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You are wrong. The GGP (my GGGP) is talking about the ActiveX widget that banks use for encryption in South Korea:

http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/

The idea is/was to do a large scale cleanup and refactoring.

And it's getting done in pieces. Mozilla developers wrote a string of tools (Elsa, Oink, TreeHydra, DeHydra) to analyze the codebase, all open source and some contributing to GCC's rearchitecture to better support plug-ins Developers can then pick specific cleanups and refactoring and identify exactly what code is affected and even do rewrites, though these go through code review. This happens steadily.

... But the smaller, leaner, more approachable codebase goal?.

DeCOMtamination proceeds. In each release a few major internal rewrites get in, like the switch to thebes on Cairo and the HTML reflow changes; upcoming is Combined nsImage* & gfxImageFrame and the HTML5 parser.

... Makes you wonder if there's anyone at the wheel.

There's no need to wonder when all the development takes place in the open. Pay attention or don't style yourself as an armchair expert.

It wouldn't have to be just developing countries. In South Korea, it's pretty much impossible to use anything but a PC with Internet Explorer, since they have some kind of national identity system that only works as an ActiveX plugin in IE.

It's not just their national ID number system (which all websites require for registration) that's like that. Pretty much every Korean site with more than just text and pictures is so heavily ActiveXed that it's ridiculous. I have to run IETab on most popular Korean sites, such as CyWorld.

It wouldn't have to be just developing countries. In South Korea, it's pretty much impossible to use anything but a PC with Internet Explorer, since they have some kind of national identity system that only works as an ActiveX plugin in IE.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Once again the problem here is too tight integration with other part's of the OS. Yeah, IE is the most used browser and as such a major target for exploits, but some separation from other parts of OS wouldn't do any harm. Or atleast make it optional to use such; You won't be automatically affected by Flash or PDF exploits if you choosed not to install those. Just another reason to use alternate browsers like Opera or Firefox, seeing it only affects IE users.

That being said, you dont need admin priviledges for some malware to do its job, botnets and such easily run within user priviledges aswell. Funnily, this issue is exactly the same in Linux and Mac OS too, which their users always seem to forget and go about how malware couldn't get the admin rights. They dont need it.

The fun thing is, there always seem to come exploits for IE and Firefox. Very rarely for Opera. That makes me think they've made some good fundamental decisions on design and programming and know how to secure code from exploits, specially because they have major marketshare (better than IE actually) in CIS countries like Russia and Ukraine and you would be thinking the local hackers would be trying to break it apart and exploit every possible thing on it. Hats off to them, really.

With these ages, isolating browser from the OS and even virtualizing it in its own environment that's cleaned when browser is closed starts to be a must, and I dont really see why they aren't doing it already. It would save people from so many trouble, and wouldn't affect performance at all.

Please site your references.

Also, FireFox compares itself to IE from 2006 http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/.

It's already hard enough to switch to Google.

Nah. It's pretty damn painless actually.

Wow! A Microsoft shill with mod points. How does mentioning Firefox make me a troll?

It's already hard enough to switch to Google.

Nah. It's pretty damn painless actually.

In the case of Safari, it does. Safari uses QuickTime to play videos, so you can use the <video> tag with any format that QuickTime supports. If you install XiphQT, then that includes Ogg Theora (I just checked, the video here plays just fine in Safari 4 with XiphQT installed).

How do I turn off Location-Aware Browsing permanently?

Location-Aware Browsing is always opt-in in Firefox 3.5. No location information is ever sent without your permission. If you wish to disable the feature completely, please follow this set of steps:

• In the URL bar, type about:config
• Type geo.enabled
• Double click on the geo.enabled preference
• Location-Aware Browsing is now disabled

Yeah, I meant them 3.1 beta release jobbies.

Mozilla's also put up a page that tracks downloads in real time, plotting their location on a map as well as maintaining running totals. As of this posting, Firefox 3.5 was already over 1 million downloads worldwide. See http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/

Like this?

Step two: fail.

yeah, there's no such configuration option... apparently you need to edit the userChrome.css file?!

http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=el&comments_parentId=372871&forumId=1

bleh

Not sure what your complaint is exactly...

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 was released on April 27 2009. Just a few days after it was scheduled to be released.

We are now at the review candidate (RC) stage... which admittedly wasn't included in that original schedule since it's never known how many RCs will be needed or how far along they will be.

