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.

SeaMonkey 1.1 Released

SeaMonkey, the Internet suite package formerly known as Mozilla Suite, was just released under version 1.1.  SeaMonkey is like the old friend that you don't call anymore because  you're too "busy" spending time with your new friends, Firefox and Thunderbird.  Yet you still wish that old friend the best of luck and perhaps it's time for a reunion of sorts.

You can check out the online readme file for the new features and fixes in SeaMonkey 1.1.  However, the best summary likely comes from SeaMonkey's Project News page.

Recommended Firefox and Thunderbird updates available

Some critical security and stability updates have been made available for my favorite Internet browser, Firefox, as well as my favorite e-mail client, Thunderbird.

As part of Mozilla Corporation's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 1.5.0.9, Firefox 2.0.0.1, and Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from getfirefox.com & getthunderbird.com.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. This update is available immediately in 41 languages including Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hungarian, and more.

Firefox 3 to drop support for older Windows and Mac X 10.2

I'm currently testing a development version of Mozilla's Firefox 3 (codenamed Gran Paradiso). The contents of the release notes for Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 may surprise a few users.

Currently Firefox 3 is scheduled to be officially released in May 2007. When Firefox 3 is finally released it is expected to no longer support older versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME. Support for Apple's Mac OS X 10.2 will also be dropped. For the Mac platform, Mozilla is recommending users run Firefox using OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

Several new features for the Alpha 1 version of Gran Paradiso include:

  • Cairo is now being used as the default graphics library, affecting all graphic and text rendering
  • Cocoa Widgets are now used in OS X builds
  • An updated threading model
  • Changes to how DOM events are dispatched (see bug 234455)
  • Changes to how web pages are painted
  • New SVG elements and filters, and improved SVG specification compliance

Many of the new features are a result of changes in the Firefox rendering (layout) engine, Gecko. For this alpha version, Gecko 1.9 Alpha 1 is being used under the browser's hood.

One step closer to Firefox 2.0

In case you missed the brief announcement, the second release candidate for Firefox 2.0 went public last Friday. The release notes for Firefox 2.0 RC2 are available at Mozilla.com while download links have been made available at Mozilla.org.

I've already written quite a bit about the new features in Firefox 2. If you are interested in reading my articles on Firefox 2 please check out the articles from the list below:

Daniel Glazman, Mozilla Composer, and Nvu's future

I have been sitting on this story for some time. Daniel Glazman has been writing a number of posts recently on a brand new project he's just starting. Daniel Glazman was involved in the development of the Netscape and Mozilla Composer (now called SeaMonkey) as well as the author of the Nvu Web authoring system. All these composers contain a WYSIWYG HTML editor and in many ways can be the considered the open source versions of Microsoft's Frontpage and Adobe's Dreamweaver.

Using Firefox 2 with Content Management Systems

As you can tell from the screenshot below, I am using a release candidate of Mozilla's Firefox 2 while viewing and editing content in my Drupal site. If you look closely at the image or click on the image to enlarge it, you will also see that I don't always focus my browsing on Drupal. Take a look at the tabs and you'll see me taking a look at a number of other open source projects (such as Joomla and e107). I have been known to have 20 tabs open referencing just as many different portals, forums, and blog applications as I can find. What can I say, I'm obsessed with Web content management systems (CMS).