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

We are excited to announce that Mozilla won the American Business Awards Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year (with less than 2,500 employees) in the software category!

More than 2,700 entries from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration in more than 40 categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year and Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year.

We are so pleased to accept this award on behalf of the always innovative Mozilla Community!

Today, Mozilla is happy to release Firefox 3.6.4, the latest security and stability release for Firefox, used by nearly 400 million people around the world to browse the Web. This release provides crash protection for Windows and Linux users by isolating third-party plugins when they crash.

Results from our beta testing show Firefox 3.6.4 will significantly reduce the number of Firefox crashes experienced by users who are watching online videos or playing games. When a plugin crashes or freezes while using Firefox, users can enjoy uninterrupted browsing by simply refreshing the page.

Mozilla recognizes that third-party plugins provide important functionality in many of today’s websites. At the same time, plugins can lead to problems for users as they browse. With the ability to automatically alert users when they have out of date plugins, and now crash protection, Firefox 3.6.4 allows users to experience all the content they love without any of the hassles. (If you’re not running Firefox, Mozilla recommends that you make a habit of visiting the Plugin Check page to keep your plugins up to date.)

At this time Firefox offers crash protection for Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight on Windows and Linux computers. Support for other plugins and operating systems will become available in a future Firefox release.

All Firefox users are encouraged to upgrade for free by using the “Check for Updates” function in the Help menu, or by visiting www.firefox.com. For more information, please visit:

• Crash Protection FAQ
• Firefox 3.6.4 Release Notes
• Plugin Check

Firefox enables hundreds of millions of people all over the world to each have a Web experience that’s unique. They can make Firefox look and feel the way they want with Add-ons and Personas. And more importantly, Firefox becomes their trusted guide to the Web. It intelligently searches browsing history and bookmarks to help people get to their favorite sites with minimum effort using the “Awesome Bar”. Tabbed browsing allows people to efficiently work with multiple sites at the same time while Password Manager and automatic form fill help them quickly get things done.

But the world is changing. People access the Web from many devices, including their mobile phones. As people move through the day from their home computer to mobile phone to work computer and back again, the rich personalization provided by Firefox is sacrificed.

At the same time, faster networks, cheaper cloud storage, and more powerful hardware, especially on mobile devices, enable new possibilities.

Mozilla launched an exploration (the Weave project) into how multiple devices, connected through the cloud, could make the personal Web experience portable across multiple computers and devices, while providing unprecedented privacy protection. That exploration has resulted in a set of products, features and services that provide great user experiences and begin to create new possibilities for developers:

Firefox Sync (formerly Weave Sync) – Currently packaged as a free Firefox Add-on, Sync will be an integrated (opt-in, of course) feature of Firefox 4. It makes your bookmarks, history, Awesome Bar intelligence, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs accessible from Firefox running on other computers and mobile phones. And unlike cloud services that use your data to track your travels throughout the Web for ad targeting or other purposes, Firefox Sync encrypts all of your data before sending it to the server. This means you do not have to sacrifice any privacy or control while still getting the convenience of ubiquitous access to your data using Firefox Sync.

Firefox Home for iPhone – For users of Firefox Sync (don’t forget to install it on your computer today, so that you’re ready to go when Firefox Home for the iPhone arrives!), Firefox Home gives iPhone owners instant, secure access to the bookmarks and open tabs from Firefox on their computers, as well as a version of the Awesome Bar that quickly gets them to the right website. Firefox Home provides the comfort that comes from knowing you can quickly get to the information you need wherever you are. You’ve already done the work to find what you need on the Web. Why start all over again on your iPhone?

Developer API – Firefox Sync and Firefox Home are built upon open, simple and powerful REST APIs that you can use for your own applications. The User API enables account creation, authentication and other account-related actions. The Sync API handles data storage and retrieval. These APIs work hand-in-hand to provide a complete end-to-end synchronization service. All of our code is open source, including that for the server, which means you can even run your own servers if you want.

We’re building services that make the user experience more personal, portable and privacy-protected while providing developers with a platform and tools that are easy, effective and extensible. Join us by trying Firefox Sync today and by learning more about how to build upon our platform. For more information about Firefox Home, check out our progress, updates and FAQ here.

Editor’s note:  Cross-posted from Chelsea Novak’s Blog.

