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Thanks to the German government's warning to IE users to dump the browser due to the recently discovered vulnerability, Firefox has seen a huge increase in downloads.

According to Ken Kovash, Mozilla’s manager of analytics, downloads of the browser have jumped some 300,000 since last Friday.

" …over the past few days there has been a huge increase in the number of Firefox downloads from IE users in Germany. The orange area is meant to represent the 'incremental' impact, i.e., the number of downloads beyond what we would have normally expected on those days. As the chart highlights, the orange area adds up to just over 300,000 downloads during the recent Friday-Monday period."


300,000 extra downloads over a few days, all with no advertising, and all thanks to the German government. I bet Mozilla are well pleased with that result. Given this IE security scare, I think it’ll be really interesting to see what effect all this has had on browser usage share for January.

Firefox version 3.5 has been released and available for download. Firefox 3.5 is the fastest web browser yet. It is twice as fast as Firefox 3!

As a result javascript and multimedia enabled web apps loads faster. Firefox is also the first browser to support open video and audio formats, allowing practically limitless new ways for sites to display rich content. This is based upon the open formats (HTML 5) which allow displaying media without a plug-in and/or proprietary software.

Here's some command for generic Linux installation:

cd /tmp
wget 'http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-GB'
tar -jxvf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2
cp -avr firefox/* /opt/firefox/

Nice

Mozilla is inching closer to the release of Firefox 3.5, which includes a faster Javascript engine, a private browsing mode, faster page rendering, and changes to the way tabs are handled. Firefox 3.5 beta 4 is due to be released within the next week or so.

If you're not ready to test out pre-release software yet, Mozilla should be releasing Firefox 3.0.9 next week as well. That version will likely offer bug fixes and security updates but no major new features.

Or if you want to live on the bleeding edge, you can always try the early builds of Firefox 3.6, also referred to as Firefox.Next. Goals for that version include faster startup times, improved add-on and customization support, and blurring the distinction between desktop and web apps. You can download the latest nightly builds of Firefox.Next from Mozilla's FTP site

Yes, Firefox now has 100% of the browser market on one continent, Antarctica. While those stats are not particularly impressive, you've got to start somewhere, right, Mozilla?

And it's not like Microsoft or Apple can claim the same thing - Antarctica is pretty much the only continent on Earth where a browser would even have a fighting chance to claim 100% of the market.

We can only wait patiently for the gang at Mozilla start producing t-shirts that proudly proclaim "One down, six to go."

Up until recently, web browser developers have more or less seen the mobile handset as an afterthought as opposed to a serious platform, but when the iPhone came along with Safari, this was the impetus for change.

At the same time as Apple’s mobile version of Safari arrived on the scene, Mozilla was also looking seriously at bringing a rounded user experience to the mobile web browser, and at the time, back in October 2007, Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s vice-president of engineering said that mobile devices had become a top priority for the organisation behind the popular open source browser, Firefox.

Roll the clocks forward a year later and Mozilla has indeed been working hard on its Firefox Mobile (codenamed Fennec), with an alpha version expected sometime this week, according to Christian Sejersen, mobile director of engineering on Mozilla Mobile.

If Safari has already brought a decent browsing experience to the touchscreen, widescreen iPhone, then what can Firefox bring to the average modern handset? Well, according to Sejersen, the way Mozilla looks at it is, there is no mobile web: “There’s only one web and we want to provide access to this one web where Firefox can render the exact same page on the mobile phone with the same rendering technology.”

The difference here is that, as Schroepfer has observed, the mobile has become a ‘tier one’ priority for Mozilla: “The mobile browser shares the same code as the latest version of Firefox for the desktop, so it will benefit from all the good things such as HTML 5 and added security.

“What we have said before is that Firefox Mobile will be afforded the same first-class citizen status as the desktop version, and not one version behind like most other web browser developers do,” explained Sejersen.

As for the platform for the forthcoming mobile browser, Sejersen said that Mozilla is initially targeting the N810, which is Linux-based and has open access to APIs (application programming interfaces) and the OS (operating system), but also has a large touch screen as its development platform.

Further down the line, Firefox Mobile will be made available for both touch and non-touch versions of Windows Mobile. After that, Sejersen said that although Mozilla hasn’t made a commitment as of yet, the Symbian phone will most likely follow.

