Ilya Kozhevnikov

Browser Newsletter #26

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:06:22 +0000

Announcing SquirrelFish

WebKit’s core JavaScript engine just got a new interpreter, code-named SquirrelFish.

SquirrelFish is fast—much faster than WebKit’s previous interpreter. Check out the numbers. On the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, SquirrelFish is 1.6 times faster than WebKit’s previous interpreter.

SquirrelFish is a register-based, direct-threaded, high-level bytecode engine, with a sliding register window calling convention. It lazily generates bytecodes from a syntax tree, using a simple one-pass compiler with built-in copy propagation.

SquirrelFish owes a lot of its design to some of the latest research in the field of efficient virtual machines, including research done by Professor M. Anton Ertl, et al, Professor David Gregg, et al, and the developers of the Lua programming language.

Read more…
© Surfin’ Safari, 02/06/08

Introducing IE=EmulateIE7

Bill Gates’ recent Tech Ed keynote and Tony Chor’s follow-up blog announced that IE8 Beta 2 will be available in August in many languages. We are encouraging sites to get ready for Beta 2 prior to release as it will present a big jump in IE8 browsing traffic.

What does “getting ready for IE8” mean for web sites? IE8 displays content in IE8 Standards mode – its most standards-compliant layout mode – by default. In previous blog posts, we’ve discussed how this aligns with our commitment to Web standards interoperability. However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of IE to display differently than intended. This creates a “get ready” call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in IE8.

The preferred response to this call to action is to update the site to ensure that IE8 is provided with standards content fitting the DOCTYPE. However, we know it is very important to give site owners the chance to update site content on their schedule without affecting user experience. As such, we provide a meta-tag that tells IE8 to display an entire site or a specific page like it did in IE7.

about:mozilla - Firefox 3 RC2, Governance, Accessibility, Bugdays, Acid3, T-shirts, and more…

Now that mozilla-central, the source code repository for the release of Firefox after 3.0, is open, a bunch of patches fixing bugs affecting our score on the Acid3 test have landed [...]

Firefox Keeps Nipping at Microsoft

The latest version of its Web browser should help Mozilla take a bigger bite of the market

Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race

Most of today’s web sites and web applications are built using the JavaScript scripting language. Some may say that a trend towards the fine-tuning of JavaScript interpreters in modern browsers was just a matter of time since any such optimization translates into performance gains. Mozilla recently launched the browser speed race with Firefox 3, which delivers more speed than any other previous Firefox version. Apple answered with Safari 4, claiming the browser’s JavaScript engine has been accelerated by 53%. Welcome to the browser speed race.

Safari 4 has just been seeded to the developers at Apple’s developer conference. The manufacturer claims that the software has a 53% faster JavaScript engine than the preceding and current version 3.1 (based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test conducted on iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM and running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard.) Although Firefox 3 RC3 was the first to deliver significant JavaScript performance improvement, Apple apparently is exceeding those gains with Safari 4.

Third Firefox 3 Release Candidate available for download

The third Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. It contains a single change for Mac OS X users only; there is no change for users running previous Firefox Release Candidate versions on Windows or Linux.

What’s Coming in Internet Explorer 8 for IT Professionals?

Yesterday at Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando we announced some of the enhancements we’re making in Internet Explorer 8 to help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization. We wanted to share those with the IT Pros on our blog.

Slipstream Support in Internet Explorer 8 [...] Application Compatibility and Internet Explorer 8 [...] Security in Internet Explorer 8 [...] Updates to the IEAK [...]

Firefox 3 To Be Released On June 17th

Mozilla has been announcing Release Candidates for Firefox 3 consistently for the past month. In fact, Firefox 3 RC 3 was just released earlier today. One could guess that the time for an official release was right around the corner, but we wouldn’t have guessed it’d be this soon. Only hours after RC3, and after 34 months of development, the company has announced that Firefox 3 will be officially released next Tuesday, June 17th.

Firefox Mobile concept video

Aza Raskin, one of the human interface experts hired last year by Mozilla, has released a five minutes video of a very early prototype of what Firefox Mobile’s interface may look like.

As you can see in the video below, the design aims to overcome two of the most common limitations in mobile devices: a small screen that translates into small user interface elements and a small content window, and a handicapped user experience compared to desktop browsers.

Opera 9.5

Today we released the final public release of our flagship Web browser, Opera 9.5. Opera’s cross-device expertise, support for open Web standards and commitment to speed and performance has culminated into our most powerful browser yet.

Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) planned features draft

As Firefox 3 approaches its grand debut this next Tuesday, for Mozilla developers it means the end of a development cycle and the start of another. Firefox 3.next is the tentative name for the next relatively minor update to the Firefox 3 branch, which is most likely to become Firefox 3.1.

A very early draft of planned features reveals that as expected, this release will be mainly about landing stuff that didn’t make it on time for the Firefox 3, along with the usual performance, stability and security bug fixes.

Visual tab switching and tab searching/filtering were both tried for Firefox 3, abandoned for other more critical features, and are being considered for 3.1. Ctrl+Tab, a extension developed by Dao Gottwald implements both of them displaying a thumbnail of the opened tabs when pressing Ctrl + Tab to switch tabs.

Browser Newsletter #25

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:50:33 +0000

Nielsen: Mobile Internet Causes 13% Jump in Web Site Audience

CenterNetworks reported yesterday on the launch of the new TotalWeb tracking service from Nielsen, which includes mobile traffic along with desktop PC traffic in its measurement of top Internet properties. When including mobile traffic, says Nielsen, top Internet sites can extend their reach an average of 13%. Though TotalWeb only covers about “200 leading Internet sites” (ironic for a product called TotalWeb), the data is nonetheless interesting.

“The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, Vice President of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile in a press release. According to Nielsen, leading sites with a mobile property could increase the size of their audience via the mobile Internet.

Read more…
© Read Write Web, 02/05/08

Dragonfly Smashes Bugs in Opera

Long-time browser competitor Opera is out with a new piece of software today: Opera Dragonfly. Web developers (especially those concerned with cross-browser compatibility) will want to have a look at this first release and keep track of it as it evolves.

Read more…
© Web Worker Daily, 06/05/08

IE8 to boost ActiveX security on Vista

ActiveX has long been regarded as a thorn in the side of Windows users everywhere; a gaping hole through which spyware and viruses can contaminate your PC and compromise your data. Although much of the criticism leveled at ActiveX is excessively harsh, binary browser plugins—that can do just about anything the user can do—do have security concerns. With Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s forthcoming version of its embattled browser, steps will be taken to further reduce the exposure caused by ActiveX. The IE blog has recently given details of what we can expect.

