Mozilla, Gecko Archive

Mozilla Labs: Introducing Bespin

Kroc 2009-02-13 Mozilla, Gecko 13 Comments

Bespin is an experimental in-browser text/source-editor created by Mozilla Labs. Using any modern web browser (that means no IE, obviously), you can edit your projects from any computer, or with the added flexibility of the web - such as online collaboration, decentralisation, and extensibility. Read more for Kroc's review.

Mozilla Joins Opera in Celebrating EU’s Actions Against IE

Thom Holwerda 2009-02-10 Mozilla, Gecko 86 Comments

Recently it became known that the European Union is charging Microsoft with anticompetitive behaviour concerning its Internet Explorer web browser. The EU is considering forcing OEMs to offer consumers a choice of browser. Opera responded quite positively to these events, and now Mozilla has responded as well: they fully support the EU.

Guest post by Rahul 2009-01-21 Mozilla, Gecko 4 Comments

Firefox 3.1 beta 2 includes a host of new features including built-in support for Ogg Theora videos and Ogg Vorbis audio, better memory management, improvements in the smart search location bar and source view, and several other minor enhancements.

Mozilla’s Ubiquity Logo Contest

Submitted by Sebastiaan 2009-01-12 Mozilla, Gecko 11 Comments

You may have thought Mozilla could not open up beyond its current state, but you may be wrong: Aza Raskin, Mozilla Labs' UX Lead and Sebastiaan de With, a freelance icon designer, have completely opened up the process of designing a new logo for Mozilla Ubiquity. The second round of conceptual exploration has just started, and the popular vote is very welcome on the blog or in the comments. What's your favorite concept, and why?

Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2008-12-08 Mozilla, Gecko 33 Comments

The Firefox guys at Mozilla have released the 2nd beta for Firefox 3.1. "The public beta of Mozilla's first Web browser to incorporate a private browsing mode, is being made available to the general public today, although as before, the organization has yet to make it official." This build also includes the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, and for web content, it's enabled by default. If you want to enable it for XUL/chrome as well, go to about:config, search for 'jit' and set the XUL/chrome option to 'true'.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-11-20 Mozilla, Gecko 10 Comments

Mitchell Baker, chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation and former CEO of Mozilla corporation has posted a report the details the financial status of Mozilla for this year. "Our revenue remains strong; our expenses focused. Mozilla's revenues (including both Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation) for 2007 were $75 million, up approximately 12% from 2006 revenue of $67 million. As in 2006 the vast majority of this revenue is associated with the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox, and the majority of that is from Google. The Firefox userbase and search revenue have both increased from 2006"

Submitted by techsin 2008-11-04 Mozilla, Gecko 20 Comments

Developers have proposed an out-of-the-world browsing experience for Mozilla Firefox 4. Here is a user who peeks into those features and gives us insight. Taragana.com looks at Mozilla initiatives that might make it into Firefox 4.

Submitted by Michael 2008-10-20 Mozilla, Gecko 9 Comments

Mozilla's latest browser "Fennec", specifically designed for mobile devices has finally been released. Currently, it is only available for the Nokia N810 platform. Support for other platforms is planned for the future. Ars Technica has a review of the new browser. If you are interested in getting involved, but don't have a Nokia N810, you can install it on your desktop (Windows, Linux and OS X) and experiment with it.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-10-11 Mozilla, Gecko 3 Comments

Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release.

Why Mozilla Is Committed to Gecko as WebKit Popularity Grows

Thom Holwerda 2008-09-09 Mozilla, Gecko 83 Comments

With the recent surge in WebKit adoption, many have stated to question the usefulness of Mozilla's Gecko browsing engine, claiming that WebKit is far superior. Some even go as far as saying that Firefox should ditch Gecko in favour of WebKit. Ars Technica's Ryan Paul explains why that is utter, utter bogus. "From a technical perspective, Gecko is now very solid and no longer lags behind WebKit. A testament to the rate at which Gecko has been improving is its newfound viability in the mobile space, where it was practically considered a nonstarter not too long ago. Mozilla clearly has the resources, developer expertise, and community support to take Gecko anywhere that WebKit can go."

