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I was looking into it yesterday a bit. It's both, but mostly in browser, for now.

It's an in browser app that can leverage an optional plug-in. I haven't tried it to see if a new document can be created offline or not.

what could occur later might be creating a stand-alone application that is essentially a shell in which the browser based apps can run, but pre-loads the interfaces locally.

Quick, everyone! Download Slashdotter so that we can at least fake that we had a pink April Fools joke this year!

Oh, wait...

Use the Slashdotter Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2175 That way you can select a specific stylesheet, amongst them the OMG ponies.

its called Foxmarks - create a free account, upload to their servers (or setup and specify your own) then download/sync changes to other machines

if this is what Mozilla is going to do, they might as well just use the majority of the work Foxmarks has done

the upside of using it as an extension instead of including it with the browser, is that if people don't wanna use it, they don't have to...

The whole original premise of Firefox was that it was lightweight, fast, and actually worked.

That was never the premise. The premise was to have a fast cross-platform web browser with the right set of features. No lean mean light stuff, except for not being too large a download.

Source: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/charter.html

Typing into the address bar? That's so old school. If I have a site I visit frequently, it goes on the HTML page that I built myself locally that just contains a nicely CSS'd group of links. Set it as your homepage, use Tab Mix Plus to set every new tab to auto go to your home page and just click what you want to go to. Or, if you have only a few sites, use Speed Dial to get a little thumbnail view of each web page and just click the thumbnail.

Why would you actually type in the bar any more?

Typing into the address bar? That's so old school. If I have a site I visit frequently, it goes on the HTML page that I built myself locally that just contains a nicely CSS'd group of links. Set it as your homepage, use Tab Mix Plus to set every new tab to auto go to your home page and just click what you want to go to. Or, if you have only a few sites, use Speed Dial to get a little thumbnail view of each web page and just click the thumbnail.

Why would you actually type in the bar any more?

Doesn't Firefox already use up enough memory? Currently Firefox is running on my computer using up nearly 800MB of RAM. I have 3 tabs open and none of them are doing anything intense. I'm glad my computer has 2 gigs of RAM but I bought that for Photoshop not Firefox...

Mozilla developers have made a lot of significant changes to the platform on which Firefox 3 is built on, many of those aiming to reduce the browser's memory footprint.

Install Tab Mix Plus.

I don't want huge OS/browser integration either, but there are some things that I would like regarding browser oriented services. http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Feature_Brainstorming:Bookmarks#Bookmark_tags_and_keywords

when the Browser is keeping tabs on sites visited and metadata regarding that AND making that available to the OS and other Apps there is a great many things that can become easy based on your use of the Internet. More than I can mention here, but I'd like to see it. Imagine some mashup apps run locally on what you view, or optionally what others view via a tracking service not entirely unlike del.icio.us that allows you to categorize files on your hard drive also, where the tag clouds are shared, and downloading files uses the tags to organize etc.. as a basic premise.

No, the tags do not have to be shared with the world, and files will still be files, but finding them would be easier than saving everything to the desktop. This is one area that I think has not been sufficiently explored to assist casual users. They can remember that the file was something to do with banannas, but not that it was about Costa Rica. Tags allow easier memory tracks for humans.

Actually, in this case they can't. I personally HATE the new "awesomebar", it really sucks. Luckily, there is a way out.

I'm really hoping Mozilla does not take Firefox in the direction of "wow new features!" that actually reduce functionality.

