Mozilla, Gecko Archive

"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."

Thunderbird 2 is now available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux in over 35 languages. It offers easy ways to manage and organize your email with message tags, advanced folder views, message history navigation, find as you type, and improved new mail alert notifications. Thunderbird 2 also includes a refreshed user interface and support for Microsoft Vista.

"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 today released updated versions of the Firefox browser, v1.5.0.10 and v2.0.0.2, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, which close a major security flaw called the 'location.hostname vulnerability'. The fix stops hackers from being able to tamper with how websites are displayed.

"Using the experimental Mozilla XForms extension, you can process XForms in your browser today. While not yet deployed widely enough for use on the public Internet, XForms may be suitable for some intranet applications. This article demonstrates basic XForms processing as currently supported by Firefox and the Mozilla XForms plug-in."

"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."

"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."

According to research carried out by French firm Xiti Monitor, use of the Firefox browser continues to grow in Europe. Since April this year, the geeky alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer gained an extra four percent of the market across the continent. According to Xiti's research, the browser is now used by some 23.2 per cent of European PC web surfers - up from 19.4% in April.

"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."

This week the Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 2.0, and that occasion did not go by unnoticed at Microsoft's Internet Explorer team. "The Microsoft Internet Explorer Team sent us a cake for the upcoming release of Firefox 2! A big thanks to Redmond, Washington!" What's next, Stallman on a dinner date with Ballmer?

"These Release Notes cover what's new, download and installation instructions, known issues and frequently asked questions for the Firefox 2.0 RC3 release. Please read these notes and the bug filing instructions before reporting any bugs to Bugzilla."

"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."

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.

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."