So this is reasonably exciting. Some super secret source told PlayStation Insider that Sony has talked to Mozilla about porting Firefox to the PS3. Note the wording of that sentence: talks about porting Firefox. Needless to say, if this is even true, then we’re at a very early stage of development.

It’s no secret that the PS3 Web browser isn’t the best one out there, and porting Firefox would give Sony another bullet point to put on a press release: “Runs Firefox (Does your Xbox 360? Thought not.)” I’m not sure how often people use their PS3 Web browser, so I don’t know if this will end up being a huge deal from a users’ standpoint, but yeah, I just see it as something Sony can have over its competitors.

I seem to recall the Xbox “scene” trying to port over Mozilla and/or Firefox to the Xbox1 back in the day, but the people were like, “The code base is a giant mess, it’d take many, many hours to get it to run on the Xbox.”

Of course, people have had the ability to run Firefox on the PS3 for some time—provided you install Linux on the system, which you can’t do anymore.

Come back with me to the turn of the century, circa 1996. Your humble narrator was working for campus police at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, creating FileMaker databases for their police reports. It wasn’t uncommon then to see DOS machines sitting beside Windows 95 machines and the web was a primitive and strange thing. There were only two browsers of note, Netscape and Internet Explorer, and firing either up was neither particularly comfortable or interesting. But, hidden deep behind Netscape’s bland carapace, was Mozilla. When you typed “about:mozilla” in the Netscape address bar, for example, you got:

Pretty badass stuff, especially when most websites were dedicated to kittens and burgeoning corporate identity. I was hooked instantly. This was the browser for me and it slowly became the browser for everyone with self-respect and a brain.

Fast forward to 2004: Mozilla and Netscape were on the rocks and it looked like the browser wars had been won. IE was the victor. In order to combat bloat and “feature creep,” however, a ragtag team of coders led by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross built something they called “Phoenix,” then “Firebird,” then, on November 9, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was born. This turned into the Mozilla suite – Firefox and Thunderbird – were born.

On this, the fifth anniversary of that momentous occasion, let’s all tip out a little Jolt for Netscape and toast to the future of Firefox, the best browser in the world. Best of all, the book of Mozilla is still being written and any time you type ‘about:mozilla’ into Firefox you get a red screen and a potent reminder of the early days of the Internet.

Happy birthday, Firefox.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 in June of 2008, but there’s still a few of you out there who haven’t upgraded, despite, if nothing else, the security improvements. So what gives? Mozilla asked the abstainers, essentially, “Why haven’t you upgraded?” The answer, of course, has to do with Internet pornography. Doesn’t it always?

One of the shiny, new features of Firefox 3.0 (we’re now at Firefox 3.5.2, by the way) was the AwesomeBar, the nickname applied to the improved address bar. In older versions of Firefox, the address bar would only store addresses that you visited and/or typed in. So, if you always visit marca.com, whenever you typed “m” “marca.com” would pop up. And that’s the way these people liked it.

The problem with the AwesomeBar is that, not only does it search addresses you’ve typed/visited, but it also searches your bookmarks. Let’s say you have “hotgirlsdoinghotthings.com” bookmarked way in there, several layers below the fold, as it were. This becomes a problem if you share a computer with, say, your wife, and you don’t want her to see your crazy Web sites you’ve bookmarked whenever she types in the letter “h.”

Says a Mozilla designer:

When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed. In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you.

So, tsk-tsk, people are, to use a rubbish cliché, biting their nose to spite their face, denying themselves the wonders of Firefox 3.0 because they’re being all secretive. Oh, dear.

Where were you when Firefox passed 1 billion downloads? It happened sometime yesterday, some five years after its first release, in 2004.

It’s been a heck of a ride, I guess. Once named Phoenix, Firefox now has something like 31 percent of the Web browsers market. Internet Explorer—now with a free Nickelback song!—still has 60 percent of the market. Other browsers, including Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, and Opera, come in at less than 5 percent.

As to the question, where were you when Firefox hit 1 billion downloads? I was probably on the couch, watching Real Madrid get smashed by Juventus.

