The Mozilla Blog

The response has been tremendous since Firefox Home, our free iPhone app, became available in Apple’s App Store. We made some updates to Firefox Home, which are now available, so if you haven’t tried it yet, get it now.

We read your comments in the App Store and on our forum and truly appreciate all the feedback you have given us. Your comments and ideas are great input for our future plans with Firefox Home. Keep ‘em coming!

Firefox Home 1.0.1 Available in the App Store
We worked quickly to address the top three problems you reported and have released updates to both Firefox Home (v 1.0.1) and the Firefox Sync add-on (v 1.4.3)

In Firefox Home 1.0.1:
* FIXED: Now supports usernames with uppercase letters
* ADDED: Help button on login page that links to troubleshooting tips
* IMPROVED: More helpful error messages when problems occur
Get this update on iTunes.

In Firefox Sync 1.4.3:
* FIXED: Now correctly supports multi-byte characters in passwords
* ADDED: Ability to complete initial sync if setting up in Private Browsing mode
* IMPROVED: Helpful UI indicator to show sync status
* See the Firefox Sync Account Setup Demo
Get this update on the Mozilla Add-Ons site.

We believe Firefox Home is an excellent Web companion for the iPhone because it lets you access your Firefox history, bookmarks and tabs no matter where you are. We are humbled by all the interest and positive reviews we’ve seen on the Web.

“If you’re at all like me and leave dozens (or more!) tabs open on your home machine, you’ll definitely like the convenience of being able to access something you left open while you’re on the go.” — Chris Foresman, ars technica

“Can’t remember where you saw that important story just before you left the office? Open the app and check your history. Want a shortcut to save you from typing a long URL on the iPhone or iPod Touch? Open the app. (As a bonus, on my tests, it opened Web pages faster than Safari.)” — Bob Tedeschi, New York Times: Gadgetwise

“Firefox’s Home App for iPhone has opened my eyes to a world where desktop and mobile web browsing become one, but we’re not quite there yet. Being able to pick up on the iPhone where I left off on the PC is one of those ideas that suddenly seems long overdue,”  – Jared Newman, PC World.

Firefox Home, Different from Firefox Web Browser
Firefox Home is a part of making the personal Web experience portable across multiple computers and devices. Firefox Home is a valuable app that gives you instant access to your most recently and frequently visited sites, right at your fingertips. You now have the ability to get up and go in a moment’s notice, and access your flight status, reservation time or driving directions you were looking at at your desk without a second thought!

Going Global
Many of you have asked when Firefox Home will be available for download in your country’s App Store. We’re working to make Firefox Home available worldwide in the very near future. Stay tuned!

Get Involved & Stay Connected
This is the first release of Firefox Home on iPhone, and with your ideas, we hope to provide more features to this application over time. Please leave your comments or ask questions on our Firefox Home Support Forum. Designers, let the creative juices flow and participate in the Firefox Home iPhone Skin Design Challenge.

Guten Tag! 你好! Cześć! Olá! Привет! Bonjour! Γεια σας! Hello!

The new update of Firefox 4 Beta is now available in 23 languages for testing and feedback. Thanks to the help of the global Mozilla community, we’re now able to bring Firefox 4 Beta to more people around the world. This update to Firefox 4 Beta continues with changes to the look of Firefox with tabs appearing on the top of the browser and introduces the ability to turn tabs into App Tabs.

What’s new in this Firefox 4 Beta update?

Continued Evolution of the New Firefox Look – Tabs on Top

• Mac and Windows users now have all their tabs on the top of the browser. We moved the tabs to the top to make it easier to focus on the Web content and easier to control the tools in your Web browser.
• If you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the Menu bar is replaced with a single Firefox button so you get to the most used options with just one click.

App Tabs

• There are some websites you visit many times throughout your day, such as your email, social networks, music or game sites. Now you can turn the websites you use most into App Tabs to easily find the ones you need.
• App Tabs offer a better way to manage tabs, saving space on the tab bar and making it easy to find frequently used tabs. Check out this video from Alex Faaborg for more details on App Tabs.

