With the release of Firefox 29 you’ll probably notice a few new UI elements. The tabs and main toolbar is very changed, or at least refined. Probably a bit of a shock, but looks good to me!
Firefox hits 20 and is now allowed to drink in Canada and the UK, but not in the US yet.
Top new features are a new download manager (looks a lot like the one from Safari) and per window private browsing (like in Chrome). Both awesome additions.
Mozilla won’t bring Firefox to iOS until it can use its own rendering engine via The Verge.
Jay Sullivan, the company’s vice president, told an audience at SXSW that Firefox won’t be coming to Apple’s platform until Cupertino relaxes its stance toward third-party browsers.
I’ll echo Gruber’s comment about no one holding their breath for Firefox for iOS. There are already a bunch of browsers on iOS, all do basically the same thing and other than a couple of differentiating features, they’re all the same. No need for another one, and frankly even if Firefox for iOS could run it’s own rendering engine, why would I use it? There’s just no leverage there.
The H has the story and video: Mozilla shows off Firefox OS:
Mozilla has shown off a recent build of its Firefox OS for mobile devices, demonstrating more of the open source operating system’s features and functions. In a new video on its Firefox YouTube channel, the non-profit organisation shows the browser-centric OS’s built-in Firefox web browser, phone dialer, camera and Gallery image viewer running on a developer phone from Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE.
Looks laggy (granted this is a nightly beta) and like a bad skin over android. Not sure what problem this is solving, but I am glad that someone’s doing cool and interesting things.
In an oddly worded Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation, it’s announced that the development of Mozilla Thunderbird (my mail client of choice) is coming to an end.
Much of Mozilla’s leadership — including that of the Thunderbird team — has come to the conclusion that on-going stability is the most important thing, and that continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts. (For more information about the path to this conclusion, see the “Background Information” section below.) As a result, the Thunderbird team has developed a plan that provides both stability for Thunderbird’s current state and allows the Thunderbird community to innovate if it chooses.
This is very sad to me. I’ve been using Mozilla Thunderbird for years now, on all three major OSs. On Ubuntu Linux it’s the default mail client (sorry, but Evolution is still stuck back in 2002), it’s the only (decent, IMHO) free mail client for Windows (Outlook is horrible and if you’re not working at a corporation or want something free it’s not there for you). I am ok with Apple’s Mail.app, but it’s not going to do it for everyone, and Thunderbird runs great under Mac OS.
Hopefully folks in the Thunderbird community will take up the mantle and continue to update Thunderbird in the future.
Interesting video from Mozilla talking about how they are developing a new ‘Junior’ browser for the iPad. The video is a bit long (21 minutes) but it’s worth going through to see some of their new ideas and how they’ve gone about implementing their vision of a web browser.
Gotta say that the New Firefox for Android looks pretty nice.
Firefox for Android introduces a completely redesigned experience that is optimized for tablets and makes mobile browsing more intuitive. New tools in Firefox enable developers to create interactive mobile Web experiences.
Unlike Gruber I don't think that the scrolling and panning looks that bad, maybe not as smooth as iOS, but not what I'd call "herky-jerky" necessarily.
Mozilla labs has released an alpha version of the Firefox Share plugin, letting you share from the URL bar to twitter, facebook and gmail. Very sweet.
I think I'm already updated to a Firefox 6 beta, for those who aren't, you will be happy to know that Firefox 6 was released.
The Thunderbird Conversations plugin is now stable. If you have the latest Mozilla Thunderbird email client (5.0) you will want to check this one out. Brings gmail-like conversation threads to thunderbird.
WTH? The Mozilla Firefox Web Browser 5 is available for download. Wasn't it only a month or two ago that FF 4.0 was introduced?
Seems to me that they are feeling under the numbers-gun from Chome (currently at version 8 billion) and are adopting a more rolling release cycle, with less emphasis on the major version numbers. Funnily I went to check on my home desktop and found I already had Firefox 5 on it, and hadn't even noticed.
Good write up on the Mozilla blog about updating the compose window and some of the things changing and being experimented with (and why).
We're currently exploring ways to relieve the pressure, and move on to a saner design for us. I've been working on an experiment that aims at tackling these pain points. It basically consists in replacing the standard XUL compose window with a tab written in XHTML that integrates CKEditor, and doing all the composition process in JS, upto the actual send that takes places in C++.
Interesting new UI concept for tab management as Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Introduces Panorama.
Firefox 4 Beta 1 has been released to the world. Check it out and give your feedback to Mozilla. My big question is where is the standalone / portable version so I don't have to worry about messing up my (required) work setup?
Sadly it seems on mac and linux the cooler UI changes aren't available. Still, I'm sure this will be coming in the next betas.
Update: Portable version link here.
Title pretty much says it all: Rid The Internet of All Mentions of Justin Bieber, With A Firefox Add-On. If you already have this, you won't see this entry.