They seem to be remarkably on top of things, to me.

Not sure what your complaint is exactly...

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 was released on April 27 2009. Just a few days after it was scheduled to be released.

We are now at the review candidate (RC) stage... which admittedly wasn't included in that original schedule since it's never known how many RCs will be needed or how far along they will be.

They seem to be remarkably on top of things, to me.

I saw some of the stuff they do with the video tag and tried it out on my machine. http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/

It seems like they are encouraging doing elaborate things with this tag. I'm hoping that this won't escalate into what we have now with flash.
Even if it isn't as much of a resource hog for playing video, once people start rotating / clipping 20 videos on a single page it'll bring your system down.

As of now, if you got to Mozilla's page and choose to download Firefox, you get version 3.5 :

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html

if google were to start making deals with all OEM's that their default search engine was google search

Start making deals? They already have.

Weave is excellent. Its the first Browser Sync replacement I've seen that improves on it. The "Tabs From Other Computers" dropdown under History is quite useful.

I agree with GP, that different tools are good for different purposes. I personally use Git across several computers for code, documents, and other small files. Pictures go to my Flickr Pro account.

I'm sure that they'd have loved to make a more fair comparison, say, between XP and an 8-year-old version of Linux.

But: Firefox 3.5 RC2 won't run on 8-year-old versions of Linux.

So, there. :P

Demo of video and SVG support in Firefox 3.5. That's why video being built-in to HTML5 is important.

You can get the 3.5 release candidate from here.

I also like the ability to highlight text then see it translated into a different language in a little popup. Hopefully this is not patented so other browsers can now copy it but I am probably being overly optimistic here.

Firefox has had an extension for this for a while now called Ubiquity. And it does so much more than just translating selected text. I doubt Microsoft would be able to patent it.

While Microsoft's campaign is rubbish, unfortunately Mozilla is no better.

No it isn't. That's something so easy to verify i can't beleive you're at +4 right now.

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
http://unite.opera.com/

Opera Unite is a 40% larger download than Firefox.

• go to about:config
• Change the "geo.enabled" preference to false

All information summarized (read: stolen wholesale) from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/

This is actually a pre-RC build, the actual RC should be coming in the next week.
See this site for more details.
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2009/06/17/firefox-35-beta-users-will-receive-update-to-early-release-candidate/

If you want it now replace 3.5b4 to 3.5rc1 in the URL from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html Might not be intended but it worked for me.

That's the old preview build. This is the RC link.

Beta 99

editor embedded in the browser ?L You mean Mozilla Bespin project ?:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/02/introducing-bespin/
http://www.vimeo.com/4183124

Well, there's AIR. You can use just web-standards to develop for it. And you have the benefit of WebKit plus their JavaScipt engine, which I think is a version of Tamarin. On the free side, there's Titanium, and Prism. But these are site-specific-browsers. If you meant something that you could package into a gzip/tar and send over the web, I think you're left with the usual feature-sniffing and mass-o-files stuff that we all know and "love"...

It's also a regional issue. In Israel and South Korea you'd better be coding *for* IE. Your fallback should be a standards-compliant browser.

South Korea browser share, September 2008

If your image of video is "Youtube", then you're right. But the other approach lets you do things like these:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/green/green.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/mashup/video.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml

Having video fully participate in the rendering pipeline (unlike the Flash situation) lets you usefully include video (we're not talking "ads" or necessarily "main content video" a la Youtube, but video that is part of a web app or a web-based game, or that the web page wants to annotate) in your web page without screwing up other parts of it...

If your image of video is "Youtube", then you're right. But the other approach lets you do things like these:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/green/green.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/mashup/video.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml

Having video fully participate in the rendering pipeline (unlike the Flash situation) lets you usefully include video (we're not talking "ads" or necessarily "main content video" a la Youtube, but video that is part of a web app or a web-based game, or that the web page wants to annotate) in your web page without screwing up other parts of it...

If your image of video is "Youtube", then you're right. But the other approach lets you do things like these:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/green/green.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/mashup/video.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml

Having video fully participate in the rendering pipeline (unlike the Flash situation) lets you usefully include video (we're not talking "ads" or necessarily "main content video" a la Youtube, but video that is part of a web app or a web-based game, or that the web page wants to annotate) in your web page without screwing up other parts of it...