After a great Mozilla Creative Collective design challenge and vote, we have the Mozilla 2010 T-shirt! Designed by Mozilla community member foxyboy, this shirt cannot be bought in stores and is only available to Mozilla donors.

So how do you get it? Contribute $75 or more to the Open Web Fund. Every dollar you donate will support a Mozilla Drumbeat project.

You can help us support these amazing Drumbeat projects and wear your love for the open web on your sleeve. Or on your chest. It is a T-shirt, after all.

PS. This program has been live for a little while now, but because of some upstream technology issues we haven’t been able to process donations very well. If you’ve tried to donate before and were having a less than awesome experience, please try again.

The world’s largest football tournament will kick off this week with plenty of opportunity to celebrate. Ever worn a team jersey, painted team colors on your face in support or waved a flag from your car after a victory? There is another way to express your team spirit, and it doesn’t involve paint or fabric – just your Firefox Web browser!

Firefox is the most customizable browser in the world. With Firefox Cup Personas (easy-to-use backgrounds that let you personalize the look of Firefox) you can customize your browser and show your team spirit.

Being in front of your computer doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the action, you can participate with the Firefox Cup . By wearing one of these 32 Personas to support your team, you’ll take part in the global Firefox Cup competition. On the Firefox Cup website, you can easily see how many “fans” each team has (i.e., how many people are wearing each team Persona on their Firefox). The team with the most fans will win the Firefox Cup!

We’ll announce round winners on the following dates:

• June 16th: Round 1
• June 23rd: Round 2
• June 30th: Round 3
• July 7th: Round 4
• July 14th: Overall country winner announced!

You can also stay on top of scores and news within your Firefox browser with the FootieFox add-on. No matter where you are in the world or your time zone, you can catch all the action and support your team with the Firefox Cup!

The winning country will be showcased on Mozilla’s sites and more, so be sure to cast your vote by wearing your favorite country’s Persona today.

For more information, see:

• Firefox Cup
• Personas
• FootieFox

Editor’s note: On May 28, Mozilla announced the release candidate build of the next version of Firefox, which will include the Crash Protection for “out of process plugins” feature to help create a smoother, faster and more secure browsing experience for users. Early testing shows that this feature may protect users from a significant number of the browser crashes that are commonly reported to us.

For more details, check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below.

The release candidate build of Firefox 3.6.4 is now available for download and public testing. This version fixes issues found in the previous beta of Firefox 3.6.4. If no issues are found during testing this build will be officially released as Firefox 3.6.4 final in the coming weeks.

Users who have already downloaded or opted in to previous betas should receive the latest beta as an automatic update. If you did not download the previous beta and would like to help us test this release, please download the latest Firefox 3.6.4 beta from mozilla.com.

For general information about Firefox 3.6.4 and the uninterrupted browsing feature, please see the previous beta announcement.

Editor’s note: On May 28, Firefox Sync graduated from Mozilla Labs. For more details, check out Ragavan Srinivasan’s blog announcement, reposted below.

We are excited to announce that the “Weave Sync” project from Mozilla Labs has officially graduated and is now being incorporated into the Firefox roadmap. “Weave Sync” is now named “Firefox Sync” and the service will become a feature of Firefox in an upcoming major release. Until then you can download Firefox Sync as an add-on.

In addition to graduating and changing names, the latest version of Firefox Sync, v1.3, has a few new features and developments including:

• Availability in more than 15 languages including German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese
• A simpler sign-up and setup process
• A single button to access all your remote tabs and more.

For those of you that tested Sync and gave feedback while it was a part of Mozilla Labs, thank you, this would not have happened without you. And even though this project has graduated, we are still looking for your feedback and involvement as we incorporate Sync into Firefox.

And, yes, Mozilla Labs will continue to focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences. In fact, check out the Contacts project and the Account Manager feature for some of our work there.

Finally, in case you missed the latest news, we have been working on an application for the iPhone based on the Firefox Sync technology. The app is called “Firefox Home”, and it will give iPhone users instant access to their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks, and the set of tabs from their most recent browser session, in addition to having “Awesome Bar” capability.

Set up Firefox Sync on your desktop now to ensure you’re ready for Firefox Home once it’s available for the iPhone.