GOOGLE AND MOZILLA KISS AND MAKE UP

Mozilla announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with Google in which Google Search will remain the default search engine in Firefox for the next three years. “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Google’s senior vice president of search, Alan Eustace. While terms of the agreement remain confidential, Mozilla reported in October that its partnership with Google helped the company achieve a large portion of the $123 million in revenue in reported last year.

FIREFOX IN TROUBLE NOW THAT GOOGLE DEAL HAS APPARENTLY ENDED

It hasn’t been a good year for Mozilla and its flagship product, the Firefox browser. Firefox continues to lose share to Google Chrome. Statistics from Net Market Share show the decline, with Firefox plunging from 25% to 22% and Chrome rising from under 5% to more than 18% during the last two years.

Now, the deal with Mozilla’s biggest financial backer is in question. A search partnership with Google has historically been Mozilla’s greatest source of income. In a recent financial statement from the Mozilla Foundation back in Augusta "The Corporation has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2011. Approximately 84% and 86% of royalty revenue for 2010 and 2009, respectively, was derived from this contract."

When asked for clarification a Mozilla spokesperson replied with a link to the 2009 financial FAQ, which contained equally vague language: “We believe that search providers will remain a solid generator of revenue for Mozilla for the foreseeable future” and a PR spokesperson said on December 1 when asked about the Google contract being renegotiated "We currently do not have an update to share."

CHROME BROWSER SURPASSES FIREFOX IN USAGE

Google’s Chrome web browser surpassed Mozilla’s Firefox in global browser market share for the first time ever in November. Research firm StatCounter found that Chrome’s market share during the month was 25.69%, up 4.66% from last November, and that Firefox’s share was a hair lower at 25.33% during the month. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer maintained its lead with 40.63%. ”Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also,” StatCounter CEO Aodjan Cullen said. Internet Explorer remains the top browser in the United States with a 50.66% share. Firefox is the second most popular browser in the U.S. with a 20.09% share, down from 26.75% in November last year, and Chrome is the third most popular browser with a 17.3% share, up from 10.89% last year. Net Applications, another research firm, published similar results on Thursday.

MOZILLA FIREFOX 8 OFFICIALLY RELEASING TOMORROW, GET IT TODAY

Mozilla has November 8th pencilled in as the day the stable version of Firefox 8 will become available to the general public. However, you can download it right now if you so wish with a few clicks of your mouse.

Although Mozilla is nice enough to tell us all when the next update to its browser is arriving, a less well-known fact is that they make that same stable release available a couple of days early via FTP. That way certain people in the know can get it early e.g. anyone who has to support users downloading the new browser and wants to check its stability or security. So, if you can’t wait another day then you need to visit Mozilla’s FTP site and select the right file to download.

While Firefox 7 promised to be noticeably faster while using up to 50% less memory, Firefox 8′s improvements focus on other areas.

Add-on installations get a new compatibility assistant, meaning when the new version of Firefox is installed you have to allow or disallow all the add-ons you use. Once the new browser is installed and loaded you’ll also notice a Twitter search engine built-in, more accessible history details, and an option to only load tabs on selection. That last one should speed up Firefox loading and relates specifically to users who have set Firefox to show their windows and tabs from a previous session.

Firefox users will be prompted to update to Firefox 8 tomorrow, and for most people the best thing to do is just wait for that to happen.

FIREFOX 7 RELEASED FOR WINDOWS AND MAC

Mozilla on Tuesday pushed out a new version of its popular Firefox web browser for Windows and Mac computers. Mozilla released Firefox 6 on August 16th, just over one month ago, and version 7 is already upon us, reaffirming Mozilla’s commitment to the world’s second most popular web browser. Firefox 7 brings with it a host of changes, the most notable of which is perhaps “drastically improved memory handling” and other speed related improvements. As of August, Net Applications shows Firefox’s global browser share as 22.57%, behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (55.31%) and ahead of Chrome (15.51%) Safari (4.64%) and the Opera browser (1.68%). Users can wait for the browser to self update or they can go grab the release here.

FIREFOX 6 NOW OFFICIALLY AVAILABLE

You may have caught wind of one sly fox unofficially popping up over the weekend. Well, as we reported, that fox, specifically Firefox 6, is now officially ready for your downloading pleasure. If you're a diehard Mozilla fan, or just an armchair browser expert, you're probably already hip to the new Firefox rapid refresh cycle that's seen three releases in the past five months.

