Web browser options expand, Dec 31, 2004

For those who remember the browser wars, Microsoft seems to be missing in action from the latest battle.

One reason Firefox will be of interest to developers is its modular plug-in architecture. While it's significantly simpler than Eclipse, another open-source project design for application development, Firefox already has a host of plug-ins that enhance its functionality.

Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla's Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum--but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft's monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?

The Mozilla Foundation is hatching yet another software project to challenge a key Microsoft title.

The Mozilla mania is part of a broader movement toward free, open-source software, in which no company owns the code. Open source draws upon the strength of the collective. Anyone can add features and fix flaws. Not beholden to any commercial interests, developers argue they only have users' interests at heart.

Fans of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser who funded an advert in The New York Times will finally get to see their names in print on Thursday.

The U.S. browser usage share of Firefox, the upstart Mozilla-based browser that has become a champion of the open-source movement, has grown by more than a third over the past month, according to the latest independent study from WebSideStory, a provider of on-demand Web analytics

I think you will probably be happy with Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail program as well. Savvy geeks I know who are using Thunderbird like it and highly recommend it.

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 email client.

The Mozilla Foundation has unveiled the most complete preview version yet of its stand-alone e-mail application.

Firefox missionaries promise an Internet experience that's faster, more secure and free from pop-up ads. And that's just the beginning of their Utopian vision. To hear many of the faithful talk, their ministry stops nothing short of changing the lives of Internet users.

More than 5.6 million copies of the Firefox 1.0 stand-alone browser have been downloaded in the first two weeks of its release, the Mozilla Foundation said this week.

Mozilla's new Firefox Web browser can make believers even out of loyal Internet Explorer proponents.

With Mozilla Firefox, at least I know where I stand. The code is open source, built from the ground up, clean--not recycled. No more hidden agendas.

Firefox 1.0- Mozilla Foundation's first product aimed at users looking for an alternate browser, has met with an overwhelming response from users worldwide. This heavy rush has resulted in performance issues for the Mozilla site.

The Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving choice and promoting innovation on the Internet, today announced the worldwide availability of the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 web browser.

Much like Linux, the Firefox browser has become an open-source phenomenon. More than five million people have downloaded the preview version of the free product

Now in its third year, the annual Desktop Linux Summit has added an extra day, expanding its focus to include discussions of open source leaders Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.

While the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser garners most of the headlines, the open-source group's Thunderbird e-mail client is also attracting users' attention. Mozilla Thursday released the latest beta edition of the program.

Although Microsoft still dominates the Web browser space, its Internet Explorer continues to lose market share to open-source rival Mozilla.

Alternative Web browsers Mozilla and Firefox experienced another month of growth at the expense of Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer, according to an online study.

The Mozilla Foundation expects one in 10 Internet users to be browsing using Firefox within the next year

It's a roundabout way to challenge Microsoft's Windows monopoly -- attempting to refashion the Web itself as an operating system where every bit of software is controlled through the browser.

The open-source browser continues its inexorable rise, riding the wave of interest in an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer

The world of Web browsing has reached a tipping point. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has been and remains the de facto standard for Internet users. But for the first time since the late '90s, when Redmond quashed Netscape, Microsoft has some real competition.

After months waiting for Microsoft to give me a reason to remain loyal, I finally dumped Internet Explorer for the Firefox Web browser last week.

At the office, my cubicle colleague--a Firefox aficionado of long standing--smugly greeted the news by asking me what took so long. But rest assured this is no small concession.

Back in the mid-'90s, they called it the Browser Wars: Netscape Navigator vs. Microsoft Internet Explorer.

But that score was settled long ago, when America Online ironically bought out Netscape while using IE as its default browser. For the past few years, IE has dominated web browsing, growing to about a 95 percent market share.

But now, in a flashback, the remnants of Netscape -- now the open-source Mozilla Foundation -- have come back with Firefox, and the buzz is building for alternative browsers now that IE has been beset with security problems.

Rumours flew around the Web on Tuesday about Google's potential plans to release a Web browser.