And this is what Firefox 4.0 (for Windows) will supposedly look like. If you like this look, may I recommend the Chromifox Add-on? It sort of gives you the look and feel of Chrome, but with good ol’ Firefox under the hood.

• Simply open a new tab (I’ll wait) —
• Put “about:config” in the address bar, no quotes. It’ll ask you if you’re sure. Yes, you are. You are okay.
• Ready? Okay, now type “twist” into the search box.
• Double-click on the twist right, and put “Browser:NextTab” into the box, without the quotes.
• Theeen, in twist left, put “Browser:PrevTab” without the quotes.
• You’re done! Now, I found the gesture (it applies immediately, try putting one finger down and rotating another around it) to be a bit slow to respond, so I changed that other setting, the threshold one, from its default (25) to 10. You can mess around and figure out what’s best for you.

See, tweaking is easy! If you’re afraid you’ve ruined something, just right-click (or “context menu click”) on any box you’ve modified and hit reset.

Curiosity piqued? Type “gesture” into the search box and try modifying a few of those settings. I don’t particularly like the twist, so I’m about to set tab switching to three-fingered swipes. Aren’t we just having so much fun?

To clarify: This only works if you have a multi-touch trackpad; if you’ve never used two fingers on your trackpad at once to scroll or anything, you probably don’t have one. Any Mac laptop from the last four years has at least two-finger gestures, so twisting should work.

[thanks to Rafael for the tip and original instructions]

Will Google Chrome signal the end of Firefox’s “geek” domination? That is, will Chrome one day replace Firefox as the computer savvy user’s browser of choice? Maybe, friends. Maybe. Reasons? Chrome is faster, it’s newer (who doesn’t love a shiny, new toy?) and it’s architecturally better—a YouTube tab crash doesn’t bring down the entire browser.

Such is the thesis put forward by author Keir Thomas. Thomas, whose books include Ubunutu Pocket Guide and Reference, seems to think that Firefox has “lost the plot,” and that Mozilla’s focus on whiz-bang features at the expense of core competency have greatly hurt the browser’s reputation. At the same time, Chrome has made headway with the same power users who originally made Firefox popular all those years ago. (Anyone else remember using Firefox when it was called Phoenix? Those were the days, I tell ya!) And if enough of these users go full-Chrome, to paraphrase the movie Tropic Thunder, Firefox would have lost its most ardent supporters.

But the extensions! Yes, we know. Many Firefox users cling to the browser because of this or that extension, and if Chrome can’t replicate Extension_Function, then they won’t be switching. Fair enough, sirs, that’s your prerogative, but are there enough of you guys to prevent non-extension users from switching? I, for one, have regularly used a grand total of one extension, and that was Gina Trapani’s Better Gmail. But considering I use Mail.app most of the time, it won’t really be missed. Besides, WebKit is my browser of choice nowadays; I’m extension-free, and loving it.

I don’t know, just something to think about. Should Chrome mature into a proper browser, and Firefox continue to flounder (if that’s even the right word to use), we may well be seeing more and more “power users” switch over, who will then tell their less savvy friends, who will then tell their friends, etc.

Is anyone else seeing a lot of crashes from Firefox recently? It may have been after I installed CS4 for OS X and it seems that Flash is destroying things. But best of all, the crazy Crash Detector keeps crashing, which is something I’ve only seen in Windows before this. Anyone else see this?

Next week should mark the alpha release of Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile web browser. Interestingly, it’ll first be available on the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, according to PC Advisor. The alpha will be available for Windows Mobile devices over the next few months, as well. Mozilla’s interested in testing out the touchscreen interface and the plugin development, so it’s a good move to release it for the N810 first as the Nokia Internet Tablet series has a pretty active developer community.

The beta version of Firefox Mobile will likely not be released until 2009. The browser is built on the same engine (Gecko) as the full-fledged Firefox and will be able to handle JavaScript and AJAX. Might not be a bad idea to work support for Flash Video, too.

Dare I say it, but I think my interest in the Bold is beginning to wane. BGR demos both IE and FF emulators that both crash, but that OS sure does it look pretty. Of course, I can’t pass judgment on something I haven’t seen in person, yet. Any BlackBerry fans being swayed either way by this video?

