Firefox download record official

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries.

"The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen" said Marketing head Paul Kim.

Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it "an extremely impressive accomplishment".

The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted.

Mr Kim told the BBC: "The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea.

"It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world."More>>

Google Browser Sync To Be Discontinued for FireFox 3.0

For those who never used it, Google Browser Sync was a Firefox extension that synchronized your bookmarks, web history, browser sessions and passwords across multiple computers by temporarily saving them to Google's servers. According to the Google Browser Sync team: 'It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.' For all of those who fell in love with Google's Browser Sync, our only hope now is to resort to poorly maintained 3rd party extensions without Google's blessing."

Firefox 3 won't have 'private browsing'

The feature, Private Browsing, would have disabled all caching, cookie downloads, history records, and form data used during the current session. In essence, you could surf the Web and leave no fingerprints.

"It basically said to the browser: I would like what I'm about to do to not be logged anywhere," said Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's "human shield," aka its security user interface designer.

He described the private browsing process as this: you hit a button and everything past that point isn't logged. Then, at some point in the future, you hit the button again and it's as though what you just did never happened.

One possible use might be when someone other than the computer owner uses the browser.

"We looked at ways to do this, but the problem is that it touches a lot of code," Nightingale said. "Because there are such rich interactions with Web sites and mashups and things like that, we didn't want to put in something that was half baked."

You can hear more of my interview with Nightingale on my Security Bites podcast here.

Firefox on track to crack 20% share in July

Firefox boosted its share by 0.6% in May, accounting for 18.4% of the browsers used during the month and putting it within shouting distance of a major milestone, according to Net Applications Inc. "Firefox is trending to hit 20% market share sometime in July," said Vince Vizzaccaro, the company's executive vice president of marketing, in an e-mail.

Net Applications' May figure represents a record for the open-source browser, which resumed gains that had been interrupted in April when its share dropped slightly. The one-month increase was also the largest by Firefox since March 2007.

"Firefox is surging again, but their gains when reviewed over time aren't out of the ordinary," said Vizzaccaro. "Other than the stagnation Firefox experienced in mid-2007, their growth has been fairly consistent."

Vizzaccaro was referring to several months last summer when Mozilla's flagship browser slipped in market share, including May 2007 (down 0.9% from the previous month) and July (down 0.2%).

Although Vizzaccaro didn't pin all of Firefox's increase on a change last month to its update dialog, he did note the new approach. "Mozilla has implemented a change in Firefox 3.0 [Release Candidate 1] where the installation now has a checkbox that defaults to making Firefox your default browser," he explained. More>>

Top 10 Firefox 3 Features

The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla's finally made a feature-complete release candidate available, so it's time to spotlight the biggest improvements that will make "Gran Paradiso" the browser to beat. Nearly everything in the open-source app has gotten a second look from the minds at Mozilla, from back buttons to bookmarks, address bars to add-ons, passwords to performance, and the changes will make Firefox 3 worth the upgrade come its official release date, slated for sometime next month. Let's take a look at the 10 best upgrades in Firefox 3, and how they'll bolster your browsing, after the jump.

10. Souped-up Add-ons manager

9. More intuitive interface overall

8. Stronger phishing and malware protection

7. Improved download manager

6. Native looks for every system

5. Streamlined "Remember password" handling

4. Smart bookmarks

3. Places Organizer replaces the Bookmark Manager

2. Smart Location Bar learns how you browse

1.Insanely improved performance

Read the full article here

How to make work Firefox 2.0 Add-Ons Work With Firefox 3.0

If you're like me, you've been playing around with the beta releases of Firefox 3.0. The new version of the open source browser is better-looking, uses less memory, and feels snappier all around. There's just one problem: Every time they release a new beta version, some of your extensions and add-ons are bound to stop working. With the release of Firefox 3.0rc1, almost none of them work.

Fortunately, there is a solution that will "fix" all of your extensions at once. But I caution you, it's not for the weak-hearted. The fix doesn't take longer than a few seconds, but when it comes to troubleshooting your browser afterward, you'll be on your own.

I can't repeat this enough. DO NOT TRY THIS unless you are comfortable editing the advanced preferences of your browser. And don't do anything until you've read through this entire post. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In my experience, extensions that worked with Firefox 3.0b5 will generally be stable with 3.0rc1. It is possible, however, that some of them will cause the new version of the browser to crash. It might even crash on startup -- which means, obviously, that you won't easily be able to undo the fix I'm about to describe.