There are some good ideas in the article but I think it's a bit incomplete.
I think browser security is already a major feature of Firefox so the article title is misleading.
The security features I see and which are part of Firefox are :
- automatic update and making sure users update
- good reactivity to correct bugs (means people working on security stuff, clean and understandable code,...)
- proactive security audit (mozilla has been doing this for a while, including developing specific stuff like jstfuzz)
- good security model (ie no ActiveX,...). This will be made better with post firefox 3 work (see http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_2/Work_List about centralized security check feature)
- UI : good communication with the user (ie for example reworked ssl dialogs in firefox 3...). I think this is the most difficult part as we all wan't to have a easy and powerfull to use browser without loosing security...
- not too much attack surface (ie not implementing too much things (or reimplementing similar things with differents api) , which multiply the risk) without sacrifying functionality

I agree that some stuff should be done in separate process and I think I read somewhere that it may be done in future Firefox version (something like the different privilege for different part of the browser done by MS with Vista and IE). Browser update should also be done by a separate process with different privilege, which is unfortunately not possible with Firefox at this time.
Some feature could also be provided by the os (ie even if I run my browser with my user account, I would like it to be in a "less powerful" mode by default and have this enforcable via the os (and not only the browser)

In the end, I think it's a good thing that some people experiment stuff to improve browser security.

Firefox and Acrobat Reader are distributed as signed executables. Plus, what's this? ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/2.0.0.13/KEY Oh, look Firefox has a PGP key.

Really, OOo should sign their executables.

Makes you wonder how Safari is doing using the HEAD code.

Ah, yet another class of ads to locate, rate, and filter. Now Adblock and CustomizeGoogle need to be updated.

We probably should look into rating the advertisers with AdRater. Outright ad blocking seems overkill for this class of ad, but rating doesn't interfere with user searches.

The revolt against excessive advertising is growing. Sao Paulo, Brazil eliminated outdoor advertising last year. All of it.

ScreamingMonkey is the project to add script-engine integration glue to Tamarin, so that it can handle
    <script type="application/ecmascript;version=4">
and
    <script type="application/javascript;version=2">
tags in other browsers, starting with IE (using ActiveScript interfaces).

ScreamingMonkey is the project to add script-engine integration glue to Tamarin, so that it can handle
    <script type="application/ecmascript;version=4">
and
    <script type="application/javascript;version=2">
tags in other browsers, starting with IE (using ActiveScript interfaces).

Javascript makes it really quick to hack together a dynamic page.

The real issue with writing objects in javascript is that there really isn't much reason -- unless you want your code to be a 300k download on your skimpy little webpage.

In javascript's case, it's actually detrimental to be a purist. #1 rule for writing javascript -- cut to the chase.

But you'll still need to support IE 6 for a year or so and then IE 7 support will be necessary until at least 2012.

Rot. Comments like yours end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. W2K is in extended support, Opera and Fx3 work fine.

By the time JavaScript 2.0 is available in nearly all browsers you find in the wild

Not "all browsers you find in the wild" support script in any form. If you're targeting maximum audience, script should be used only to enhance the user experience.

That way, a website can trigger the user to update to the latest version of the language spec

Why didn't anyone else think of that?

That should also allow website authors to use any language, not just JavaScript. After all, if you're developing your site in RoR, wouldn't it be easier to use Ruby for the client-side scripting as well as the server-side? The same would go for Python, Perl, PHP (/me shudders)

No it shouldn't, what is wrong with you people? Note I removed Java/Groovy because (as I suspect you well know):

• Applets already run in browsers via a plugin
  
• GWT lets you write in java and generates javascript.
  

You can generate javascript from any language and authoring server-side code in javascript is trivial. Then there's Haxe, Lazlo and friends which target the exact none-problem you highlight. You might as well be arguing that every desktop application should be able to load it's own ISA.

Javascript 2 deals with this the same way as javascript 1:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/same-origin.html

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Tamarin:ScreamingMonkey

Javascript makes it really quick to hack together a dynamic page.

Mozilla has a project underway to make a plug-in run javascript 2.0 inside of IE:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Tamarin:ScreamingMonkey

Link prefetching does not randomly load any link it finds, the links need to be tagged accordingly, or nothing will happen. See the Mozilla link prefetching FAQ for more info. Unless the FBI people were complete idiots or wanted to massively inflate the number of child porn suspects (considering the german case of over twelve thousand child porn "suspects" to drum up popular support for new, "urgently needed" surveillance laws, the latter is not too unlikely), they probably didn't make use of this feature. It could however be abused to send the FBI to you,

There's an interesting write-up by Orin Kerr over at Volokh Conspiracy. An important point that's lost in the hand-wringing above is that the FBI agent in question posted the link in a message board which was already known to be a distribution point for child pornography, and the link in question was clearly described as a link to child pornography. As an aside to the prefetch argument, from reading Mozilla's FAQ I'm not such a link would have been prefetched, but I'm not sure about that.

