Mozilla News & Articles

HTML, the core syntax markup for the web, is in transition. With new browsers, new technologies, the realization that updates and changes are needed has taken hold. A new version of HTML is in the works. And Adobe has joined the ranks of Opera, Mozilla and Apple to help out.

The first release of Mozilla’s in-browser messaging/content aggregation client was--at best--a terribly executed extension backed by a good idea and a cool looking logo. 

Yesterday sparked an unprecedented rush to fix browser security issues. With the announcement of Internet Explorer’s security flaws, both Microsoft and Mozilla have released fixes for their respective browsers. The fixes for both Internet Explorer and FireFox are available now.

Less than 24 hours after news was released about security issues with Internet Explorer, Microsoft has released a hack patch for the security flaw that affects all versions of IE version 5 to 8 beta. According to Microsoft, there was not a security patch due out until January 13, 2009, but with the recent announcement and the push for users to switch browsers, Microsoft opted to push the release today.

To update your Internet Explorer all you need to do is simply visit the Microsoft update center, run the check for updates, and it will show up as a high priority update labeled “Security Update for Internet Explorer (your version number)”. You can either install express or custom, but it is recommended that your antivirus software also be checked and updated and full scan be run to ensure that no breaches occurred.

Mozilla has also released a group of fixes for their FireFox browser. These updates come at a time when neither party wants bad publicity, largely due to the heavy competition between the two browsers. FireFox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 are both available for Windows and Linux now. The update to 3.0.5 fixes 3 major XSS issues including crashes with evidence of memory corruption. These issues have been labeled critical on top of five other minor security fixes.

As for FireFox 2.x, the patch fixes 10 issues, four of which are critical. These vulnerabilities are again tied to XSS issues, but these fixes also address an issue related to additional XSS attack vectors in feed preview. The bad news for FireFox 2.x users is that after this update there will be no further support for 2.x. Mozilla urges FF users to upgrade to 3.x as soon as possible. Updating your version should happen automatically when you log in to your browser. If it does not, under "Help" in your menu there is an option to check for updates. You can upgrade your version from FireFox 2.x to 3.0.5 here.

So whether you are an Internet Explorer die-hard or a FireFox advocate, both browsers have acknowledged severe security vulnerabilities. It is urged that you update your browser.

Here’s an interesting conference happening on December 11, 2008 in Mountain View, California. Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are joining forces to bring you a conference all about creating Add-ons for the browser.

As the ever popular browser battle wages on all over computers around the world, a mini version, equal to its predecessor in casualties and bloodshed, is going on somewhere just as close to us — our cell phones.

We have been keeping our eyes on the browser wars for quite some time here at CMSWire. While the battle has been heating up on desktop platforms, the new and cool thing is mobile browsing.

Mozilla has been lagging behind in the mobile arena, but that may have changed with Mozilla’s latest mobile browser — Fennec. Fennec enables the very things that made Firefox so popular: extensions. The first extension has been released and things are moving quick.

Mozilla, the same entity that is responsible for providing us with the Firefox Web browser, is expanding Firefox’s wide appeal by offering users the ability to interact and control the browser with a linguistic user interface project called Ubiquity. The point of this project is to allow users to create on-the-fly mashups.

The browser wars continue as the Mozilla Foundation, also known as the Rebel Alliance, releases the second beta of the upcoming 3.0 version of Firefox.

No longer considered an upstart competitor to Internet Explorer, the open source web browser has enjoyed steadily increasing market share and continues to be the browser of choice for those web workers fortunate enough to not be trapped behind a corporate firewall.

User Interface improvements in the beta include:

• Improved security with an upgraded Password Manager, automatic version checking of plugins and extensions, anti-virus integration with Download Manager, and the new Effective Top-Level Domain (eTLD) service designed to improve user privacy.
• Enhanced functionality with an upgraded Download Manager, improved rendering of international characters, full page zooming, and an animated tab strip.
• New personalization features with organized browsing using Places, a new organizer for managing history and bookmarks, plus an upgraded location bar.

Beneath the UI, there are two enhancements of particular interest:

1. Implementation of a cycle collector for better memory management. Firefox is known to devour memory a gigabyte at a time. Therefore, any improvement in memory management will be most welcome.
2. Support for offline browsing and web-based protocol handlers. Does this version of Firefox coupled with rich internet applications like Google Apps and Zoho Office Suite finally challenge Microsoft’s supreme dominance in desktop productivity arena?

Stay tuned and find out.