Submitted by irbis 2008-08-29 Mozilla, Gecko 23 Comments

Firefox 3.0, released not too long ago, was generally well-received. It added a load of new features, while also providing much-needed speed improvements and better memory management. Some new features, however, have met more resistance - one of them is the rather complicated user interface thrown at users when they reach a website with an invalid or expired SSL certificate.

Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ Contest Announced

Submitted by Caffeine Deprived 2008-08-26 Mozilla, Gecko 4 Comments

The winners of Mozilla's Extend Firefox competition have been announced. The top trio were Pencil, a diagramming and graphics interface tool; Tagmarks, which adds additional tagging icons to Firefox 3.0's location bar; and HandyTag, an extension that provides relevant keywords for associating with bookmarked sites. More info is available in this Mozilla blog entry.

Qt Port of Mozilla and Firefox 3

Submitted by Ali 2008-08-07 Mozilla, Gecko 38 Comments

The Mozilla and Nokia teams have been working hard to port Firefox 3 and the Mozilla Platform to Qt and there are now some solid results available from their efforts. An experimental build of Firefox Qt is available and you can download the sources from Mozilla's mercurial repository. The plan is to merge the Qt branch into the central Mozilla branch to make the port official.

Firefox 3 Earns Guinness World Record

Submitted by Merciades 2008-07-04 Mozilla, Gecko 18 Comments

The Firefox project was rewarded on Wednesday when Guinness World Records accepted that the 8,002,530 downloads of Firefox on 'Download Day' in June constituted a world record. Firefox is now officially in the record books for receiving the most downloads from a Web site with a 24-hour period.

12 Quick Hacks for Firefox 3

David Adams 2008-07-02 Mozilla, Gecko 5 Comments

"Firefox 3 has been out for two weeks now and it's time to hack it. The newest version of Mozilla's browser has plenty of new features, including the site identification button, the Bookmarks Library and what has become known as the "Awesome Bar" -- and how to hack them all."

Firing Up Browser Security

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-23 Mozilla, Gecko 8 Comments

"Mozilla released its latest browser, Firefox 3.0, last week. SecurityFocus contributor Federico Biancuzzi tracked down two key members of Mozilla's security team, Window Snyder and Johnathan Nightingale, to learn more about the security features included in this major release. They discussed the protection against phishing and the new malware protection, the new update mechanism for add-ons, Mozilla's security policies and processes, and the hardening of their Javascript implementation."

Firefox 3.0: Cut the Superlatives, Please

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-20 Mozilla, Gecko 77 Comments

I've seen superlative after superlative concerning the release of Firefox 3.0, and in all honesty, it is making my stomach ache. Yes, Firefox 3.0 is a great release. It has a slicker interface (the UI on Vista looks quite pretty) and the use of native widgets in Linux is a very, very welcome addition. On top of that, it actually delivers what I was craving for the most from my favourite Windows web browser: much improved performance. But does Firefox 3.0 change the web, or alter the way we use the intertubes?

Firefox 3 ‘Download Day’ Cripples Mozilla Site

Adam Scheinberg 2008-06-18 Mozilla, Gecko 11 Comments

Mozilla's big plan on Tuesday to set a world record for downloads with the newly released Firefox 3 browser hit a snag when its Web site would not work properly. The Mozilla Dev Blog reports that the site, when restored, was receiving over 13 gigabits per second of traffic! In addition, PCWorld is offering a brief Firefox 3 FAQ for new and existing users.

Firefox 3.0 Coming Today

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-17 Mozilla, Gecko 60 Comments

Any minute now, the Mozilla Foundation will officially release the third incarnation of their successful Firefox web browser - the browser that cracked Internet Explorer's monopoly and forced Microsoft to improve IE. Mozilla aims to set a world record in most software downloaded in 24 hours with Firefox 3. Update: It's out there, boys and girls. Update II: And the Firefox 3 page is up too.

Mozilla Warns of Flash, Silverlight ‘Agenda’

Thom Holwerda 2008-04-30 Mozilla, Gecko 93 Comments

While the technologies used on the web have always been mostly free, with non-free technologies delegated to non-essential parts of the net, this has been changing fast, lately. The popularity of YouTube has demonstrated the pervasiveness of Adobe's Flash, to an extent where not having Flash is one of the big downsides to any alternative operating system. And to possibly make matters worse, Microsoft is pushing its proprietary Silverlight technology. The founder of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, warns for "the dangers of the proprietary web".