Thanks! I just turned that off. Why is this option hidden? It just seems ripe for abuse.

Link prefetching FAQ.

Replying to my own posting here: Garden Networks' GTunnel works with wine on Linux so if you don't feel like setting up a Tor node and don't want to hunt for anonymizing proxies on the web you can use that instead. If you add the Switchproxy or (preconfigured for GTunnel etc.) GProxy extension to Firefox you can switch between your normal net connection (with or without proxy) and the anonymizer.

You can change your sig now; that Firefox plushie is back: http://store.mozilla.org/product.php?code=14%2093119&catid=search

They brought it back -- http://store.mozilla.org/product.php?code=14%2093119&catid=14

http://store.mozilla.org/product.php?code=14%2093119&catid=search

This does not affect the users directly, but it is a major pain for integrators/porters. OO.o has a terrible habit of bundling all of the 3rd-party software packages, that it uses, into its own source tree. I'm talking about (probably missed some):

• agg
• bash
• bitstream-vera
• bsh
• bison
• boost
• curl
• db42
• dmake
• expat2
• freetype
• icu
• jpeg
• firefox (or some other Mozilla-based browser)
• libmspack
• libsndfile
• libtextcat
• libwpd
• libxslt
• neon
• nss
• nspr
• python
• sane-backends
• STLport
• unixODBC
• unzip
• vigra
• xmlsec1
• xt
• zip
• zlib

If they could, I'm certain, they would've bundled Java too, but — fortunately — Sun's license prohibits that... Now I realize, that this is done to offer "a single package" to those, who build it on their own, but nobody does. Everybody gets these from their OS' integrators. And the pain for us is enormous, because to force OO.o build to stop its silly ways is a serious undertaking. For some of the above packages there is --with-system-foo configure-flag, but not for all, and the default is to always use the bundled one, so support for the external ones bitrots quickly...

Most of the local builds don't bother and so end up wasting disk space and CPU-time rebuilding packages, which are external to OO.o. The end results are also bloated, duplicating stuff, that's already installed on the users' systems and without bug-fixes, which have already gone into each of the respective package since its most recent "bundling" into OO.o tarballs.

Download a source tarball and see for yourself... Something like: tar tjf OOo_OOG680_m9_source.tar.bz2 | grep 'z$'. No other software project does this on this scale and for good reasons — it is Just Wrong[TM]. OO.o better clean up their act in this respect...

This does not affect the users directly, but it is a major pain for integrators/porters. OO.o has a terrible habit of bundling all of the 3rd-party software packages, that it uses, into its own source tree. I'm talking about (probably missed some):

• agg
• bash
• bitstream-vera
• bsh
• bison
• boost
• curl
• db42
• dmake
• expat2
• freetype
• icu
• jpeg
• firefox (or some other Mozilla-based browser)
• libmspack
• libsndfile
• libtextcat
• libwpd
• libxslt
• neon
• nss
• nspr
• python
• sane-backends
• STLport
• unixODBC
• unzip
• vigra
• xmlsec1
• xt
• zip
• zlib

If they could, I'm certain, they would've bundled Java too, but — fortunately — Sun's license prohibits that... Now I realize, that this is done to offer "a single package" to those, who build it on their own, but nobody does. Everybody gets these from their OS' integrators. And the pain for us is enormous, because to force OO.o build to stop its silly ways is a serious undertaking. For some of the above packages there is --with-system-foo configure-flag, but not for all, and the default is to always use the bundled one, so support for the external ones bitrots quickly...

