Mozilla, Gecko Archive

"Mozilla released Beta 2 of its upcoming Firefox 2 browser for developer review Aug. 31, emphasizing that it is being made available for testing purposes only. The release contains a number of new features, as well as some enhancements to look and feel. "Firefox 2 Beta 2 is intended for Web application developers and our testing community," the team said on the Mozilla development website. "Current users of Firefox 1.x should not use Firefox 2 Beta 2 and expect all of their extensions and plugins to work properly."

The Mozilla team has more or less accepted Microsoft's help in working on Firefox for Windows Vista. Besides the fact that the two parties are already working together, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla developer, has accepted Microsoft's invitation, saying: "Yes, we'd definitely be interested in getting some 1:1 support." Note Sam Ramji's good sense of humour: "I sent this invitation to staff@mozillaNOSPAM.org as well, but in case their spam filters are set to block @microsoft.com email addresses, I'm posting here."

Firefox 1.5.0.6 is a stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version. Fixed an issue with playing Windows Media content.

"Following on the heels of the Firefox 2.0 beta in mid-July, Mozilla has released the first 2.0 previews of its Thunderbird email client. Firefox may get most of the attention, thanks to its flashier job, but it is the trusty email reader that conducts most of the killer-app conversations on a daily basis. Let's see what the new build holds in store."

eWEEK Labs' tests show that Beta 1 of the open-source Firefox 2.0 includes some welcome new features, catches up a bit with capabilities found in other Web browsers and adds some nice security enhancements. However, while Firefox 2.0 is shaping up to be a good upgrade to Version 1.5 of the popular Web browser, it doesn't look like it will be the slam-dunk over the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 that Firefox 1.5 has been to the current IE 6.x. For that matter, unless Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 improve greatly before their respective releases later in 2006, neither will come close to topping the quality of the already shipping Opera 9.

Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 1 has been released. This milestone for developers and testers includes several new features including anti-phishing, browser session restore in case of a crash, support for client-side session and persistent storage, ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs, support for JavaScript 1.7, new Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, new microsummaries feature for bookmarks, new search plugin manager and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds. Screenshots documenting the new features can be found here.

"Recently, I have been pondering why is Firefox so darn popular? This is a question that I honestly ask myself sometimes, often while browsing the web from within the browser itself. The real trick is that there are so many different ways to answer this." More of the editorial here. Additionally, the first set of release candidates for Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 have been posted to the Mozilla FTP of nightly releases.

"Firefox 1.5.0.4 is a security update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version." You guessed it, general bugfix and security fix release.

The Mozilla Foundation has said it is committed to rewarding the community that helps develop its software. Mozilla's suite, which includes the Firefox Web browser, is partly developed by unpaid programmers, often working in their spare time. Mozilla on Wednesday said it could not afford to pay all of its voluntary contributors, but instead may contribute by providing hardware to some developers.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 has been released. This update fixes a publicly disclosed denial of service weakness. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this version. The bugfixes previously planned for Firefox 1.5.0.3 were shifted to 1.5.0.4, and a quick update was released shortly after the recent 1.5.0.2 release to address the publicly reported issue.

"uBrowser is a simple web browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using LibXUL. In this case, the contents of the page is grabbed as it's being rendered and displayed as a texture on some geometry using OpenGL. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox 1.5."

"A lot of people complain about the Firefox 'memory leak(s)'. All versions of Firefox no doubt leak memory - it is a common problem with software this complicated. We look to fix the issues where we can. David Baron and others have done a huge amount of excellent work in this area. What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature."

The Mozilla team has set February 10th as the release date of the next major Firefox version. Some of the more notable features to be included in Firefox 2 are in-line spell checking, some sort of anti-phishing functionality, and improvements to tabbed browsing. Elsewhere, Asa Dotzler made a posting about his thoughts on the preview of IE 7 Beta 2.

"The first security and stability update to Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has been released. It is recommended that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest version. Downloads are available from GetFirefox.com. The update is also available for other systems and languages. More details can be found in the Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1 release notes."