Section: Firefox
Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 is live and is available for download. This is the development milestone of the open source browser that will be made available to the general public. Mozilla already started serving the RC of Firefox 3.5 as soon as June 16, but the availability process is not over yet.
In fact, June 19 marks the day that the final RC bits of Firefox 3.5 are going to be served to the public. Mozilla indicated that with the development of Firefox 3.5, formerly Firefox 3.1, and codenamed Shiretoko, it has changed the traditional process of wrapping up the browser.
Historically, step seven in the development evolution involved “shipping partial updates to beta-channel users and change the beta download page to point to the new development milestone,” revealed Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla. “So, what’s new and exciting? We’ve realized that we can run this process in a more parallel fashion by splitting step 7 into: 7.1 ship partial updates to beta-channel users; 7.2 change the beta download page to point to the new development milestone.” Read More»
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Mozilla introduced Jetpack, an application programming interface designed to permit developers to apply web development technologies and skills to building Firefox add-ons, in May 2009. Since the initial, 0.1 version release of the API, no less than four updates were introduced, focused mainly on resolving bugs with the initial build, but also on introducing new API features. On June 11, Mozilla labs brought to the table Jetpack 0.2, defined as a major refresh compared to the minor updates delivered since the solution was first launched. The evolution of Jetpack from 0,1 to 0.2 offers developers a new Firefox experimental UI element and fresh APIs.
“Besides numerous bug fixes (including a particularly nasty one that would hide prevent extensions from being in the status bar), there are three main additions: slidebars, jetpack.future, and persistent storage,” revealed Aza Raskin, head of user experience for Mozilla Labs. “Slidebars are a reinvention of the old sidebar feature of browsers. They allow quick access to a wide range of both temporary and permanent information at the side of your browser window.”
Raskin stressed the fact that Jetpack was put together to serve a double purpose. First and foremost, the solution is designed as a platform for experimentation. However, this aspect needs not to lead to the exclusion of developers using Jetpack as a solid and comprehensive set of APIs capable of extending Firefox. In this context, Mozilla Labs now allows Jetpack developers to import features from the future, as long as they are experimental in nature, which is the case of Slidebars, for example.
“One of the most requested features in the Jetpack development mailing list was for the ability to persistently store data across restarts. We’ve added simple storage to the future module,” Raskin added. “Mozilla Labs is a virtual lab where people come together online to create, experiment and play with Web innovations for the public benefit. The Jetpack experiment is still in its infancy and just getting started.”
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Many Pctipsbox readers use Firefox because it suffers from fewer security holes than IE and most people don’t need .NET features so I’m publishing in my free column today the following steps to remove Assistant 1.0 from Firefox:
Step 1. Check whether the .NET Framework Assistant is installed. You may or may not have Assistant 1.0, even if you installed .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, so check this first. In Firefox, pull down the Tools menu and select Add-ons. In the Add-ons dialog box that appears, if you don’t see .NET Framework Assistant, the add-on is not installed. In that case, you don’t need to do anything further (except close the dialog box).
Step 2. Remove or disable the add-on. If you do find the extension, I recommend that you remove it to reduce your vulnerability to possible security flaws. Choose one of the options shown below.
• Best option: Install the Microsoft fix. On May 6, with little publicity, Microsoft posted an update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. Installing this update enables Firefox’s Uninstall button for the add-on. To install the official update, visit Microsoft’s download page. Read More»
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1. Delete items from address bar history
While it’s very handy to have your recently visited pages autocompleted as you type, it’s not always desirable. Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited. You can highlight and delete these at will, for maximum privacy.
2. Protect your PC from malware
You don’t have to visit the seedy side of the web to pick up a virus – even the best social networking sites regularly host all kinds of malware. But you can reduce the chance of infection by installing NoScript. This handy add-on blocks Javascript, Java, Flash and other executable content from running unless you explicitly allow it, and is a great way to keep yourself safe online.
3. Speedily search for images
Browse Google images and your results are split into blocks of 21. But use CoolIris and you’ll get all your results displayed on a 3D photo wall, a much faster and easier way to find the images you need. It only works with some sites, unfortunately, but as these include Google, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpace then you’ll still have plenty to browse. Especially as it searches and displays YouTube videos, too. Give it a try. Read More»
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Mouse gestures
1. Control Firefox with your mouse
A massive time saver, Mouse Gestures enables you to navigate with a quick flick of the mouse while holding the right mouse button down.
