Mozilla, Gecko Archive

Seamonkey 1.1 Released

"SeaMonkey 1.1 is now available. Powered by the same engine as Firefox 2 and the upcoming Thunderbird 2, SeaMonkey 1.1 includes numerous enhancements including more visible security indicators in the browser and enhanced phishing detection for e-mail, a new tagging system for e-mail that supersedes labels, support for multi-line tooltips in web pages, and previews images in tab tooltips. Other changes include inline spell checking in the browser, an updated version of ChatZilla, and a significantly improved startup script on Linux. See the release notes for a complete list of changes."

Mozilla Betas Thunderbird 2.0

"The Thunderbird email client doesn't get half the attention that its big brother, the Firefox browser, gets, but the Mozilla Foundation has finally gotten around to lavishing some love on it, and the first beta of version 2 is now out. If you think there's nothing more that can added to an email client - except for the fabled seek-out-and-destroy-spam option - prepare to be pleasantly surprised. The new Thunderbird comes with numerous new features."

Mozilla Released Fixes for Critical Flaws

Mozilla has released updates for its Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail application and the SeaMonkey application suite to fix 'critical' security vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities affect 1.5 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird as well as version 1 of the SeaMonkey suite, Mozilla said in its security advisories. The bugs do not affect Firefox 2.0, the latest version of the browser released late last month.

Adobe Donates EMCAScript 4 VM to Mozilla

"Today Adobe announced that the EMCAScript 4 compatible virtual machine in the Adobe Flash Player has been contributed to the Mozilla project under the name Tamarin. It is the single largest contribution to Mozilla since its inception and consist of about 135000 lines of source code. The engine is fully open source using the standard Mozilla license, with the Mozilla foundation retaining full ownership."

Firefox Accepting Feature Suggestions for Version 3

"The Firefox web browser has come a long way since the project was announced as a fork from the open-sourced Mozilla project. Version 1.0 was released in 2004 and quickly won critical acclaim for its speed, compatibility with web standards, and features. In a couple of years, Firefox managed to reach a milestone that its predecessor never quite reached: hitting 10 percent market share worldwide. Version 2 of the browser recently hit RC2, but the team is already making plans for 3.0. The Mozilla organization has set up a feature brainstorming web site that allows everyone to enter their favorite wish lists for the open source browser."

Qualcomm Hands Off Eudora to Mozilla

Qualcomm on Wednesday joined up with the Mozilla Foundation to announce it is transitioning Eudora into an open source e-mail client that will be based upon Thunderbird. In turn, all future versions of Eudora will be free and Qualcomm will discontinue the current paid client. Although it may seem like Eudora is simply abandoning its e-mail software, which has a small but strong following of loyal users, the company claims the Thunderbird-based client will retain "Eudora's uniquely rich feature set and productivity enhancements".

Behind the Debian and Mozilla Dispute Over Use of Firefox

As previously reported, Debian plans to release its newest version, Etch, in December, and wants Mozilla's Firefox Web browser to be part of the distribution. Mozilla, however, told Debian it couldn't release the software without its accompanying artwork. Now a legal expert says that the existing distinctions between copyright and trademark laws should have prevented this from becoming an issue in the first place. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols also discusses the issue.

A Look at Firefox 2.0 RC2

Ars reviews Firefox 2 RC2, and concludes: "I personally never managed to get any of the third party spellcheck extensions to work right, and the availability of spellcheck support alone was enough to convince me to use 2.0 pre-releases rather than the 1.5.0.7 build that comes with Ubuntu. All things considered, RC2 adequately meets most of my needs, but doesn't exceed my expectations as major releases have in the past. Hopefully, development on the Places system and other delayed features will make future releases more interesting."

Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 Released

"Firefox 2 Release Candidate 2 is a preview release of our next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for download to Web application developers, our testing community and users who want to get a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox. Please note that at this time, users should not expect all of their extensions, plugins and themes from previous versions of Firefox to work properly." Update: A guide on how to make old extensions work or port over to 2.0.

Alleged Firefox Hacker Backs Down

Smile, we've been on candid camera, and we've been caught with our pants down, standing on our heads, with umbrellas between our teeth. "I have not succeeded in making this code do anything more than cause a crash and eat up system resources, and I certainly haven't used it to take over anyone else’s computer and execute arbitrary code. I do not have 30 undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities, nor did I ever make this claim. I have no undisclosed Firefox vulnerabilities. The person who was speaking with me made this claim, and I honestly have no idea if he has them or not." Of course it did not take long for black helicopters to arrive. Microsoft has computers, so do the hackers: a link! MS is behind it all!

Hackers Claim Zero-Day Flaw in Firefox

The open-source Firefox Web browser is critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript, two hackers said Saturday afternoon. An attacker could commandeer a computer running the browser simply by crafting a Web page that contains some malicious JavaScript code, Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi said in a presentation at the ToorCon hacker conference here. The flaw affects Firefox on Windows, Apple Computer's Mac OS X, and Linux, they said.

Debian To Rebrand Firefox

Debian adheres to a strict interpretation of what is Free Software and what isn't. The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn't consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution. Mozilla claims that using the Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation. Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval. What all this ultimately could mean is that the Firefox name is wiped from the face of Debian and its offshoots. Debian developer Eric Dorland confirmed to internetnews.com that Debian will re-name Firefox and that the re-naming process could be completed as soon as next week.