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You could use the super-secret Mozilla Add-on SDK

QUOTE: help ensure your add-on continues to work as new versions of Firefox are released.

Nobody seems to be mentioning this solution. Not even Mozilla.

That's no longer current practice; there's a number of filed bugs where extensions and plugins are responsible for the memory leaks, and the Mozilla guys have been contacting the developers and helping them track down the leaks.

An example.

From the big Bugzilla thread about version numbers earlier this week:

Users cannot sit on Firefox 4.x They will be updated to the latest version when they open the About dialog (or sooner) because all* but the current Firefox release are unsupported versions in the new rapid release cycle. Those not current versions do not not get critical security updates except via the current version. Firefox users will not be spread across Firefox 4, 5, 6, etc. They will be on the latest version or they will be about to be on the latest version.

Effective expiration, lack of bugfixes, and rapidly replaced by newer versions with bugfixes? By any practical definition, there is no stable version. They're all betas from here onwards. The whole notion of a release isn't that it's bug-free, but that it's supported for a reasonably-long period of time.

Does this happen while you're at the office, behind a proxy? Then perhaps you're suffering from bug 235853.

I suspect this would affect Firefox on many 100,000s of corporate networks around the world (depending on PAC configuration). - potentially costing Firefox millions of users. I always assumed that if I could just find the right person at Mozilla and get them to realize this, then it would get fixed.

But with the recent (unofficial?) comments about Firefox not being intended for corporate environments, things became a little clearer.

So if I have version "??" and it turns out it has a feature I don't like or a bug in it, then I can downgrade to version "??" to fix it?

No, because downgrading is not supported.

As Asa Dotzler said in a comment on that Bugzilla entry:

Users cannot sit on Firefox 4.x They will be updated to the latest version when they open the About dialog (or sooner) because all* but the current Firefox release are unsupported versions in the new rapid release cycle. Those not current versions do not not get critical security updates except via the current version. Firefox users will not be spread across Firefox 4, 5, 6, etc. They will be on the latest version or they will be about to be on the latest version.

What you're looking for is a Firefox Plugin called Certificate Patrol. It will let you know if a certificate changed since it was first seen.

So, if I've been using a certificate for Bank of America signed by Versign for the last year. (Work with me here. Assume Verisign isn't already a front for the NSA. :-) And all of a sudden the certificate changes to one signed by someone else, it'll warn me. Even if it is signed by the same CA, but the hash or signature changes, it'll warn me. Hell, you even get an extra warning if the certificate was renewed, but not close to expiring before!

As that paragon of virtue, Joseph Satain once said: "doveryai, no proveryai" Or as Ronald Reagan put it: "Trust, but verify."

The main developer of Firebug, who used to get paid by IBM to work on it, has left for Google to work on their tools. The new lead is a Mozilla Corporation employee.

This may or may not have additionally been affected by an internal Mozilla group writing their own developer tools that will ship by default and not as an extension.

Speaking of bug reports, I made one regarding version numbers

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679081

currently, the Mozilla add-on website permits max-version all the way up to 8.0a1

max-version was 7.0a1 a few weeks ago, and 6.0a1 a few week before that.

A moving target for max-version is a bad thing. It's amusing to see web developers encouraged by browser developers (including Mozilla) to do feature detection instead of version detection, and then Mozilla's own extension system requires version detection.

We're still stuck on 3.6 waiting for the plug-ins to catch up

There is no justifiable excuse for this. First, because the add-on developer should maintain the add-on and update its max-version (currently, the Mozilla add-on website permits max-version all the way up to 8.0a1). Secondly, because you can always override it anyway. It's not likely that the add-on will actually break.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

After installing the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, your incompatible extensions will become enabled for you to test whether they still work with the version of Firefox or Thunderbird that you're using. If you notice that one of your add-ons doesn't seem to be working the same way it did in previous versions of the application, just open the Add-ons Manager and click Compatibility next to that add-on to send a report to Mozilla.

Even if your add-ons all work fine, if they're marked incompatible, please let us know that they work fine by submitting a success report so we can encourage the add-on developer to update their compatibility information.

For you there is User Agent Switcher.

You can grab a nightly 64 bit version meanwhile https://nightly.mozilla.org/

Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox/ and Winestripe Realfox 4 (makes Firefox 4+ look like Firefox 1.5) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/winestripe-realfox-4/ There's also Pale Moon http://www.palemoon.org/ , which keeps the status bar and tabs below location bar by default. Anyways, Firefox's 4+ GUI can be reverted almost totally to the old style with a few clicks.