Opera Mini 4.1 released with better page and file management

Opera today released version 4.1 of its Opera Mini browser for mobile phones that can run Java applications. Even though version 4.0 just landed last November, version 4.1 makes an equally significant splash with a number of new features for searching, exchanging files, and archiving pages for offline viewing.

Adobe Releases Flash 10 Beta

Adobe announced today the release of the Flash Player 10 beta, previously code named “Astro,” on the Adobe Labs site. The beta is available for download immediately at the Astro web page and adds a number of compelling features to the Flash player. Adobe, which claims that the Flash player is on 98% of Internet connected PCs, says it has seen an acceleration in the penetration rate for new versions of the player which each new release. It took just 3 months to reach 62% of Flash users for the last version of the player (verion 9), according to the company.

Read more…
© Read Write Web, 14/05/08

Apple okay with Safari ‘carpet bombing’ vuln for now

Next time you get nagged to install Apple’s Safari browser keep this in mind: The company’s security team has dismissed research that shows a simple way miscreants can use the browser to litter an end user’s machine with malicious files.

According to researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, Safari doesn’t bother to ask for user permission before downloading resources from websites. When encountering malicious iframes and other scripts, the browser obediently does what the website tells it to do, including downloading a file as many times as html scripts order.

When informed of this “carpet bombing” vulnerability (as researcher Billy (BK) Rios has dubbed it), Apple agreed that it might be good if Safari actually checked with the user before downloading potentially vicious files, but signaled that kind of addition wasn’t much of a priority.

A tantalizing taste of Firefox 3: testing RC1

Mozilla has issued the first official release candidate of Firefox 3, the next major version of the popular open source web browser. Firefox 3 includes a visual refresh as well as a multitude of exciting new features and significant improvements. Our experience indicates that this release candidate is fairly robust and ready for widespread testing.

One of the most impressive features in Firefox 3 is the new Places system, a massive overhaul of the browser’s bookmark and history functionality that is built on SQLite and provides noticeable improvements to performance and data integrity. The Places system has facilitated a number of very compelling user interface enhancements, like the new combined history and bookmarks organizer and an impressively intelligent new autocompletion implementation for the browser address bar.

Firefox 3 is built on top of Gecko 1.9, a new version of Mozilla’s powerful rendering engine, which now uses the cross-platform Cairo rendering framework. Gecko 1.9 brings Firefox into the age of Acid2 compliance and also greatly improves SVG handling and reflow. It also made possible a handful of other long-awaited feature like full-page zooming.

Performance and memory efficiency were high priorities for Firefox 3. Adoption of FreeBSD’s jemalloc allocator and the implementation of a new XPCOM cycle collector have significantly cut down the size of Firefox’s memory footprint. Firefox 3 now uses less memory than Safari and Opera in some benchmarks.

Firefox 3.1 targeted for year’s end

Mike Shroepfer, Mozilla VP of Technology announced today a draft plan for Firefox and the Mozilla platform beyond the upcoming Firefox 3 (and attached Mozilla platform 1.9) release next June.

Most notable is Firefox 3.1, the next update to the Firefox 3 branch. It would add a few features that were not ready to ship in Firefox 3 development time frame. Among the most relevant: Support for the as defined in the HTML 5 specification [...] Support for cross-site XMLHttpRequests (XHR) [...] More power for Firefox 3’s location bar [...] More performance tuning [...] Native JSON DOM binding

Opera Takes on Apple With Open Widget SDK

The popular mobile browser Opera today launched a software developers kit (SDK) for widgets. While rival Apple’s iPhone SDK requires that applications be distributed exclusively through the still-unlaunched iPhone App Store, pay a $99 application fee and wait - Opera SDK built widgets appear to be much more open and free.

Opera’s widgets will be able to run on the company’s wildly popular mobile browser, Opera Mini excluded, the desktop version of Opera, the Nintendo Wii and any other devices that run Opera 9.5. We covered the launch of 9.5 here.

Read more…
© Read Write Web, 21/05/08

A second Firefox 3 RC confirmed

On today’s Firefox 3 status meeting, the need for a second release candidate was confirmed and it has been tentatively targeted for early June.

RC2 will fix about a couple dozen bugs including some top crashers, some affecting performance and localization related. Most of the bugs already have patches waiting for review or landing and the revised code is expected for tomorrow, with initial builds available on Thursday. QA will start the same day and last for about a week.

If all goes as planned, RC 2 should be released close to June 6 for a new round of tests by Firefox users. Depending on whether a new critical bug is found or not, a third RC could be necessary or RC2 will become Firefox 3 final.

SquirrelFish: WebKit has a new, fast, JavaScript engine

SquirrelFish seems to be the code name for a new JavaScript engine for WebKit.

You can see performance benchmarks that show a significant increase across the board of tests.

On average the tests show a 4 times improvement (compared to Safari 3.1), with spikes of 12.6x improvements on some access tests, and with the lowest grade of 1.63x for String unpacking.

IE8 Beta 2 Coming in August

In addition to the features for developers we showed in IE8 Beta 1, we’ve been working on great new features for consumers and IT professionals (as well as doing even more cool stuff for developers). I’m happy to announce that we’re on track to deliver IE8 Beta 2 this August when you’ll get a chance to see what we’ve been up to in these areas. Furthermore, in order to help us get even more feedback for this global product, we’ll be releasing Beta 2 in over twenty languages within a month of the initial release. This is a big step up from the three languages we released for beta 1 and much more than we ever did during IE7.

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Ilya Kozhevnikov — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:48:34 +0000

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Browser Newsletter #24

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:39:03 +0000

Apple, Mozilla Plug Critical JavaScript Browser Flaws

Critical JavaScript security flaws have been patched in both Apple, Inc.’s Safari Web browser and Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But Mozilla and Thunderbird could be vulnerable in some instances. Apple also patched a flaw in Safari 3.1.1 for Windows. The Safari hole allowed Charlie Miller to hack the MacBook Air at the CanSecWest conference.

iPhone’s Safari browser simplifies phishing, researchers say

According to Yuan Niu, Francis Hsu, and Hao Chen from University of California who presented a report at Usability, Psychology, and Security Conference 2008 in San Francisco, iPhone’s Safari browser, along with the Nintendo Wii’s Opera browser, simplify phishing.

