Mozilla, Gecko – OSnews

Mozilla Delays Firefox 4 Until ‘Early 2011’

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-27 Mozilla, Gecko 15 Comments

"Mozilla has pushed back the planned release of Firefox to sometime in 'early 2011'. Previously, the open source outfit had said its latest desktop browser would be officially released next month."

Firefox No Longer Not Fast?

Guest post by lemur2 2010-10-15 Mozilla, Gecko 151 Comments

For its upcoming Firefox 4.0 release, Mozilla has been concentrating a great deal on what is often cited as the main shortcoming of Firefox ... its speed. For example, Firefox 4.0 will include GPU acceleration for both rendering and compositing on Windows 7/Vista, OSX and Linux, and it will have GPU acceleration for compositing only for Windows XP.

Firefox Build with JaegerMonkey Javascript Engine Released

Submitted by lemur2 2010-09-10 Mozilla, Gecko 64 Comments

"Mozilla has published the first Firefox build that integrates a new JavaScript engine that aims to match the performance in IE9 and reduces the gap to Safari, Opera and Chrome. The JavaScript performance is pretty dramatic and, at least on our test system, Firefox 4 is now faster than IE9 PP4."

Fennec Alpha for Android Too Slow, But Add-ons, Sync Impress

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-30 Mozilla, Gecko 16 Comments

"Mozilla has announced a new alpha release of its Fennec mobile browser for Android and the Nokia N900. Fennec offers support for add-ons and has tight integration with Firefox Sync, a browser synchronization service that was formerly called Weave. The support for Firefox Sync is arguably Fennec's killer feature, especially because Mozilla is planing to include the synchronization features out-of-the-box in Firefox 4. Users will be able to have access to the their bookmarks, browsing history, and tabs across all of their computers and supported mobile devices."

Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Introduces Panorama

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Mozilla, Gecko 70 Comments

Today, Mozilla released the fourth beta of Firefox 4.0. After a period of what I would call stagnation, the Mozilla team are back on track with delivering interesting UI concepts. They were sensible enough to copy Chrome's excellent tabs-on-top UI, but have now also added something called Panorama, a new and very interesting way of managing your open tabs.

‘Firefox 4: One Generation Ahead of Everyone Else Speedwise’

Submitted by suka 2010-08-18 Mozilla, Gecko 52 Comments

In a recent interview with derStandard.at Mozilla's Chris Blizzard talks about the rising competition by Google Chrome, the evolution of the web platform and the prospects for WebM. He also promises that Firefox 4 will be "one generation ahead" of other browsers in relation to Javascript speed.

Mozilla’s JaegerMonkey JavaScript Engine

Submitted by lemur2 2010-07-15 Mozilla, Gecko 5 Comments

Mozilla has reached an important Milestone as its new JavaScript engine "JaegerMonkey" is now faster than the current "TraceMonkey" in a key benchmark. Mozilla wants JaegerMonkey to be faster than the competition and launch on September 1, which means that JaegerMonkey will make it into Firefox 4.0.

First Beta of Firefox 4

Submitted by fran 2010-07-07 Mozilla, Gecko 66 Comments

Firefox 4 Beta (version 1) considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release.

Firefox User Interface Elements Studied

David Adams 2010-07-05 Mozilla, Gecko No Comments

The Firefox team invited users to install a test addon, which measured which UI elements they use, and recorded their frequency. In no big surprise, the back and reload buttons were used most frequently. Learning about the popularity of the lesser-used buttons should help the Firefox team set their product development priorities.

WebM Lands on Firefox Nightlies

Thom Holwerda 2010-06-09 Mozilla, Gecko 50 Comments

WebM support has been added to Firefox trunk. "Today I landed Firefox's WebM support on mozilla-central, our Firefox development branch. It should appear in nightly builds from tonight onwards. Firefox should build with WebM support without needing any extra changes to your build configuration, unless you're building on Win32, where you'll need to have MASM installed in order to compile libvpx's optimized assembly."

Firefox for Windows Starts 64bit Transition

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-31 Mozilla, Gecko 23 Comments

"Mainstream microprocessors have been 64-bit for years. Operating systems have followed suit. Now it's time for a program used by hundreds of millions of people to make the leap: Firefox. Programmer Armen Zambrano Gasparnian announced the first 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows on Friday, offering an FTP site for those who want to download it. But the software isn't for mainstream users yet."