Enterprises and users who don't like the fast release pace could try SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-3-theme-for-firefox/ and Winestripe Realfox 4 (makes Firefox 4+ look like Firefox 1.5) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/winestripe-realfox-4/ There's also Pale Moon http://www.palemoon.org/ , which keeps the status bar and tabs below location bar by default. Anyways, Firefox's 4+ GUI can be reverted almost totally to the old style with a few clicks.

Enterprises and users who don't like the fast release pace could try SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Is there just some tool which can scan through my extensions and report back on which aren't marked as compatible with 6.0 or above?

Yes, Is It Compatible? does this.

Any developer who believes that their add-on won't break in future updates is welcome to support any version up to version 8.0a1. The only reason an add-on should ever break due to a Firefox update is because the developer is too lazy to update it. And in that case you can still use the Add-on Compatibility Reporter to override the version check and enable the add-on.

Any developer who believes that their add-on won't break in future updates is welcome to support any version up to version 8.0a1. The only reason an add-on should ever break due to a Firefox update is because the developer is too lazy to update it. And in that case you can still use the Add-on Compatibility Reporter to override the version check and enable the add-on.

you have clearly not been following development. --> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_6_for_developers

They probably just haven't gussied up the page for the release version yet. If you're feeling gutsy, though, why not take up Nightly? The current builds are very stable and have better memory management than 6 will probably provide.

1. Memory leaks have been a major issue of recent Firefox development. Current FF 8 nightly builds use a tiny fraction of older versions, and they're extremely stable. This is accomplished by no longer caching previous pages (so if you go back, you'll have to reload from scratch.) I've got a cool 200 tabs open right now in a very old session and it's only using about 500 MB of RAM.

2. The status bar can be restored with this extension. Addon compatibility is likely to be more stable in the foreseeable future since most of the major architectural changes were around the 3-to-4 transition.

3. Firefox doesn't run on the iPad. Are you a troll, technically inexperienced, or in a state of reduced mental capacity?

Firefox 6 has been already released unofficially (i.e. files are available, the announcement hasn't been yet made).

From https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665580#c19:

For all users who don't need/like it:
about:config -> browser.urlbar.trimURLs = false

For example, take removing the status bar. Chrome will expand the little URL popup that replaced the status bar if you continue hovering a link. Firefox 4 and 5 don't. And for some reason they randomly switch between left-aligning it and right-aligning the popup. And for fuck's sake, why don't you just expand the popup to fill the entire horizontal width of the window?! I've got the room to display the entire URL! Why doesn't Firefox bother doing so?!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar/

Haha, so it seems like they decided to get rid of the initial "http://" in displayed urls as well as the trailing / on root urls. That is, if you're on the regular Slashdot home page, the full string displayed in the url bar is just slashdot.org. Copy-and-paste it somewhere and you still get http://slashdot.org/, though. Other protocols (including https) still include the protocol part.

Here's the associated ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665580

There will be many flame wars over this when Firefox 8 is more widely distributed.

yes

This will tell you "hey, there's a new addon, do you want to use it?" and then you can opt out.

You're right that "sneaky" addons that decide to play evil will be able to get around it

It will at least differentiate between "sneaky" add-ons and outright "evil" ones, which can be blacklisted once someone catches it and reports it.

I see your point. I don't know how or if they'll try to do that.

However, the current "sneaky" method of installing add-ons was a feature, not a bug, and using it is not, per se, malicious. However, once user confirmation is required, any add-on that circumvents it will clearly be malicious and Firefox will be justified in blacklisting it.

They do. Go here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/?src=api Install this. Enjoy.

What exactly do Mozilla do with 100 million dollars of tax-free revenue?

The first thing we do with it is to pay taxes. It was not trivial for us to figure out how to do that.

Are they building a war chest?

You can get a sense of how much we're saving by reading financial reports from previous years. To some extent, we're saving not because we want to save, but because we can only hire people so fast while maintaining quality and culture.

That'd be 500 full time employees at 100k per year with 50 million left over in case of emergencies.

500 full time Mozilla employees and contractors isn't far off.

I've heard a rule of thumb that once you throw in benefits, offices, and travel, the cost of employing someone is about twice their salary. I don't know whether that holds for Mozilla, which has generous employee benefits but many remote employees.

mostly for posts about my programming projects (mostly my Firefox Plugin, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/), so privacy is a non issue. I'm just careful about what info I give FB.

Yes the desktop battle is so last-decade, but you manage to utterly miss the current battle. The future may not and should not be compiled apps from a curated store written for a particular runtime on a platform controlled by a commercial behemoth. The alternative is running a bunch of HTML applications that run in any browser on ANY platform, that you can View > Source to inspect and modify. That's a free software battle worth fighting!