If your browser has not updated, or to see which version you are using, click the Firefox button in the upper right and select Help and About Firefox.

FIREFOX 6 OFFICIALLY RELEASING ON TUESDAY AUGUST 16, AVAILABLE NOW

In typical Mozilla fashion, a complete build of Firefox 6 is now unofficially available for your downloading pleasure, three days ahead of schedule. If you're looking for a major facelift to the desktop edition, you won't find one here -- most of the new features aren't cosmetic. Perhaps most visibly, you'll find the domain name of the page you're parked on highlighted in the address bar. On the Android side, version 6 makes much bigger promises, like a "fresh visual style in Chrome Gingerbread," enhanced image scaling, and, perhaps most importantly, it's "faster and uses less memory." We've downloaded the desktop version of the browser ourselves, and we've found the release quite snappy. If you're not afraid of a little pre-release downloading, you can catch the (desktop) fox at the source links below.

Windows
Mac
Linux

GOOGLE CHROME OVERTAKES FIREFOX AS UK'S #2 BROWSER

Google's Chrome is Britain's second most popular browser, a sign of the internet giant's increasing grip on the UK search market.

Three years after launch, Chrome last month captured 22% of UK users and marginally overtook Mozilla's Firefox browser, according to the web metrics firm Statcounter. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is losing market share to Chrome but remains the most popular browser for UK users with 45% – although it has a head start by being pre-installed on almost all computers sold in Britain. Apple's Safari is UK number four, with a 9% share.

FIREFOX 5 PEEKS OUT, LAUNCHING JUNE 21

Mozilla promised a faster refresh cycle for its wily web browser, following the release of Firefox 4, and it's made good on that promise. We got word this morning that the final version of Firefox 5 is now available for download on Mozilla's ftp server, just 12 weeks after the last re-up. The latest incarnation brings with it support for CSS animation and a more easily accessible do-not-track setting -- now available at the top of the privacy pane -- but won't see much in the way of GUI enhancements. Of course, if you want to play it safe, and avoid any last-minute tweaks, you can always hold off until version 5 gets official on Tuesday June 21st.

MOZILLA TAKES ON DHS OVER MAFIAAFIRE PLUG-IN

No judge has ever declared a Firefox plug-in called MafiaaFire Redirector to be illegal. But that didn't stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from trying to censor it from the Web.
The Mozilla Foundation says DHS requested the removal of MafiaaFire, which describes itself as a utility that "automatically redirects you to the correct alternate site" if the main domain has been seized by the U.S. government.

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's general counsel, stated today that the request from DHS was made over the phone. Anderson replied in writing, posing a list of questions in an April 19 e-mail, including this important one: "Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on?"
Anderson says DHS hasn't replied, and the plug-in has not been removed.

A DHS spokesman told CNET this afternoon that "ICE's Homeland Security Investigations does not comment publicly on our interaction with Internet intermediaries on intellectual property theft enforcement issues." ICE stands for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

The reason DHS doesn't like the MafiaaFire plugin is obvious: It makes the government's tactic of seizing domain names less useful. FirstRow.net, Atdhe.net, and Torrent-Finder.com are among the domains seized on grounds that they're allegedly infringing copyrights of U.S. companies.
One response to a domain name seizure is, simply, to move to a new one, preferably in a top-level domain that can't be easily reached by DHS and the U.S. judicial system. That's what the popular sports video-streaming Web site, Atdhe.net, did after its domain went offline. It's now at Atdhenet.tv (and, just in case, Atdhe.me as well).

MafiaaFire helps to make this process a little easier by redirecting Firefox automatically to the replacement Web site. Its unflattering name arose out of a protest against the RIAA and MPAA--aka "the Music and Film Industry Association of America"--and the "mad-with-power ICE."
If a government official applies pressure on a private company to delete a file or document, that can raise constitutional and free speech issues. In the 1963 case known as Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a commission's extra-judicial notification that some books or magazines were objectionable was an illegal "system of informal censorship."

"Whether the add-on is unlawful, or whether any speech is unlawful, is for the courts to determine, not for DHS to determine," says Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "Nobody from DHS should be going around trying to get speech removed from the Internet before a court decides."

