We are excited to launch Rock Your Firefox today as a place where Firefox users can learn how to customize their Web experience and discover cool new add-ons.
The first add-on featured on Rock Your Firefox is Yoono, the most popular social networking add-on that nearly 4 million people use today. Yoono is a cool sidebar that integrates all of your social networks and displays them in one stream. There are thousands of Firefox Add-ons to choose from and hundreds of millions of people worldwide have already downloaded nearly 2 billion add-ons.
Get ready to Rock Your Firefox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see what Firefox Add-on is featured next!
This past Saturday, February 27th at 3:34 AM Chilean local time there was an 8.8 magnitude earthquake that lasted for approximately three minutes causing a lot of destruction throughout Chile.
Mozilla has a strong volunteer community through both ChileMoz and Firefox Chile. In October 2009 a number of Mozilla employees and community members spent a week in Santiago, Chile for the first Mozilla Hispano Camp and participation in Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre. We are very fortunate to know that most of our community members are doing well and have survived the earthquake.
Below Rodrigo García Segovia of Firefox Chile (www.firefox.cl) talks about the recent earthquake and ways you can get involved:
Follow Updates from our community members
Follow updates from some of our community members through Twitter:
Text CHILE to 864833 to give $10 to the United Way
Financial Support
The Huffington Post did a great write-up of different relief organizations. Rodrigo García Segovia, one of our community members from Santiago, Chile would like to point out the two official recommendations that the Chilean government are endorsing:
Caritas Chile
Is the official organization of the Catholic Church in Chile to help people in emergency situations. One of their biggest needs is financial support so they can purchase food and setup temporary homes. To donate through this organization click here, select “Emergencies” and then select “Earthquake in Chile 2010″ from the drop-down menu.
Note: We still have not heard from Mozilla community member, Javier Martínez Ortiz. If you have any information about his whereabouts please add details here.
3/3 Update: We finally reached Javier – both he and his family are fine. A special thanks to the entire community who has been concerned with his safety.
I’m excited to announce the latest challenge from the Creative Collective: designing the Mozilla 2010 t-shirt! The goal is to create a cool design that captures the unique essence of Mozilla, which would then be printed as the official Mozilla 2010 t-shirt and distributed as an exclusive item to contributors.
Creating a design that represents the multi-faceted nature of Mozilla, its mission and its values is certainly no easy task, but we know that our amazing design community is up to the challenge. You might recall the last time that we gave our t-shirt design process an open-source flavor like this was with the Firefox 3 t-shirt contest, which resulted in thousands of submissions from around the world. Now, for the first time, we’re channeling the talents of our design community towards Mozilla (vs. Firefox), which makes this challenge particularly interesting and even more exciting.
When designing, take inspiration from the broader themes that make Mozilla unique, such as: openness, community, and innovation. You can retain the bold, constructivist graphic style of the original artwork, or take a completely different direction. The possibilities are practically endless and we encourage you to take a more abstract approach, but please keep the Dino logo intact as indicated by our Trademark Policy. For additional details, considerations and requirements make sure to visit the design challenge page.
And, remember that the submission period ends onApril 30th 2010. So, get those creative juices flowing and send us your best stuff!
This week, Mozilla launches the Open To Choice campaign. Aimed at raising awareness among web users in Europe on the importance of making an informed choice when selecting the software and services used to access the Internet. The campaign launches at a time when almost 200 million Europeans in 32 countries will be asked to make an active choice about which Web browser will act on their behalf to broker their online experiences.
Open To Choice begins with an open letter written by Mozilla CEO John Lilly, and Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker, addressing the European Commission and Microsoft’s landmark Browser Choice screen settlement as “… an important milestone towards helping more people take control of their online lives”. Explaining the critical importance of the browser today, the open letter calls for greater understanding, and education on why choice not only matters, but also that of an informed choice.
Over the coming weeks Opentochoice.org will go on to provide further information about browser basics, and become a hub for conversations on the importance of Web choice.
There is exactly one week left to vote for Firefox in the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards. The nominations are in and Firefox is a finalist in the “Best Major Desktop Browser”, “Best Mac Browser” and “Best Mobile Browser” categories. Follow the links below to vote for Firefox as your favorite browser in each category. You can vote through February 25 as many times as you’d like, so please vote and tell your friends!
The Web Browser section of the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards honors the year’s best browsers. This is the first year that About Web Browsers is a part of the awards.
