Facebook applications are notorious for capturing lots of data about the user.  That’s simply not how we roll at Mozilla. We took the extra step of hashing the facebook user ID to ensure that if you take the quiz all of your personal data will stay with you.  The only thing we’ll know is how quiz-takers (in aggregate) scored on the quiz.

Go take the quiz and find out if you’re a security ninja or a security newbie!

Last night the Mozilla community released Firefox 3.6 Beta 3, making it available for free download and issuing an update for all Firefox 3.6 beta users. This update contains over 80 fixes from the last Firefox 3.6 beta, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. More than half of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If your favorite Add-on isn’t yet compatible, you can also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!

The Mozilla community appreciates your feedback and assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox. Your beta software will update itself periodically, and eventually will be updated to the final release itself.

The Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features for users to evaluate:

• (New in this update) A change to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
• (New in this update) The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• A mechanism to prevent incompatible software from crashing Firefox.
• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Web developers and Add-on developers should read more detail about the many new features in Firefox 3.6 for developers on the Mozilla Developer Center. For the full list of changes since the alpha release, see this list (it’s big).

Please use the following links to download Firefox 3.6 Beta, or visit the beta download page:

• Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 Setup.exe
• Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 3.dmg
• Linux: firefox-3.6b3.tar.bz2

As always, the Mozilla community would appreciate hearing about any feedback you have about this release, or any bugs you may find.

Personas 1.4 Released

Personas gets a set of new features that lets you discover new art, rotate through your favorites, and undo.
With feedback from the Personas community, Labs recently released Personas 1.4. Here is a video describing some of the features:

Introducing Personas 1.4 from Mozilla Labs on Vimeo.

What you can Expect from 1.4

1. More From the Designer: Say you’re browsing through the Personas gallery and pick a design you like. The next day, you want to know whether the designer has created any other cool designs. Before, you would need to go to getpersonas.com and either search for the designer name or find the design you liked and click on the designer by-line. Now, you can simply click on your extension (the little fox on the bottom left corner of your screen), mouse to the top of the menu, and then mouse right to the submenu.

2. Favorites: In the last version of Personas, we enabled you to easily favorite any Persona design in the gallery and have it instantly accessible in the “my favorites” section of your menu (see more about the 1.3 release).

3. More From the Category: Say you’re in the mood for a Holiday persona design. Within the extension menu, you mouse through the Holiday category but can’t find anything you like. Before, you needed to navigate to the Holiday gallery by navigating to getpersonas.com and finding the Holiday gallery. Now you can get there in one step by clicking “More From Holiday” in the extension.

4. Undo: Personas gives you the ability to preview a design before you select it. But still, maybe you chose a design and instantly regret the decision. Before, to undo you would need to go to “recently selected” designs in your extension menu and click on the last design you were wearing. Now, an undo notification bar drops down every time you select a design that you haven’t used recently, or haven’t marked as a favorite.

Get Personas 1.4

If you are already using Personas 1.3, Firefox will automatically update it to Personas 1.4 the next time it checks for add-ons updates. If you aren’t using Personas yet, or you want to get the new version immediately, install it at getpersonas.com.

Thanks!

Many thanks to Erik van Eykelen, Jose Bolanos, Ryan Doherty, Carsten Book (a.k.a. Tomcat), Toby Elliott, Zandr Milewski, and all the Personas localizers on Babelzilla (AtteL, dogi, drry, Ersen Yoldac, fernph, Funkin2x, funTomas, Joergen, jojaba, jooliaan, kkemenczy, kustodian, Lisman, lois, loveleeyoungae, moZes, pia, SiiiE, spjutster, steekid, stoyan, Wareczek, and wtspout), who did great work to make this feature possible, along with all the folks in the discussion forum who suggested the feature, tested early versions of it, and reported problems!

What’s Next?

We’re looking to make this feature even better and easier to use. To continue to evolve Personas quickly, and in the right direction, we need your feedback and participation. Join the conversation in the discussion forum and add helpful hints to the support wiki. And stay tuned to this blog for updates!

- Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez on behalf of the Personas development team

Last night the Mozilla community published Firefox 3.6 Beta 2, and
issued an update for all Firefox 3.6 beta users. This update contains
over 190 fixes from the last Firefox 3.6 beta, containing many
improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. The
Mozilla community appreciates your feedback and assistance in testing
this preview of the next version of Firefox. Your beta software will
update itself periodically, and eventually will be updated to the final
release itself.

The Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features
for users to evaluate:

* (New in this update) A mechanism to prevent incompatible software
from crashing Firefox.
* Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single
click, with built in support for Personas.
* Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep
them safe.
* Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports
poster frames.
* Support for the WOFF font format.
* Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness
and startup time.
* Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Web developers and Add-on developers should read more detail about the
many new features in Firefox 3.6 for developers on the Mozilla Developer
Center. For the full list of changes since the alpha release, see this
list (it’s big).

