Starting a little later tonight, users with the latest version of Firefox 2 will be getting an offer to update to Firefox 3. If you’re running Firefox 2.0.0.17 you will see the offer in the next couple of days, though if you’re eager you can always “Check for Updates” in the “Help” menu. This is what the offer will look like:

Clicking the “Learn More” link will open a new tab with more information about Firefox 3 to help you make your decision about upgrading. From there, you have a choice:

• select Later if you don’t want to decide now; Firefox will ask again in 24 hours
• select Never if you don’t want to accept this upgrade offer; we might send you another offer again in the future, but it won’t be for several weeks or months
• select Get the new version to continue on with the upgrade process!

Some of the updated features in Firefox 3 - like malware protection - required us to update our End User License Agreement (EULA), so we have to ask you to accept the new one:

Once you’ve accepted that, Firefox will download and install the update, then offer to restart the browser. When you restart, you’ll be rolling with Firefox 3!

Now, although over 90% of Firefox Add-Ons have been updated to be compatible with Firefox 3, in some cases the authors have created entirely new versions. If that happens with your favorite Add-On, you might see the following screen:

You can see exactly which Add-Ons are being flagged as potentially incompatible by clicking on Show List. As mentioned above, for most popular Add-Ons, there probably is an update available, but you’ll need to install Firefox 3 first in order to check. If you continue with the update process, when Firefox 3 starts up for the first time you’ll see the following screen:

By all means, Check Now to see if there’s a version of that Add-On which works with Firefox 3. If there is, you’ll see the following:

You’ll want to Install Now which will fetch the update and then continue loading Firefox 3.

If an update isn’t available, Firefox will check every day and let you know once the Add-On author has created one. If you’ve come this far and decide that you can’t live without your favorite Add-On, you can always go to www.getfirefox.com and click on “Other Languages and Systems”, and click on the link to download an older version of Firefox.

Note: Please do not link directly to the update site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this 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.

Firefox 3.0.1 security and stability update now available for download

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.1 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getfirefox.com/.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.0, 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 review the Firefox 3.0.1 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 2.0.0.x users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.1 by downloading it from http://getfirefox.com/.

Firefox 2.0.0.16 security and stability update now available for download

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.16 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox 2.x users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, 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 review the Firefox 2.0.0.16 Release Notes.

Note: Firefox 2.0.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December, 2008. All users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.

Yesterday Mozilla received the official Guinness World Record certificate for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.”  From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3!

Tristan Nitot, President of Mozilla Europe, accepted the certificate from Gareth Deaves, Records Manager for Internet and Technology at Guinness World Records, on behalf the Firefox Community. The record achievement certificate was awarded in front of a 300 strong community gathering in central London to celebrate the launch of Firefox 3, and the Guinness World Record feat. The event was organized by our friends at Glaxstar.

It’s wonderful to finally have this official document - a great accomplishment for our community and one that we can all be proud. Thank you and Well Done!

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.15 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html.

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, 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 review the Firefox 2.0.0.15 Release Notes.

Note: Firefox 2.0.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until mid-December, 2008. All users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 2.0.0.15 security and stability update 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.

This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community!  Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we’ve relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.  Incredible work!

Don’t forget to get your very own personalized Download Day certificate.

With the same enthusiasm that went into spreading the word about Download Day, the Firefox community has been planning parties with gusto!  There are over 700 parties planned worldwide. Here are some of the highlights:

• Catch a viewing of Kung Fu Panda with its director Michael Osborne in Palo Alto this Saturday.
• Fancy that Firefox 3 robot?  Come build one in Dolores Park in San Francisco on Sunday.
• The MVGeeks are planning a huge party in the Maldives on June 26th (editor’s note: the Firefox will need appropriate tropical attire stat!)
• Community members in Bucharest will be toasting Firefox 3 and the Mozilla 10-year anniversary!
• Bob Chao of MozTW will be hosting a Firefox 3 party for the Taiwan community on July 19th!

This is just a sampling…and please be reassured that it’s not too late to plan one!

Thanks to OLPC for throwing a Firefox 3 party on launch day!

]]> http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/20/its-party-time/feed/ http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/19/our-esteemed-judges/ http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/19/our-esteemed-judges/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:25:00 +0000 Mary Colvig http://blog.mozilla.com/?p=140 We’re getting close to handing over our download logs to our judges for our Guinness World Record attempt.  We’re very lucky and honored to have Paul Vixie of the Internet Systems Consortium and Corey Shields of Indiana University.

Here is a little background on them both:

Paul Vixie has been contributing to Internet protocols and UNIX systems as a protocol designer and software architect since 1980, and was a cofounder of ISC in 1994. Early in his career, he developed and introduced SENDS, proxynet, rtty, cron and other lesser-known tools. Paul is considered the primary modern author and technical architect of BIND8, the most commonly used DNS server on the Internet.

Corey Shields is the Lead Systems Analyst for the High Performance Systems group in University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. Corey has had a long history as an open source software user,  advocate, and contributor.  He has made contributions to many open source projects including Mozilla and the Gentoo Linux distribution, and spent a couple of years managing the Open Source Lab  (OSL) at Oregon State University.

Currently, Corey is working with a team of administrators on the BigRed supercomputer at Indiana University.  BigRed is the 42nd fastest supercomputer in the world, and relies on open source software to operate and produce results for researchers across the country.

A huge thanks to them for supporting our effort!

The Mozilla team at Download Day HQ as the attempt period wrapped! (Photo courtesy of Clare Bayley)

We’re at 7.8 millions downloads with just under an hour to go!  Can we break 8 million?

You can still be a part of the world record — just download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) today.  Remember that Guinness is only counting complete downloads.   If you’re using an early version of Firefox 3, such as a beta or release candidate, you’ll need to download the new Firefox 3 to be counted.

Let’s go for the gold!