“Phishing” is a process used by many Internet criminals to collect personal information that tricks users into typing in their personal bank/online wallet/etc account information, while thinking they’re visiting a legitimate website. “Phishing” is most commonly achieved by sending a bogus e-mail to the victims, asking them to “update” their personal information at a malicious site that resembles the original site, but that is especially meant to log logins and passwords (which can then be used by the culprits to withdraw your hard earned funds).

PayPal Gives Safari Users a Break Despite Security Shortcomings

PayPal hinted last week that it might enact some strict new rules for web browsers visiting the site. Among the requirements would be some sort of built-in phishing protection and support for Extended Validation (EV) certificates, both of which are designed to reduce fraud.

However, Apple’s Safari browser doesn’t ship with phishing protections and thus far doesn’t support EV SSL certificates which would seem to mean that Safari users would be banned from PayPal’s site.

While many assumed that since Safari fails to meet PayPal’s new standards, it would be a candidate for exclusion, PayPal says that’s not the case. In an e-mail to Computer World a company spokesperson writes, “we have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our Web site”

Flock Announces Eco-Edition of Award Winning Social Web Browser

Flock, the innovative social web browser, today announced the availability of the Eco-Edition of the Flock browser that delivers the latest environmental and sustainable living content to eco-minded social media and web users. The Eco-Edition is based on the latest version of the award winning Flock browser, and comes pre-populated with best of breed news, photos, videos and feeds from leading eco content partners across the web.

Read more…
© The Earth Times, 22/04/08

Firefox 3 Bookmarks (My god, it’s full of stars…)

Firefox 3 introduces a few new features to bookmarks that I think makes them much, much easier to use, more useful in general, and much more useful in particular for catastrophically disorganized folk like me. The three main features being introduced are: Bookmark Stars, Bookmark Tags, and Smart Bookmark Folders.

about:mozilla - Firefox 2.0.0.14, Camino 1.6, Privacy policy, AMO, Security metrics, and more

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available [...]

The Camino Project is proud to announce Camino 1.6, a major update to the Camino web browser. This release includes a number of new features and improvements, including a customizable toolbar search field, a find bar, software update, a scrolling tab bar, and enhanced AppleScript support. [...]

Madhava Enros, User Experience lead for the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) redesign, has posted a detailed discussion about the reasoning behind and road ahead for the AMO 3.2 release. “In the 3.2 redesign, our goal was to improve the experience for people new to the idea of add-ons as well as the large and growing set of people who want to stop in, quickly find something to improve their online experience, and be on their way again. All of that said, … [a] successful AMO must support add-on developers and those advanced users who are at the forefront of add-on testing and reviewing.”

Live Mesh: First Look at Microsoft’s New Platform

The new Live Mesh service that just launched as an invite only “technology preview” is Microsoft’s attempt to tie all of our data together. Live Mesh synchronizes data across multiple devices (currently just Windows computers, but theoretically it will extend to mobile and other devices in the future) as well as to a web desktop that exists in the cloud. [...]

Perhaps the most interesting bit that Microsoft demoed to us was an offline compontent of the Mesh platform. Web apps using the Mesh platform will be able to lean on the client software to take their web applications offline, including all user data, and sync it up when the user gets back online at a later time.

Now your mobile phones get to take some Acid

Dominique Hazael-Massieux, co-chair of the Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group at the W3C, has published a test in the spirit of the ACID tests: Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers:

That test, in the same spirit as the ACID tests, combines in a single page tests for 12 Web technologies, ranging from well-deployed (but often poorly implemented on mobile devices) technologies such as HTTPS and PNG, to technologies we believe will matter in a year or two (like SVG animation and CSS Media Queries).

The Next Browser War

A brand-new crop of browser betas gives us a glimpse of what Web surfing will be like when IE, Firefox, and Opera release new versions later this year.

WebKit GTK+ port passes Acid3 on Linux

The GTK+ port of WebKit is the first open source HTML render to fully pass the Acid3 test on the Linux platform. WebKit, which is Apple’s increasingly popular fork of KDE’s KHTML rendering engine, is used by Apple’s Safari web browser and the iPhone. The GNOME desktop environment’s Epiphany web browser has also adopted WebKit and will be using it instead of Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine in a future release.

The Acid3 test evaluates compatibility with a wide range of web technologies (some of which are quite obscure), including SVG, advanced CSS features, DOM Level 2 support, XML capabilities, and certain JavaScript functionality. The test was created earlier this year by Ian Hickson with help from volunteer contributors who assisted with several of the subtests. A recent Internet Explorer 8 beta passes only 18 of the 100 tests, a Firefox 3 nightly build passes 71 of the tests, and a recent development build of KDE’s KHTML renderer passes 73 of the tests. Like WebKit, experimental builds of Opera’s rendering engine also pass all 100 of the tests on Linux.

Mozilla: Fennec to Revolutionize Mobile Browsing

Fennec, the mobile version of the Firefox browser, will simplify and enhance Web browsing on cell phones and usher in an era of intense developer innovation, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation and of Mozillla Corp. said Thursday.

Access to data, sites and applications on the Internet shouldn’t be limited by the type of device being used, and Fennec will make that possible, said Mitchell Baker during a keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Firefox reached 29% share in Europe

XiTi Monitor has released the latest numbers on browsers utilization in Europe and the rest of the world, announcing it has reached about 29% in March 2008.

Finland, Poland and Slovenia keep leading the pack with 45.9%, 44% and 43.7% respectively. Considering other browsers including Safari and Opera probably have a strong presence in Europe as well, it could also mean that Firefox is used even more than Internet Explorer in those same countries.

Opera Desktop Beta 2 (Kestrel) now available for download

Opera today unveiled the second beta preview of the forthcoming Opera 9.5 desktop browser, code-named Kestrel. The new beta improves on security, speed and performance, while refining some of Opera ’s most popular features.

Web 2.0: Firefox Key To Open Mobile Web

Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker on Thursday called on developers to bring the same features, functionality, and passion to handheld devices as they have to the PC, using the Firefox browser as the model.

“We should be able to access it, mix it up, mash it up, save it, store it. All of those things should be the same if I am on a laptop or phone, at home or on a train,” Baker said during her keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

Read more…
© InformationWeek, 24/04/08

IETester

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

Firefox wins Webware 100 2008!

Duh-factor aside, Firefox was among the top 10 voted products that amounted for about half of the 1.9 million votes, so at least it was one of the most voted browser, despite Maxthon’s tricky tactics.

Hackers Focus Efforts on Firefox, Safari

Many people are switching from Internet Explorer to alternative browsers such as Firefox and Safari. Though that might make them feel more secure, the shift has also opened new doors for bad guys.