The key to the fix is to prevent Firefox from checking its version number before it tries to load extensions. To do this, you will need to set a new preference value. Point your browser at the URL "about:config", then right-click on the preferences list to bring up the contextual menu. You should see an option that says "New." Select that, and choose "Boolean." When it asks you for the preference name, type "extensions.checkCompatibility" (without the quotes). You have to enter the name exactly. For the value, choose "false."

Now restart Firefox. When the browser comes back up, it should give you a warning that version checking is disabled. You can double-check under "Tools:Add-Ons" to make sure everything is activated once again.

If the worst case happens and the browser won't start after you add the new preference, you'll need to remove it by hand. Locate the file "prefs.js" within your Firefox profile directory and edit it with any text file editor to delete the line with the preference you just created. (If you're not comfortable doing that, then as I've said, this fix is probably not for you.)

Also, you'll want to remember to delete the preference once the final version of Firefox 3.0 is released, or else you'll never be certain that your installation is stable.

The future of the Firefox address bar

I had an interesting discussion today about Firefox with Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer and Mike Beltzner. One of the things we drilled into a bit was the address bar in Firefox 3 (download). It's being called the "awesome bar" at Mozilla, and while it will end up with an official name eventually (the "smart location bar"), what it does for users can fairly be described as awesome. And as it's probably the most important touchpoint in the browser, it's worth exploring not just what it means for users but for Mozilla as well.

The Firefox 3 address bar helps users auto-complete the URLs they type in, but it's smarter than it appears at first. The choices that pop to the top of the list as you type are not based just on best text match, but on your previous behavior. Sites you visit frequently pop up higher on the list. Bookmarked sites also get special treatment. And since Firefox now has a new high-performance database to record your behavior, it can track what you do over a long period of time; it doesn't have to flush your history every week or so to keep the performance up. More>>

Apple's Safari, Mozilla's Firefox lose market share

Apple Inc.'s ploy to gain browser market share by pushing Safari to users with an update tool normally used for security fixes failed to boost its overall share, a Web metrics company said yesterday.

Instead, Safari's share fell last month to 5.5%, down from March's 5.8%, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer increased its dominance by growing to 76% from March's 74.8%. It was the first time Internet Explorer (IE) gained share since October 2007.

In late March, Apple started using its Windows software update tool -- previously used only to provide patches for iTunes and QuickTime -- to offer Safari 3.1 to users who did not have the browser already installed. More Details>>

The Mozilla community is celebrating 500 million Firefox downloads

TechCrunch noted Thursday that Mozilla was about to celebrate its 500 millionth download of Firefox, the open source browser that has made inroads into Microsoft’s dominant market share. By this morning, the official Spread Firefox site was claiming an additional 340,000 downloads, putting it over the half billion mark.

That’s an impressive download rate — one that has given Firefox an approximately 17 percent share of the browser market. Looking at visitors to NYTimes.com, a much larger share of our online readers, about 28 percent in February, were Firefox users. The bulk of our online readers use various versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (about 60 percent) and Apple’s Safari (about 10 percent).

But we also noticed that tens of thousands of our visitors use various versions of Netscape Navigator, the nearly defunct browser owned by AOL, as well as a variety of other, more obscure browsers. It made us wonder why people choose the browsers they choose. Let us know about what’s behind your choice in the comments section.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 Brings a New Browsing Interface

With the release today of beta 3 of Firefox 3, we are definitely getting closer to the final release of Mozilla's open source web browser.

But for a third beta this version of Firefox 3 includes some fairly significant changes from the previous betas, including changes to the main user interface of the browser.

By far the biggest change is the inclusion of what is being called the keyhole interface for the Back and Forward buttons on the browser toolbar. This keyhole essentially combines the two buttons into a single composite button that is shaped like, well, a keyhole.

In the keyhole the Back (which tends to be used more than Forward) is the larger portion of the button. The Forward button becomes a smaller button to the right of the Back button and a drop down menu to the right of the Forward button lets users view all pages they have browsed in that session, with the page they are currently on shown in bold type.

In general I liked this new keyhole modification to the Back/Forward buttons and found it intuitive. However, some users may be a little confused at first.