Started in October 2007, Mozilla’s mobile FireFox project, code named Fennec, hopes to deliver what Safari and the iPhone did for mobile Web browsing, but in an open source format.

VP of mobile for Mozilla Jay Sullivan, told NetworkWorld: “With the iPhone, people have a sense that they can or should be able to browse the full Web. We’re in that camp: We’re going for the full Web.”

But even more than camping with Apple, mobile FireFox hopes to up the ante when its comes to usability and performance, while keeping it open for developers.

Sounds good to me.

First, this incident was NOT a zero day attack, as was originally reported. The exploit was discovered by a group called “The Zero Day Initiative” but was not actually a zero day exploit. According to the Mozilla Security Blog, the details of the problem will be kept private but it’s not a public exploit and “the risk to users is minimal.”

Second, we reported the exploit as a Firefox 3 issue, but the exploit affects Firefox versions 2.x and 3.0, so it’s not strictly a Firefox 3 issue.

We sourced this CNET article, which does contain accurate information. We apologize for any confusion that our original post may have caused.

There was more than 8 million downloads of Firefox 3.0 during a 24-hour period yesterday, making “Download Day” an unqualified success. As I type this, the total number of downloads is 8,846,784.

The Mozilla team is currently talking to the Guinness World Record officials about to what degree Firefox set a record. Hickey says the unofficial record for downloads in a 24-hour period is 5 million (”I read it somewhere yesterday,” he says), and I’m inclined to believe him.

There’s a fun map on the Firefox site showing country-by-country downloads. The highest number is the U.S. with (so far) 2.69 million downloads. The lowest? Liberia has four downloads so far. Western Sahara, which may or may not be an officially recognized country, has zero downloads. But my guess is that the people there have more pressing things on their mind than the Awesome Bar.

How’s the transition from 2.0 to 3.0 been for y’all? I don’t use too many extensions (only AdBlock and Better Gmail), so everything has been fine on my end.

via Bits New York Times Blog

Firefox 3 [Mozilla.com]

Today’s the big day. You’ll be able to download Mozilla’s latest web browser at 1PM EDT, 10AM PDT. If you’re the type that likes to open presents early, you can already find direct links to the final browser floating about the web. Me, I like to wait.

Hit this link when it’s go-time: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Photo by Labnol.org

Next Tuesday is Firefox 3 Day, according to Mozilla’s developer news web site. The most recent release candidate was made available on June 5th yesterday, so that’s a pretty quick turnaround – a sign to me that the browser’s definitely stable. I’ve spoken to a number of people who have been using the various Firefox 3 betas and release candidates without very many problems at all. I’m running RC2 as well.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

Nice work, ladies and gentlemen. Looking forward to the final version.

Head on over to Mozilla.com to grab the latest release of the almost-finished Firefox 3 if you’ve been keeping up with the various betas and release candidates. The second release candidate should probably be the last one before the browser makes the leap to the final version and word on the street is that this latest iteration is definitely stable enough to use full-time.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 appears to be mostly bug fixes and behind-the-scenes updates. If you’re running and earlier version of Firefox 3, you should be able to update the browser through the Help menu. If not, you can download it directly here.

And now’s a good time to get tweaking: you’ve got your Firefox 3 release candidate all downloaded, Things are a little different, you’re not sure what settings to adjust, and you don’t know which extensions are the definite must-haves. Don’t worry, child. Daddy will explain how to make your browser a fearsome beast.

Now, these tweaks apply to Firefox 3, RC1. If you haven’t upgraded yet, do so now. I’ll wait. They’re going to have another release candidate after this one, but most if not all of these tips should work in the final 3.0 release.

Under the hood
Okay, let’s get some basic stuff out of the way. There are a few settings you’ll want to change in the “hidden settings” everyone knows about. Put “about:config” in the address bar and go there. It might warn you off, but are you going to let some program tell you what to do? Once you’re there, make it look like mine by putting “network.http” in the filter box and changing the settings

I’ve set pipelining to true, increased max-connections to 45, persistent to 8, and pipelining requests to 8. These aren’t revolutionary or aggressive settings, but power users usually have a decent connection and will want to boost things a little bit by increasing the number and duration of simultaneous connections to a server. I don’t mess around with too many other settings because at this point I think Mozilla has got it mostly figured out. They just err on the side of caution with these values.