MOZILLA LAUNCHING FIREFOX 5 JUNE 21

According to an update at the Mozilla releases page, Firefox 5 looks like it’s headed for a release on June 21, less than two months away. We haven’t heard anything about what new features the next version of Firefox will have, but when Mozilla said that Firefox 4 would be the last time they waited months between major releases, they meant it.

Mozilla is taking the same approach that Google is taking with Chrome; faster updates, more releases, and no waiting to bundle major features together into a bigger update that takes longer to assemble. It’s no surprised that they want to make sure the next version of Firefox is right on the heels of the release of Firefox 4.

To contrast, Google steadily and regularly releases updates for Chrome, silently downloading them and installing them in the background when a user closes and then re-opens the app. To date, each major revision of Firefox has been lauded with a laundry list of features and highlighted release dates. Mozilla developers are hoping to keep up with its browser competitors by slipstreaming bug fixes and minor updates more regularly, and introduce major updates as they’re available instead of waiting.

To help with the testing process, Mozilla devs have introduced dev and pre-release channels of Firefox in addition to the stable release build that most people have running. The dev channel will be the most unstable, with new changes and features added and removed on almost a daily basis, much like the current nightly builds. The pre-release channel, called Aurora, will include features and bug fixes that developers plan to include in the stable build, but want to test with a broad audience.

All of that aside, we still don’t know what Firefox 5′s features will be. Mozilla has said they want at least four major releases of Firefox in 2011, but the product roadmap doesn’t list major features aside from things like “anything that improves responsiveness and is ready” and “anything that improves stability and is ready,” among others.

MOZILLA REVEALS PLUG-INS THAT SLOW DOWN FIREFOX

Mozilla has put a great deal of time and effort working speed improvements into the latest version of its Firefox browser but sometimes all that hard work is for naught due to slow add-ons from third-party developers. In an effort to raise awareness and to push developers to optimize their plugins, perhaps, Mozilla has published a list of the add-ons that slow down Firefox the most. Among the worst offenders are FoxLingo, AniWeather, FoxyTunes and Xmarks Sync. In a bit of irony, an add-on called “FastestFox” that is supposed to speed up browsing by simplifying repetitive tasks is No.8 on Mozilla’s list. If you’ve been experiencing some slowness in Firefox and are wondering which add-ons might be the culprit, click here for Mozilla’s complete list.

FIREFOX 4 DOWNLOADED OVER 6 MILLION TIMES IN 24 HOURS

Mozilla announced on Tuesday that the final release version of its Firefox 4 Web browser was available for download. Within its first 24 hours of availability, the browser was downloaded over 6 million times. Microsoft’s latest browser release, Internet Explorer 9, was downloaded 2.35 million times in its first 24 hours of availability.

Version 4 of the popular Firefox Web browser features a variety of enhancements including a redesigned UI, improved tab management and faster performance. Mozilla’s Firefox browser is the second most popular browser in the world according to market share tracker Net Applications. Firefox held a 21.74% global browser share in February, behind Internet Explorer’s 56.77% and ahead of No. 3 browser Chrome, which has grown to 10.93% in a very short period of time. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have seen their shares decrease over the past year, while Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari browser have gained popularity.

FIREFOX 4 LAUNCHED TODAY

Mozilla has today officially launched the final version of Firefox 4 and with it brought some of the biggest changes to the Firefox web browser for quite some time.

Lets start with the new interface which has been completely redesigned to get out of your way. In reality that means more screen real estate for web pages, and more functionality hidden away behind buttons.

Tabs now appear by default above the address bar and therefore take up less space as they sit where the window bar used to be. To the left of your tabs is a Firefox button which hides many of the links and menus you’d find on the typical menu bar, which is also missing from the default interface. On the far right is a small Bookmarks button giving access to the usual list of links, and above that is a Home button.The layout can be changed to make it more like Firefox 3.x though, but in general this layout does seem to be a progression we as users should embrace as it frees up the screen.