These rumours have been fuelled by a number of high-profile hires that Google has made, including various people who worked on Microsoft Internet Explorer, added to the fact that Google Inc. has registered the domain name gbrowser.com.

The web browser wars are over and Microsoft won, right?

Well someone's forgotten to tell Ben Goodger and his team at the Mozilla Foundation because this Kiwi software engineer is taking market share from Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox, the browser that's smaller yet smarter than just about anything else available.

Microsoft Internet Explorer is continuing to lose share in the browser market, as its much-smaller competitors chisel at its dominant position, new Web site visitor data shows.

Microsoft's browser has dropped by 1.8 percentage points over the past three months to 93.7 percent of the market, according to data provided Wednesday by Web analytics vendor WebSideStory Inc.

Mozilla Firefox, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Web browser, is preparing for prime time with the first preview of its 1.0 release and a new marketing campaign.

The Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday plans to release a preview of Firefox 1.0 that incorporates the final set of features for the browser's full version, said Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's release coordinator. Among the new features are a newsreader for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, updates to the "Find" feature and greater compatibility with Internet Explorer-specific Web sites.

The road to browser Nirvana is not always paved with improved productivity and better security. Switching browsers may be more challenging for hard-core Web surfers and business users. Many users who consider breaking with IE also have to resolve concerns about cost, staff training and compatibility issues.

Mozilla.org has released the first "official" beta release of Mozilla Sunbird, a standalone calendaring application. The Sunbird Project is a redesign of the Mozilla Calendar component, with a goal producing a cross platform calendar based on Mozilla's XUL user interface language.

America Online Inc. on Tuesday opened the curtain on its update to the Netscape Web browser.

Netscape 7.2 became available for download from the Netscape site. As previously reported, AOL had planned to unveil its first browser update in a year by the middle of this month.

Tired of embarrassing bugs in its browser, the Mozilla Foundation Monday announced a $500 bounty for every critical vulnerability researchers report.

The Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program funding was seeded with contributions from Linux distributor Linspire and South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who reportedly laid out $20 million in 2002 for a trip to the International Space Station.

When the Mozilla Foundation recently announced its one-year anniversary, I thought, "Wait a minute! Hasn't Mozilla been around for many years?" I then realized that the anniversary referred not to the Mozilla browser but to when the browser was freed from its corporate entanglements with Netscape/AOL and the Mozilla Foundation itself was formed as an independent entity. As companies from Sun to even Microsoft think about open-sourcing some of their products, they would do well to remember Mozilla's history and learn from its successes and mistakes.

Recent weeks have seen some major advancements for the Mozilla browser, as the latest security hole in Microsoft's aging Internet Explorer became the straw that broke the camel's back for many users.

Since 1998, when Netscape decided to open-source its flagship Netscape Communicator suite and call the project Mozilla, the software has developed into a modern, flexible collection of applications, including the Mozilla browser, email client, chat client, and Web page creation tool, as well as the dedicated Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird email client. To get a deeper understanding of Mozilla and the direction it is heading in, I spoke to Chris Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation director of engineering.

A series of highly publicized security vulnerabilities found in Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser may be having an effect on the browser's market share, according to data compiled by WebSideStory, a San Diego Web metrics company. Over the last month, Internet Explorer's share of the browser market dropped by 1 percent, the first noticeable decline since WebSideStory began tracking the browser market in late 1999.

"It's the first time that we've seen a sustained trend downward for them," said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. "We have a very steady trend. It's been about a month, and every day we have a steady incremental change."

Webmaster's note: This flaw does not effect Linux systems

The Mozilla Foundation has confirmed findings that its Mozilla and Firefox browsers are vulnerable to attacks using the "shell:" scheme, which execute arbitrary code under Windows without the user having to click a link.

Security researchers are reporting another security issue in Web browsing under Windows, but this time Internet Explorer is not the culprit. The Mozilla Foundation's Mozilla and Firefox are reported as vulnerable.

Nokia has funded a mobile phone browser project at the Mozilla Foundation, breathing new life into the open-source effort once written off as Microsoft roadkill.