New for Developers: Under the Hood

CSS3 Transitions:

• The Firefox 4 Beta now has support for new CSS3 features like Transitions and Transformations, making it fun to add elegant animations to your websites.
• To show what CSS3 Transitions can do, we added them to the Firefox 4 Beta “What’s New” page. For more information, check out this post and demo from Paul Roget.

Retained Layers:

• Adding Retained Layers in Firefox 4 Beta allows for super-fast scrolling on complex websites. See Robert O’Callahan’s post for more information.

XPCOM Framework:

• We made changes to the XPCOM framework that improves start up time when you load Firefox. See Jorge Villalobos post for more information.

There are more features to come in future Firefox 4 Beta updates and we need your help to test them. Already with help from our community of testers, we were able to get valuable feedback on the first Firefox 4 Beta that enabled us to fix more than 670 issues in this update.

Help build the best Firefox ever!

Firefox 4 Beta includes a new Feedback Add-on so at any time you can click the Feedback button to tell us about what you do or don’t like. The Feedback Add-on includes Mozilla Labs Test Pilot, and will ask you to take part in anonymous studies. The latest Test Pilot study explores the ways people interact with the Firefox menu bar, Firefox button (on Windows Vista and 7) and toolbar controls. You can choose to opt-out of any or all studies and manage your settings in the Feedback button (no data will be sent to Mozilla without your permission).

Testers will receive automatic updates to the Firefox 4 Beta, so stay tuned for the next release in the coming weeks.

• Download Firefox 4 Beta
• Learn more about the features
• Submit your feedback
• FAQ
• Get the detailed Release Notes

Today we’re excited to announce the launch of the Social Media Toolkit.

The Mozilla Social Media Toolkit is a set of tools that allows you to leverage social media to market Mozilla and Firefox in your region and beyond.  The toolkit contains everything you’ll need from best practices, tips and tricks, to design assets for both Facebook and Twitter.

Are you a Mozillian that has a community or localized Mozilla/Firefox social media account?  Or are you interested in setting one up?  Then this toolkit is for you!

Go check out the toolkit! We’re excited to see an increase in the Mozilla social media space!

We are happy to announce that the wait is over.

Firefox Home, a free application, is now available for download on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Firefox Home provides access to your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone. Get up and go and have exactly what you are looking for on the Web on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Firefox Home uses your browser data, securely synced from Firefox on your desktop to the cloud, to let you search and browse quickly and efficiently. You can view the sites you want directly in Firefox Home, open them in Mobile Safari or share them with friends via email. Your Firefox data is private and only you have access to it.

Quick Start:

If you have Firefox Sync on your desktop, skip to step #3.

1. Install Firefox Sync, a free add-on for Firefox, on your desktop.
2. Restart Firefox and follow prompts to create an account with both a password and a secret phrase.
3. Go the App Store on your iPhone and search for “Firefox Home” or install it directly from iTunes.
4. Launch Firefox Home on your iPhone. You’ll be prompted to enter your Firefox Sync account info. Enter your username, password and Secret Phrase and tap “Done.”
5. Enjoy!

More detailed set-up instructions are available, as well as a answers to frequently asked questions.

Tell Us What You Think

Take this quick survey, or if you have a question or comment please visit the Firefox Home Forum.

Stay Connected

As always, you can get the latest and greatest news and info about what we’re up by joining our newsletter and following us on Twitter or Facebook.

To celebrate the world’s largest football tournament, we launched the Firefox Cup — a friendly, global competition based on the number of users for each team Persona. We’ve seen thousands of fans from around the world showing their team spirit by wearing Personas on their Firefox. The winner for each round was chosen based on the team Persona with the most fans (average daily users) for the week.

Today, we announce the overall winner of the competition: Germany! Congratulations to Brazil and Spain, who were second and third place, respectively.