One of the major improvements Firefox 4 introduces is something called Tab Groups (formerly Tab Candy and also referred to as Panorama). This is going to please anyone who gets frustrated managing lots of tabs all the time, and something we have previewed before. Basically, it allows you to assign each tab a group, then Firefox will only display the tabs in an active group on the tab bar (think of it like having multiple desktop views, but within your browser). If you want to see tabs in another group you simply click the Tab Group icon which brings up the groups, and select the tab you want. You can also right-click a tab and move it to a group. Once you’ve used this organization feature a few times you’ll wonder how you coped without it.

While you’re exploring this new found tab paradise you may also notice web pages rendering faster. That’s the new JavaScript engine which is touted as being up to 6x faster than that used in Firefox 3.x. Staying with performance features there’s also WebGL support for 3D on the web, and hardware acceleration taking advantage of OpenGL, Direct2D and Direct3D on your machine’s GPU. There’s also crash protection in case a plug-in like Flash dies so as to not crash the whole browser.

Mozilla has also taken on board the fact we don’t just use one point of access for the web anymore. You may have a main PC, netbook, smartphone, and tablet. The Sync features allows the same Firefox experience to be accessed across multiple devices. So you get all your bookmarks, passwords, history, and even open tabs automatically fed to each device.

There’s also a bunch of new security and personalization features to help make the upgrade to Firefox 4 compelling.

Firefox 4 is available now as a 12MB download which will act as both a new install or an upgrade. I can confirm that all your bookmarks and preferences seem to be carried over to the new browser, but it’s worth doing a backup of your bookmarks anyway before doing the upgrade.

MOZILLA'S FIREFOX 4 TO RELEASE ON MARCH 22ND

Mozilla has confirmed that the newest version of their Firefox browser, 4.0, will launch on March 22nd. Firefox 4 has had one of the longest development cycles out of all the Firefox versions, having gone through 12 betas before reaching the release candidate version last week and now readying for the stable release next week.

“Firefox 4 RC1 has received a very warm welcome; it’s time to make a decision to ship,” said Mozilla’s Damon Sicore. “As of now, there are no known issues that would stop us from shipping RC1 as final.

Mozilla has stated earlier that version 4 would be the last long evolution update and they would be going to smaller updates that take shorter development and testing times moving forward. This is being done to help shore up the encroachment on Firefox's market share by Google's Chrome browser which previously had a much shorter update cycle.

MOZILLA'S 2011 ROADMAP TOO AMBITIOUS?

Mozilla has published an updated roadmap in which it lays out its plans for 2011. The organization hopes to significantly shorten its release cycle and deliver a total of four major releases during 2011, cranking the browser up to version 7 by the end of the year.

Some of Mozilla's key technical priorities include improving responsiveness, integrating social sharing, refining the user interface, supporting 64-bit Windows and Android tablet form factors, finally delivering process isolation for tabs, and supporting emerging standards like CSS 3D transforms and WebSockets. In terms of features, Mozilla's 2011 roadmap is compelling and achievable. There is room for skepticism, however, about the organization's new release management strategy. Instead of aiming to roll all of this functionality out in a major release next year, Mozilla intends to push it out to users incrementally, using a series of three releases after the upcoming launch of Firefox 4.

The ambitious plan will require Mozilla to completely reinvent its development, testing, and release management practices. The organization currently averages one significant release a year and typically spends months on beta testing and quality assurance before officially issuing a new stable version. Mozilla will face major technical and operational challenges as it attempts to transition to shorter release cycles.

MOZILLA OFFERS DO-NOT-TRACK TOOL

According to CNet, Mozilla, acting on a U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposal, has offered a detailed mechanism by which Firefox and other Web browsers could prevent Web pages from tracking people's online behavior for advertising purposes.
With Mozilla's do-not-track technology, network data packets from the browser would signal to a Web site that a person doesn't wished to be tracked. Then comes the tricky part: getting Web site operators to cooperate.
Alex Fowler, Mozilla's global privacy and public policy leader, said that with the mechanism, the browser would alert a Web site during basic communications that use the Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). He also acknowledged that getting Web sites to cooperate is a crucial difficulty in getting the system to work:

As the first of many steps, we are proposing a feature that allows users to set a browser preference that will broadcast their desire to opt-out of third party, advertising-based tracking by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header with every click or page view in Firefox. When the feature is enabled and users turn it on, Web sites will be told by Firefox that a user would like to opt-out of OBA [online behavioral advertising]. We believe the header-based approach has the potential to be better for the Web in the long run because it is a clearer and more universal opt-out mechanism than cookies or blacklists...
The advantages to the header technique are that it is less complex and simple to locate and use, it is more persistent than cookie-based solutions, and it doesn't rely on user's finding and loading lists of ad networks and advertisers to work...
The challenge with adding this to the header is that it requires both browsers and sites to implement it to be fully effective. Mozilla recognizes the chicken and egg problem and we are taking the step of proposing that this feature be considered for upcoming releases of Firefox.