If your image of video is "Youtube", then you're right. But the other approach lets you do things like these:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/green/green.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/mashup/video.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml

Having video fully participate in the rendering pipeline (unlike the Flash situation) lets you usefully include video (we're not talking "ads" or necessarily "main content video" a la Youtube, but video that is part of a web app or a web-based game, or that the web page wants to annotate) in your web page without screwing up other parts of it...

And for those of you who are wanting to tell me "but Firefox just joins all startups into the same process and only gives you a new window". Well, I defeated that by dynamically creating a new home directory on the fly for each startup, populating it with a template set of files Firefox expects, setting the HOME environment variable to that path, and starting the Firefox process. So the scanning of my browser is limited to just what this one I use for Slashdot has visited recently.

If you didn't want to go through all of that hassle, you could have just done:
env MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox --ProfileManager
It starts a new firefox instance and gives you the option of creating a new profile for a site. Comes in handy for me.
Also check out prism

If anything, I'd say the author of Noscript has proved two things: one, that he is human and makes mistakes, and two, that he has the integrity of character to appologise for his mistakes and rectify them. Neither of which makes him any less trustworthy than anyone else.

From what I hear, he only "apologized" and fixed the problem for several reasons:
1. Because the Firefox devs said that NoScript was breaking Firefox's Add-on Policy when it started monkeying around with AdBlock Plus.
2. NoScript's rating was plummeting on the Firefox Add-on site. If this rating drops too much, NoScript would no longer be considered a trusted add-on, and therefore every version would be subject to security review before it exited the Sandbox.

Oh, yes, you read that correctly. NoScript is currently not reviewed before new versions go up on the Firefox add-on site.

Incidentally, Mozilla made a new policy spelling out some restrictions for add-ons after this incident.

Then it's not Google Wave, it's more like Mozilla Labs Weave project. A way to have your bookmarks, history, tab-information, etc. synced between all your Firefox/Fennec (Mozilla mobile) browsers:

http://labs.mozilla.com/projects/weave/

We've thought about this a lot, and the rules for customized versions of Firefox that are distributed publicly are quite different. We limit changes to those editions - especially anything that directly impacts the user experience - as the type of behaviours you describe are exactly what we want to stay away from. Changing the start page to a corporate site adds very little value, where adding a bookmark to a support or product page can, as it's there when the user wants it. Those are the types of changes we encourage, and we do our best to stay away from changes that don't add value to the user.

If you do come across distributions of Firefox that exhibit the type of behaviour you outline,we'd like to hear about it.

How do I capitalize Firefox? How do I abbreviate it?
 
Only the first letter is capitalized (so it's Firefox, not FireFox.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx" or "fx".

If people are concerned about their privacy then why don't they use Firefox, AdBlock, Flashblock, and NoScript? The truly paranoid can download and use Tor as well. Do people have a right to complain if they aren't willing to lift a finger to protect themselves?

Firefox has always had Windows as its primary GUI and target platform, with Linux added as an afterthought

Firefox is Phoenix, which has always been cross-platform, being a stripped-down version of Mozilla.

From the Phoenix 0.1 release notes:

Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform.

Netscape successfully committed suicide.

Having used Netscape 4.x (all the way through 4.72 iirc), I have to agree.

Internet Explorer 4 was leaps and bounds better than Netscape Communicator, so I switched to it.

Coincidentally, I switched again a few years later when it turned out this one browser was leaps and bounds better than Internet Explorer 6. What was its name again... Phoenix? Firebird? Something like that.

I think you are putting way to much stock in how a few minutes of advertising can adversely affect your life. Just ignore them, fast forward, or hit the DVD Menu button and skip all that crap. Seriously the only way to avoid all of what you call "corporate propaganda" is to live in a cave, never buy anything and live a completely self-sufficient life, never have any contact with the outside world, never again read anything, listen to anything, or watch anything. Then you would truly be "free" of the corporate shackles. (As a bonus you could also realize that you've had people shouting in your ears their whole life and that you never realized how much your thinking had been muddled - in the silence of your cave.)

Ahh... now you're telling me it's impossible and/or impractical. Which is great, because it just so happens I already did it. As a matter of fact, I wrote a series of pieces for members of an eating disorder recovery group on how to avoid all the negative imagery and get healthier. It's on a private forum, so I'll just stick it in here.

