Mozilla, Gecko Archive

"Mozilla's greatest success to date has come from its online efforts with the Firefox web browser. Since at least October of last year they've been working on the Mozilla Prism effort to bring the online experience to the desktop. That effort is taking a major step forward today. Instead of struggling with Mozilla Prism to create a standalone desktop version of a Web app, there is now a point and click browser plugin to do the magic."

Mozilla has announced the official release of the third Firefox 3 beta, which includes many user interface improvements and a handful of new features. Firefox 3 is rapidly approaching completion, and much of the work that remains to be done is primarily in the category of fit and finish. There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates. Additionally, jemalloc from FreeBSD will be the default internal memory allocator for Firefox.

The Mozilla Corporation today released Firefox 3 Beta 1, which is now available for download in a variety of languages. The beta includes updates to the default theme, the new places site management features, improved security architecture, and Gecko 1.9. Release notes with a more complete list of features, are also available.

"Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls - like back and forward buttons and a location bar - that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself. Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur."

The developer team behind Firefox has announced plans to bring a mobile version of the technology to the market in 2008. "People ask us all the time about what Mozilla's going to do about the mobile web, and I'm very excited to announce that we plan to rock it," Mike Schroepfer, a Mozilla developer known as 'schrep', wrote on the Mozillazine blog.

"At the Blackhat conference, Window Snyder and Mike Shaver of Mozilla released new tools for testing their browser - Firefox - and other popular browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Opera. The tools include a protocol fuzzer by Michael Eddington and a Javascript fuzzer by Jesse Ruderman. Fuzzing is a method by which researchers randomly simulate common conditions under which most browsers fail.

"The fifth public alpha build of Firefox 3 has been officially released. The new alpha build, which is codenamed Gran Paradiso, features early components of the revamped Places system, a cohesive storage framework that will unify bookmark and history storage. An earlier prototype of the Places system was tested in early Firefox 2 alpha (Bon Echo) builds but was removed because it couldn't be completed within the Firefox 2 release timeframe."

"Mozilla is having a nightmarish security week. The company released a security-fix version of its Thunderbird email client late yesterday after updating its Firefox browser, a Firefox Google toolbar extension, and its SeaMonkey web application suite - all within the last six days. The new Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 replaces 1.5.0.10."

"When Firefox launched in beta release five years ago, it burst on the open-source browser scene like a young Elvis Presley - slim, sexy and dangerous. Since then it has attracted millions of users, generally set the agenda for browser development and unseated Microsoft's IE as the de facto monopoly in the field. But, with Firefox 3.0 poised for release later this year, the 'IE killer' is in danger of morphing into an early Fat Elvis, if increasing numbers of die-hard fans turned reluctant critics are any guide."

Mozilla's Firefox browser will probably abandon support for older distributions of Linux, a company executive has said. Mike Conner, director of Firefox development, has proposed that the browser's next edition work only with more-or-less current Linux runtimes, rather than support aged versions.

"According to Mozilla's CEO Mitchell Baker, Firefox is just at the beginning of its life cycle. In this one-on-one interview with APCMag.com, she talks about where Firefox came from and where it's going."

"Gran Paradiso Alpha 4 is now available for testing. New features in this development milestone of Mozilla Firefox 3 include the FUEL JavaScript library for extension developers, a redesigned Page Info window, improvements to offline application support and Gecko 1.9 bug fixes. Several Mac OS X additions have also been made, including support for Growl notifications, improvements to the Cocoa user interface and an initial version of the Breakpad crash reporting tool."

Mozilla on March 20 released new security and stability updates for both versions of its Firefox browser and for its Internet application suite, SeaMonkey. The new updates eradicate a minor FTP PASV port-scanning vulnerability.

"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."