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New Media News Every Morning

Mozilla Releases Mobile Firefox for Maemo, Android to Follow

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Mozilla just released their first mobile Firefox browser, running on Maemo platform. In case you’re not aware one of the mobile devices sporting this platform is the computer-like Nokia N900 handset. So, if you’re one of the probably few users of this handset, you might want to visit firefox.com/mobile using your N900.  Or if you want to be cautious about it, check out the FAQ first.

Better yet, check out these key features first, to help you decide whether you should install  the mobile Firefox on your Nokia N900. Firefox for Mobile lets you:

  • Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
  • Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
  • Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
  • Get maps and information relevant to your location
  • View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
  • Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings

What’s great about Firefox Mobile is that it’s probably the first mobile web browser that supports browser add-ons. Yeah, I envy  you N900 users and I’m seriously hoping that Mozilla releases an Android version, specifically for Nexus One soon.

The mobile Firefox add-ons let you cusztomize the browser by adding extra features such as AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators and definitely more. In fact, there are already more than 40 of these add-ons that you can use after you’ve installed mobile Firefox.

So, if you’re a Nokia N900 user, check out Mozilla Firefox mobile now. And if you’re an Android phone user like me, let’s wait a while for the Android version to come out.

Originally posted on January 30, 2010 @ 5:04 pm

Mozilla Releases a Faster and Better Firefox 3.6

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Alright Firefox users,  the latest version of your favorite browser is officially out. Firefox 3.6 finally goes out into the open and brings with it some new cutting edge features including support for a wide variety of web standards as well as access to more than 6,000 free add-ons.

According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.6 is 20% faster than Firefox 3.5, thanks to extensive under the hood work that improved its performance when doing your daily web routine such as email, uplaoding photos, social networking and more. Firefox 3.6 also promises to deliver new features including customizable Persona themes, plugin updates, improved JavaScript performance and more.

From the users’ side, here are the new features that you should expect from Firefox 3.6:

  • Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
  • Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
  • Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
  • Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
  • Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
  • Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

If you’re a developer, here are the goodies for you:

  • Support for the latest HTML5 specification, including the File API for local file handling
  • Font Support: In addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, 3.6 now supports the new Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
  • CSS gradients: Supports linear and radial CSS gradients which allow for a smoother transition between colors
  • Device orientation: Firefox 3.6 exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to Web pages

Alright, you know the drill, download Firefox 3.6 from here.

Originally posted on January 21, 2010 @ 4:25 pm

Mozilla Prepares its Prism App to Bring Web Apps to your Desktop

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It looks like Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight have something to watch out for from Mozilla. The same Firefox browser developers are preparing their latest endeavor – Prism, a new application that will bring most web applications to the desktop, similar to what those two products have been doing right now.

Mozilla is about to unleash Prism’s third beta release any time now. Once out, you can start downloading it and install on your desktop to let you pull your favorite web apps, such as Gmail or YouTube out of your web browser and then let it run as a stand-alone application on your desktop.  The third beta release of Prism is the most stable version yet and is almost close to being the final release version, according to Mozilla.

Now, why should Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight be worried about Prism?  That’s because Prism might just steal their users especially since it promises to bring in a simpler way of making things done with regards to pulling web apps and bringing them into the desktop. [Read more…]

Originally posted on January 13, 2010 @ 5:38 pm

Celebrating Five Years of Firefox Goodness

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Screen shot 2009-11-10 at 2.23.18 AM

Five years ago today, browsing the internet was all black and blue. But thanks to Firefox it has turned orange and yellow.  Yes dear folks we join the millions of people in celebrating Firefox’s 5th  birthday.

With 330 million users worldwide, 70 languages and more than 7,000 add-ons that make our daily Internet browsing experience, Firefox certainly deserves all the accolades. [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 9, 2009 @ 2:43 pm

Microsoft Executive publicly doubts Firefox download numbers

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barzdukasAfter the debacle around the by Microsoft sponsored internet browser security survey the Redmond company continues the smug and now publicly doubts the download numbers for the open source Firefox browser.

Senior Executive Any Barzdukas went as far as saying that the celebrated 1billion downloads “interesting maths” were. Barzdukas, who surprisingly is General Manager at MSFT in charge of the much loathed Internet Explorer, did not detail her claim but let some vague Marketing smug lose:

“As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat sceptical about large number claims,” she said.

“It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.”

The Executive further announced that the company will continue to support its Achilles heel, Internet Explorer 6 because users apparently are satisfied with the browser or not aware of the availability if newer versions for the browser.

“The reason that a consumer would still be on IE6 at this point is a lack of awareness or the ‘good enough’ problem,” she said. “If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and you’re not particularly curious about new technology and don’t really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle. Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser.”

Personally I would say that the main reason users still use the security flawed IE6 browser the, just as security flawed ActiveX script, applications are which are used on many internet and intranet websites which require IE6. Not the fact that users can not be bothered to upload. Many a system administrator MUST continue to block updates because companies will not make resources to upgrade large intranets, relying on since IE7 deprecated code.

Not so surprisingly, Firefox has since long surpassed the popularity of IE6 and continues to grow in popularity.

[Via]

Originally posted on August 17, 2009 @ 9:42 am