Last week Mozilla’s security program manager, Brandon Sterne, posted an update to Mozilla’s plan for its Content Security Policy (CSP).  The news has gotten positive attention in the press and has resulted in more than 10 articles since the post.

The Register’s Dan Goodin comments on CSP’s potential. He says, “Still, CSP is worth watching – and if you’re a web developer, even playing around with. If it works as intended, it could prove to be one of the more promising solutions for a Web 2.0 world that’s built first and is only later, if ever, patched.”

Johnathan Nightingale spoke with ComputerWorld’s Gregg Keizer. Gregg notes, “‘This isn’t a single trick that’s meant to counter a single kind of attack,’ said Johnathan Nightingale, the manager of the Firefox front-end development team. ‘This helps sites solve cross-site scripting, but it’s more than that. They now have a way to shut everything dynamic off, so that no matter what content gets added to a site, if it’s on the page and they’ve sent us policy instructions in its header, we shut it down.’”

Additional coverage highlights include: Threatpost, Security Focus, PC Magazine, ITChuiko, The Inquirer,  InternetNews, InformationWeek, The H and Beta News

Last week Ken Kovash, Mozilla’s manager of metrics, wrote a blog post on Mozilla’s metrics blog analyzing the results of Mozilla’s campaign to warn users if their version of Adobe Flash is out of date. Ken noted that in just one week 10,000,000 people have clicked on the “flash update” link below.

Sean Michael Kerner from Internet News helps put that number into perspective. He says, “That potentially means that 10 million people were running older out-of-date and insecure versions of Flash. It means that despite Adobe’s own efforts to get people to update with their own update mechanisms and public outreach that 10 million people were still left out of the loop.”

Mitchell Baker and Johnathan Nightingale also commented on the success of the effort in blog posts last week.

ComputerWorld’s Gregg Keizer includes comments from Adobe in his article, “Adobe on Thursday confirmed a spike in traffic to its Flash Player update page, and applauded Mozilla’s move. ‘For us, anything that others do to help users stay up-to-date is a good thing,’ said Brad Arkin, Adobe’s director for product security and privacy. ‘We’re glad to see Mozilla doing this.’”

Additional coverage includes GHacks, Download Squad, Geek.com, SC Magazine and InformationWeek and Heise.

Earlier this month Mozilla announced that beginning with the Firefox 3.5.3 and Firefox 3.0.14 security and stability updates, Mozilla will warn users if their version of the Adobe Flash Player plugin is out of date. Old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a significant security risk. Mozilla is focusing on the Adobe Flash Player both because of its popularity and because some studies have shown that as many as 80% of users currently have an out of date version.

Since the Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 security updates have gone out,  the news has gotten significant attention in the press, with most of the discussions being centering on the positive implications of the updates for users.

Sean Michael Kerner, from Internetnews.com comments, “There are many (millions?) users that open their browsers every day and browse sites using outdated versions of Adobe Flash. I suspect that most of those users don’t have a clue that they are using vulnerable software…Having the browser, the place where most users interact with Flash, as the place where an update notification is made is just such an obvious (and great) idea.”

Geek.com’s Mathew Humphries says, “With Firefox’s growing user base and little reminders popping up regularly to tell you plug-ins are out of date it will surely have a positive impact on those updating software like the ever-vulnerable Flash player. Although it won’t stop malware targeting the browser and Flash in particular it will mean more of those attacks are blocked before they can do any harm.”

Other coverage highlights include: PC Magazine, SC Magazine, TechSpot, Heise, The Washington Post, PC Pro, Ghacks Tech News, ZD Net, and Computerworld.

Earlier this week the Mozilla Add-ons team released Add-on Collections, which 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. The news has gotten a lot of positive attention and feedback. Many people are excited to be able to more easily discover and share the wealth of Add-ons, enabled by Collections and a redesign of the Add-ons site.

Lifehacker’s Kevin Purdy discusses some of the benefits of Collections:

By creating a new collection, which you can make private or public, you basically create an up-to-date backup of your must-have Firefox extensions. For frequent re-installers, a good collection is going to be a must. For those looking to help out Firefox newcomer friends or keep a group of workers updated, it seems like a pretty nifty tool.

PC Pro and Beta News have even made their own Collections. Check them out!

Coverage highlights include:

The New York Times, Geek.com, PC Pro, PC Pro, Pocket lint, Lifehacker, Mashable, BetaNews, GHacks, Heise and Tech Radar

Mozilla Labs recently announced a call for participation in its latest project, Jetpack. Jetpack explores new ways to extend & personalize the Web.

Jetpack was received positively by the press, with many people noting that the already impressive size and dedication of the Mozilla add-ons community should help make the project a success. There seemed to be some initial confusion over the differences between Jetpack and Greasemonkey, but we continued to push the message that Jetpack was in part informed by the success of Greasemonkey, and that you’ll likely see support for Greasemonkey scripts to Jetpack to allow them work even better together.

The Register’s Cade Metz spoke with Aza Raskin about the goals of the project. He writes, “‘We want to enable more people to participate in the creation of browser functionality, following the Mozilla mission of making the browser yours, making the web yours,’ Mozilla’s head of user experience Aza Raskin told The Reg. ‘What if any eighth grader with a little skill could change the browser? What would that mean for the web?’”

CNet’s Josh Lowensohn notes some exciting benefits the release brings to users, “Besides no restarts and no breaking with updates, the most exciting aspect of Jetpack is how it can give users more control over what they see on a site, and how they can interact with its content. Like Ubiquity (another Mozilla Labs project), it also appears to be putting these add-ons right in the hands of users as soon as they visit a site with Jetpack controls, which means there’s less of a need to promote it in an add-ons directory to have users find it.”