The Star button in the address bar has also been improved somewhat, making it possible to bookmark a page with a single click and get more detailed bookmarking information with two clicks. However, in my usage of the betas I've come to dislike this star button as it sits right next to the drop down button that lets users view pages they have visited. As a frequent user of the drop down I have accidentally clicked the star several times, often bookmarking pages I had no desire to bookmark.

Other usability enhancements include improved site finding accuracy in the autocomplete features in the address bar, as well as better icon and interface integration for users on Mac OS X and Linux. Read More>>

Firefox 3.0 beta is live

The Mozilla Corporation has released a beta version of Firefox 3 for download, but is warning it is not ready for "casual users" yet.

You can get the browser here. It's available in 30 languages and claims several new features and improvements.

The browser has architectural changes which should make page rendering quicker, more personalisation through one-click bookmarking, and better downloading - including a progress indicator in the status bar and anti-virus checks.

Security is also improved with support for Extended Validation SSL certificates and stricter SSL error pages. Mozilla is asking testers to send its feedback on these features particularly.

The official, full release of Firefox 3 is expected later this year.

There's more on the Mozilla blog here.

It also emerged today that Mozilla is offering live support for Firefox users via instant messenger.

As part of its ongoing battle against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla has been running a support service since the start of the year. The service only runs for a few hours during US business hours and is staffed by a handful of volunteers.

Your MySpace Web Browser Is Coming

Flock, the Mozilla-based social web browser has made the announcement that everyone has been waiting for: they will now integrate with MySpace. Building on the MySpace Developer Platform, Flock will allow users to surf the web with their MySpace friends in their sidebar. At Tuesday's MySpace Developer Platform kick-off, Flock demonstrated this integration by giving event attendees a sneak peak at the upcoming Flock features. Although details of the new functionality are limited at this point, we do know that the MySpace People integration, as it's being called, is expected to function in a manner very similar to the Facebook integration that is already in use in Flock. This integration will expose all of the relevant actions made available by MySpace and will build them into the People Sidebar of the Flock browser. Read More>>

Mousewheel Click to Paste in Firefox

A typical computer mouse has 3 buttons but only two buttons remains dominant in our daily computer usage. For those who don’t know, the middle mouse can become quite useful too, if one know how to use it properly.

In this post, I will show you 6 tips to supercharge your Mozilla Firefox with the middle mouse button , thus making your web browsing experience better than before.

1- Click on a link with the middle mouse button to quickly open a link in a new tab. No more right click -> “Open Link in new tab”!

2- Press the Control (Ctrl) button and scroll the mouse wheel backward to increase Firefox’s font size. Scroll it forward to decrease the font size.

3- Press the Shift button and scroll the mouse wheel forward to move a page forward and scroll backwards to go the previous page.

Below are Mozilla Firefox’s about:config hack to modify hidden preferences (mouse related). Check out here on how to modify about:config.

4- Change the value of middlemouse.paste to true. This will let you paste a clipboard content to any text field with the middle mouse button.

5- Change the value of middlemouse.scrollbarPosition to true and restart your Firefox. The next time you click on a scrollbar location with the middle mouse button, Firefox will center the screen to that position.

6- Change the value of mousewheel.withaltkey.action to 1. This will enable you to scroll document by one page while pressing the Alt button.

That was all that I can find on how to optimize the usage of a middle mouse button in Mozilla Firefox. Feel free to add more tips and tricks by leaving a comment below. Enjoy!

Firefox 3 Beta 3 to be out Feb 11

The targeted release date for Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now February 11 and follow on Beta 4 is “tentatively” scheduled for February 26, according to Firefox meeting notes posted on Mozilla.org Tuesday.

With that, it appears Firefox 3 will be released in early 2008 as planned, although no exact date has been announced.

The team started release candidate builds after the Beta 3 features code freeze on January 29 but planned at least one more beta before version 3 of the open source browser is released.

The Firefox development team has decided to put out a Beta 4 version of Firefox 3 to refine the Windows, Linux and Mac OSX themes and overall “Visual Polish,” as well as improved offline support, security UI and Places feature, according to the meeting notes. Beta 4 is referred to as the “final ship”

One major bug in Places, for example, makes it impossible to drag and drop items across different views and menus. “This is the cause of much weeping and gnashing of teeth,” the report notes.