As regards Google’s Android, he said Mozilla is doing nothing right now or in the near future. As for the iPhone, it is a complete no for two reasons: firstly the fact that developers cannot create an application that replicates the functionality of a pre-existing Apple one, and secondly because Apple also does not allow apps that run any code in the background because of the way the licence terms are written.

With regard to extra functionality over the Mozilla Firefox Mobile browser, Sejersen said that if a company like Adobe provide the Flash plug-in from its end, then Firefox will provide the plug-in mechanism, but, he reckons, one of the most important aspects is the added security features.

“There is not a lot of focus around security on the mobile right now; people think about it on desktop and laptop a lot, but as far as I know, I haven’t seen a security update for the mobile platform yet, and we carry a lot of personal information around with us on our phones so there is a need for this.”

The beta version of Firefox Mobile will be released before the year is out and is expected to come out of beta testing some time in 2009.

Mozilla is planning to develop a browser for mobile phones by 2010. Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, has been laying out her plans for the organisation over the next two years.

Baker also committed to expanding the role of Firefox and building on its market share, while developing new browser technology such as the Aurora project. Mozilla has already stated that it is working on a mobile version of Firefox, but has never set a timeframe for release.

Ready or not, here it comes. And it is Firefox 3.0.1. Mozilla has been issuing automatic updates for Firefox for ages. If you're running Firefox 3, you were probably prompted to install version 3.0.1 a few weeks ago. But if you've been running an older version of Firefox, you might still be at version 2.0.0.16. Now Mozilla plans to push out an update to all Firefox 2 users that will prompt them to update to version 3.0.1.

The update could come as soon as next week. Firefox 3 offers a number of advantages over Firefox 2. First, and probably most importantly, it's the most up to date version of the browser when it comes to security features. But it also has improved JavaScript support, faster page load speeds, and improved performance with web applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Zoho Office. Firefox 3 also has a completely redesigned location bar that makes it much easier to find pages you've recently or frequently visited.

Firefox 2 users don't have to update. If you're happy with your existing browser experience, you can either postpone the update or decline it.

Having recently installed both Firefox 3 and Flock 2 (both into my home directory so as not to mess with other users' settings), I discovered today that I was missing the PDF plugin for both browsers.

No worries, I thought, I'll just download from Adobe and install. The browsers will then all update. Wrong!

The installer updated the old system wide Firefox 2.x installation, not the mozilla based installations in my home directory - which makes perfect sense. But, what doesn't make sense, is that there was nowhere in either the browser(s) or the PDF Reader program to turn on these plugins for Firefox 3 or my new shiney Flock 2 browser (which rules, btw).

So here's the solution (make sure all browsers are closed - print this page if necessary). There is a script at /opt/Adobe/Reader8/Browser/ called 'install_browser_plugin' (I wonder what IT does?!). Navigate to this direcory and excute this script as root:


The output is as follows:


Which is great. Firefox 3 in the home directory now has PDF support. But what the flock? My Flock 2 installation is still in the dark! Well, the answer to this is quite simple.

All the above script did was copy a file, nppdf.so, to Firefox's plugin directory. Let's now copy it again to the Flock directory, as Flock 2 is just a Firefox 3 clone with lots of cool added functionality:


That's it. Both browsers now have PDF support

Flock has released a second public beta of Flock 2, a web browser based on Firefox 3. What sets Flock apart from Firefox is the integration with a ton of social networking services including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, YouTube, PhotoBucket, and more. There's a blog editor for updating your web site from the browser, and a media bar for viewing images and videos shared by your friends without navigating away from your current web page.

Flock has always been based on Firefox, but what sets Flock 2 beta apart from Flock 1.x is that the beta version is built on Firefox 3. That means you get a redesigned location bar, a new bookmark manager, and a new rendering engine that helps most web pages load faster.

The Flock team has addressed over 175 bugs that were found in the first beta of Flock 2. Aside from bug fixes, there aren't many new features in Flock 2 beta 2. But the browser is based on Firefox 3.01, which means it also includes some important security updates. So if you're using Flock 2 beta 1, we'd recommend upgrading.