January 2008

With the start of 2008 came a handy “how-to” guide for moving Netscape 9 users to Firefox 2. Recall, AOL had announced they would discontinue support for Netscape 9 (based off of Firefox 2) in February 2008.

While the below “We Remove Vista…” photo was taken back in October 2007 at A&D Computer in Milford, NH it appeared in Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog (now The Microsoft Blog) in late January.

Included in January were three Add-Ons Reviews.

• Organize Search Engines, allowed Firefox users with lots of search engines a better management system to keep their search engines organized. Think of the Manage Bookmarks functionality, except for search engines. 
• Tab Effect, was a bit of a ‘novelty’ extension that I didn’t keep loaded for very long.
• URL Link, a powerful and highly customizable add-on which allows you to add options to the context (right-click) menu for handling URL links

January 22, 2008 marked Ten Years of Mozilla, a celebration that would last most of the year.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1998 ) — Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet. The company plans to post the source code beginning with the first Netscape Communicator 5.0 developer release, expected by the end of the first quarter of 1998.

Also in Mozilla news, John Lily was announced as New Mozilla Corp CEO succeeding Mitchell Baker. Mitchell would remain as Mozilla Foundation’s Chairman.

2008 also brought some much needed good news about Thunderbird. David Ascher head of MaiCo (now Mozilla Messaging) had posted an extensive article Thoughts on Thunderbird’s Evolution on his blog. At the end of January came Thunderbird 3 Plans for 2008. The plan included both purposed features and time lines.

Due to the increasing popularity of the Get a Mac ads we added a Get a Mac Category. Released during the NFL playoffs and in response to a Wall Street Journal report, Get a Mac: Referee. Also this month was a the slightly annoying Get a Mac: Time Machine ad.

A great photo of Canadian Firefoxen by Rick MacWilliam/Edmonton Journal:

February 2008

The Future of Yahoo! was being questioned with an unsolicited offer from Microsoft at the end of January. Little did we know that this would become a wild and confusing roller-coaster ride that even today has yet to end (though Steve Ballmer thinks it has).

Big news for Add-ons this month with 600-Million Add-Ons Downloaded. A sneak preview of the new AMO 3.0 gave us a glimpse of the new and improved AMO engine. Also came news FoxyTunes was Acquired by Yahoo Music.

Firefox hit the 500 Million Downloads milestone on February 22nd. During the month of February, Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Firefox 3.0b3 were released.

On February 7th, the Mozilla CEO John Lilly was interviewed on The GigaOM Show. Part of the year long 10-years of Mozilla celebration was the Launch of mozilla.org on February 23, 1998.

On February 19th, David Ascher announced the official creation of Mozilla Messaging (has unofficially been called MailCo for the past few months). This is a new subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, focused on email and internet communications. While on Thunderbird news, Febuary 26th, Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 was Released.

March 2008

Lots of Firefox news in March. Firefox 3 Beta 5 Announced and later on the release was delayed. Meanwhile on March 10th, Firefox 3 Beta 4 Released. On March 27th came news Firefox 3 to be Released In June:

Mozilla VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, has confirmed that the final release of Firefox 3, currently in Beta 4 stage, is expected for June, a full quarter later than the latest estimate and some nine months past the original.

The Guru made his intentions know he was going to be making the Switch to Fx 3.0 later that month. Finally, on March 25th Mozilla released Firefox 2.0.0.13.

Also in March was some much needed news about Thunderbird. Starting March 4th and every Tuesday thereafter are the new Thunderbird Status Meeting. Notes from this first meeting include an updated list of Thunderbird 3 Features. In mid March David Ascher announced New Thunderbird Engineers had joined the Mozilla Messaging team.

The end of March marked the New AMO Launch. An alert reader pointed out a couple things I had managed to overlook which I touched on in a quick addendum post.

Mozilla’s 10th Birthday was celebrated on March 31st, 10-years from the date when Mozilla (then Netscape Communication Corp) released the first developer release of Netscape Communication 5.0.

Microsoft is no stranger to legal action, usually against them. Back in May 2007, publicly claimed Free Software Violates Patents! Nearly a year later Microsoft Mum on Alleged Patents Violated, meaning they will not disclose which patents they claim free software violates. Only Microsoft…

While on the topic of Illegal Operations, installing Safari For Windows is an Illegal Operation. At least according to the Safari EULA:

While on the subject of Apple, how about some QuickTime Quirkiness! My dealings, frustration and general disapproval with the install and resulting mess left by Apple QucikTime and iTunes.

Then there was the Get a Mac: Bad Vista reviews ad. This was another website based ad and also was called misleading as the ‘reviews’ were article titles and the articles were not entirely about Vista.

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2008 Blog Year In Review

BYIR: April, May & June 2008