Firefox Home Coming to the iPhone

Thom Holwerda 2010-05-27 Mozilla, Gecko 11 Comments

As most of you probably know, Apple does not allow competing browsers into the App Store. As such, browser makers are forced to come up with inventive solutions to still get their name out there among iPhone users, and after Opera's successful attempt, Mozilla is going to take a stab at it too. Their solution is different, but no less interesting - especially if you're already a Firefox user.

Mozilla Developers Talk Up Firefox as a Key Development Tool

Thom Holwerda 2010-03-27 Mozilla, Gecko 8 Comments

"For many users of Mozilla's open source Firefox Web browser, Firefox is simply a tool for looking at Web content. For others, Firefox is an enabling tool to actually help develop content and code for the Web. This week, Mozilla released the results of a developer survey it conducted in November 2009. The survey received responses from 5054 developers spread across 119 countries and provides some insights into how developers work with Firefox - and what about Firefox makes it so critical as a tool for developing."

Mozilla Stop Firefox on Windows Mobile Development

Kroc 2010-03-23 Mozilla, Gecko 21 Comments

It has long been known that in addition to the N900 port of Firefox (released just 49 days ago) Mozilla have been targeting Windows Mobile, drawing ever nearer to a release. They have now decided to put the port on hold, following the news of Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX (and what that holds for Windows Mobile 6.5). "While we think Windows Phone 7 looks interesting and has the potential to do well in the market, Microsoft has unfortunately decided to close off development to native applications. Because of this, we won't be able to provide Firefox for Windows Phone 7 at this time. Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don't know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold."

Mozilla To Update the Mozilla Public License, Invites Input

Thom Holwerda 2010-03-10 Mozilla, Gecko 7 Comments

All Mozilla projects (the major ones at least, I didn't check them all up) are licensed under the Mozilla Public License, version 1.1. It's already over a decade old, and the Mozilla Foundation believes it is time to overhaul the license, with a focus on modernising what they believe to be outdated wording.

Mozilla Borrows from WebKit to Build Fast New JS Engine

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-03-09 Mozilla, Gecko 21 Comments

"Mozilla's high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which was first introduced in 2008, has lost a lot of its luster as competing browser vendors have stepped up their game to deliver superior performance. Firefox now lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Opera in common JavaScript benchmarks. In an effort to bring Firefox back to the front of the pack, Mozilla is building a new JavaScript engine called JaegerMonkey."

Elements of Firefox Overhaul Arrive for Testing

Thom Holwerda 2010-03-01 Mozilla, Gecko 16 Comments

"Mozilla, faced with new competitive pressures, has begun work on three separate, significant changes to Firefox. First is a new JavaScript engine that - with a transfusion from the project behind Apple's Safari - should run Web-based programs at least 30 percent faster. Second is a new graphics engine for Windows that will take advantage of hardware acceleration for graphics and text. And third is a programming tool to help bring to fruition a new system for Firefox add-ons."

Where Is Mozilla Ubiquity?

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-25 Mozilla, Gecko 10 Comments

"One of the most interesting Mozilla Labs projects has now stagnated. Is the project dead? Does it have a future? The Mozilla developer who led the project tells all. Back in the summer of 2008, Mozilla began development of an experimental add-on called Ubiquity, providing new command mash-up capabilities for the Firefox browser. After just over a year of development, Mozilla is now pulling back on the effort, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been successful. The current release of Ubiquity is version 0.1.9.1, and was released on January 20th of this year. To date, Ubiquity has garnered more than 420000 downloads, according to the Mozilla add-ons site. So what is happening with Ubiquity now?"

Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 Support in Gecko 1.9.3

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 Mozilla, Gecko 13 Comments

Mozilla has announced that they are going to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger definitively. "Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed since then," Josh Aas writes, "We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."

Hands-on: Mozilla’s Pocket-Sized Firefox Mobile for Maemo

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-03 Mozilla, Gecko 9 Comments

"The notion of a Firefox smartphone browser seemed implausible only a few short years ago, but today it's very much a reality. Firefox Mobile for Maemo demonstrates the flexibility of the Firefox Web browser and its potential to bring a desktop-like browsing experience to constrained computing environments. It is truly an impressive achievement, but it's only the beginning of what Mozilla hopes to accomplish on handheld devices. Stay tuned for our follow-up about Weave, in which we will examine some of the opportunities for innovation created by Firefox Mobile."

Mozilla, Gecko Archive