The Mozilla Blog

Today the Mozilla mobile team announced the release of two milestones for the Fennec project - Fennec 1.0 Beta 2 for Maemo and Fennec 1.0 Alpha 2 for Windows Mobile. Additionally, you can also download desktop builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla’s mobile team technical lead, highlights some of the exciting new features in his blog post, excerpted below:

For these releases we have worked on improving the user experience, replacing our old theme with a much nicer looking one and fixing numerous usability issues. We’ve continued to increase performance and responsiveness. We’ve revamped how you install Add-ons, improved our download manager and the whole look of the application. We’ve started work on making forms on web pages easier to use, providing a nicer combo box UI than before.

For more details visit Stuart’s post. Congratulations on these milestones!

Editor’s note: Mozilla released an update to an early release candidate for Firefox 3.5 beta users on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 12:11 am PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.

Please note: beta and release candidate versions of Firefox 3.5 are intended for developer testing and community feedback. If this makes you nervous, we recommend that you wait for the official Firefox 3.5 release, which is coming soon and will be available at www.getfirefox.com

Our 800,000+ Firefox 3.5 beta users will be receiving an update to the first Firefox 3.5 release candidate (3.5rc1build2) in order to continue to help us with daily testing and public feedback. This update contains bug fixes which will be included in the final release of Firefox 3.5, expected later this month. While Mozilla has not yet completed the quality assurance testing required before an official product release, this update is considered stable for daily browsing use and we appreciate your assistance in helping us test and evaluate this version of the release candidate.

If you’re running a beta version of Firefox 3.5, you should be receiving the update automatically within the next 24 hours. To get the update immediately, select “Check for Updates…” in the “Help” menu.

This version is not yet being made available for direct download. If you’re not yet a Firefox 3.5 Beta tester, we recommend that you wait for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate, which should be released on our website within the next week. If you’d like to become a beta tester for Firefox 3.5 and subsequent releases, please feel free to install the latest available beta and then manually “Check for Updates…” in the “Help” menu.

(Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.)

Note: We strongly encourage bloggers and media to link to this Firefox 3.5 Beta User update announcement so that everyone will know what this update is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.x users on Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 4:13 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.

As part of the Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing security and stability process, Firefox 3.0.11 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users as a free download from getfirefox.com.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please see the Firefox 3.0.11 release notes.

Please note: If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3 by downloading Firefox 3.0.11 from getfirefox.com.

Today the Mozilla add-ons team introduced Add-on Collections. Collections enables anyone to create their own collection of add-ons that can be shared with their friends, posted on blogs, and featured on the Firefox Add-ons website.

Justin Scott, Mozilla’s add-on ninja, explains Collections in further detail on the Mozilla Add-ons blog, excerpted below:

Starting today, visitors to the add-ons website will see a brand new look with collections of add-ons front and center. We’ve integrated collections throughout the site, and created a Collection Directory that showcases all of the add-on lists created by our users. There are a number of Mozilla-created collections that are featured throughout the site, but we hope to replace these with useful community-created collections in the near future. If you find a collection you like, logged-in users can mark it as a favorite to easily get back to it later.

Besides creating your own collection, you can also subscribe to other collections and be notified when new add-ons are published to them.

You can subscribe to a collection via RSS, or you can install the Add-on Collector extension for Firefox. The Collector turns your favorite collections into subscriptions in your browser, where you’ll be notified as soon as new add-ons are published to one of your collections. The extension has a number of other features, including the ability to share an add-on you have installed with a friend by e-mail, publish an add-on to one of your collections, and set up a collection that is automatically kept up to date with your installed add-ons.

To get started, check out the Collection Directory to experience collections and fashion Firefox the way you want it.

Additionally, the team has also launched an entire redesign of the Add-ons site, which aims to do a better job of explaining add-ons and helping both new and experienced users find fun and useful add-ons through exploration. Nick Nguyen, Mozilla’s director of add-ons, goes into more detail on the Add-ons blog, excerpted below:

You’ll see we’ve integrated a new promo module that will allow us to feature collections of related add-ons in the top area as well as feature a simple tour that will communicate the value of an add-on to users who have never tried an add-on before.

Visit Mozilla Add-ons to experience both of these exciting changes!

Editor’s note: Mozilla released the Firefox 3.5 Preview for Firefox 3.5 beta 4 users on Monday, June 8, 2009 at 4:15 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.

Please note: This Firefox 3.5 Preview is intended for developer testing and community feedback. We recommend that most users wait for the official Firefox 3.5 release, which is coming soon.

