Multiple versions of Firefox will happily co-exist on the same machine. However, it’s a good idea to tell each version to use its own separate profile. The process of doing this is relatively simple. I will describe the process for Windows initially and then mention how it differs for Linux and Mac OS X. (more…)
Mozilla Developer News is reporting that the tree has been closed for 1.9a1. Gecko 1.9 will power the back end for Firefox 3 and other Gecko based products such as Thunderbird and Camino. New alpha builds will be produced approximately every 6 weeks. This alpha is concentrating on the Gecko backend so will have no differences to the Firefox frontend over version 2.0.
Firefox is the main utiliser of Gecko technology but is not the only one, so it’s important to note that this alpha release is not a Firefox alpha but any Gecko alphas you download will be using the Firefox frontend as a means of testing the underlying Gecko technology. This release is not intended for general consumption and should be avoided unless you’re a Mozilla developer or tester (or interested in getting involved), or a web developer interesting in how their sites display under this rendering engine.
In the coming weeks we’ll be looking at what’s expected of Gecko 1.9 and how that’s expected to relate to Firefox 3. Please note that project Tamarin that was mentioned previously is not planned for Gecko 1.9, it is planned for 2.0 (aka Mozilla 2) which will be a major overhaul of the Gecko engine.
The Firefox crop circle is now showing on Google maps. It was part of one of the imaginative Spread Firefox marketing initiatives. It looks like Google were in on the idea - if you zoom out you can see the area taken on that section of the field is newer than the surrounding area and also there’s the cars forming ‘Fx’ below the circle. For more information on this check out the Firefox flicks video blog.
As reported in Slashdot there’s a flaw in the password managers of Firefox and to a certain extent IE. It’s reported to Mozilla as bug 360493, the severity of the bug depends on your usage of passwords and the password manager.
Corel plans to distribute Firefox alongside the next release of their WordPerfect Office suite.
It’s a good move for Mozilla because it’ll expose the browser to a group of people who may never have used Firefox before, although it’s important to remember that WordPerfect is now rather a minority office suite so it won’t impact browser usage stats too much. But as Tesco say “Every little helps”.
Quite recently Adobe donated their JIT compiler for ActionScript (an ECMAScript 4 compatible language) to Mozilla. I’ve written an article describing what this means to the future of scripting in Mozilla.
The product previously known as the Mozilla Suite has been regularly maintained as SeaMonkey. Version 1.0 of SeaMonkey would have been Mozilla Suite 1.8 if the Mozilla Foundation hadn’t dropped support for it after the 1.7 series. This codebase was also used by Netscape for Netscape 7.x.
An update to the SeaMonkey 1.0 codebase has been released. Thi is a security and stability release of the 1.0 series. Please read the release notes before downloading.
1.1 is a beta release intended for developers, testers and those interested enough and comfortable using pre-release software. See the release notes before downloading, and make sure you back up your profiles if you’re upgrading from a stable SeaMonkey release. (more…)
Mozilla are looking for testers using Windows Vista (a recent release candidate). If you are interested email marcia (at) mozilla (dot) org and you’ll be notified of any areas that need testing.
It looks like Firefox 2 will have a point release to improve Vista compatibility, this should occur before Vista hits the streets for public consumption in January. It’s likely that this release will have the same toolbar layout as under XP so it won’t look like a native application, however, the support for native themes in Mozilla apps means that the widgets and colour schemes will still look correct.
It’s likely that Mozilla will work on making Firefox and Thunderbird look like native Vista apps in the future (maybe Firefox 3). This will be good as long as they keep the traditional look for XP and earlier as otherwise, like IE7, the browser will not fit in with the platform conventions.
Ideally when under Vista I’d like to see Firefox comply with the platform conventions, which would mean a different toolbar layout, but it’d be good to make it customisable enough to make the XP layout also available to Vista and vice-versa. But the defaults should be right for each platform.
Even if you’re not using Vista there’s still plenty you could do to help the QA team. If you’re an experienced tester your skills would be welcome and if you’re new to testing this can give you very useful experience with writing good bug reports, working on a large project, working with bug tracking systems, etc. A good place to keep an eye on is the QA blog. Events called bug days are frequently held to help newcomers get started.
As promised earlier I asked an IE 6 user to try out Firefox 2 for a week and to let us know their opinions. Thanks go to Ian Charlton for this review - A Week with Firefox 2. This review is from someone who has not used Firefox previously but with the changes up ahead with IE7 decided this was as good a time as any to try out the other options. Ian has had good experiences with Firefox and this has motivated him to try Opera too, maybe we’ll get another review if he’s not too busy.
As for other reviews, I’m still writing my review of Firefox 2 on Mac OSX and if you’ve not seen it already, there’s the “A Week With IE7” review that I’d written following the launch of IE7.
listvine.com lists 9 reasons not to upgrade to Firefox 2. Here’s my comments on the points raised in the article: (more…)