The title of the post pretty much says it all. There are some caveats, but it does look good. I'm almost tempted to jailbreak my iPhone, use the 70 step process to install Android on it, and then play around with the pre-alpha of Fennec :)
The Mozilla Labs blog has a great series they started called the Concept Series, essentially a "hey wouldn't it be awesome if...". The first one is the Account Manager, where they write about a world where we've moved beyond the boringness of logins and passwords, and are outside the complexity of OpenID. There's even an alpha plugin to check out.
Interesting, just found the SQLite Optimizer for Firefox, which seems to solve my main FF issue of really slow startup time and a lot of disk thrashing from (I assume) having to load up and deal with the SQLite storage system.
Well, this morning Mozilla Delivered Firefox 3.6. Among the new hotness is:
- Themes using "Personas"
- Better plugin management
- Magic form completion magic
- HTML5 (still doesn't work with the new Youtube HTML5 experiment though)
- Blah blah security blah stability blah blah
More on the what's new page too.
No issues for me so far, Google gears and a couple of other extensions aren't compatible, but I'm sure they'll be updated soon enough :)
The firefox UI team has posted some mockup ideas for the Windows Theme/UI for 4.0. Some interesting stuff in there such as putting the menu in a button, a la the MS Office button, moving tabs to the top, sexy toolbars, and a bunch of other tweaks. Screenshots in the link for you to check out.
The Mozilla Labs page points over to Raindrop, a new "communication application" (Wave killer/competitor?). It's only at 0.1, but still an interesting set of ideas. The video introducing them is embedded below:
Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo.
According to OSNews, Firefox 3.6 will include a new device API for orientation, allowing it to detect accelerometer data on mobile (laptop) devices. Both cool and useless at the same time, though I'm sure those wacky Mozilla folks will figure a cool use for it.
Mozilla has Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 ready for testing. Wonder how good it looks?
Quick note that Mozilla has released Firefox 3.5.2, so if you don't see a "firefox has updated, restart now?" when you get into the office this morning, go to help -> check for updates to get yourself up to date and protected against a couple of security vulnerabilities.
Ooohhh.. in addition to the Firefox 3.7 mockups I saw last week, looks like OSnews found the Firefox/4.0 Windows Theme Mockups. Sexxxxxy.... interesting that they are flirting with the chrome-like tabs-on-top.
The Mozilla Wiki has some Firefox/3.7 Windows Theme Mockups for consumption. Nothing mindblowing, but a good step more towards the uber-cool windows (for one) look integration that was promised for the 3.0 phase (or was it earlier?). I find it interesting that they're moving towards the Chrome/Safari style with the page and tool buttons on the right hand side of the bookmarks bar, but after using chrome for a bit, it does seem a reasonable design paradigm. Very sexy buttons too!
Moving fairly fast, Mozilla has released Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 which among other things, fixes the slow start up Windows issue.
Just a quick FYI, if you are having sync problems using Mozilla Weave with Firefox 3.5 (the little spinner keeps on going forever and the activity log has something like "(NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [IWeaveCrypto.unwrapSymmetricKey]" in it), check out the latest release (at this point 0.5pre1) over at https://people.mozilla.com/~cbeard/weave/dist/latest-weave.xpi , it seems to solve the problem nicely.
Mozilla labs has released Ubiquity 0.5, with more/better instructions, internationalization, and "smart" suggestions (ie: 'pasta' will summon yelp results).
Mozilla labs has launched the Open Web Tools Directory, a "real world" use (if nothing else) of the modern browser canvas.
(Note: a modern browser with canvas is required to view this, like Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Chrome 2, or Opera 9).
If you just click through the icons, it's fairly unimpressive. However, do some searching with the box at the bottom or the category tabs, and observe the sexiness. Sadly they don't even let you see how badly the Microsoft "modern" browser (IE8) renders this and you just get redirected to the HTML only version.
The Problematic extensions section in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base is a good resource to find solutions to memory leaks or issues related to extensions in Firefox.
Yay! 3.5 is out officially. Hit the Mozilla Download links to get the latest firefox, including, but not limited to:
- Uber-fast new javascript engine for your gmail, google reader, and other javascript powered apps
- New awesomebar functionality, including ability to filter by bookmarks only, domain only, and so on
-
Private browsingPorn mode. Lets be honest, this isn't for hiding you buying a new ring for your wife, this is for hiding you surfing for nazi lesbian midget porn from your wife
- Re-opening of closed windows as well as tabs
- New icon!
- ...and much more.
With Firefox 3.5 just around the corner, Mashable has a Sneak Peek of What's On Tap for Firefox in 2010. The high points? Ubiquity built into the awesomebar, actual perceivable performance boosts, web application boosts, and more. Course, we'll never see these until things actually appear in 2010 or so ;)
Lifehacker talked to Mozilla, who Confirms Tuesday Release for Firefox 3.5. See link for some of the great new things in this release. I've been running it since it was in the early 3.1 beta stage with zero problems, looking forward to the final release.