The 800,000+ users of Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 will be receiving an update to a “Firefox 3.5 Preview” release in order to assist us with further testing and feedback. This update contains many fixes for stability bugs, correctness fixes for our JavaScript engine, and improvements to our built in support for open Ogg based video and audio playback. While this release has not yet completed the testing required to be declared a release candidate, it is considered stable for daily browsing use and we appreciate your assistance in helping us test and evaluate this preview release.

If you’re a Firefox 3.5 Beta user you should be receiving this update automatically within the next 24 hours. To get the update immediately, select “Check for Updates…” in the “Help” menu.

If you’re not yet a Firefox 3.5 Beta user, we recommend that you wait for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate, which should be in the next 1-2 weeks. If you’d like to become a beta tester for Firefox 3.5 and subsequent updates, please install the latest available beta and install any offered updates.

Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.5 Preview milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

The Mozilla Labs team has announced that in only ten short weeks since the Personas launch, the Personas community has welcomed more than 5 million downloads! The downloads have been worldwide, with approximately 60% of them coming from outside of the United States. The community has welcomed more than 13,000 designs from nearly 9,000 artists.

Check out the post on the Mozilla Labs blog for more details, and to find out what’s next for Personas! And, as always, we appreciate your ideas and feedback. If you have thoughts on how to make Personas better, please discuss and debate them with the community in our discussion group or add a solution to our newly created support wiki.

Today Mozilla Labs announced Jetpack, a new project to explore new ways to extend & personalize the Web. The Jetpack development team’s Aza Raskin, Atul Varma and Nick Nguyen explain the project further in their post on the Mozilla Labs blog, excerpted below:

With Jetpack, we’re building upon our experience over the last four years empowering a community of more than 8,000 developers to produce more than 12,000 add-ons to imagine and build the next generation of the add-ons platform. We want to grow our community of developers by orders of magnitude through making add-on creation much more accessible, and yet more powerful by developing it as an extensible platform for innovation itself. Many useful Jetpack Feature’s can be written in under a dozen lines of code.

Specifically, Jetpack will be an exploration in using Web technologies to enhance the browser (e.g. HTML, CSS and Javascript), with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play.

Most importantly, from a user perspective, Jetpack will allow new features to be added to the browser without a restart or compatibility issues, resulting in little to no disruption to the online experience.

As with all Mozilla Labs initiatives, Jetpack is an open source project and everyone is welcome to participate in its design, development & experimentation.

The team also highlights how you can participate in the project:

This is a 0.1 release, so it unpolished, unfinished, and still highly prototyped. We are planning on entirely revamping things for the next iterations within the coming days and weeks. We need your feedback, both on the particulars as well as the direction. In particular, we are actively seeking feedback on the API design.

For more information or to learn how to get involved, visit the Mozilla Labs site.

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced that Mitchell Baker is a winner of this year’s Women of Vision Awards in the Leadership category. Mitchell, along with Yuqing Gao, IBM Research, and Jan Cuny, National Science Foundation, was honored for her accomplishments and contributions as a woman in technology at ABI’s fourth annual Women of Vision Awards Banquet at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on April 30th, 2009.

The news was announced in a press release issued by The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, excerpted below, which also links to a video detailing Mitchell’s accomplishments:

Mitchell Baker is recognized for her work as the leader of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. Her work with the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox Web Browser has evolved the technology around web browsing with more than 200 million users worldwide. Her leadership in the Open Source movement has impacted millions of people, through her way of integrating and unifying the work of company employees and an international community of volunteers.

The Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal also highlighted the recipients in an article on Monday. Please join us in congratulating Mitchell on this achievement!

Editor’s note: Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 beta 4 on Monday, April 27, 2009 at 5:22 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement reposted below for more details.

Please note: Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3.5 (formerly known as Firefox 3.1) Beta 4 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 3.5. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.5 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

* This beta is now available in 70 languages - get your local version.

* Improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.

* Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.

* The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.

* Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.

* Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.

* Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 and elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

Testers can download Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 64 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.5 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

Editor’s note: Mozilla released a security and stability update for Firefox 3.x users on Monday, April 27, 2009 at 3:05 pm PT. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement, reposted below, for more details.

As part of the Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing security and stability process, Firefox 3.0.10 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users as a free download from getfirefox.com.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please see the Firefox 3.0.10 release notes.

Please note: If you’re still using Firefox 2.0.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Firefox 3 by downloading Firefox 3.0.10 from getfirefox.com.