June was quite the month for releases: Fx 3 Alpha 5 – Later than planned but finally saw the inclusion of Places again Netscape 9 Beta 1 – Only four months after the initial announcement (of course it helps that it is built off of Firefox 2) Flock 0.7.14 – Nothing all that special just Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 Safari 3.0 Beta For Windows – How Weird! Major Update – at long last the update the allows user to go from Fx 1.5 to 2.0 automatically Whilst on the subject of Safari, I did take it for a ‘Test Drive‘. It handled…

First off, Merry Christmas from the Guru! For those readers who were not around this time last year, I did an impromptu special feature called the Fx Year In Review. I thought it would be neat to look back and see what happened with Firefox that year, especially with the release of Firefox 2.0! I want to continue this as an annual Christmas tradition so here’s a look back at Firefox in 2007. A lot of us were hoping to see Firefox 3 come out in 2007, however given the huge complexity of Firefox 3 (especially Places) this just did…

There will not be a Weekly Update Meeting today or next week. The next scheduled Weekly Update Meeting will be on January 7th, 2008.

Up until the release of Thunderbird 3, there was not an automated way to install extensions from within Thunderbird. In the older versions you had to download the add-on, find it on your computer, open Thunderbird’s Add-Ons Manager window and then drag the file into the window to install. Most 3rd party extension hosting sites do not offer the automated install for Thunderbird. You can setup your Thunderbird to have an ‘Install’ Button on the add-ons manager. It is turned off by default, but can be turned on via a very simple tweak in Thunderbird’s Config Editor. Thunderbird From the…

Well, it is official, Firefox 3 is not going to released in 2007. However, late today Mozilla did give us an early Christmas present with the release of Firefox 3 Beta 2. Should you choose to download and test, here are some new features and changes in this milestone that require feedback: Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins. Improved ease of use…

JustZisGuy at Spread Firefox has copied Firefox 2.0.0.11 on floppies. OK, so floppy disks are obsolete. These days USB flash drives can be used even on 95, NT 4, and DOS, but there is nothing quite like having software physically at your fingertips. To that end I printed up some 3.5″ floppy disk labels and created a setup self extractor using Winzip to span the install file across the disks. Using the WinZip self-extractor he was able to get Firefox on five 3½ disks or five 5¼ disks. While his 3½ & 5¼ drives did work, his 8-inch did not….

Personas is an extension or is it a theme? Both actually, it is extension that “adds lightweight theming” to your Firefox. Lightweight in that it only does the main browser window, not any of the options, bookmarks, downloads, etc. windows. There are several Personas to choose from and they apply on-the-fly (no restart needed once the extensions is installed). Personas is a prototype that builds upon the ideas that: themes today are too hard to find, install and use graphic designers should be able to style the browser without having to code browsers can be more than just desktop software,…