Most of the get-off-my-lawn graybeards on Slashdot miss this point. They refuse to understand the potential of HTML, they conflate it with cloud computing and web services (I run several "web" apps from my hard drive), and they make dismissive snorts that native Gnome/KDE/whatever desktop apps will always be superior while ignoring the relentless advance of exceptional HTML applications. I think that's what Mr. Proffitt is getting at in the original article when he write "I have some doubts that any Linux distribution is going to be able to get its collective act together in time."

At least Mozilla understands this battle, read The App Model and the Web and the rest of Mitchell Baker's recent posts. But the Linux users who should be Mozilla's natural allies in promoting an open Internet don't seem to understand what's going on; maybe that's why Boot to Gecko is based on Android instead of a Linux distro. A few other projects like Joli OS and Webian shell are moving past the Linux desktop to the browser. If these falter, there's still Google's ChromeOS, but it competes with Google's own Android ecosystem.

Please work on something that will be actually useful, like those below. These are hard to do but it looks really bad when Mozilla ignore these for nearly 10 years to work on eye candy.

HTML5 <ruby> support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33339

CSS3 writing-mode (vertical text)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145503

Please work on something that will be actually useful, like those below. These are hard to do but it looks really bad when Mozilla ignore these for nearly 10 years to work on eye candy.

HTML5 <ruby> support
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33339

CSS3 writing-mode (vertical text)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=145503

is Chrome.

I find it hilarious that that was moderated "Insightful." Actually, Mozilla browsers have always called their UIs "chrome" so I wonder if Google intended to cause confusion by naming their browser that.

The theme is the very appropriately named Firefox 3 theme for Firefox 4+.

Let's see:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS_Reference/Mozilla_Extensions

> If Google pulls out in favor of Chrome, you have to
> ask what will happen.

You can ask... or you could look up the answers.

The 2010 data is not out yet, but the 2009 numbers are at http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2009-audited-financial-statement.pdf which means you don't have to worry about citing 2006 numbers.

As of 2009, Mozilla had $120 million in net assets. Expenses in 2009 were $61 million. Revenues were $104 million. They were hiring as fast as they could find good people, and earning more money than they could spend. They had 2 years worth of operating costs in the bank. All of this is public data, as it is for any other nonprofit.

So if trends continued in that revenue and expenses grew at the same percentage rate, and if you assume that Google is still 85% of their revenue stream (the data on that doesn't seem to be available), what would happen if Google pulled out is that Mozilla would have about 2.3 years to find funding sources to replace that revenue. Assuming they kept spending as much as they do now in the meantime instead of trying to stretch the money out.

On the other hand, you also have to wonder what the bottom line for Google would be from 20-30% of internet users not having Google as the default search engine anymore, say. And if that were a possibility, why Google would want to risk that.

Chrome may have a nice interface and WebKit may be a bit faster than Firefox's rendering engine, Gecko , but if Firefox failed as a project I'd miss its Emacs-like extensibility (something all other browsers lack).

TFTFY. Seriously, how do you publish a story about browsers and get stuff like this wrong, or use such confusing language? And I don't want to get into another pissing contest between WebKit and Gecko, but do we really need a shout-out to Chrome in a Firefox story just to placate the /. users that prefer it? While we're at it, why such a dismal outlook on Firefox's future? It's not becoming a niche browser any time soon; anyone see concrete signs of that happening? Even if it did, I'm sure Mozilla will live on in some form...there are dozens of products out there still using code from the Mozilla suite. Y'know, stuff like that thing "XULrunner" from the summary.

That was what XUL and XPCOM were for. XULRunner is still a very respectable development environment. (The Firefox and Thunderbird UIs code is written almost exclusively in XUL/JavaScript.) Unfortunately, while these technologies have been around for quite a while, they haven't really taken off beyond Mozilla's apps. Up until recently, it was still possible to load XUL from a remote site and get an interface with native widgets, but no longer.

I agree with most of your sentiments, and I think that you will find this Thunderbird extension great for editing the From line of your emails automatically:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/virtual-identity/

I've been trying to get this functionality in Kmail for years:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=72926
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159251
Please comment in support of those two bugs. Thanks!

Sorry to reply offtopic to your dick joke, but I wanted to get this as high up as possible.

MafiaaFire has a known design flaw that presents security problems, use the fork FireICE instead:

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

Of course, the real problem is "old" CAs who have been "grandfathered" in, because "they are too big to be excluded". But that doesn't mean that auditing requirements are just a fairy tale "belief". They are very real, especially for the more recent CAs

There are a lot of things that I'm waiting for "until such time as", but I don't foresee "such time" happening within one investment horizon.

Just because you can't do it immediately doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing.