Mozilla doesn't appear to be acting alone. Today, "Google is expected to announced a privacy tool called 'Keep My Opt-Outs' that enables users to permanently opt out of ad -targeting from dozens of companies," The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing an unnamed source.

MOZILLA BLOCKS SKYPE TOOLBAR BY DEFAULT DUE TO CRASHING

Mozilla has added the Skype toolbar to the blocklist it uses to block add-ons by default. The Skype toolbar gets automatically installed when the user installs or updates the main Skype application.

The issue with the Skype Toolbar for Mozilla is the fact it is creating two rather large problems in the Firefox browser. The first is that it makes Firefox crash a lot as the Mozilla blog entry about the toolbar explains:

The current shipping version of the Skype Toolbar is one of the top crashers of Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13, and was involved in almost 40,000 crashes of Firefox last week.

The second problem is that is causes a major performance hit for the browser:

The methods it uses to detect and re-render phone numbers can make DOM manipulation up to 300 times slower, which drastically affects the page rendering times of a large percentage of web content served today (plain English: to the user, it appears that Firefox is slow loading web pages).

Mozilla does not want users to experience slow loading web pages and have a browser that crashes unexpectedly. So it has been decided the Skype Toolbar is being blocked by default for the time being.

Mozilla has made this a "soft" block, so users can still install the toolbar by overriding the block. Mozilla and Skype are talking to work out a resolution to the issues.

FIREFOX TAKES LEAD OVER INTERNET EXPLORER

Internet Explorer has been seeing some pressure in the form of incremental gains in market share from competing browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Chrome for some time. In September, Internet Explorer’s global market share had degraded below 50% with particular losses being experienced in the European market as demonstrated by a 6% drop compared to the same period in 2009. In December, it looks like Firefox was able to take advantage of IE’s vulnerability to supplant the browser in the European market for the first time.

StatCounter, the free website analytics company, reported that Firefox took the number one spot with 38.11% of the European market compared to IE’s 37.52%. Internet Explorer experienced nearly a 3% drop from September which allowed Firefox to edge up ahead of the previously dominant browser. Interestingly enough, Firefox can thank Google’s Chrome according to Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter’s CEO, who says:

This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share.

When you look at the gains of Chrome in Europe the numbers speak for themselves. As of December, Chrome had 14.58% market share in Europe compared to its previous market share during the same time last year of only 5.06%. Don’t expect Microsoft to put up a white flag anytime soon, though. When you look at North America it is clear that Internet Explorer maintains a dominant lead over other browsers with 48.92% market share compared to Firefox (26.7%) and Chrome (12.82%). If IE’s market share continues to erode in North America, Microsoft’s browser may soon find itself fighting a bloodier browser war on the home front as well.

FIREFOX AVAILABLE FOR ANDROID AND MAEMO DEVICES

If you are not satisfied with your current browser on your Android or Maemo mobile device and Opera and the other browsers aren't to your liking, you can download the latest beta of Firefox Mobile.  Any device running Android 2.x or the Nokia N900 can download Mozilla's latest browser.  The list of features include:

• Pinch-to-zoom (Android), double-tap, or use the volume rocker (Nokia N900) to zoom in and out
• Tabbed browsing in thumbnail view lets you easily see and open the site you want
• Location-Aware Browsing gives you content and info relevant to your location
• Find in Page in the Site Menu lets you quickly find text on the webpage
• Share Page in the Site Menu lets you send content to email, Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader
• Forget Password in the Site Menu tells a website you no longer trust to forget your private data
• Add Search Engine in the Site Menu lets you quickly add a new search engine to your Awesome Screen
• Context Menu lets you Open in New Tab and Share by long tapping and holding a link
• Smart Tapping lets you tap on links, widgets and other Web content with accuracy
• Password Manager lets you choose to remember site password to avoid typing

[BGR]