In Deb’s words, here’s a quick snapshot of what makes Firefox 3’s URL bar just so awesome:

Dubbed the “AwesomeBar”, it lets you use the URL field of your browser to do a keyword search of your history and bookmarks. No longer do you have to know the domain of the page you’re looking for — the AwesomeBar will match what you’re typing (even multiple words!) against the URLs, page titles, and tags in your bookmarks and history, returning results sorted by “frecency” (an algorithm combining frequency + recency).

Not only that, but the drop-list results show you the page’s favicon, the full title, the URL, and whether you have bookmarked and/or tagged the page in a richly formatted two-line display.

Example:  I start by typing “ginger”, and AwesomeBar searches through my history and bookmarks to return everything that matches that keyword, showing the first six and letting me scroll through the rest. You’ll notice here that several of the results are bookmarked (blue star icon on the right), and tagged (tag icon). The sites’ favicons are displayed on the left, making it really easy to scan through the results if you know what site you’re looking for in particular.

Check out Deb’s post for more on the AwesomeBar and check back here for more on the cool things to expect in Firefox 3!

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Firefox 2.0.0.14 security and stability update now available for download

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.14 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 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 2.0.0.14 Release Notes.

If you are still running Firefox 1.5.0.x, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the Firefox 2 series as Mozilla ceased supporting Firefox 1.5.0.x in May 2007. Simply choose “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu to begin the upgrade process.

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[Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Beta 5 today, April 2 at approximately 10:10am PT. See Mike Beltzner’s comprehensive post from DevNews, crossposted below.]

Firefox 3 beta 5 now available for download

Please note: Firefox 3 Beta 5 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 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. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

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

• Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others, based on feedback from our community.
• Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web compatabilty and stability.
• Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve performance over previous releases as measured by the popular SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 5 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 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 Beta 5 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.

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No Monday blues around here today — it’s Mozilla’s 10 year anniversary! On March 31, 1998 Mozilla was officially launched and the Mozilla source code became publicly available for the first time. Mitchell Baker has a write up of what Mozilla and its community have accomplished in these past 10 years and what’s in store for the next 10. Here are a few highlights:

• Converted a closed, proprietary development process into a vibrant, transparent, open source project
• Grown into a massive global community, quite possibly the largest open source project in the world
• Developed a set of long-term, vibrant projects — Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, Bugzilla, Calendar — most, and possibly all of which have millions of users
• Become the software provider of choice for over 170 million people
• Proved that open source development can produce great end user products
• Brought the Internet to millions of people in their language
• Moved the overall state of browser software forward dramatically
• Become a technology platform others use to create products built on Mozilla technologies, and in some cases competitive with Mozilla products

A huge thanks to our wonderful community that has helped make this all possible! Please stay tuned for more details on how we’ll honor the anniversary over the year.

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Firefox 3 beta 4 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 4 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is now available for download. This is the twelfth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

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

• Improvements to the user interface: better search support in the Download Manager, ability to zoom entire page or just the text, continuing look and feel improvements on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: location bar that uses an algorithm based on site visit recency and frequency (called “frecency”) to provide better matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, as well as an adaptive learning algorithm which tunes itself to your browsing habits.
• Improved platform features such as: support for HTML5’s window.postMessage and window.messageEvent, JavaScript 1.8 improvements, and offline data storage for web applications.
• Performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization resulted in significant gains over previous releases in the popular SunSpider test from Apple, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run much faster, and continued improvements to memory usage drastically reduce the amount of memory consumed over long web browsing sessions.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 4 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 35 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 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 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.

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Firefox 3 beta 3 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 3 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now available for download. This is the eleventh developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

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

• Improved security features such as: better presentation of website identity and security including support for Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager.
• Improved ease of use through: easier add-on discovery and installation, improved download manager search and progress indication in the status bar, resumable downloading, full page zoom, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that uses an algorithm based on site visit recency and frequency (called “frecency”) to provide better matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 350 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 3 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 30 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 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 Beta 3 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.

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A big thanks to all who participated! And special thanks to our panel of judges, including Garrett Camp (StumbleUpon), Brendan Eich (Mozilla), Jesse James Garrett (Adaptive Path), Tariq Krim (NetVibes), and Joshua Schachter (del.icio.us) and our sponsors, including ActiveState, O’Reilly, and VMware.

Congratulations to our awesome winners! And thanks again to all who contributed add-ons and ideas. Stay tuned for details of Extend Firefox 3, which will kick off within the next month.

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So join us, this Wednesday for our live community discussion and “call-in” show.
Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and guests Mitchell Baker, and John Lilly.
When: Wednesday, January 09, from 10:00:00 - 11:00:00 PST (UTC -8).
Where: View the webcast at air.mozilla.com and participate on IRC, IM, or email.

• IRC: join the discussion on irc.mozilla.org at #airmozilla.
• IM: instant message your questions to the AIM/YIM/GTalk screenname airmozilla.
• email: send in your questions before and during the show to airmozilla@mozilla.com.

Air Mozilla is now streaming 24/7 with a new live show every month (or as close to that as makes sense.) If you’ve got ideas for shows, please email us and let us know. Even better, if you’re a part of the Mozilla community and you’d like to be interviewed or present on our live broadcast, let us know.

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