They won't follow that link; they'll just visit the site's competitor.

I don't see how that would drive traffic to competitors. It doesn't make your service unavailable, it only reminds your customers that they should update their software. For example, try installing the latest version of Firefox while you have an out of date Flash player: As soon as the install finishes you get a page telling you that your Flash player needs an update and supplying a link to Adobe's website to download the update.

This is true especially in cases where no update to support DNSSEC is available at all for a given platform.

DNSSEC doesn't strictly require platform support. Someone could pretty easily create a DNSSEC resolver as a browser plugin similar to this one for any given browser.

According to the statement, a whopping 97% of Mozilla's income comes from the search deals. Unfortunately, [the] company did not disclose the percentage of searches it sends to each search provider.

Mozilla's 2009 Financial Statement [Nov 19, 2010]

The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider which expires November 2011. Aproximately 86% and 91% of royalty revenue for 2009 and 2008, respectively was derived from this contract.

Mozilla Foundation and Susidiaries: Consolidated Financial Statements : Notes: Note 9: Concentration of Risk [August 23, 2010]

When your only source of funding is the "add-supported" browser, the Windows OS is the air you breathe and the water you drink.
You cannot survive without it.

Windows 88%
OSX 6%
iOS 3%
Linux 1%
Android 1%

Operating System Market Share [August 5, 2011] [Rounded] [Global]

Desktop: 95%

Mobile vs Desktop [July 10 to July 11] [Rounded] [Global]

Windows XP 50%
Win 7 28%
Vista 15%
OSX 6%
Linux 1%
Other 1%

Top 5 Operating Systems [July 10 to July 11] [Rounded] [Global]

Windows is a commercial, proprietary and closed source OS. That is in many ways extraordinarly open to the user, the recreational programmer and the professional developer.

I have over 200 programs on this Win 7 system. I am not bound to any single repository or app store. I am not hectored by RMS. Steve Jobs or Bill Gates when I install a program which they would not approve.

Microsoft began with the stand-alone PC for the school, the home and small business. It began with the user. It began with a market.

The producer Samuel Goldwyn is usually credited for the line "If you've got a message, send a telegram."

Good advice for anyone whose Grand Design is about to collide head-on with a world that is skeptical, pragmatic and more than a little weary of those Who Think They Know What Is Best For Me.

If you use HTTPS everywhere in conjunction with HTTPS finder you can add your favorite sites to your HTTPS ruleset automatically.

If you use HTTPS everywhere in conjunction with HTTPS finder you can add your favorite sites to your HTTPS ruleset automatically.

Apple has stated repeatedly that touch screen devices are fundamentally different than desktops/laptops. While they may borrow UI features back and forth they are never going to merge into one unified device or GUI.

While they are 'fundamentally different', that doesn't mean that they're not poking at the foundations.

You mention borrowing UI features, so you might be including the recent decision for the scrollbar direction reversal - defended (as usual, the shill that he is) by David Pogue as being far more natural.. slide down to make the page slide down, who could argue with that logic - for it applies to the real world and whaddayaknow touch devices, too.

This despite the fundamental point of a scrollbar, vs scrolling a page, being that it tells you where you are in a documen. It, in essence, defines the viewscreen's position, rather than the underlying page.. There's even extensions for FireFox that will put little markers near the scrollbar for search hits on a page ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrollbar-search-highlighter/ ).

All of those conventions, however.. thrown out in Lion. Yes, you can still change it back - and maybe if enough people do so, Apple will revert this change in the next OS X. But I wouldn't count no it.

That change, like many before it, most definitely point to a continued merger of OS X and iOS paradigms.
Will they be merged into a unified GUI? Probably not. Most likely there will still be GUI- and input-related differences between a desktop and a tablet, just as there are between a tablet and a(n i)phone.
But that doesn't mean the underlying OS can't be the result of a complete merger.

It's good for me. My plugin for downloading flash video & converting to MP3 gets a lot more attention because it's free. It's a nice little boost to my ego & programming skills. I fixed a lot of bugs and added a lot of enhancements I wouldn't have known about w/o the community I have now.

I was saved by Kitten Block, and you can be too:

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

Now I know you're trolling; Firefox for Android DOES support Flash

If Firefox for Android supports Flash they're being pretty quiet about it. News reports announcing the Firefox 6 beta complain that it has no Flash support. User comments on the Firefox Beta page on the Android Market complain that it still has no Flash support. The release notes for Firefox 6 say Flash and other plugins are not supported. This bug report has been open since January and as of late June it just says "we're working on it." If you guys are using Flash with Firefox for Android I'd love to hear how you've managed it. Sounds like the Mozilla Foundation would love to hear about it, too.