The Mozilla Blog

Last night the official Spread Firefox download counter reached one billion! That’s one billion times over the last five years that users have chosen a better Web experience.

This is a monumental event – Firefox has come a long way since its debut in November 2004, thanks to the amazing Firefox community. Volunteers from all over the world contribute to the coding, testing and spreading of Firefox to communities across the globe. Firefox 3.5 shipped in 75 languages – more than any other browser.

On Monday, www.onebillionplusyou.com will go live and act as a hub of information concerning the billionth download of Firefox. So stay tuned!

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!

Today Mozilla and the Khronos Group announced that Mozilla will be leading an initiative to bring accelerated 3D to the Web. Mozilla will work with the Khronos Group to extend the exploration process of what an initial take of 3D on the Web should look like to a wider audience.

Mozilla’s Graphics Team Lead, Vladimir Vukicevic, writes more about the initiative on his blog. “Finally, people are doing more and more on the Web, and are coming to expect more from the applications that they use.  Web applications already have access to features that have traditionally been reserved for desktop apps, including being able to work while offline, storing data locally, multiple choices for 2D graphics, and native audio and video support.  Adding 3D to this mix ensures that current Web apps can experiment with new user experiences, while also enabling new classes of web applications.”

“This is a pretty big deal for us and for the Web, and is really a reflection of the continued acceleration of open web technology well beyond just the classic HTML and JavaScript that we’ve seen in the past,” says Chris Blizzard, Mozilla’s director of evangelism, in his blog post. “It’s our intention to include this as base functionality in the release after Firefox 3.5, assuming all goes well on the standards front.”

For all of you heading to Austin this week, here’s a rundown of the events where you can catch Mozilla. Hear the inventor of JavaScript, the creator of jQuery, Mozilla’s Standards Evangelist, and members of the Mozilla Labs team share their thoughts on the future of the Web.  Stop by any of our exciting panel sessions or our Mozilla Labs event – we look forward to seeing you there!

Activities:

1. John Resig, Mozilla’s JavaScript Evangelist, is moderating a panel, “More Secrets of JavaScript Libraries”:
Saturday, March 14

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Room Hilton B

2. Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s CTO and the founder of JavaScript, will be speaking on a panel with representatives from Opera and Microsoft, called “Browser Wars III: The Platform Wins” moderated by Mozilla’s Arun Ranganathan:

Monday, March 16

11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Room Hilton C

3. The Mozilla Labs 2009 Design Challenge: SxSW Edition event:

Monday, March 16

Time: 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.

Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill

303 Red River St., Austin, TX

Today Mitchell Baker was announced as a winner of The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) Women of Vision Awards in the Leadership category. Please see the post on Above the Fold for more details, crossposted below:

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, will be 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:

The Women of Vision (WOV) Awards honor women making significant contributions to technology in three categories: Innovation, Leadership, and Social Impact. The three winners were selected from a field of highly qualified women all of whom are engaged in technology professions in industry, academia, NGO’s or government. Candidates for the awards are considered based on their records of (1) consistent, significant contributions to technology invention and application; (2) effecting positive changes in the ways in which technology impacts society; and (3) demonstrated leadership in the technology industry that extends beyond their place of work.

Please join us in congratulating Mitchell in this achievement!

In response to questions that have been asked about Mozilla’s involvement with the recent European Commission (EC) conclusion regarding Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system, we’ve prepared this brief set of questions and answers.

What is Mozilla’s involvement in the EC’s complaint against Microsoft?
We are following it closely and are obviously interested in the outcome. Mozilla has received “interested third party” status in the EC’s investigation. As a result, we may see the Statement of Objections confidentially. We may participate in a hearing if the EC concurs. Mozilla’s role as an interested third party best enables us to contribute our knowledge of the browser industry to the EC. Mozilla is not a complainant; we have not “joined the suit”, despite some reports to the contrary.

Why is Mozilla getting involved?
The EC has taken a position that Microsoft’s actions harm competition among web browsers. The EC is currently developing a response based on this conclusion. A good remedy could be helpful; a bad remedy could create more damage. Mozilla has relevant and unique expertise in the web browser industry, both as to the nature of the damage and the complexities of possible remedies. We believe it’s worth offering that expertise to the EC. Ultimately, this case has huge potential impact on our mission of supporting an open and participatory web.

What does Mozilla want to have happen?
We want any remedy imposed to support an open and participatory web. By the same token, we seek to avoid any remedy that causes unintended damage.