You can also vote for your favorite Firefox Add-ons in the following categories:
For the first time, About.com’s Computing Channel is running a coordinated award program that will honor the best products, services and innovations in dozens of categories. The awards cover everything from phones and phone apps to high-powered desktop publishing programs and PCs. The program grew out of a popular IM Reader’s Choice Awards program, which took place in 2009 and 2008.
Editor’s note: On Feb 5, Mozilla Labs released new Weave Sync APIs and resources for developers. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.
Last week we announced that the Weave Sync add-on for Firefox is now generally available to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences.
Using this free browser add-on from Mozilla Labs, you can use secure mechanisms to access all of your personal data (including your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and open browser tabs) across all of your supported devices, making your Web experience instantly more personal and useful. And all of your data is encrypted end-to-end to help ensure your privacy.
This week we’re launching the first set of developer resources including Weave Sync & User APIs, documentation, and Python & Javascript client libraries — to increase the number of places where you can securely access, and have your personal data readily available to you, independent of whether or not Firefox is available.
This first set of APIs focuses on enabling Weave clients to provide user’s access to their stored data from other devices and environments.
Future APIs will provide third-party web sites and applications the ability to request permission and obtain explicit access only to specific user data to augment a users’ Web experience, e.g. providing personalized recommendations based upon a user’s bookmarks or search history.
We’re also releasing a number of early prototypes and sample code that have been developed alongside the Weave APIs, including:
Editor’s note: Today, the GNOME Foundation announced a $10,000 grant from Mozilla to advance accessibility. See the full press release for full details. Included below is an excerpt from the release:
The GNOME Foundation and Mozilla are committed to open source, open standards, and open formats. Both organizations and their contributors contribute to numerous projects to ensure an open Web and open desktop platform for all users. Part of that effort is working hard to ensure users with physical disabilities are able to make use of a free desktop and Web browser.
“The GNOME Foundation’s commitment to accessibility improves the desktop and Internet experience for millions of people, and Mozilla is proud to support this work,” said Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation.
We’re pleased to announce that Firefox is now available for Nokia’s Maemo platform. Starting today, Nokia N900 owners can enjoy many of the same Firefox features they know and love on the desktop on their mobile device.
Bringing Firefox to mobile devices is the next step toward fulfilling Mozilla’s mission of providing one Web that everyone can access, regardless of device or location. Secure, powerful, and customizable, Firefox is the most modern mobile Web browser available and is optimized for a mobile experience. Key design principles are at the heart of the mobile browsing experience including minimal typing, seamless synchronization with desktop Firefox and the ability to take your Firefox with you, to name a few.
Firefox for mobile is packed with your favorite features, including:
Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
Available in more than 30 languages and counting
Firefox is the first mobile Web browser to support add-ons. With add-ons, you can customize your Firefox by adding features that help make your browser your own. Add-ons like AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides become especially handy when you’re out and about on your mobile device. You can both discover and install add-ons directly from your Nokia N900. There are currently more than 40 Firefox add-ons available for mobile and the number is growing every day.
Just as Firefox does for the desktop, Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications. Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser. Visit the Develop for mobile page to learn more.
Firefox is currently supported on Nokia’s Maemo5 platform and is available for download on the Nokia N900. Users can download and learn more by visiting Firefox.com/mobile. Visit the FAQ for more information.
We’re pleased to announce that the Weave Sync add-on for Firefox is now generally available to seamlessly bridge your desktop and mobile Firefox experiences.
Using this free browser add-on from Mozilla Labs, you can securely access all of your personal data across all of your supported devices, making your Webexperience instantly more personal and useful.
Weave Sync synchronizes your bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history and open browser tabs. And all of your data is encrypted end-to-end to ensure your privacy.
Get Up and Go! – With Weave Sync, open web sites on your desktop are instantly available on your mobile device.
Future releases of Weave Sync will add support for synchronizing your browser add-ons, search plugins and other customizations and ultimately everything that makes your Firefox and Web experience personal.
Weave Sync is open source software developed by Mozilla Labs and released under the GPL/MPL/LGPL tri-license.
It’s been a week since Firefox 3.6 release day and after more than 21 million downloads we are still going strong! We spent some time last Thursday capturing the magic of the release and have put together a behind the scenes video. Enjoy!
Get Up and Go! – With Weave Sync, open web sites on your desktop are instantly available on your mobile device.