The next developers milestone for Firefox 3, Alpha 2 has been released. It is important to note this release is only for web developers and the Mozilla testing community. Also important Gecko 1.9 does not support the following out-dated OS’s, Win95, Win98, WinMe, and Mac OS 10.2. Some new feature with this release: Resolved remaining issues with ACID2 test compliance. Support for the Web Apps 1.0 API for changing stylesheets. XML documents can now be rendered as they’re downloaded instead of only after the full document has been loaded. Greatly improved Mac widgets support since Alpha 1. Improvements in the…

Skimming through the notes from yesterdays Mozilla Weekly Update meeting I did notice a brief mention on the Major Update feature: “Major update still scheduled for 1-2 weeks after the release of 1.5.0.10/2.0.0.2” As it stands now the tentative release date for the 1.5.0.10/2.0.0.2 builds is February 15th. However, given the difficulties in getting this release out, chances are this will end up being pushed back. There are still two major bugs blocking these releases. The developers had hoped to have these bugs fixed by last Thursday (02/01/07) so the RC could be released later that week. Then that was…

With the recent release of Windows Vista, comes a new PC vs MAC ad demonstrating the new security feature of Windows Vista. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4FF_aT_mE8] Now imagine if you would trying to install, setup and run Firefox on Windows Vista… You are about to install a non-Microsoft application (Mozilla Firefox). Cancel or Allow? You are about to run a non-Microsoft application (firefox.exe). Cancel or Allow? You are trying to use a non-Microsoft web browser (Mozilla Firefox) to connect to the Internet. Cancel or Allow? You are about to make a non-Microsoft web browser (Mozilla Firefox) your default browser. Cancel or Allow? You…

At the time of this post, the Mozilla Weekly Update Meeting is still in progress. But there is some news (good and bad) I wanted to write about now for these future Fx releases. The bad new is there are still two bugs the developers are trying to get patched for this release: Arbitrary code execution by using javascript: url with <img> tag. menupopup.showPopup() can be abused The good news is all the Vista bugs, including Yahoo! IM and default browser (thanks to Robert Strong) are patched and ready to go. Even better the fix for the Firefox Password Manager…

Part of the reason the Fx 1.5.0.10/2.0.0.2 releases are being delayed may be attributed to the developers wanting to do more testing with Windows Vista. Today was the Windows Vista Community Test Day and there is plenty of information on the Mozilla Wiki. Since I am not a Windows Vista user, most (okay may be more like all) of this is Greek to me! But from what I can tell, the developers are trying to make sure the future releases of Firefox are going to work smoothly with Windows Vista. Permalink

I was reviewing the notes from the latest Mozilla developers meeting this past Monday (2007/01/29) and noticed some exciting news in the Thunderbird section. Besides announcing Thunderbird 2 Beta 2 being released last Wednesday (2007/01/24), there are now over 100,000 folks using the Beta 2 since its release. Even more encouraging, they are “on track” for an early March release for Thunderbird 2. If you are interesting in trying out(at your own risk) Thunderbird 2 Beta 2, you can get it via the OSU Open Source Labs FTP server (select your OS below): Windows, Linux or Mac News Source: Mozilla…

As is typical with Firefox/Thunderbird releases, the release date for Fx 3.0a2 has been pushed back. Earlier I had indicated it was tentatively scheduled for January 29th. Per the notes from today’s Firefox 3 Status meeting Gecko 1.9a2 (Minefield)/Firefox 3.0a2 (Gran Paradiso) are scheduled for release now on February 7th. Tree closure and code freeze are schedueled for February 5th. Permalink