There have been a number of opinions shared by individuals affiliated with Mozilla. What is Mozilla’s official stance on the EC complaint?
As with any dedicated and enthusiastic community, ours is one of diverse opinions. Our official stance: (1) we want to offer our knowledge to the EC as it considers its next steps; and (2) we intend to continue public discussions of this topic.

What remedies does Mozilla propose?
Mozilla has not proposed any remedies at this point. We have started a discussion to help figure out what the options are and how helpful they might be.

When will you have an opinion on remedies?
We’re synthesizing feedback from our community, our own previous experiences and from the EC. We don’t have a preset timetable.

What will the EC’s decision mean for Microsoft in other parts of the world?
Mozilla has no way of knowing this – we’ll learn what this means along with everyone else.

For additional information, please refer to the following blog posts by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Foundation chair:

• The European Commission and Microsoft
• EC and Microsoft: Discussion Themes
• EC: Foray into Remedies
• EC Theme: Building Firefox is the only appropriate activity for Mozilla

Editor’s note: Mozilla Labs introduced the first of a series of Design Challenges on Tuesday, January 27, 2009, as part of the Mozilla Labs Concept Series.  See Pascal Finette’s, Mozilla’s open innovation catalyst, comprehensive post on the Mozilla Labs blog, excerpted here:

The Design Challenge is a series of events to encourage innovation, and experimentation in user interface design for the Web. Our aim is to provoke thought, facilitate discussion, and inspire future design directions for Firefox, the Mozilla project, and the Web as a whole.

For the inaugural edition of the Design Challenge, we’re focusing on highlighting the creativity of students: if you don’t know what’s impossible, you’ll accomplish it.

If you’re a student, help us answer the question: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”

March 1st, 2009 is the submission deadline for Initial Mockups. If you’re interested in participating, please see the Labs discussion forums for more information. If your school is interested in participating, please contact Mozilla Labs at conceptseries@mozilla.com.

Editor’s note: Today, Mozilla announced a $100,000 grant to the Wikimedia Foundation to advance open video.  See comprehensive posts from Mike Shaver, VP of Engineering and Chris Blizzard, Director of Evangelism.  Excerpt from Mike’s post here:

We believe that Theora is the best path available today for truly open, truly free video on the internet. We also believe that it can be improved in video quality, in performance, and in quality of implementation, and Mozilla is proud to be supporting the development of Theora software with a $100,000 (USD) grant. Administered by the Wikimedia Foundation, this grant will be used to support development of improved Theora encoders and more powerful playback libraries.

Editor’s note: Mozilla announced the release of Ubiquity 0.1.5 on Wednesday, January 14, 2009.  See Mozilla Labs User Experience Lead Aza Raskin’s comprehensive post on the Mozilla Labs blog, excerpted here:

We are proud to announce Ubiquity 0.1.5. Since the last major update, Ubiquity has gained a sleeker look and a smarter, more stable core. Ubiquity has also gained the ability to be skinned: anyone who knows how to write standards-complaint CSS can now create and share a custom Ubiquity skin.

• Beautiful: Ubiquity has a new look that increases its visual simplicity and lays the groundwork for full keyboard access.
• Skinnable: Anyone can now give Ubiquity a new look. It’s as simple as a little bit of CSS. That’s how the new look was created! Once you’ve created a skin, it’s easy to share it with the world: you can subscribe to skins just like you can subscribe to commands.
• Speed: Ubiquity is now much snappier.
• Stability: This is the most reliable Ubiquity yet, with much of its internals refactored.
• Relevancy: Ubiquity now makes it easier to issue the commands you want. It remembers the commands you use — using the same technology that powers the Awesome Bar — as well as matching anywhere in a command name.

For more information, check out the Ubiquity home page and Ubiquity news. Also keep an eye out for Ubiquity 0.2, expected to be released in the near future.

Editor’s note: Mozilla announced the release of Fennec alpha 2, an early developer release of the mobile version of Firefox, on Monday, December 22, 2008.  See Engineering Manager Stuart Parmenter’s comprehensive post for more details, excerpted here:

We’re happy to announce that our second alpha release of Fennec has come together.  While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted, we’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance.  We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading.

The release notes have information on a quick start, how to install, what’s new, known issues and how to provide feedback. So if you’re interested in getting involved with Mozilla Mobile, install Fennec and tell us what you think.

Congratulations to the entire mobile team!