Firefox 3 is now in the release candidate stage, with RC1 now available to download. The release notes can be found over at Mozilla, but the biggest new feature over FF2 (aside from the new default UI theme) is the address bar. It’s no longer simply an “address bar,” but has be re-christened the location bar. It searches URLs (including page titles) and bookmarks and “remembers” your most visited sites. So whenever I type “e” Wikipedia is the first site to pop up (for en.wikipedia.org). It absolutely will take getting used to, and I’ve read here and there that people hate it to no end, but I’ve grown to tolerate it.

If no other significant bugs are found, RC1 will become the final version, which is scheduled for a June release.

Behold! The Firefox logo as seen in variable star V838 Monocerotis of the constellation Monoceros. I had Monocerotis one summer and it was NOT fun. I still get residual rashes from time to time and I can feel it in my joints when it’s about to rain.

via Newlaunches.com

Dude, seriously: don’t you wish browser wars were this cool?

Daring Fireball wrote a nice comparison between FF3 and S3, finding Safari to be the better contender. He makes a few good points (I like FF3 better than Safari, but it might just be for ephemeral, weenie reasons like not wanting to use something new) but this sticks out:

Tabs — Firefox 3 does let you drag to reorder tabs within a window, and drag tabs between windows, but it doesn’t let you drag a tab out of a window to create a new window with just that tab. Safari 3 does. Picky-picky, I know, but I use this feature in Safari every day to group related tabs together in their own window.

The rest of his comments are compelling as well: better key shortcuts, built-in dictionary, inline PDF viewing (all for Safari) and a cool robot icon for FF. What would you pick?

Mozilla just released Firefox beta 5, the final beta beforr the browser’s expected June release date. There’s a new “thanks for helping test out Firefox” splash screen (pictued above). That weird Mac OS X jiff bug appears to have been fixed, too.

As always, full release notes can be found on the Firefox Web site.

Click to see full-sized image.

Not sure what purpose it serves, but Firefox 3 on OS X changes the names of jpg files to jfif, which is the umbrella filetype for JPEG encoded files. As a blogger and collector of pornography involving goats and fish, I find this very problematic. You can, however, create an Automator task to fix your JFIF files on the fly. I’ve attached it to a downloads folder and it seems to work fairly well.

1. Open Automator and choose Custom.

2. Type “rename” into the search box.

3. Drag “Rename Finder Items” into the grey area to the right. Choose “Don’t Add” to the prompt that appears.

4. Change the first drop down box to “Replace Text”.

5. In the Find box type in “.jfif” and in the Replace box type in “.jpg”. Make sure the Ignore Case box is checked.

6. Click on the File menu and choose Save as Plug-in… Type in “JFIF to JPEG” and make sure the Finder option is chosen in the drop down box.

Now whenever you need to change a bunch of images to .jpeg, just select them in the Finder, right click, choose “More”, choose “Automator”, and click on “JFIF to JPEG.”

I have it set as a folder action, but you can also add it to your right click menu. Either way works.

How to Fix the JFIF Bug in Firefox 3 Beta [Wired]

Firefox 3 won’t be out of beta until the end of June but Mozilla told Reuters yesterday that anyone can go ahead and download the most recent version and run it without worrying too much. It’s now stable enough for everyone, not just developers.

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I am really, really looking forward to Firefox 3.

I love Firefox when it’s behaving, but mine has a tendency to suddenly lose interest in displaying a given page’s images, or finding its CSS. There are many memory leaks in Firefox 2 and 3 is said to plug most of them. Great!

The beta for Firefox 3 just hit version 4, and it’s sounding like its shaping up to be a great browser. Page zooming, new download manager, and stability?

Yes, please.

Firefox 3 Reaches Beta 4 [Trusted Reviews]

Vladimir, one of the coders working on Firefox 3, was having some trouble overcoming a few performance issues in the builds. He did a little investigation, resulting in the chart above and others, and found that Firefox’s display rate appeared to be being throttled by the OS for no particular reason. The problem didn’t affect Safari, and it wasn’t until he dug deep into Webkit’s coding crevasses that he found the solution: a set of special instructions and shortcuts so poorly documented that they may as well be secret. He worked some in (just a few lines) and Firefox exploded out of the gate.

Vlad doesn’t think this code was hidden maliciously, but it seems at least to be a little negligent on Apple’s part to bury these so deep. Of course, I’m not a coder and I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Finding the OSX Turbo Button

Call me crazy, but I don’t like the stylus. Never have, never will, not sure why. So it’s with great fanfare that I patiently await Firefox Mobile, a mobile browser with the following four user interface goals; 1-2 taps for most frequent activities, finger taps (no stylus required), familiar to desktop users, and intuitive.

An intuitive mobile browser? Hallelujah. It’s about time (although I do like Opera Mobile). The MozillaWiki UI page has been updated with some screenshots and notes. Click through for more details.

Mobile/UI/Designs/TouchScreen [MozillaWiki] via bit-tech.net

Mozilla announced last night the availability of Firefox 3 Beta 2, which should be setting your auto-update notifications buzzing right now. The new version includes:

Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.

Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.

Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.

Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

It’s still consuming memory like a whore, but I’ll be damned if the new drop down navigation menu doesn’t look pretty. Anyway, get it while it’s hot.

Look, a chart! A chart with numbers on it!

There’s a division of Microsoft known as the "Trustworthy Computing Group". That sounds nice. The head of the aforementioned group is Jeff Jones. He says that Internet Explorer has historically needed fewer security fixes than the competition and, as such, IE is the more secure browser.

Jones says that Mozilla has had to fix almost 200 Firefox vulnerabilities since 2004 whereas Microsoft has only needed to fix 87 Internet Explorer problems. He also points out that Microsoft still supports IE 5 while Mozilla only supports Firefox 2 and up.

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Stuck with Windows Mobile? Opera Mini not cutting it for you? You’re in luck, friend, as development of Mozilla for mobile devices is now official. According to Arne Hess at the Unwired, there’s already a version ready for those nifty Nokia Internet tablets we keep writing about. I haven’t seen it in action, but I’m sure it’s sweet. They’re Linux-based, but the point is it can run well on mobile hardware.

But the Windows Mobile version is the kicker. There are more WinMo smartphones in America than any other OS, and the lack of a good, fully-functional browser is one of the key drawbacks to the platform. This fills a very empty hole for Windows Mobile, and should be on your “download ASAP” list when it’s released, though we don’t yet have a date.

DEVELOPMENT: Mozilla for Windows Mobile gets official Confirmation [The Unwired.net]

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 Beta 1 is now available for download if you hadn’t already heard.

I took it for a quick spin and found that, on the surface, it’s not a whole lot different than Firefox 2. There are some nice little improvements under the hood here and there but it’s probably not going to be worth using as your everyday browser until it’s been officially released.

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For a company that makes its living by producing open source software, Mozilla’s doing quite well for itself. It brought in almost $67 million in 2006, up 26% from the year before.

It spent just under $20 million, mostly on its 90-some employees (full and part time) around the world and the necessary infrastructure required to support things like serving up "close to 600,000 Firefox downloads, over 2.1 terabytes of data and 25 million update requests" each day.

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When it comes to Web browsers, I swear by exactly two: Firefox by Mozilla, and Opera Mini by Opera, the former for my laptop, and the later for my mobiles. All of them.

But now I may have to reconsider Opera Mini, on the news that Mozilla is working on a mobile version of Firefox. It’s welcome news, as more browsers means more competition, which then means better browsing experiences for everyone.

What’s really interesting, as smartphone usage ramps up, and as people start using their phones’ data connections, is that it looks like we might have another old-fashioned browser war on our hands. Remember that last one? It was a doozy. Here’s to the battlelines, people.

Mozilla Plans to Develop Mobile Browser [Phone Scoop]

I don’t really use Gmail’s web interface, but if I did I’d download all ten of these apps and plugins and make my Gmail experience that much better. I think the best one on this list is Gmail This bookmarklet which allows you to send blog postings and other things just by clicking a button.

Most of the tools are for Firefox only, but a few are cross-platform.

Top 10 Unofficial Gmail Apps and Add-ons [Lifehacker]

Open source is all well and good, but what should happen to all the money that’s generated in its creation? A very good question, and one the New York Times tackled today. Told against the backdrop of a failed presidential campaign and the spirit of the grassroots movement, the article looks at the success of the Mozilla Foundation and its Firefox Web browser. The non-profit group’s browser has been downloaded an estimated 75-100 million times, representing 15 percent of the market. Moreover, some 1,000-2,000 people have contributed actual code to the browser, with many more having beta tested it.

What to do?

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How many of you use Firefox on the Mac but hate how it looks like a Windows 3.1 application? The guys at Mozilla know this, have heard your complaints and are now doing something about it. If all goes according to plan, Firefox 3.0 will feature a much more Mac-like interface. In the meantime, one of the main developers of the new Mac build has released a preview version on his Weblog… too bad for us the Mozilla servers seem to be dead at the moment. Way to get our hopes up.

Firefox Mac OS X Native Form Controls Preview [Boom Swagger Boom via Macworld UK]

gaming console and DVD format wars we’ve seemed to have forgotten the browser wars, but it seems as though that has come to an end, or at very least an amicable ceasefire. At the Web 2.0 Expo this week Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took center stage to discuss what’s really going on. The main topic of discussion was security and I’d like to think that’s a very good start. I could care less about market share, but I will say I loathe IE.
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According to the IE group and WebSideStory, IE 7 has had 100 million downloads. It sounds like a milestone, but the problem is, these downloads were mainly conversions from older versions of Internet Explorer.

As of Dec. 2006, IE accounted for 79.6% of all browsers, which is a notable decline from the 80.6% it held in Nov. This is in stark contrast to Firefox which gained from 13.5% to 14% during the same period.

The quantity of IE 7 downloads is credited to users downloading the software through Automatic Updates in Windows. So does it really matter than IE 7 has been downloaded 100 million times? I’m thinking no.

By a show of hands who is using which browser? I’ll start things off: I’m using Firefox 2.

Despite 100 Million IE 7 Installs, Microsoft’s Browser Still Loses Ground [Information Week]