Sexy and compact, kind of like your mom

Now, let’s look at the UI. First, take a look at how my browser looks. Beautiful, isn’t it? We’ll talk extensions and homepage later. Screen real estate is at a premium and I’ve eliminated all toolbars but the tabs. You can do this by simply dragging all your stuff up onto the menu bar in View > Toolbars > Customize. It’s optional, and really only a good idea if you have a nice, wide window, but who couldn’t use another 20 pixels of space in their browser? After all, you don’t need that extra junk. It’s your browser after all, throw away everything you don’t want!

Home, sweet home
Now, the home page. Some of you love the iGoogle, some stick with plain ol’ Google, or the default home page, or even a blank page (about:blank) — as I once did for a long time. Well, an extension came out for Firefox 2 which changed everything for me, and although My Portal is no longer compatible with Firefox, its legacy lives on. What it did was just take your bookmarks and put them in the form you see above. I saved the html file along with all the info and favicons, and have ported it over to my new FF3 digs. New bookmarks do NOT add into it now, so this is just my core links. I add stuff manually by editing the html.

I consider my start page indispensible now. If you want to have something like it, here’s what you do:

1. Install Firefox 2 and the My Portal extension
2. Import your bookmarks and restart Firefox
3. Save the My Portal page somewhere on your computer
4. Point to that file as your homepage
5. Party

Now you’ve got your homepage all set up. What about all those extensions? What works, what doesn’t? What’s awesome, what’s unnecessary? Well maybe if you quit asking questions for a second, I’d tell you! Hush now.

Go go gadget extensions
I actually don’t think it’s necessary to go down the list of what’s good, since you probably already know most of them by now. Getting most of the stuff from the Popular list at Mozilla will certainly set you up. Download Statusbar is excellent, and Better GMail is great if your primary address is a Google one, like me. Don’t forget Adblock, and be sure to tell it to replace flash objects with placeholders! Save yourself a lot of trouble.

Two things not there which you’ll need are GoogleBar Lite (to keep or until Google Toolbar is available for FF3) and FireGestures. The latter is totally integrated with my life now.

Much like Quicksilver and Launchy make amazing things possible with a few keystrokes, FireGestures (and All-in-One Gestures before it) lets a couple basic mouse movements translate into a range of actions. I have gestures set up for incrementing urls, closing and opening tabs, navigating pages, saving links and images, and more. I rarely have to use the context menu because all my most-done actions have a simple, intuitive, customizable gesture associated with them. Download it, try it for a few days, and it’ll change the way you surf.

Some other random things? Let me see. Don’t forget about finding text with /, then hitting F3 to go to the next instance. Going to the filetype handler lets you customize what to do with any kind of file, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally opening a pdf when you want to download it and that sort of thing. Ah, yes, and the panic button. Just finished downloading that donkey porn and the spouse busts in? Ctrl-Shift-Delete and hit enter. Browsing history, downloads, search history, all eliminated just like that. Smart, eh?

Final word
Remember: Customization is the name of the game now. Don’t feel you have to use the default skin, the default layout, the default homepage. Firefox is the swiss army knife of your computing environment, and you can choose whether you want this or this. There are more tweaks to be found, and if you have any settings, extensions, or general tips for Firefox, let us know below.

Ah, springtime; when a man’s fancy turns to newer, younger, more nimble versions of popular web browsers. Take Firefox 3, for example. It’ll be here “sometime in June,” Mozilla’s VP of engineering, Mike Schroepfer told CNET.

Apparently everything’s running relatively smoothly…

“We’re in a phase where we’re letting add-ons get a chance to update,” Schroepfer said. “We like to have RCs (release candidates) out for a while to gather feedback.”

More release candidates are possible, he said. With Firefox 2, there were three. “We’re in better shape this time, but there’s no reason to rush this,” he said.

Schroepfer also commented that the final version of Firefox 3 will be “2 to 3 times faster than the previous version and nearly 10 times faster than IE 7.”