Still, the Firefox team is in the final stages of development and has fixed more than a thousand bugs since Beta 1. The development team is working to resolve the last slate of bugs and the quality and assurance team is fhammering on the upgrade’s new add-ons manager, the Mac OSX theme and icons (formerly known as Proto), web protocol handling, the Places UI library and safebrowsing and phishing protection, according to the meeting notes. Read More>>

The New Browser War: Mobile Firefox vs. Opera Mini

Last October, Mozilla announced that they were working on a mobile version of the Firefox browser. As it turns out, they were working on two versions: one designed for touchscreen devices like the iPhone and another for traditional phones. Now Mozilla has finally given us a glimpse of their designs by posting the plans, mockups, and details of these two upcoming mobile browsers on the Mozilla wiki.

The non-touchscreen browser introduces a virtual cursor that is controlled with the keyboard navigational keys. Using short presses (clicks) on the directional pad's left key will quickly navigate through clickable elements. Longer presses on the left key will begin smooth scrolling. When scrolling, after a set amount of time the page will gradually zoom out to give you a view of the entire layout which will allow for faster scrolling. When you stop pressing the directional pad button, the browser will gradually zoom back in on the element that the cursor is positioned over.

The right key of the directional pad will bring up a menu that provides access to navigation functionality, including items like the Address Bar, Refresh, Back, History, Bookmarks, Tabs, Bookmark This, and Quit. read more

Firefox share up over 20% in Europe, mostly at expense of IE

French web survey company XiTi Monitor has published Firefox market share statistics for 2007, which indicate that the open-source web browser is continuing to see gains at the expense of Internet Explorer, particularly in Europe.

XiTi's breakdown of monthly Firefox market share gains for the past year show that the browser climbed from about 20 percent two years ago to 23.1 percent in December 2006 to a record 28 percent in December 2007. Firefox market share hit a plateau and hovered around 27.7 percent between June and September before taking a 0.7 percent drop in October, but then recovered prior to reaching 28 percent last month.

XiTi also provides market share statistics for 32 individual European countries. Finland currently has the highest Firefox market share in Europe with 45.4 percent, followed by Slovenia with 44.6 percent and Poland with 42.4 percent.

In December alone, Internet Explorer fell to 66.1 percent in Europe after losing 0.9 percent market share. During the same time period, Firefox gained 0.7 percent. The statistics show that Safari currently has only 2 percent market share in Europe.

read full story

4 Years Ago Today - Netscape Corporation Killed, Mozilla Foundation Born

4 years ago today, 15 July 2003, AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation - the company that sparked the Dot Com Internet boom in the mid-90's with its 1995 IPO. Also 4 years ago today, The Mozilla Foundation was established. mozillaZine reported at the time:

"It has been learned through public and private sources that AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they've even pulled the logos off the buildings). Some will remain working on Mozilla during the transition, and will move to other jobs within AOL.

The news isn't all doom and gloom, folks. I've been informed that the number of volunteer Mozilla hackers started eclipsing the number of Netscape hackers last month, and that a number of folks have already been snatched up by other organizations. ".More>>

Firefox Partners With EBay For Branded EBay Browser

Mozilla has released another branded, use-specific version of Firefox, this one as part of a deal with eBay. For now the eBay optimized Firefox (which really just amounts to the eBay toolbar pre-installed) is available for users in Germany, France and the United Kingdom with other countries “possible at a later date.”

Branded versions of Firefox are nothing new, Google has long offered a version with the Google Tools pre-installed and we looked at an AllPeers version a while back, but the EBay deal could be a sign the Mozilla sees this as Firefox’s future.

The Ebay toolbar, which has been in testing for a while now, includes the following features designed to improve your buying/selling experience:More>>

Lots of new features in Firefox 3

Mozilla has started to leak snippets of information about what new features will be included in Firefox 3 , which is due sometime in the autumn.

An entirely new graphics engine that can handle more feature-rich web pages will be added to Firefox 3, according to Mozilla . So will better options to upscale and downscale images, and the ability to zoom in and out on web pages

Another major addition is SQL Lite, which makes it possible to 'tag' your favourite websites instead of bookmarking them. Similar tagging features can already be found in Gmail and Google Reader. The most frequently visited websites will automatically be accessible at the top of the web browser window.More>>

Firefox2 Launched

The Mozilla Corporation has officially released Mozilla Firefox 2 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Firefox 2 now with a refreshed user interface, anti-phishing protection, improvements to the built-in search feature, tabbed browsing changes, the ability to restore an interrupted session, better support for Web feeds, inline spell-checking, support for microsummaries and a number of other enhancements. Get it now!!