Please use the following links to download Firefox 3.6 Beta, or visit
the beta download page:

* Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 2 Setup.exe
* Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 2.dmg
* Linux: firefox-3.6b2.tar.bz2

At this time most Add-ons have not yet been upgraded by their authors to
be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If you wish to help test your
Add-ons, please also download and install the Add-on Compatibility
Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!

As always, the Mozilla community would appreciate hearing about any
feedback you have about this release, or any bugs you may find.

This release brings noticeable improvements to the user experience and UI of the browser. Specifically you’ll see:

• Firefox official branding, with Firefox name and logo
• Support for multiple locales, currently including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Russian
• Flash sites such as YouTube now work
• The viewport meta tag is now supported by Firefox on mobile sites using it
• New form assistant to make filling in forms easier
• Improved panning and zooming performance and behavior
• Numerous other bugs and polish issues addressed

These improvements build upon the features set of previous releases.You can find more information by reading the Firefox for Maemo beta 5 Release Notes.  Be sure to check out the new Firefox for mobile page that includes ways to stay connected to the Project, information for developers, and a video discussing the user interface, features and vision of Firefox for mobile.

Five years ago today, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 with belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all. Within the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded a brand new browsing experience.

In just five years, that number has swelled to over 330 million users worldwide; almost a quarter of Internet users worldwide choose Firefox. Today, Firefox ships in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to help customize their browsing experience.

From your desktop to your mobile device, Mozilla is committed to building an open and participatory Internet. We’ve come so far in the past five years and we’re incredibly excited about the next five. For a more comprehensive look at where we’ve been and where we’re headed, check out Chris Blizzard’s excellent post on hacks.mozilla.org.

To celebrate this milestone, Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the globe in a special campaign called “Light the World with Firefox” – shining the Firefox logo from Tokyo to Rome, from Paris to San Francisco, and more. For full details on parties in your area or to check out other ways to join in the celebration, head to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/.

Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.” Be sure to check out his other Mozilla work as well as his general portfolio.

The four runners-up in the challenge were Mauro Henrique de Bulhões Fidelix’s “Hot Navigation”, Emmanuel John Y. Villar’s “One Mask One Family One World”, Joyce Schellekens’ “Firefox All Around the World” and Eric Yeoung’s “MobiFox”. Interestingly, these designers all hail from different countries (Brazil, the Philippines, the Netherlands and Indonesia), which speaks to the incredible diversity of our community. Many thanks to them, and to everyone else who participated, for sharing their time and talents with Mozilla.

We’ve also launched a new challenge at the Creative Collective: “Five Years of Firefox”. Help us celebrate Firefox’s 5th birthday by creating designs based on this milestone. The possibilities are practically endless, but should generally focus on recognizing what a great accomplishment this is for the Mozilla community and what it’s meant for the hundreds of millions of people who use Firefox. The winner will be featured on this blog, turned into desktop wallpaper and t-shirts, and more.

The submission period for “Five Years of Firefox” ends on December 9th, but don’t wait to get started. Visit the design challenge page for more details, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is now available for download. This beta version of the next version of  Firefox is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.6 can be followed in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #planning or #developers.

This first revision of the Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features:

• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Web developers and Add-on developers should read more detail about the many new features in Firefox 3.6 for developers on the Mozilla Developer Center. For the full list of changes since the alpha release, see this list.

Testers can download Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 53 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.6 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

At this time most Add-ons have not yet been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If you wish to help test your Add-ons, please also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 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.

Calling all Web developers! We’re looking for developers from all over the Web to help us build the Mozilla Developer Network.   Firefox is an important tool for many developers and as the Web continues to evolve as a platform, we need your input to enable better communication and collaboration to push the Mozilla project forward and make the Web better for everyone.

To learn more about the initial steps we’re taking to connect with Web developers, check out Chris Blizzard’s post on the Hacks blog.

Here are a few ideas, but don’t feel limited!

• Spotlight: Borrow a projector and shine the Firefox logo on the wall during a Firefox party, or make a logo stencil and place it in front of a flashlight for a cool effect (think shadow puppets). Or, go crazy and get a searchlight to create your very own Firefox “bat signal“.
• Mash-Up: Think of the most interesting way you can combine Firefox and light. For example, create the logo out of candles on a birthday cake, program your very own lite-brite or light show, or create a fun wallpaper! If you’re really have a lot of time on your hands (and skills) you could even create a light show.  The more creative, the better.
• Mobile: Get the Firefox logo on your phone and take a picture holding it in front of a local landmark. Or, organize a bunch of friends for a big group photo with the logo on everyone’s phones.

Please upload all videos and pictures on Flickr with the tag “Firefox5″.  We’ll feature submissions on a special site launching on November 9th and the most creative actions will be rewarded with some cool Firefox swag.  Remember to have fun, but be safe and use common sense.  And, get permission before projecting our logo on public buildings!

If you’re looking for other ways to help celebrate the coming anniversary, here’s how:

• Host a party
• Join our Facebook group
• Sport a twibbon

We’re all looking forward to celebrating five years of hard work on the 9th!