2. Go one page forward in the browsing history
Hold the right mouse button down and move mouse to the right
3. Go back a page in the browsing history
Hold the right mouse button down and flick mouse to left
4. Close the active tab
Hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse down and to the right in an L motion
5. Open the link crossed by the gesture in a new browser window
Hold the right mouse button down and flick the mouse downwards Read More»
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1. Firefox Companion for eBay
The eBay Companion shows auctions in the sidebar and alerts you when anything happens, helping you to strike at the right moment.
2. Amazon Shopper
Amazon’s prices change from day to day, so tell this nifty plug-in what you’re willing to pay. When the price drops, it’ll let you know.
3. RetailMeNot
Discover whether discount codes are available for the site you’re visiting. RetailMeNot is a collaborative effort, so the more people that use it the more useful it gets.
4. Yapta
Flight finder Yapta includes the main European carriers, although it’s best for transatlantic or US travel. The tracking feature lets you know if any flights drop in price. Read More»
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1. Auto-complete websites
Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there. For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
2. Turn your bookmarks into keywords
Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
3. Speed up your downloads
Download Manager Tweak Extension adds extra functionality to the existing Download Manager to help you download faster.
4. Search faster
To search with lightning speed just highlight the word or phrase with your mouse and drag the highlighted text into the search bar. Firefox will then automatically load up the search in a new tab, so you can stay informed faster. Read More»
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1. Enable pipelining
Browsers are normally very polite, sending a request to a server then waiting for a response before continuing. Pipelining is a more aggressive technique that lets them send multiple requests before any responses are received, often reducing page download times.
To enable it, type about:config in the address bar, double-click network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining so their values are set to true, then double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.
Keep in mind that some servers don’t support pipelining, though, and if you regularly visit a lot of these then the tweak can actually reduce performance. Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to false again if you have any problems. Read More»
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The Firefox Superbar is about to be kicked to the next level with the integration of Ubiquity. Right now all that is available from Mozilla is the Taskfox Prototype, an illustration of what Ubiquity blended into Firefox’s fabric would look like to the end user. Of course, you can watch the video embedded at the bottom of this article in order to get a perspective over Taskfox for Mozilla’s open-source browser. Taskfox is essentially a feature Mozilla plans for Firefox, and which was inspired by the ubiquity experiment.
“The main thing we haven’t prototyped is the interaction of the awesome bar results and the Taskfox commands. We know that this is a major remaining question so we’ll be prototyping that soon. We’ve more or less ignored that interaction for this prototype,” revealed Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla Labs. “Being able to navigate results with the keyboard is lacking in Ubiquity proper. We’ve tried to solve that in TaskFox.”
But fact is that the video doesn’t actually do Taskfox justice. In this context, Mozilla has made available a demo of the feature, put together with HTML, Javascript, and jQuery. The Firefox Taskfox demo can be accessed via this link, and obviously users will need Firefox in order for it to work. Typing slowly is advised in order to get the best experience possible. Raskin applauded the success of Ubiquity (over one million downloads), an experiment from Mozilla Labs which inspired Taskfox (see the second video embedded below). Read More»
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With Firefox 3.1 evolved into Firefox 3.5 in the move from Beta 3 to Beta 4, Mozilla is also looking ahead beyond Shiretoko, to the next iteration of its open-source browser. Firefox Next will be codenamed Namoroka and the version number for the project will be 3.6, although this will only be valid for the initial stages. Mozilla in fact refers to what will be the successor of Firefox 3.5 as Firefox.next. Namoroka will be based on the Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine, and is currently planned for availability in the first half of 2010.
“In contrast to previous product planning exercises, which were declarative and relatively inflexible, we hope to develop this project in a highly iterative manner by which we initially declare project goals and prioritized areas of interest for investigation, and then spend time determining the exact shape and scope of feature development tasks. The outcome of these investigations will be a set of feature design documents (using a common template) which will be prioritized and constitute the final product development plan,” revealed Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox at Mozilla Corporation. Read More»
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