Mozilla has released a minor update to the current Firefox 43 branch with Firefox 43.0.1 on December 18th. This is part 1 of 2 for the fix of Bug 1079858. This bug has to do with Microsoft deprecating the use of the SHA1 Authenicode signatures for Windows singing on January 1st, 2016. Mozilla is moving to use SHA2 signature algorithms and the purpose of this patch is to simply inform the updater and maintenance service of the new SHA2 certificate issuer. Part 2 which will be released with Firefox 43.0.2 likely in the next week will Use SHA-2 to sign Windows binaries, and…
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Note: While this post mostly pertains to Mozilla’s other project, Thunderbird I still felt it was important to post this here as to remind people that while Thunderbird is very different from Firefox, they are still both ‘interconnected’ within the Mozilla Foundation in regards to technical resources. Mitchel Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation has posted an update on her blog about Thunderbird. She assures us that Mozilla is not ‘dropping’ Thunderbird. But, at the same time it is no longer effective for Thunderbird and Firefox to share the same technical infrastructure. Firefox and Thunderbird have diverging needs. Firefox needs to move at the speed…
…starting with Firefox 42 but you need to go to the Mozilla FTP site in order to download it. Once you click the link, find the most current version of Firefox and click that link, then click on the win64 link. Choose your localized (language) build then download the .exe setup file. At sometime in the future, the Win64 build will be offered directly from the Firefox downloads page. Per Bug 1181014, 32-bit Windows users who are running 64-Bit version of Windows will be offered an updated to the 64-bit version. This likely won’t happen until sometime next year after some…
At least for a while as Mozilla still plans on deprecating Silverlight support sometime in the future (much as Google and Microsoft already have). Bug 1225293 which was made public today indicates Mozilla’s short term plans to support Silverlight in the Win64 builds. When exactly Silverlight will return to the Firefox 64-Bit builds is not exactly known. It could (but not likely) be with Firefox 43 already in Beta and due out December 15th, 2015 or (more likely) Firefox 44 still in Developer’s Edition (Aurora) and due out in late January 2016 or Firefox 45 currently in Nightly builds and due out…
So Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 and 8.1 users are being targeted to be automatically update to Windows 10 via the Windows Update utility. While this has been happening since September and in October Microsoft called this an ‘accident’, now they are admitting that their plan is to get every Windows 7 and 8.1 PC (that can run Windows 10) on to Windows 10. Right now the Windows 10 Update is only an optional update, but in ‘early 2016’ it will become a recommended update. For those user who have their update settings to automatically download and install recommended updates, they are going to…
The title of this post sounds quite like a marketing gimmick by Microsoft to promote their new Windows 10 browser. It could be for a TV commercial or online advertisement. Actually it is the messages Windows 10 users may see if a new ‘feature’ in a forthcoming Windows 10 update is left in place when they attempt to change their default browser to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft has already made it a pain for users to change their default browser by making them do it from within the Windows 10 settings instead of allowing from within the browser itself. But, now…
On Thursday, October 15th, Mozilla released an update for the Firefox 41.0 branch with Firefox 41.0.2. This update addressed the following issues: Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2015-115: 2015-115 Cross-origin restriction bypass using Fetch The next planned release will be Firefox 42 on November 3rd.
Following in the footsteps of Google and Microsoft, Mozilla plans to eliminate support for the ancient NPAPI plugins (with the exception of heavily sandboxed version of Flash) in the next year. This would include the 32-bit versions of Firefox. There has been a lot of heated discussions in the past few months in regards to Mozilla removing the support of NPAPI plugins (mainly Silverlight and Java) from the upcoming (Firefox 43?) Windows 64-bit (Win64) version of Firefox. I agree this needs to be done as NPAPI plugin technology is over 20-years old from the Netscape days and is badly outdated…
On Wednesday, September 30th, Mozilla released an update for the Firefox 41.0 branch with Firefox 41.0.1. This update addressed the following issues: Fix a startup crash related to Yandex toolbar and Adblock Plus (1209124) Fix potential hangs with Flash plugins (1185639) Fix a regression in the bookmark creation (1206376) Fix a startup crash with some Intel Media Accelerator 3150 graphic cards (1207665) Fix a graphic crash, occurring occasionally on Facebook (1178601) Crash when serializing a principal with unknown app id (1205456) The next planned release will be Firefox 42 on November 3rd.
I both love and hate Windows 10. The story of Microsoft’s new operating system – both the build -up, launch and indeed the following month, has been a mixed one to say the least. From the start, there was an undercurrent of mistrust between enthusiasts and journalists like myself and Microsoft, for the simple reason that so little information was being offered about various aspects of the OS. Forbes’ Anthony Leather examines where Microsoft went (and continues to go) wrong with Windows 10.