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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.02

What’s New in Firefox 3:

The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox 3 sets the pace with dozens of new features to deliver a faster, more secure and customizable Web browsing experience for all.

User Experience. The enhancements to Firefox 3 provide the best possible browsing experience on the Web. The new Firefox 3 smart location bar, affectionately known as the “Awesome Bar,” learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time. The Firefox 3 Library archives browsing history, bookmarks, and tags, where they can be easily searched and organized. One-click bookmarking and tagging make it easy to remember, search and organize Web sites. The new full-page zoom displays any part of a Web page, up close and readable, in seconds.

Performance. Firefox 3 is built on top of the powerful new Gecko 1.9 platform, resulting in a safer, easier to use and more personal product. Firefox 3 now uses less memory while it’s running, and its redesigned page rendering and layout engine means users see Web pages two to three times faster than Firefox 2.

Security. Firefox 3 raises the bar for security. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the Web. Firefox 3’s one-click site ID information allows users to verify that a site is what it claims to be. Mozilla’s open source process leverages the experience of thousands of security experts around the globe.

Customization. Everyone uses the Web differently, and Firefox 3 lets users customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons.

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0

What’s New in Firefox 3:

The Web is all about innovation, and Firefox 3 sets the pace with dozens of new features to deliver a faster, more secure and customizable Web browsing experience for all.

User Experience. The enhancements to Firefox 3 provide the best possible browsing experience on the Web. The new Firefox 3 smart location bar, affectionately known as the “Awesome Bar,” learns as people use it, adapting to user preferences and offering better fitting matches over time. The Firefox 3 Library archives browsing history, bookmarks, and tags, where they can be easily searched and organized. One-click bookmarking and tagging make it easy to remember, search and organize Web sites. The new full-page zoom displays any part of a Web page, up close and readable, in seconds.

Performance. Firefox 3 is built on top of the powerful new Gecko 1.9 platform, resulting in a safer, easier to use and more personal product. Firefox 3 now uses less memory while it’s running, and its redesigned page rendering and layout engine means users see Web pages two to three times faster than Firefox 2.

Security. Firefox 3 raises the bar for security. The new malware and phishing protection helps protect from viruses, worms, trojans and spyware to keep people safe on the Web. Firefox 3’s one-click site ID information allows users to verify that a site is what it claims to be. Mozilla’s open source process leverages the experience of thousands of security experts around the globe.

Customization. Everyone uses the Web differently, and Firefox 3 lets users customize their browser with more than 5,000 add-ons.

Alternative Details brings news that PayPal is developing a plan to stop users from accessing its financial services if they aren’t using browsers with anti-phishing protection. PayPal is recommending the use of blacklists, anti-fraud warning pages, and EV SSL certificates. Browsers without anti-phishing features will be considered "unsafe." It seems likely Safari will be included in this category given PayPal’s warning about the Apple browser last month.

"’At PayPal, we are in the process of reimplementing controls which will first warn our customers when logging in to PayPal of those browsers that we consider unsafe. Later, we plan on blocking customers from accessing the site from the most unsafe–usually the oldest–browsers,’ he declared. Barrett only mentioned old, out-of-support versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer among this group of ‘unsafe browsers,’ but it’s clear his warning extends to Apple’s Safari browser, which offers no anti-phishing protection and does not support the use of EV SSL certificates."

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Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 was released today with a single critical bug fix. It is highly recommended that you update if you use Firefox.

Fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.14:

• MFSA 2008-20 Crash in JavaScript garbage collector

Download Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14

Release Notes

This release is a recommended security and stability upgrade. See the Security section for additional information.

Changes Since Opera 9.26

Security

• Fixed an issue where newsfeed prompts could cause Opera to execute arbitrary code, as reported by Michal Zalewski. See our advisory.
• Solved an issue where resized canvas patterns could cause Opera to execute arbitrary code, as reported by Michal Zalewski. See our advisory.
• Improved keyboard handling of password inputs, as reported by Trystan S.

Miscellaneous

• Fixed a BitTorrent transfer stability issue.
• Resolved stability issues with the Acid 3 test.
• Additional stability fixes.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13 was released today with a number of critical bug fixes. It is highly recommended that you update if you use Firefox.

Fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.13:

[Update]

• MFSA 2008-19 XUL popup spoofing variant (cross-tab popups)
• MFSA 2008-18 Java socket connection to any local port via LiveConnect
• MFSA 2008-17 Privacy issue with SSL Client Authentication
• MFSA 2008-16 HTTP Referrer spoofing with malformed URLs
• MFSA 2008-15 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.1.13)
• MFSA 2008-14 JavaScript privilege escalation and arbitrary code execution

[/end update]

Download Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13

The European Commission has fined US computer giant Microsoft for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour.

Microsoft must now pay a record 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its position.

The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers.

EU regulators said the firm was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling.

The fines come on top of earlier fines of 280m euros imposed in July 2006, and of 497m euros in March 2004.

“Microsoft was the first company in 50 years of EU competition policy that the Commission has had to fine for failure to comply with an antitrust decision,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

Future improvements?

An investigation concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in products such as media players, while unfairly linking its Explorer internet browser to its Windows operating system at the expense of rival servers.

The European Court of First Instance upheld this ruling last year, which ordered Microsoft to pay 497m euros for abusing its dominant market position. Last week, the firm announced that it would open up the technology of some of its leading software, including Windows, to make it easier to operate with rivals’ products.

“As we demonstrated last week with our new interoperability principles and specific actions to increase the openness of our products, we are focusing on steps that will improve things for the future,” Microsoft said.

Further cases

But the firm is still being pursued by Brussels.

Last month, the European Commission launched two new anti-competition investigations against Microsoft into similar issues.

Today Web developers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team revealed their latest milestone: IE8 now renders the Acid2 face properly!

For those who aren’t familiar with this test, Acid2 is designed to determine how compliant a given web browser is with published HTML. A fully compliant browser displays a smiling yellow face. However, non-compliant browsers show varying degrees of garbage.

While we appreciate Microsoft’s effort to embrace open web standards (finally), there is something a bit suspicious about the wording of the announcement. Apparently, IE8 only passes the test when operating in something called “Standards Mode”.

We can only wonder what Microsoft is up to with such an odd distinction. Will IE8 run in Standards Mode or another mode by default in the future? Only time will tell.

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While Firefox enthusiasts swear that the web browser is the best invention since sliced bread or the scientific calculator, there’s no question that Firefox can be a bit of a memory hog. When you load your first window, the browser zips along smoothly. But open a few more tabs, do a little navigating back and forth, and before you know it Firefox is eating up half of your system’s RAM.

Mozilla has long insisted that this isn’t a “memory leak” bug, per se, but rather a way to ensure that Firefox opens pages at blazing fast speeds. That’s because an awful lot of information is kept in cache.

But bug or no bug, as Mozilla tries to figure out how to cram Firefox onto mobile phones, 200MB+ memory requirements just aren’t going to cut it. Mozilla developer Stuart Parmenter has posted an interesting analysis of Firefox memory use on his blog. And Mozilla board member Christopher Blizzard suggests that over the next few months, we’ll see developers tackling the memory use issue a bit more aggressively.

Of course, it’s possible that reducing memory use will also reduce performance, so we may eventually see a version of Firefox with a smaller memory footprint for mobile devices, with a fuller-fledged version for desktop use.

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As August draws to a close, the young uns are getting ready to head back to school. And you know what that means. Lots and lots of displays at the local drug store featuring pencils, 3 ring binders and headphones.

Well, Mozilla isn’t trying to sell you anything with their upcoming Campus Edition of Firefox. It’s just as free as any other version of the web browser. But it comes with a few handy add-ons that might be useful for students, such as Zotero, StumbleUpon, and Foxytunes.

Wait, now that we think about it, Zotero’s the only one of the three that’s actually targeted specifically toward students, since it provides tools for researching and writing papers. We’ll wait to see what other add-ons Firefox bundles with its campus edition before passing judgment, but it looks like you might as well just download and install Firefox 2.0.0.6 and install the appropriate add-ons yourself.

There are are variety of dictionary, library, citation, and other tools that could be helpful for doing research.

Aside from Zotero, what add-ons would you recommend for students?

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