Case in point: We have no IE bugs to report this month, but both Firefox and Safari have been hit hard.

In a somewhat dubious recognition of Firefox’s growing popularity, hackers have focused their attention on it, leading to a rash of newly discovered holes. The folks at Mozilla recently released two Firefox updates in less than six weeks, fixing a total of five critical security vulnerabilities. All five can be exploited by planting a poisoned JavaScript file in a Web site and waiting for you to stumble across it.

Read more…
© The Washington Post, 26/04/08

Browser Newsletter #23

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:55:40 +0000

iPhone is already the top mobile browser

It’s been on the market for just six months, and already the iPhone (plus its Wi-Fi-only variant, the iPod Touch) is the most used mobile browser for Internet access in the U.S., according to Irish researcher StatCounter. At No. 2 is the Symbian OS used in Nokia’s devices. Globally, the two positions are reversed. In either case, Windows Mobile — in all its versions — is just a blip.

First look: Mozilla Fennec takes browser fight to handhelds

With Firefox 3 right around the corner, Mozilla’s top lizard wranglers are turning their attention to the next step in their plans for world browser domination. The Mozilla Mobile initiative, which was first announced last October, has reached the functional prototype stage. The developers now have released pre-alpha test builds of a mobile Firefox prototype, codenamed Fennec, which we tested and discussed with Mozilla Mobile director Jay Sullivan.

The story behind Opera Mini on Google Android

This article takes a look at one of Opera’s latest and greatest projects - the creation of an Opera Mini version that will run on Google’s Android open mobile development platform. Over the course of the article, we’ll explain why we created it, how, challenges we faced, and how you can try it out for yourself. We’d like to encourage you to try it out, and give us as much feedback as you possibly can.

HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1

With the release of IE8 Beta 1, I’m pleased to be able to talk about the first round of improved standards compliance and bug fixes in IE’s HTML and DOM support for the new IE8 standards mode. Doug hinted at some of these improvements, and I wrote a little bit about them in the IE8 Beta 1 whitepapers here and here. In this post, I’d like to enumerate the ‘change list’ (of sorts) here on the blog in response to requests for such a list that I received at MIX08. Personally, I’ve been long-awaiting this release because of what I know it means to web developers (like myself) that have had to code around a lot of IE’s DOM quirks for many years.

For IE8, I have really focused on the HTML and DOM Core standards and concentrated on building a solid cross-browser compatible foundation for many of the APIs that are already supported by Trident. This effort to fix some of the cracks in IE’s foundation has been a long time in coming, and I believe it’s a critical and necessary first step before adding on additional standards support.

For IE8 Beta1, we looked at many community-provided bug reports and found that the top pain-points were related to IE’s attribute handling (with a few prominent exceptions like getElementById). Therefore, attribute-handling has served as the ‘theme’ for the set of issues to tackle in IE8. We probably won’t be able to fix all of the community-reported bugs in the DOM in this release (there are many), but we want to make sure that we get to the worst offenders first. Help us out by submitting or voting on the bugs that you feel are most impactful to your business.

The new Internet Explorer Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.1 - desktop browsing from Windows Mobile

As I mentioned previously, Microsoft is aiming to deliver the same desktop-like browsing experience that you get with Opera Mobile/Opera Mini and Firefox Mobile in an updated Internet Explorer Mobile (Pocket Internet Explorer, as some of you might know it). The new IE Mobile is based wholly on code from the desktop version of Internet Explorer and is ported to work on the WM6.1 platform. The browser is still in development, but from what I saw, it worked beautifully on a touchscreen handset.

Research fingers ActiveX, QuickTime as buggiest browser plug-ins

ActiveX controls accounted for an overwhelming majority of all browser plug-in vulnerabilities in the second half of 2007, Symantec Corp. said this week in its semiannual Web security report.

Microsoft Corp.’s technology, which is used to create add-ins for Internet Explorer, accounted for 79% of the 239 plug-in bugs discovered between July and December of 2007, Symantec said. The plug-in with the next-highest number of flaws was Apple Inc.’s QuickTime, which had just 8% of the six-month’s total.

Only one vulnerability in a plug-in for Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox browser was detected in the same period, meaning Firefox’s extensions — the moniker Mozilla Corp. uses for plug-ins — accounted for only 0.4% of all flaws found.

Mobile Firefox Prototype Arrives

The mobile version of the Firefox browser is now available for download in the form of an early prototype. This download of the browser, code-named “Fennec,” is only intended for developers as it is still in the pre-alpha stages. It is also only recommended for Nokia N810 devices. Even so, the browser already shows a lot of promise.

Despite it being very early in the testing stages, the Fennec browser is already showing major performance gains. In the chart below, found on Mozilla technical evangelist Chirs Blizzard’s blog, the blue bar is the “MicroB browser,” which is the Mozilla-based browser based on source code from around the Firefox Alpha 1 timeframe that Nokia included with their OS2008 release. The red bar is Fennec. The chart shows that Fennec is 5.9x faster than the earlier Mozilla version!

Why Firefox Is Thinking Small: Mobile Browser Market To Explode

Firefox parent Mozilla is hard at work shrinking its Web browser software to work on mobile phones. So far, it’s available in a very early edition for some Nokia (NOK) gadgets, with the first “alpha” release scheduled for August, DailyTech reports.

Why bother? Because the high end of the mobile browser market, where Mozilla will operate, is poised to explode in the next six years, according to a report published today by ABI Research.

ABI sees “open-Internet” browsers, like Firefox and Opera, soaring to 700 million units delivered worldwide in 2013, 820% more than the 76 million delivered last year. (These “open-Internet” browsers support more sophisticated Web technologies like AJAX, CSS, etc., unlike the crappy browsers available on most mobile phones.)

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox 3, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 duke it out to be the program you use most on your PC.

First look: AT&T’s Pogo browser beta tries too hard, fails

AT&T has opened up a private beta of its new, hyper-visual web browser named Pogo. Yes, you read that right—AT&T is diving into the web browser market with a new creation of its own, based on Mozilla and 3D technology from Vizible, a Canada-based company that AT&T has invested in. The goal is to create a web browsing experience that is more robust than the crufty old browsers that we have all grown accustomed to. The software is not yet open to the public, but we had an opportunity to test out Pogo and see what it was all about.

First off, Pogo is Windows-only, and AT&T makes no indication that it will be available for the Mac anytime soon (or ever). It requires Windows XP SP2 or later or Windows Vista, and its minimum hardware are surprisingly steep: a 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. Seem like a bit much for a web browser? It is, and as we found out, these requirements posed some major challenges for us during our testing.

Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes

Former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie announced today that he’s calling it quits for his company Mowser because the market for mobile browsing is taking a fast turn for the worse. “The mobile traffic just isn’t there,” Beattie says, “It’s not there now, and it won’t be.”

Beattie’s announcement comes just two months after mobile blogger and consultant Michael Mace wrote a much discussed post titled Mobile Applications, RIP. “The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices,” Mace wrote.

about:mozilla - Firefox 3 RC1, New tinderbox trees, Fennec reviewed, Web analytics, AMO, and more

On April 8th, the Firefox tree entered a lockdown period in preparation for delivering Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1. The same process will be used for this release as for past betas — the blocker lists will be driven to zero, and only patches with explicit approval will be allowed to land in order to more tightly control potential for regressions. For more information, please see the DevNews blog post.

Since the release of addons.mozilla.org 3.2, the AMO team has been actively reviewing the feedback users have sent in through a number of channels. In response to some of that feedback, Mike Morgan has posted an explanation of the rationale and trade-offs made with the new design and its attempts to balance the needs of various audiences AMO has to address — first-time users, seasoned experts, and add-on authors and publishers. Basil Hashem has also written a post about the feedback the team has received, summarizing the top concerns they’ve heard and outlining plans for the next iterations of the AMO site.

Mobile Web must die!

Mowser, a startup that concentrated on mobile web browsing, is no more. While it’s sad to see a startup die, especially one where the founder put in so much work, heart and money go under, I think that it’s time for the whole concept of mobile web to die.

Mobile web is a product of a “think small” mentality. In the early days it was necessary to have that “think small” mentality because the hardware and software of the time just wasn’t up to delivering a full-on web experience on an ultra-portable device. That age is now coming to a close and devices such as the iPhone and iPod touch have shown us that it is possible to have a decent browsing experience on a mobile device.

Gomez Announces Web Performance Testing Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

Gomez, Inc., a leader in web application experience management, today announced support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 8 beta 1. Using the Gomez(R) ExperienceFirst(SM) platform of on-demand web application experience testing and measurement services, developers can quickly understand how existing and new applications will look and perform in IE8, as well as the impact of IE8 on their infrastructure.

“The introduction of IE8 presents developers with great opportunities for web experience improvements but also potential pitfalls for the unprepared,” says Gomez’s CTO, Imad Mouline. “IE8 will impact both the visual rendering of a website as well as its performance due to its increased connection parallelism. Using the Gomez ExperienceFirst platform will enable web developers to assess their readiness for IE8, mitigate performance issues and plan for infrastructure investments.”

Firefox 2.0.0.14 security and stability update now available for download

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 2.0.0.14 Release Notes.

Camino 1.6 released

Camino, the Gecko-based native Mac OS X browser has reached final status for version 1.6 and has been released.

Among the most relevant new features is an automatic update system, support for OpenSearch engines, integration with KeyChain, Mac OS X’s integrated credential repository, the ability to pass web feeds to online feed aggregators such as Google Reader, a new Find toolbar displayed near the bottom, improved AppleScript support, and general user interface improvements including some new and retouched icons.

After Criticism, Apple Software Updater Gets UI Makeover

Apple has made a small but significant tweak to its Automatic Software Update utility to make a clear distinction between security patches and new products being pushed out to Windows users.

The UI redesign, which adds a new box labeled New Software, follows intense criticism of Apple’s recent decision to bundle its new Safari for Windows browser alongside an iTunes+QuickTime security patch.

The company is still pushing Safari down to Windows boxes (pre-checked by default, unfortunately!), but that download is clearly marked as new software, an important distinction that shows Apple is paying attention to the loud grumbles from its user base.

AT&T, Vizible To Launch Firefox-Based Browser With Ads

AT&T has gone Pogo. The telecommunications giant has partnered with emerging tech firm Vizible to develop Pogo, a Web browser that adds a visual dimension to searching for and organizing info on the Web.

Pogo is built on the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the free, potentially ad-supported application is not geared toward the tech-savvy digerati. AT&T is aiming for the everyday users of the Web with Pogo–a factor that pits it head-to-head with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Mobile Web Browsers Have No Where To Go But Up

As InformationWeek recently reported, mobile web browsing is a market with a substantial amount of upward growth potential. More and more mobile phone customers are swapping their ‘dumb’ phones for smartphones that feature mobile web browsers and other data-centric applications.

There are many mobile web browsers featured on various smartphones, but which are worth the most attention?

Let our round-up give provide you guidance.

Read more…
© Web Worker Daily, 17/04/08

Apple patches Safari bug from hacking contest

Apple has released a new security patch for its Safari browser, to fix the infamous bug that a hacker was able to exploit in a matter of minutes.

Cyber security researcher Charlie Miller was one of three participants in the “Pwn 2 Own” contest at the CanSecWest conference, and beat out his Windows and Linux competitors by breaking into a Mac the same day the contest began.

Paypal to block ‘unsafe browsers’

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block “unsafe browsers” from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.

Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.

Paypal said it was “an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4″.

Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.

Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks.

Apple Ends Stealth Safari Installs Via Software Update For Windows

Apple has revised the way it sends software updates to Windows PCs via its Software Update service in response to charges that it was sneaking its Safari Web browser onto users’ desktops without their permission or knowledge.

The latest version of the Software Update tool for Windows, version 2.1.0.110, now clearly lists software that can be downloaded via the service and groups the updates into those for applications already on the user’s computer and updates for new software.

Read more…
© Informationweek, 18/04/08

PayPal Bans Browsers; Mac Love; Cell Phone Bans

One company is taking dramatic steps in an attempt to reduce so-called phishing attacks, which trick people into giving away personal information by luring them to a fake Web site. PayPal, the online payment system owned by eBay, will prevent people who use older Web browsers that don’t have built in phishing detectors from accessing its site, InfoWorld reports. While the move won’t stop people with old browsers from visiting fake PayPal sites, the company hopes that the move will force people who frequent the real PayPal to upgrade.

Update: We just spoke to PayPal. It seems we in the media are reading to much into this. It will block people using old browsers and old operating systems, but contrary to many reports it will not block Apple’s Safari browser.

Apple should call PayPal’s bluff

PayPal is in another stand-off with Apple over EV SSL (Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, but Steve Jobs & Co. may call the transaction service’s bluff.