Most of the local builds don't bother and so end up wasting disk space and CPU-time rebuilding packages, which are external to OO.o. The end results are also bloated, duplicating stuff, that's already installed on the users' systems and without bug-fixes, which have already gone into each of the respective package since its most recent "bundling" into OO.o tarballs.

Download a source tarball and see for yourself... Something like: tar tjf OOo_OOG680_m9_source.tar.bz2 | grep 'z$'. No other software project does this on this scale and for good reasons — it is Just Wrong[TM]. OO.o better clean up their act in this respect...

"threading" is not the solution. There are certain things, like out-of-process plugins that would help that issue (which they are working on for Mozilla 2(which will be used in FF4)
One of the devs (Brendan iirc?) put it best that threading is a band-aid fix, rather that wrapping everything in threads (which would require making it all thread-safe, a huge perf hit) you should be fixing the cause of the slowdowns.

They are planning to run plugins out-of-process for security and stability purposes, but there are a few bugs related to threads an processes all containing good reasons against it, and very few for it.
Please tread lightly on these bugs, and don't bugspam the wontfix :)

"threading" is not the solution. There are certain things, like out-of-process plugins that would help that issue (which they are working on for Mozilla 2(which will be used in FF4)
One of the devs (Brendan iirc?) put it best that threading is a band-aid fix, rather that wrapping everything in threads (which would require making it all thread-safe, a huge perf hit) you should be fixing the cause of the slowdowns.

They are planning to run plugins out-of-process for security and stability purposes, but there are a few bugs related to threads an processes all containing good reasons against it, and very few for it.
Please tread lightly on these bugs, and don't bugspam the wontfix :)

"threading" is not the solution. There are certain things, like out-of-process plugins that would help that issue (which they are working on for Mozilla 2(which will be used in FF4)
One of the devs (Brendan iirc?) put it best that threading is a band-aid fix, rather that wrapping everything in threads (which would require making it all thread-safe, a huge perf hit) you should be fixing the cause of the slowdowns.

They are planning to run plugins out-of-process for security and stability purposes, but there are a few bugs related to threads an processes all containing good reasons against it, and very few for it.
Please tread lightly on these bugs, and don't bugspam the wontfix :)

Rejoice: FF3 has some garbage collection improvements that should fix many leaks caused by browser add-ons.

The more interesting question is of course whether the firebox beta also wins when other benchmarking tools including those produced by competiting browser developers are used.

generally speaking, I don't like banner years. This may be helpful...

Yang has been exploring different ways to ward off Microsoft.

TFA doesn't say whether he's tried such approaches as garlic, holy water, etc. What is the appropriate ward against Microsoft, anyhow? Come to think of it, I suspect it might be the GPL: their attitude towards GPL'd software is a lot like a vampire's reaction to a cross. So if Yahoo really wants to ward off Microsoft, they should spin off some of their software into a GPL project run by a separate non-profit entity, something like the Mozilla Foundation. Microsoft will recoil in horror. (Not that Yahoo has any software the rest of us would care to see, so far as I'm aware -- but that's beside the point.)

I assume you can instead just install DownloadHelper and cut out about 9 steps. Unfortunately, I can't test it because I don't live in the UK.

Guess you haven't heard of Flashblock.

I've been using the Mediaplayer Connectivity extension - it doesn't actually work with media players (in Linux) but it's possible to save the link without having to go searching for it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/446

• ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape9/en-US/9.0/unix/linux/netscape-navigator-9.0.0.6.tar.gz
  
• ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.20/2.20.3/
  
• ftp://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/
  

You can still have it with oldbar

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Stupid that it's not simply an option.

Oldbar is what you're after. Annoying that it takes an extension to do this. It should have been an option. The Mozilla developers have lost the plot.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

Here you go:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6227

For the record I think the Mozilla devs are on crack to do this without putting in an option to turn it off.

Just see if you're running any of the extensions known to have bad memory leaks or one of the extensions that cause leaks in Firefox. If you're not running one of them, you'll probably be safe. For brave souls wishing to track down which extension is leaking, I suggest creating a new profile, then adding extensions one-by-one.