Here’s a recap of the four rounds:

• June 16th: Brazil won round 1 with Argentina in close competition.
• June 23rd: Brazil kept their lead.
• June 30th: Brazil hung on to its lead in round 3 with 17,380 supporters, just a few more hundred than Germany.
• July 7th: Germany jumped to first place!

Thanks to all the loyal fans and community members for supporting their teams in the Firefox Cup! We’re already looking forward to the next football tournament and challenge Paul the Octopus to follow the Firefox Cup!

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available and ready for testing. This first version is filled with dozens of new features and improvements. Here are more in depth explanations of some of the Firefox 4 Beta 1 features from the Firefox team:

Firefox 4 beta 1 is here – what’s in it for web developers?, Chris Blizzard

Firefox 4 Beta 1 UI Changes, Alex Faaborg

Introducing the New Add-Ons Manager, Dave Townsend

History of the Add-Ons Manager, Dave Townsend

Firefox 4 – FormData and the new File.url object, Jonas Sicking

WebM Video Support in Firefox 4 Beta, Chris Pearce

Web Developer “Console” in Firefox 4.0 Beta 1, Dave Dahl

We will continue to share more analysis and details for new features and changes in Firefox 4 as the product develops.

For more information on Firefox 4 Beta 1:

• Download Firefox 4 Beta
• Learn more about the features
• Submit your feedback
• FAQ
• Get the detailed Release Notes

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now ready to download and test! This first version gives an early look at what’s planned for Firefox 4. Stay tuned, because there is more to come and we plan to release new beta versions every two to three weeks. Your feedback is essential to help shape the product which is why we’re launching now to hear from you early in our development process.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 includes dozens of major features and improvements – by testing them early we’ll be able to respond to your feedback for future versions of Firefox. Once you download Firefox 4 Beta 1, you’re part of our beta program and will receive regular updates as more features launch.

If you are using a Windows PC, the most noticeable new feature will be the look of the browser. We moved the tabs to the top to make it easier to focus on the web content and easier to control the tools in your Web browser. Also, if you have Windows 7 or Windows Vista the Menu bar was replaced with a single Firefox button so you can get to the most used options with just one click. These changes will be coming soon for Mac and Linux.

There is a lot more to this beta than a facelift on Windows, including:

• New Add-Ons Manager: gives you more space to manage your Add-Ons, Themes and Plugins. Customizing your browser has never been easier!
• HD Video: Watch hardware-accelerated, super-smooth, HD-quality HTML5 video on YouTube using the new WebM format.
• Privacy improvements: Mozilla always puts privacy first, and this latest beta fixes flaws in some Web standards that could expose your browser history.
• Crash Protection: Experience uninterrupted browsing (now available on all platforms) – when a plugin crashes or freezes, you can resume browsing by simply refreshing the page.
• Performance: We know that performance is important. In this version, we focused on improving responsiveness at start-up and during page loads. This is just the beginning for performance improvements in Firefox 4.

Web developers will be interested in some of the changes we’ve made under the hood:

• HTML5 Parser: Run the best Web apps of today and tomorrow – if a user’s browser doesn’t support HTML5, they still won’t miss out on your content.
• WebSockets: Build real-time, online interactions like gaming and chatting.
• IndexedDB: Use structured storage in your Web applications to speed them up or provide offline support.
• Web Console: Peek into dynamic websites with this experimental “Heads Up Display” analysis tool.
• Simpler Add-On Development: Authors can create Add-Ons that don’t require a restart to install, develop their Add-Ons more quickly using the new powerful Jetpack SDK, and safely connect to existing libraries using js-ctypes.
• For a full list of Web technologies supported by Firefox check out  our “big chart o’ features.”