Google's Page Speed Optimization Add-on has been released for Firefox. Sadly not compatible with 3.5b4. This looks similar to the one released from Yahoo a while back, called YSlow. It integrates with the Firebug tool to show you how your pages can be sped up.
The renamed Firefox 3.1 beta is now Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 and is Available for Download. Lifehacker has links to where other details are. Release notes are here.
The Future of Firefox looks pretty cool. Lots of video and mockups (more here showing how the ideas of the ubiquity plugin are going to be integrated into the awesomebar (maybe), and how tabs may not be in the Firefox of the future (maybe). Cool to see how the Mozilla guys are looking at the future though.
Cool article from Mozilla labs on some new Firefox New Tab Page which uses something called a "Cognitive Shield".
No matter where we put the links to your most visited sites (and their latest news), it always seemed to be a distraction, based upon our own perception and the feedback from thousands of testers. Given that the bulk of those testers are multi-tasking-adept early adopters, we’d expect that feedback to be even stronger from more mainstream users. Our original thought was to place the links along the bottom of the page — outside your foveal vision. In practice, the peripheral vision proved too strong, and the links still drew your eye and interrupted your cognitive flow.
Ubiquity (the power user plugin for Firefox) .13 is out. Hit up the Release Notes for screenshots, download, etc.
Lifehacker points out that Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 is Now Available.
I actually found some neat tricks in there, duplicating tabs being one of them...
Firefox 3: 8 Untold Secrets - OS, Software & Networking by ExtremeTech
Mozilla Firefox 3.1 is ready for download. This version has some nice new features, the new uber-fast JS engine, the detachable tabs (yay, finally!) and a porn private browsing mode (whohooooo!!!!) and special syntax for the awesomebar (ie: '+' will restrict to only tagged pages).
It is still a beta of course, and most plugins won't work with it, however, it's still worth a look if you're not super dependent on your plugins.
Christopher Blizzard posts a walkthrough of Fennec Alpha 1 (AKA Firefox Mobile Alpha 1) from Madhava Enros.
Looks like Firefox 3.1 beta 1 is available. Lots of rendering type changes, the new Javascript engine, and geolocation. See this page for some other details.
Webmonkey has some details on some Firefox 3DOT1 Alpha Preview Slick New Features.
Firefox web browser version 3.0 is finally available. Good job mozilla team, this release looks and works great!
So today is June 17th, which makes it Firefox Download Day. Looks like they are still doing some final release steps as the download link is still pointing to firefox 2. Still, looking forward to the final release, as the RCs have been very stable and very good to me. XKCD has some perspective for you though.
In preparation for the big June 17th Download Day for Firefox 3, here's a Field Guide courtesy of Dria.org, covering the new features in depth.
Just saw that Google Gears is now compatible and works with Firefox 3.0 RC2.... whooo!
Firefox 3 RC1 is now available. No hugely obvious improvements, however I've noticed.
- The back button isn't quite as disproportionate to the front (slightly smaller)
- The awesomebar is faster and has had some tweaks to it to make it look much nicer (IMHO).
Just a note in case anyone was unhappy that you upgraded to beta5 of Firefox 3 and found that ads were back.... hit up the latest dev build of adblock plus (direct link to here) work dandy.
Firefox 3 Beta 5 is up... 750 changes from the previous version, though none are immediately obvious to me in 2 minutes use. Should have checked if the ad-block plugin was updated for it before installing though.... ugh.... is this how "normal" people see the web??
Update: Hit this link to fix this all up nicely (in theory) :)
Ars reviews the just-released Firefox 3.0 beta 3 and determines that Firefox 3 beta 3 polishes rough edges. Re-done interface (nice on the Mac), integrated download statusbar, way better memory use than Firefox 2.0, plus lots more. Hit the article up for some screenshots. I'm not too sure about the windows look to be honest, I'm just booting up VMWare to check out how it looks and feels.
Any adventurous mac users out there might be interested that they released a native Mac theme for 3.0 in the nightly build. The theme is a little "more" brushed metal than the actual native apps (to my eyes anyway) it seems, however it still integrates a bit more nicely into the rest of the mac look and feel than the default 3.0b2 theme (not sure I like how they did the tab look though). There's a screenshot linked from the linked post if you're interested.
The nightly build is stable (so far) for me as well... (my first nightly build experiment).
First look at Firefox 3.0b1 over at Ars.
As I was setting myself up I thought that the default mozilla icon really didn't fit the firebird scheme, so I found some different ones, and shared. The things I do for you 12 people out there, I'm so good.
Restart your browser to pick up the styles. Go to your favorite sites and see that many ad images are gone, but other images are still there!
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