--//--

How to avoid advertisements on the web:

If you're not using Firefox, you should be.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Once you've got Firefox, you should install tools to protect you from advertising. First one is Adblock Plus

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

This lets you block advertisements, and is configurable.

Next, if you want to block particular sites completely, you can use this tool, called BlockSite:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145

After you've done all this, you can customize Google to remove certain items you don't want to see with the CustomizeGoogle add on.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743

With this tool, you can remove advertisements, filter out sites you don't ever want to see in your search results, and remove google tracking. Which may screw up Muses website statistics tracking, but will prevent you from becoming a target for advertisements specifically related to eating disorders and dieting etc.

If you take the time to install and set up these tools, you will be amazed at the difference.

--//--

How to avoid advertisements in your mail:

First, install Thunderbird:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

This mail reader has a built in spam blocker that learns how to identify spam as you mark things as spam/not spam. This will go a long way towards keeping your mailbox advertisement free.

Once you've got that installed, you want to be using it to read your web based mail, like Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, etc.

So you need to install the Webmail add on.

http://webmail.mozdev.org/

Once you've installed this, you'll be able to view your mail from all these websites without having to see their banners and other assorted crap.

After this is all done, you should set up folders for every piece of mail you expect to receive, and filters to automatically move them there. This will prefilter your pile, and your learning spam filters will also prefilter.

Between the two, you'll have an ever shrinking pile of messages that "might" be spam to wade through and mark as "is spam" or "is not spam".

--//--

How to avoid advertising in your multimedia:

Stop paying for cable television. Disconnect your service, and use the money you save to buy a DVD burner for backup, a video card for your computer that supports TV-Out, and a large external hard drive that you can use to carry files to and from your fr

I think you are putting way to much stock in how a few minutes of advertising can adversely affect your life. Just ignore them, fast forward, or hit the DVD Menu button and skip all that crap. Seriously the only way to avoid all of what you call "corporate propaganda" is to live in a cave, never buy anything and live a completely self-sufficient life, never have any contact with the outside world, never again read anything, listen to anything, or watch anything. Then you would truly be "free" of the corporate shackles. (As a bonus you could also realize that you've had people shouting in your ears their whole life and that you never realized how much your thinking had been muddled - in the silence of your cave.)

Ahh... now you're telling me it's impossible and/or impractical. Which is great, because it just so happens I already did it. As a matter of fact, I wrote a series of pieces for members of an eating disorder recovery group on how to avoid all the negative imagery and get healthier. It's on a private forum, so I'll just stick it in here.

--//--

How to avoid advertisements on the web:

If you're not using Firefox, you should be.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Once you've got Firefox, you should install tools to protect you from advertising. First one is Adblock Plus

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

This lets you block advertisements, and is configurable.

Next, if you want to block particular sites completely, you can use this tool, called BlockSite:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145

After you've done all this, you can customize Google to remove certain items you don't want to see with the CustomizeGoogle add on.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743

With this tool, you can remove advertisements, filter out sites you don't ever want to see in your search results, and remove google tracking. Which may screw up Muses website statistics tracking, but will prevent you from becoming a target for advertisements specifically related to eating disorders and dieting etc.

If you take the time to install and set up these tools, you will be amazed at the difference.

--//--

How to avoid advertisements in your mail:

First, install Thunderbird:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

This mail reader has a built in spam blocker that learns how to identify spam as you mark things as spam/not spam. This will go a long way towards keeping your mailbox advertisement free.

Once you've got that installed, you want to be using it to read your web based mail, like Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, etc.

So you need to install the Webmail add on.

http://webmail.mozdev.org/

Once you've installed this, you'll be able to view your mail from all these websites without having to see their banners and other assorted crap.

After this is all done, you should set up folders for every piece of mail you expect to receive, and filters to automatically move them there. This will prefilter your pile, and your learning spam filters will also prefilter.

Between the two, you'll have an ever shrinking pile of messages that "might" be spam to wade through and mark as "is spam" or "is not spam".

--//--

How to avoid advertising in your multimedia:

Stop paying for cable television. Disconnect your service, and use the money you save to buy a DVD burner for backup, a video card for your computer that supports TV-Out, and a large external hard drive that you can use to carry files to and from your fr

Whachoo talkn'bout Willis?

They compared Safari 4 Beta. Why is asking for them to test Firefox 3.5 beta such a stretch?