There will be much more to test in future beta releases and not everything that you see in this beta is guaranteed to be in Firefox 4. That’s why we need your feedback to help shape Firefox 4. To make it easier to give feedback, Firefox 4 Beta includes a new Feedback Add-On. Any time you run across something you like or don’t like, just click the Feedback button and tell us about it.  The Add-On also includes Mozilla Labs’ Test Pilot , and will ask you to take part in anonymous studies.  You can choose to opt-out of any or all studies by managing your settings in the Feedback button (no data will be sent to Mozilla without your permission).

Help build the best Firefox ever:

• Download Firefox 4 Beta
• Learn more about the features
• Submit your feedback
• FAQ
• Get the detailed Release Notes

We want to thank the Mozilla community of nightly testers for the amazing feedback that helped shaped Firefox 4 Beta 1. We appreciate your assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox.

We’re happy to announce that moments ago, Mozilla submitted our new iPhone app, Firefox Home, to the Apple App Store.

Firefox Home is a free application that provides access to your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone. Firefox Home enables access to the websites you need on the go by picking up where you left off with your desktop browsing. Firefox Home uses your browser data, securely synced from Firefox on your desktop to the cloud, to let you search and browse it quickly and efficiently. You can view the sites you want directly in Firefox Home, open them in Mobile Safari or share them with friends via e-mail. Your Firefox data is private and only you have access to it.

If you don’t already have Firefox Sync set up on your desktop or laptop, we recommend you install it now, so that when Firefox Home is available, you’ll be ready to go!

Firefox Home helps give you the information you need, when you need it! No need to type long URLs. Bookmarks take you to your favorite websites with one tap. Your Firefox history starts working for you the moment you fire up your iPhone.

• Are you on the go all the time? Run to a meeting, or catch a cab to the airport without thinking twice. Just pull out your iPhone and access the list of tabs you just had open on your desktop.
• Looking for the confirmation code to your flight? How about the time and location of your dinner reservations you just had open on you desktop? Start typing in the Awesome Bar finds your recently and frequently visited sites on the desktop.
• Bid farewell to typing the full URL of a website that you’ve visited several times from your desktop!

Once Firefox Home is accepted to the App Store, we’ll post and let you know how to install it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

For more information:
Firefox Home
FAQ and Release Notes

Students around the world love Mozilla’s products and embrace our mission. Our 2,100 student evangelists have a global presence, reaching schools in 77 countries around the world. To more effectively communicate with our student leaders, we are going international with our student guide as well.

We are relaunching the Mozilla campus program as Student Reps. Previously known as Campus Reps, our student community will now live at studentreps.mozilla.org. More than just a fresh design, the new Student Reps site also offers localized content to make it even easier for students to participate around the world. Our very own Student Reps made this possible, translating the site into their native languages with the help of our localization team.

Students can use the site to brainstorm project ideas, find marketing tips, and learn from other reps. The new Student Reps site is already viewable in Albanian, German, Hungarian and Spanish. Look for more languages to be added in the coming weeks!

Today, we launched an update to our crash protection feature to extend the amount of time Firefox will wait before terminating unresponsive plugins.

The crash protection feature, first introduced in Firefox 3.6.4, protects Windows and Linux users from crashes and freezes caused by third party plugins such as Flash and Silverlight. When a plugin crashes, users can reload the Web page to restart the plugin and continue browsing. When a plugin freezes, making the whole browser unresponsive, Firefox 3.6.4 terminates the unresponsive plugin after waiting 10 seconds. These changes were tested with a beta audience of close to one million users.

Following the release of Firefox 3.6.4 we heard from some users, mainly those using older computers, that they sometimes expect longer periods of non-responsiveness from plugins, especially with games. For these users the default timeout of 10 seconds was too short. To address this, we increased the amount of time Firefox waits for a plugin to respond before terminating it from 10 to 45 seconds. This change has been made in Firefox 3.6.6, which was released today as an automatic update for all users.

We would like to thank vendors, such as Zynga, for working with us to ensure that Firefox continues to provide the best user experience for our shared users. For more information, please see:

• Crash Protection FAQ
• Firefox 3.6.6 Release Notes
• Mozilla Support
• Plugin Check