According to Ryan Naraine, PayPal is about to launch a whitepaper that advocates blocking transactions from browsers that don’t have anti-phishing protection. This whitepaper is a thinly veiled attempt to get Apple to add EV SSL certificates to Safari.

Yahoo! BrowserPlus: The rumour is true

Awhile back I heard a rumour that Yahoo! had a “Gears-like” project that was cancelled. I thought this was a shame, as having Yahoo! pushing the browser would be a great thing, and I wished that we could all join forces and push together.

After 3 years of hiding out in the campuses of Yahoo! it’s good to finally have something external to show for it. Most exciting is the release of BrowserPlus, a software and software distribution framework that allows device developers (desktop, mobile, etc.) to seamlessly bridge the browser programming environment (DHTML, JS) to any component they can dream up (VoIP, image manipulation, data caching, etc.). Some time ago we created a platform team to focus on device software at Yahoo! and this is what has emerged amidst the quickly shifting strategy of the mothership. The 1.0 release of BrowserPlus is intended only for use by Yahoo! sites to enhance customer experiences; however, in the coming months, developers might expect the ability to use components on their own sites.

AT&T Pogo Browser

AT&T is trying to get in the to the web browser market now with their own browser called Pogo. Before you run out and download this keep in mind, it is still in development and in limited private beta. You can sign up to be notified when the public beta will be opened. [...]

Pogo is suppose to be a Mozilla based browser, so why is it so power hungry? This is because it has this massive 3D interface for navigating through the browser’s history as well as bookmarks. These screenshots (courtesy of CyberNet News) show the history (top) and bookmarks (bottom).

No Comments #1

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:26:13 +0000

http://java.com/en/

Install Sun Java in Ubuntu Offline

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:16:10 +0000

There are a handful of scenarios I can think of where you might require to install Java (in this case JRE to be specific) without an Internet connection: remote location, bad drivers, your corporate firewall to name a few. Here is a short tutorial to quickly get around two unpleasant issues with dependency hell.

Post has been moved to http://kozhevni.com/java/install-java-package-in-ubuntu-offline.

Browser Newsletter #22

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:01:34 +0000

First look: Adobe AIR alpha unleashed for Linux

Adobe has announced today the public availability of an Adobe AIR alpha release for Linux. Although the alpha is not feature-complete, it is already capable of running some mainstream AIR applications and is robust enough to facilitate AIR development on the Linux platform. Adobe has also officially joined the Linux Foundation and plans to collaborate with the group in an effort to bring rich Internet application and Web 2.0 technologies to the open-source operating system.

Read more…
© Ars Technica, 31/03/08

Mozilla wants to put Firefox in the cloud and your pocket

At Mozilla’s headquarters in Mountain View last week, we talked to Mozilla Labs manager Chris Beard and Mozilla Mobile director Jay Sullivan about their plans to put Firefox in the cloud and in your pocket. With the guidance of Beard and Sullivan, the open-source browser is extending itself beyond the desktop and taking its first tentative steps into new frontiers.

Mozilla Labs is experimenting with several emerging technologies that fill important niches in the Firefox ecosystem. Among these are the Prism site-specific browser deployment tool and Weave, a web services integration framework that lets Firefox push local data into the cloud. Weave is still in early development, but the current version already provides support for automatic web-based synchronization and storage of bookmark and history data.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 twice as fast in the cloud: Mozilla

Firefox browser developer, Mozilla Foundation, says the beta latest version of its new browser is now twice as fast as the widely used Firefox 2. According to Mozilla, the performance improvements are most apparent when using cloud applications.

iPhone browser to be updated soon, adding CSS Transforms and Animations

Apple yesterday released the program for the 2008 WWDC Sessions and Labs. One lab, entitled Enhancing Your iPhone Web Application with CSS Transforms and Animations sticks out.

Adding rich, hardware-accelerated graphics to your web content is now as easy as writing a few lines of CSS and JavaScript. Using the latest web standards, you can scale, rotate, or skew HTML elements, position page components within three-dimensional space, provide smooth transitions, and create captivating animations.

Opera Mini 4.1 Mobile Phone Browser released

Opera has released the beta preview of Opera Mini, the latest version of the mobile phone browser, which is expected to work on almost every mobile phone. Opera claims that Mini 4.1 is a more convenient and productive solution for users.

Microsoft to make full-scale web browsing mobile this year

Microsoft said Tuesday it will soon release a version of its Internet Explorer web browser tailored to put surfing the web with mobile telephones on par with using desktop computers.

Silverlight Timetable: 2.0 Coming This Summer

Eagle-eyed ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley spotted a “rough timetable” for upcoming releases of Microsoft’s Flash-killer Silverlight [...]. The timetable pegs the full release for Silverlight 2.0 to come sometime over the summer. It comes via a FAQ posted on the MSDN blog of Microsoft blogger Ashish Thapliyal.

Below is the rough roadmap presented by Thapliyal. Though it is rather sparse, it indicates that the final release of Silverlight 2.0 should ship sometime over the summer if all goes according to plan.

Create Distraction-Free, Customized Webapps with Prism

Among all the projects available at the Mozilla Foundation, one little application, Prism (formerly known as WebRunner), hasn’t gotten much attention. Understandable, in a way, because Prism seems like just a stripped-down Firefox window in which to view web sites—which it is, but that can be a great thing. With the help of a few utilities, web applications in Prism can be just as convenient to launch and use as your standard-installation desktop programs. Let’s take a look at where Prism really works and how to get more out of it after the jump.

Designing for Add-on Performance

As we worked towards the recent release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, the IE team focused hard on performance. As part of our effort to improve IE, our investigations have revealed several add-on performance problems. In this post, I want to share some of the common themes that we have discovered.

Opera 9.27 released

Opera Software has released the latest version of their Opera web browser. This is mostly a security upgrade as they are still working on the upcoming Opera 9.50 web browser edition.

Companies struggle to remove Apple’s Safari browser

Companies struggle as Safari pops up on networks is the headline of a story from IDG News, which contains the amusing factoid that: “On Friday, patch management vendor Shavlik Technologies announced that it had updated its Shavlik NetChk Protect software to detect and remove Safari.”

Apple, you may recall, tried to deceive users into installing its browser by presenting it as a “default update” when it wasn’t already installed. This has given companies problems. Cody Wilson, a network administrator with Soy Capital Bank and Trust in Decatur, Illinois, told IDG: “I went into work the next day and I scanned my network, and my inventory software said I have Safari on 30 PCs,” he said.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still popular

Despite Microsoft being disliked by many of the professional users of the internet, it seems that Internet Explorer the web browsing software provided by Microsoft is still the most popular method of surfing the internet for many users in the UK.