US Coverage highlights:

PC Advisor, Lockergnome Blog, Trusted Reviews, Pocket-Lint, Internet News, Slashdot, TechSpot, InfoWorld, Ars Tehnica, CNet, PC World, eWeek, TechNewsWorld, ChannelWeb, InformationWeek, The Register, N4G, Vnunet.com

EU coverage highlights:

PC Pro, ComputerWorld UK, Heise Online, ZDNet, Yahoo UK & Ireland, eWeek, Computeractive, Digital Arts,

Late last week the Fennec team announced its first significant milestone for the Windows Mobile platform, with the release of Alpha 1. Brad Lassey introduced the milestone and highlighted exciting features of the release in a blog post, which was then quoted in quite a few pieces of press coverage.

To date there have been more than 20 original pieces of coverage, with the majority of tone being positive toward the release. There has also been widespread understanding in the community that this is an early developer release, really intended for testing purposes.

CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt comments on the technical features of the release, “For the techies, Mozilla built its interface for Fennec Alpha 1 for Windows Mobile using CSS. This will help the app adjust to various screen sizes and resolutions, says Mozilla. The Mountain View, Calif., company also divulged that this Fennec build shares Firefox’s memory management library, JeMalloc. This resource-sharing is another indication that Mozilla is striving to create a mobile product as identical to its desktop offering on its back end as is technologically possible.”

Sean Michael Kerner from Internet News sums it up nicely, “Yes, there is a long way for Fennec to go before its final. But it is moving in the right direction with new platforms coming on early in the process. As mobile device vendors continue to open up their own platforms for application stores, I can see a huge opportunity for Fennec.”

Coverage highlights:

IT Pro, Heise Online, Phones Review, Silicon.com, Mobile Choice UK , Personal Computer World , PC Pro, ZDNet, Pocket-Lint, LifeHacker, Mobile News Direct, Trusted Reviews, Linux Insider, Geek.com, InformationWeek, ZDNet, The H, Mobile Marketing News, Phones Review, TechWhack, engadget, IntoMobile, Unwired View

Firefox 3. Beta 4 was released on Monday. It’s gotten much attention in the press given this release likely represents the final beta for Firefox 3.5. Coverage has been positive, focusing on improvements around speed and performance, private browsing, and geolocation.

Mike Beltzner spoke with TG Daily’s Wolfgang Gruener and commented about the significance of a beta release. Wolfgang writes, “While Mozilla releases nightly builds of the browser on a continuous basis, each new beta may not be as interesting to users as those rare betas for Safari and IE. ‘It is a fundamental difference in the way how our culture works,’ Beltzner said. Mozilla believes that its beta software is a crucial tool for developers, while other browser makers are using their beta browsers for marketing purposes. ‘Internet Explorer has such a long upgrade cycle. And when a beta is released people end up installing that software since they believe it is the latest and greatest.’”

U. S. coverage highlights include:

CNET,  ComputerWorld, ReadWriteWeb, TGDaily, InternetNews.com, Lifehacker, Mashable, PC Magazine, BetaNews and InfoWorld

On March 31 Mozilla announced new designs for the Mozilla Firefox web browser by leading fashion, cause, sports and music brands. Personas has been building on the momentum it has built from its inception in 2007 in Mozilla Labs, with hundreds of designs from a growing community of artists and designers. Personas continues to grow to enable people to easily make their browsing experience more fun and personal.

Mozilla issued a press release announcing its work with a number of brands. Public feedback toward Personas as a simple and fun consumer tool to customize your Firefox has been largely positive. Some have been of the opinion that Mozilla should focus on improving the technical capabilities of Firefox instead of these “fun” tools, though, our main goal here was to introduce Personas to mainstream consumers.

As Kevin Purdy from Lifehacker notes, “Skinning Firefox for a new look doesn’t exactly add much productivity to your browsing day, but if you’re going to seek out that complete desktop theme feel, GetPersonas makes it seriously simple.”

Coverage highlights include:

US

Lifehacker, PC Pro, TechCrunch and CNet

Germany

Chip, Chip’s “20 favorite Personas”, ComputerBild, PcWelt, Heise

Spain

20minutos

Italy

downloadblogi.it

Earlier this week The Khronos Group announced an initiative with Mozilla to bring accelerated 3D graphics to the Web in hopes of improving online games and other Web applications.

The initiative has garnered excitement among the press, with discussions around the benefits of having games available directly from a Web browser, the eventual integration of 3D features into Firefox, and what this might mean for the competition.

WIRED’s Michael Calore notes, “Nobody can ignore the obvious fact that any 3D graphics technology with the weight of Mozilla, Google and Khronos behind it has one hell of a chance of succeeding. And even if it takes years to truly mature, Adobe should be worried.”

Coverage highlights include Ars Technica, CNET, ZDNet, BBC, Internet News, Information Week, and The Escapist.

Late last week Mozilla released Firefox 3.1 beta 3. There’s been much excitement in the media around the new beta and enhancements to features and performance. Coverage has highlighted improvements to web worker thread support, Private Browsing Mode, performance stability and the Gecko layout engine.

Gregg Keizer notes the enhancements to private browsing mode. He says, “Now, however, users can selectively tell the browser to “forget” specific already-visited Web sites from the History sidebar by right-clicking and choosing ‘Forget About This Site.’”

Ars Technica’s Ryan Paul says, “The 3.1 release will bring a lot of very impressive changes, including performance enhancements and new features for users and developers.“

Coverage highlights include Internet News, eWeek, Ars Technica, Lifehacker, ZDNet, PC Advisor, WIRED and CNet.