Sources familiar with the deal have confirmed that Nokia paid Mozilla to produce a mobile phone browser based on the foundation's open-source code base. The resulting project, called "Minimo," has produced a workable prototype, or "pre-alpha milestone."

These release notes describe system requirements, installation instructions, and known issues for Mozilla 1.7. These notes are updated when we receive feedback, so please check back for new information. Consult our releases page to download the source and the latest version of Mozilla for your platform.

The Mozilla Foundation today released Mozilla Firefox 0.9, and now begins its final push towards a 1.0 release of Firefox. New features in this release include a new default theme, a new browser migration tool, reworked theme and extension managers, a much smaller download size, a new help system, and many small bug fixes and speed tweaks. More on what's new can be found in the Burning Edge's Bigger Picture or in the Mozilla Foundation's press release about Firefox 0.9.

Along with the new Theme and Extension managers, is a preview of the new update.mozilla.org website, which will be the new home for themes and extensions for all the Mozilla products, as well as possible updates to the products themselves. The site is expected to be completed sometime in the next week.

The Mozilla Foundation took the newest edition of its browser and e-mail suite one step closer to a final release.

Mozilla 1.7 RC2 (Release Candidate 2) of the open-source Internet suite -- which includes the Mozilla browser, an e-mail client, and a chat client -- is the final pre-release edition planned before 1.7 goes final this summer.

Mozilla, in case you didn't know, is a project to build an open source web browser (Firefox) and email suite (Thunderbird). I had cause to use it recently when I ran into a little browser plug-in (from a security company called CoreStreet) that plays back to you the name of the web site that you are on. It's a neat little applet that CoreStreet intends to distribute for free to assist web users in seeing through some of the Phishing scams that are currently in play.

The Mozilla Foundation recently released a beta version of the next edition of its open-source browser and e-mail suite, Mozilla 1.7.

Mozilla 1.7 beta, which comes in versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, boasts noticeable performance improvements, according to the Foundation.

Compared with the current stable release--Mozilla 1.6--the preview edition of 1.7 is approximately seven percent faster at startup, eight percent faster at opening windows, and nine percent faster in loading pages.

mozilla.org staff member Gervase Markham has posted an open letter to the Mozilla newsgroups addressed to those who sell goods bearing the Mozilla name or logos: "The following is an open letter to anyone selling Mozilla-branded merchandise. It's being posted rather than emailed in the spirit of openness, and to ensure everyone who needs to read it can see a copy."

The letter urges those selling products with the Mozilla insignia to stop and contact the Mozilla Foundation for further discussion on how to proceed. Noting that the retailing of Mozilla-branded wares without permission is an infringment of the Foundation's trademark rights, the letter hints that legal action may taken against those who refuse to heed the advice. Read the full article to see the complete letter.

The Mozilla project is riding a torrent of industry, media and end user praise for the Mozilla 1.6 Internet suite and recently released technology previews of the organization's next generation Mozilla Firefox browser and Thunderbird email application. For example, close to one million people downloaded Mozilla 1.6 in the first 20 days after it was released and an even greater number have downloaded Mozilla Firefox 0.8 since it was released on February 9. The rapidly growing demand for Mozilla applications continues to showcase the innovative capacity and excellence of its open source development model.

The Mozilla Foundation Monday changed the name one last time of its next generation open-source browser, and launched a preview edition of the software that can be downloaded for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Formerly called Firebird -- and before that Phoenix -- the Firefox 0.8 standalone browser comes with a new streamlined download manager, an updated bookmark handler that allows for the creation of folders to better organize favorite sites, better handling of external file types such as .wma and .rar files, and a new offline mode that lets users view previously-seen pages even when not connected to the Internet.

Among other improvements, the browser now better handles extensions, the small downloadable applets for such chores as spell checking, removing ad banners, and the like.

The Mozilla Foundation late on Thursday released the next version of its open-source Web-browser suite.

The Mozilla 1.6 release, out in a beta version since December, includes expanded authentication support that is particularly useful for enterprises as well as greater integration with the GNOME desktop that is popular among Linux users.

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