At the moment Internet Explorer has around eighty per cent of the UK internet browser marketplace; this is compared with the very low fifteen per cent of user who prefer to use Mozilla’s Firefox.

The Complete Field Guide to Testing Firefox 3

If you’re sick of Firefox 2 eating up over a gigabyte of memory only to freeze up and crash, it may be time to move onto Firefox 3. The new version of our favorite browser has seen its fifth and final beta release, and Mozilla says its for testing purposes only. However, the Firefox 3 beta is leaner, meaner, faster, and just plain better than Firefox 2—and don’t tell Daddy Mozilla, but even at this early stage, we’ve found it to be stable enough for full-time use. There are a few ways you can start using Firefox 3 without blowing your browser setup to hell or losing your most important extensions. Here’s how.

Apple Safari for iPhone most popular mobile browser in USA

Irish researcher StatCounter has stated in a research paper that Apple Safari has now become the most popular mobile web browser in use in the US market.

Apple Safari comes loaded in both Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch devices. It is capable of displaying web pages like they do on desktops.

Second position goes to browsers in Symbian OS which is found on Nokia mobile devices. Surprisingly, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Internet Explorer for mobile devices is missing from the top spot.

Globally, Symbian OS dominates Apple Safari but they remain in the top two places.

Tree is entering lockdown for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1

As discussed at today’s Firefox 3 / Gecko 1.9 meeting, as of 11:59pm PDT tonight, the tree entered a lockdown period in preparation for delivering Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1.

We’ll be using the same process that has been used for the past betas. The blocker lists will be driven to zero, and only patches with explicit approval will be allowed to land in order to more tightly control potential for regressions. After taking the final blocker, we will likely enter a short bake period before handing over to build.

Why We Need Web Apps on the Desktop

Yesterday on this blog Sarah Perez wondered how important is offline access for web apps? Her conclusion was that offline access is important now, but not as important as it once was. And that with the increasing ubiquity of Internet access, it is growing less important every day. I won’t dispute that, but there is an important distinction to be made between offline access to web apps (as Google Gears provides) and desktop access to web apps (as Mozilla’s Prism and Adobe’s AIR provide). The latter is a very important step in the evolution of web apps.

There are two main reasons for why desktop access for web apps is important: * It will actually help make web apps more popular. * Running a ton of apps in the browser at once is a pain.

about:mozilla - Firefox 3 Beta 5, SUMO Day, Thunderbird Bugdays, Labs updates, and more

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is now available for download, and you should read the Release Notes and Known Issues before installing. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.

The Acid Tests are a series of “web standards compliance” tests put out by the Web Standards Project. The most recent of these is Acid3, which tests JavaScript, DOM, and SVG compliance (amongst other things). David Baron, prominent Mozilla developer and member of the W3C CSS working group, has blogged his opinions about the Acid3 test, how he thinks the test should be used as a measure of the various browsers, and what Mozilla’s strategy is as to completing the tests. You can read more at David’s blog.

Chris Beard, head of Mozilla Labs, has posted a short update about what’s going on over in the laboratory. Last week saw the launch of major updates for a number of Labs projects, including Weave and Personas. They have also introduced the new Test Pilot project, aimed at strengthening the user testing framework and community around Labs projects. Additionally, Chris has been interviewed a few times recently, resulting in two articles that are worth checking out: Firefox 4 will push out the edges of the browser, and Mozilla wants to put a Firefox in the cloud and in your pocket. For more details, check out Chris’ blog post.

IE April Security is Now Available

The IE Cumulative Security Update for April 2008 is now available via Windows Update. Alternatively, you can receive this and all other Microsoft updates via the new Microsoft Update. I encourage you to upgrade to Microsoft Update if you haven’t already to ensure that you receive the latest updates for all Microsoft products.

This update addresses 1 remote code execution vulnerabilities. This security update addresses this vulnerability by modifying the way Internet Explorer handles HTML and validates data. For detailed information on the contents of this update, please see the following documentation [...]

IE Automatic Component Activation Now Available

The IE Automatic Component Activation (IE ACA) update is now available as part of the April 2008 Internet Explorer Cumulative Update. The “click to activate” behavior, formerly required for ActiveX controls embedded in some webpages, is now permanently removed from Internet Explorer. For detailed information on IE ACA, see our blog post from last November announcing this update.

IE8 Security Part I: DEP/NX Memory Protection

Internet Explorer 8 security features target three major sources of security exploits: social engineering, Web server, and browser-based vulnerabilities. This post will cover IE8 Data Execution Prevention (DEP), a feature that mitigates browser-based vulnerabilities.

Web Input Boundary and Validation Matrix

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:29:48 +0000

The most common web application security weakness is the failure to properly validate input from the client or environment. This weakness leads to almost all of the major vulnerabilities in applications, such as interpreter injection, locale/Unicode attacks, file system attacks and buffer overflows. Data from the client should never be trusted for the client has every possibility to tamper with the data.

In many cases, Encoding has the potential to defuse attacks that rely on lack of input validation. For example, if you use HTML entity encoding on user input before it is sent to a browser, it will prevent most XSS attacks. However, simply preventing attacks is not enough - you must perform Intrusion Detection in your applications. Otherwise, you are allowing attackers to repeatedly attack your application until they find a vulnerability that you haven’t protected against. Detecting attempts to find these weaknesses is a critical protection mechanism.

Browser Newsletter #21

Ilya Kozhevnikov — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:00:11 +0000

WebKit gets perfect score on Acid3 web standards - iPhone Safari and S60 web browsers will be even better

Webkit’s developers have been working to make their little darling of a rendering engine the fastest and most standards compliant solution available. And, it looks like the investment has paid off. Webkit has announced that their Webkit core scored a perfect 100/100 score on the Acid3 web browser standards compliance tests.

For the purposes of web browsers, think of Webkit as the rendering engine that determines how the web-code is displayed as a webpage. Webkit was originally devised by Apple for use in Mac OS X’s Safari browser, and has now found its way into other browsers, including the iPhone Safari browser, S60 web browser, Android’s web browser, and others. Now, the announcement that Webkit is basically at the top of the game when it comes to standards compliance and speedy page rendering only points to continued improvement in the mobile browser segment. Faster web browsing on our mobile phones? Yes, please.

Q&A with Mozilla’s John Lilly on 10 years of Mozilla and the future of browsers

Matt Marshall and I sat down with Mozilla CEO John Lilly, who was recently promoted to the top post (our coverage). We talked about everything from the origins of Firefox to what’s wrong with Google’s Android cell phone platform.

