Multitouch on Firefox

Multitouch on Firefox from Felipe

In this video Felipe demonstrates how multitouch gestures could be used on Firefox.

Here’s some demos of cool things you can do on a webapp with the multitouch support that is in the works for Firefox.

If you are interested in multitouch and Firefox make sure to read this blog post by Felipe.

Don't miss a post with our free RSS feed! You can also get updates by email.

Firefox 3.6 – First alpha released

Despite the fact I am personally still using Firefox 3.0x Mozilla already released a first alpha version of Firefox 3.6. It is intended for developers only.

The first developer milestone of the next release of Firefox – code named Namoroka Alpha 1 – is now available for download. Namoroka is built on pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform, which forms the core of rich internet applications such as Firefox. Please note that this release is intended for developers and testers only.

The Alpha of Namoroka / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features:

• Compositor (Phase 1), which moves Gecko to using one native widget per top-level content document. See this blog post or bug 374980 for more details.
• A new focus model, described here and tracked in bug 178324
• The chromedir attribute has been replaced with a pseudoclass
• Several new CSS3 properties including background size and gradients for background images
• Speed improvements to the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
• Startup and responsiveness improvements throughout the application

The final version of Firefox 3.6 is supposed to hit the download shelves within a few month as spokesman Chris Blizzard of Mozilla promises in the blog post Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 – web developer changes.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 is available

Today Firefox in version 3.5 has been released. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. You can choose to get a localised version in more than 70 languages.

Firefox 3.5 has a huge number of additions and improvements for both users and web developers alike, including: robust new user privacy features; support for high quality open video and audio; a new, high performance JavaScript engine (and a host of other performance and speed improvements); downloadable fonts that will fundamentally change how we view typography and the web; powerful new developer features such as location aware browsing, canvas features, worker threads, native JSON, and media queries; and so much more. Firefox 3.5 is essentially an upgrade to the Web itself.

Source: Firefox 3.5 now available

Meet the browser that makes the web better. Get the new Firefox today!

Taskfox extends Firefox’ Awesome bar

If you ever wondered how mondern web browers could be improved watch this video and you’ll see!

Taskfox Prototype from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

I found this video at the end of an interesting article on The Future of Firefox: No Tabs, Built-In Ubiquity on the ReadWriteWeb.

Personas – Customize your Firefox

If the standard look and feel of your Firefox browser is too boring for you maybe you want to try the new Personas for Firefox. Personas is a free add-on just released from the Mozilla labs. It is a Mozilla Labs experiment. Just surf to getPersonas.com, download the free add-on, restart your browser and choose from a selection of totally different looking skins.

After the restart you’ll find a small fox icon in the lower left corner of your browser. Klick on it to open a menu from which you can choose skins by popularity, age, category and from the ones you recently tested. You can also easily go back to the standard look and feel which you are used to.

Personas are lightweight, easy-to-install and easy-to-change “skins” for your Firefox web browser.

Among the most popular skins are a California sunset, Yosemite, Niagara Falls, Hanami, Fireflies, Minefields and the Firefox Robot of the upcoming Firefox 3.5 which I chose. You can preview a new skin just by rolling over the menu entry. The skin changes almost instantly without selection, restarting or any other hassle. Great way to do themeing!

GNU IceCat formerly known as GNU IceWeasel is not IceWeasel

You want a complicated story? Here is one. The Firefox user agent has a logo that is in terms of the Debian project not free. So they put out a differently packaged version of Firefox with a new logo and name it IceWeasel. But that did not happen until the Mozilla foundation complained to the Debian project that they cannot use the name Firefox with a different logo. To make it really complicated there was a browser called GNU IceWeasel by the GNU Project. It was renamed to GNU IceCat in 2007 to avoid name conflicts with Debian’s IceWeasel. Pretty complicated, eh?

Find out more about GNU IceCat and the GNUzilla.

Newsflash: Songbird 1.1, Firefox 3.5, IE Windows 7, Firefox Fennec

Songbird 1.1

The final version of Songbird 1.1 is available for download. Songbird is an open-source customizable music player based on Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Firefox 3.5

Rumors of a version jump for Firefox from 3.1 to 3.5 have been confirmed.

Beef about IE bundling

Google and Opera’s CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner demand that there is a choice of browsers even though Microsoft confirms there is an option to switch IE 8 off completely.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 with native JSON support has been released last week.

Fennec

A first beta – the twelfth milestone – of Fennec a mobile browser from Mozilla has been released. As this is a very interesting user agent I will write a follow-up with detailed information.

If Browsers Were Women

Internet marketer Zee has posted a fun article with a woman a browser what he thinks a women would look like if it were a browser. Have a look!

Version jump from Firefox 3.1 to Firefox 3.5

German news source Golem.de reports (German) that the next release of Firefox might be numbered Firefox 3.5. They cite the Firefox3.1 StatusMeetings on 2009-03-04.

Need to do some testing to find any weirdness with 3.1 -> 3.5 version change.

The reason for the jump is the amount of changes. The next pre-release (beta) of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is scheduled for 12th of March 2009.

Update your FF to Firefox 3.0.7 today

If you are a Mozilla Firefox you are strongly advised to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.7 as soon as possible. Several security issues were discovered in previous releases up to Firefox 3.0.6. The newest version is also more stable.

See the release notes on how to upgrade, uninstall and for troubleshooting and other frequently asked questions.

Firefox 3.0.7 fixes several issues found in Firefox 3.0.6:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Official releases for the Estonian, Kannada and Telugu languages are now available.
• Items in the “File” menu show as inactive after using the “Print” item from that menu – switching to a new tab restores them (bug 425844). This issue has been fixed.
• For some users, cookies would appear to go “missing” after a few days (bug 444600).
• Mac users of the Flashblock add-on, experienced an issue where sound from the Flash plug-in would continue to play for a short time after closing a tab or window (bug 474022).
• Fixed several issues related to accessibility features.

If you like it more technically this is scraped directly from the bug reports:

• URL spoofing with invisible control characters
• Upgrade PNG library to fix memory safety hazards
• XML data theft via RDFXMLDataSource and cross-domain redirect
• Mozilla Firefox XUL Linked Clones Double Free Vulnerability
• Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.7)

How-To: Faster requests with Mozilla Firefox

If after upgrading your Mozilla Firefox installation websites suddenly load painfully slow we might have a solution. By default in newer Firefox installation IPv6 is enabled. At the time being IPv6 requests tend to be slower than IPv4 requests to the DNS system.

So disable IPv6 in Firefox as follows:

1. Type ‘about:config’ in the Firefox URL bar
2. Accept the warning
3. Type ‘ipv6′ in the Firefox URL bar
4. An entry named ‘network.dns.disableIPv6′ appears
5. Double click this entry to set the value to true.

Now Firefox will use the IPv4 protocol for name resolution.