The first Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.
New features and changes in this milestone:
* Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
* Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
* Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatibility and stability.
* Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.
Testers can download the Firefox 3 Release Candidate builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.
May 19th, 2008
Google has updated the iPhone version of Google Reader, its online web feed aggregator.
This is good news even if you don’t have an iPhone. Like other web apps designed for the iPhone interface, it fits very well in Firefox (and other browsers) sidebar.
And it’s pretty simple:
1. Open the Bookmarks Manager (Bookmarks/Organize Bookmarks…)
2. In Firefox 2, in the File menu, select New bookmark… In Firefox 3, press Organize in the toolbar and select New bookmark…
3. Enter a name, http://www.google.com/reader/i/ for location, and ensure to check Load this bookmark in the sidebar.
4. Press Save Changes and now you can select the bookmark to load Google Reader in the sidebar.
Similar tricks allow you to add other iPhone apps and Facebook Chat.
May 16th, 2008
Users who spend a fair share of their web time around social web sites and chat will be glad to meet the new Yoono 5, currently in private beta status.
Yoono 5 beta is a powerful Firefox extension, that integrates with several social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Piczo, Flickr and FriendFeed. Once you provide your credentials, you are able to see contacts in each network, their latest activities, posted photos and access to their respective messaging systems, post to Twitter or upload photos to Flickr.
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May 14th, 2008
Iron Man movie proved to be a very entertaining story, perhaps the best told for a comic character based movie so far, fast paced, appropriate special effects.
If you enjoyed the movie, here’s an Iron Man theme for you. You will need Personas, Mozilla Labs’ Firefox extension that allows to set a background for the toolbars and the status bar.
Once installed, click on the Personas icon in the status bar, and select Preferences, press the Custom Persona Editor…
1. For header, enter http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/personas/ironman_header.png
2. For footer, http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/personas/ironman_footer.png
3. Change the font color to something suitable, like gold.
4. To allow more of the background to be seen, add this line to your userChrome.css file:
#nav-bar { padding-right: 150px !important; }
That’s all.
May 4th, 2008
Firefox 3 themes now have names: Tango for Linux, Strata for Windows and Firelight for Mac OS X.
Tango, is named directly after the Tango Desktop Project which provides visual guidelines for Gnome and KDE Linux desktop environments. The new theme is in large part an effort of Michael Ventnor.
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May 2nd, 2008
Paste Email, a Firefox extension developed by Chuck Baker, allows you to paste up to 16 different short text notes you find yourself typing often. It was originally conceived as a quick way to paste your email address but it has well grown far beyond that.
Paste Email adds an item to text boxes and text areas context menu where you can choose one of the predefined text strings for a quick paste. It also adds an option to insert the contents of a text file saving you a trip to your favorite text editor, selecting all contents and copying.
You can download Paste Email from Mozilla Add-ons.
May 1st, 2008
We continue to show you some of the coolest and useful Firefox 3 features you can expect to see. Today’s installment on Firefox 3’s new bookmarking system is brought to you once again by Deb Richardson, the author of the about:mozilla newsletter. Deb provides a clear explanation of the many improvements you’ll see, including:
• bookmark stars which allow for one-click bookmarking
• tags that allow you to add extra relevant information to a bookmark so it’s easier to find and organize
• smart bookmark folders or “saved searches” that automatically update when you add new items matching that search to your bookmarks
Take a look at her post for more details, as well as a great how-to.
April 29th, 2008
When you scroll the mouse wheel over the tab bar in Firefox you see the tab titles pass by so you can select the tab you want, which is not always that easy if titles are similar like when having several pages from the same site open simultaneously.
With Tab Wheel Scroll, a Firefox extension developed by Matt H, the mouse wheel actually switches tabs so you can see the full tab contents as you scroll up and down which you can configure to scroll tabs to the left or to the right.
You can also set whether you want to continue with the first or last tab when you have reached the opposite edge so scrolling keeps going. This sounded as a good option at first but turning it off actually made it more usable for me.
Bonus points for not adding any unnecessary user interface other than its options accessible from the Add-ons Manager and being already compatible with Firefox 3 beta versions.
An option (like Ctrl + scroll) for simple tab title scrolling would be welcomed.
Tab Wheel Scroll is available from Mozilla Add-ons.
April 28th, 2008
XiTi Monitor announced the latest statistics on browsers usage in Europe and the rest of the world, showing it has reached about 29% in March this year.
Finland, Poland and Slovenia keep their lead of the pack with shares of 45.9%, 44% and 43.7% respectively. Considering other browsers (including Safari and Opera) probably have a strong presence in Europe as well, it could also mean that Firefox is used even more than Internet Explorer in those same countries.
Market share is definitely being grabbed from Internet Explorer which stays in a slow course down. Opera and Maxthon are the other major browsers growing at its expense.
April 25th, 2008
Firefox is a winner in this year’s Webware 100 competition.
Firefox was among the top 10 voted products that amounted for about half of the 1.9 million votes, so at least it was the most voted browser, despite Maxthon’s tricky tactics.
Miro and Joost also got voted in the top ten in the Video category.
The list is worth looking at and you may learn about an interesting product or two. Here is the list of all winners.
April 24th, 2008
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