Two vulnerabilities found in Safari browser for Windows

Apple’s recently released Safari 3.1 browser for Windows not only contains two “highly critical” software vulnerabilities, but it has come under fire for its poor functionality. Apple also received criticism for the manner in which it released the browser last week.

One of the software vulnerabilities allows an attacker to run code remotely on a Windows PC. With this flaw, files with long names downloaded via Safari 3.1 “can be exploited to cause memory corruption,” leaving the PC vulnerable to the execution of arbitrary code, Secunia said in a security advisory available here.

The second bug could allow attackers to display their own content in pages loaded into Safari 3.1 without changing the URL information shown in the browser’s address bar.

Apple’s Safari Security Woes

It has not been a good couple weeks for Apple and Safari. First Opera knocked it from its position as sole 100 percent compatible Acid3 browser. Then it tried to force iTunes users to unintentionally download the browser as part of an iTunes update, which included a pre-checked install option for Safari. The move was met with broad criticism, including from Mozilla’s CEO, who commented that Apple was bordering “on malware distribution practices.” Finally, Safari users who updated to v3.1 reported many bugs and crashes.

Now the browser, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs once called the “most innovative browser in the world and the most powerful browser in the world”, has had more bad news. At the CanSecWest Show, an annual security conference, it was found that the Safari browser was surprisingly insecure, allowing successful attacks on Mac computers.

First look: Adobe AIR alpha unleashed for Linux

Adobe has announced today the public availability of an Adobe AIR alpha release for Linux. Although the alpha is not feature-complete, it is already capable of running some mainstream AIR applications and is robust enough to facilitate AIR development on the Linux platform. Adobe has also officially joined the Linux Foundation and plans to collaborate with the group in an effort to bring rich Internet application and Web 2.0 technologies to the open-source operating system.

Mozilla wants to put Firefox in the cloud and your pocket

At Mozilla’s headquarters in Mountain View last week, we talked to Mozilla Labs manager Chris Beard and Mozilla Mobile director Jay Sullivan about their plans to put Firefox in the cloud and in your pocket. With the guidance of Beard and Sullivan, the open-source browser is extending itself beyond the desktop and taking its first tentative steps into new frontiers.

Mozilla Labs is experimenting with several emerging technologies that fill important niches in the Firefox ecosystem. Among these are the Prism site-specific browser deployment tool and Weave, a web services integration framework that lets Firefox push local data into the cloud. Weave is still in early development, but the current version already provides support for automatic web-based synchronization and storage of bookmark and history data.

Internet Explorer: A Browser Breaks

Enterprises are holding onto IE 6 and giving Firefox some love. IE 6 usage is going to be a problem for Web developers, because of the browser’s weak standards support. If there were a Web equivalent to Frankenstein’s monster, IE 6 could be it.

The monster is driving away customers. Enterprise IE adoption dropped from 88.7 percent to 78.7 percent in 2007 with gains mainly going to Firefox, according to a new report. Forrester published the data on March 27, but only released it publicly today. Forrester surveyed a whopping 50,000 users at over 2,300 large to very large enterprises throughout 2007.

IE 7 and Firefox 2 were released around the same time. Firefox’s overall enterprise adoption nearly doubled, to 18 percent, in 2007. IE 7’s share climbed from about 10 percent to near 30 percent during the same time frame.

Firefox Gains On Internet Explorer In Businesses

In what could be a foreboding sign for the future of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Internet Explorer, a new study finds that IE7 has done little to slow the gains Mozilla Firefox is making on Microsoft in enterprises despite Firefox’s relative lack of business-oriented features.

A Forrester Research survey of more than 50,000 large enterprise employees found that over the course of 2007, Internet Explorer’s overall market share in that segment decreased by 10%, while Firefox’s share almost doubled from 9.8% to 18%.

Also hidden in the numbers is an indication that Internet Explorer 7 is having trouble finding traction as companies are sticking with the 6-year-old Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft released IE7 in October 2006, but 55.2% of companies still used IE6 as of December 2007. Only 23.4% of companies used IE7, barely outpacing the growth and use of Firefox.

Updated IE Mobile to bring “real Internet” to Windows Mobile

Remember when the “baby Internet” was all you could access on your mobile phone? That wasn’t all that long ago, although mobile technology has come a long way in just a few short years. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs has reminded us on more than one occasion, people don’t want the “baby Internet”—they want the real deal on their mobile devices. Microsoft apparently agrees, as the company announced today that it plans to roll out a “desktop-grade” web browser for Windows Mobile devices later this year.

The announcement came during CITA Wireless 2008, where Microsoft said that phone manufacturers would have access to the new browser by the third quarter of 2008. This would make the first phones with the improved IE preinstalled available to consumers by the end of the year.

JavaScript slows down the Internet; WebKit to the rescue

Despite increases in CPU and broadband speeds, the ‘Net stubbornly refuses to get much faster. The WebKit team behind Apple’s browser Safari has found an important contributor to the Web’s slowness: external JavaScripts that are part of many web sites get in the way of a browser’s ability to load in parallel the different elements that make up a page. This means that browsers—and users—spend most of their time waiting for packets to flow to and from remote servers, which, even at the speed of light, takes a considerable amount of time. Addressing this issue made WebKit almost twice as fast in some cases.

IE 8 strict mode doesn’t allow for CSS opacity?

IE8 Strict Mode correctly omits the filter: alpha(opacity=xx) in CSS which allows the user to specify the opacity in pre-IE8 browsers but does not implement the CSS3 opacity setting. While I understand that opacity is part of the CSS3 spec which is not finalized, this leaves developers with an odd regression in functionality where it is no longer possible to change opacity on css elements (where as it was with IE 5.5, IE 6.0, IE 7.0, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, among others).

The New Opera Mini Arrives - Now 50% Faster Than Before

Today, Opera released a new version of their mobile web browser, Opera Mini. This latest version, Opera Mini 4.1 beta preview, offers some new features, but most notably, it claims to be 50% faster than Opera Mini 4.0 when it first launched in November of 2007. For the 40 million users who are currently using the mobile browser, this is welcome news, since one of Opera Mini’s previous weaknesses was speed.

Firefox 3 beta 5 now available for download

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is here, and reviewed

Firefox 3 Beta 5, Gran Paradiso’s milestone #13 is here and the list of features and improvement it brings along is pretty long so let’s get started.

[...] for those following Firefox 3 development you may want to jump to the sections marked in green for what’s new in Beta 5.