Now that Firefox 4 is out in the wild, Mozilla is changing up the way we all test and update Firefox. Users will now have three different variations of Firefox to download at any given time. Now, most people will want to download the final release version – as that is the most stable of the bunch. However, for those of you who like to test Firefox out as the development cycle rolls on – you have some exciting new things to look forward to.
Tag Archives | development
New Firefox Update Channels
Firefox 4 Coming Tomorrow?
The long wait is over – almost. Firefox 4 is set to be released tomorrow, March 22. Mozilla has yet to really announce the date yet, so the lack of a big marketing blitz is somewhat puzzling. However, going from the release schedule this does seem to be the case.
2011 Will See Firefox 4, 5, 6, and 7
It appears Firefox will be taking great leaps in development by the end of 2011. The official Firefox roadmap was recently updated and shows that Firefox 7 is planned to ship in 2011. I find that a little odd, seeing how Firefox 4 is still being in development as we speak and recently updated to beta version 10.
Game On – The Winners
The Mozilla Labs Game On competition is over. The web game development competition spawn a lot of creative and amazing games. I can say one thing for sure, I sure am glad I didn’t have to decide who was the best of the best. The best overall winner was Marble Run – but there were a lot of other awards handed out.
Mozilla Launches Gaming Lab
Along with all of your productive and useful websites out there, gaming websites or online games often get tossed to the wayside. You know what though? Supporting games and independent developers is just as important as supporting the guys making the awesome website applications we all know and love. With that said, I am happy to see Mozilla has launched the new Mozilla Labs Gaming.
Is Firefox Coming to the PS3?
One can only hope. According to several web sites that heard about it from a friend, who knew a friend, who was feeding the dog of a guy who might have worked at Sony, the PlayStation 3’s web browser might be getting a big upgrade, to Firefox.
Well turns out is was a possible rumor, then not so possible, but might be in the works? Here is the first leak of information from psinsider:
We recently received a tip from a source very close to Sony who says that they have been in talks with Mozilla lately about possibly porting Firefox over to the PS3.
Jetpack Gallery
Do you remember Jetpack?
It is the Mozilla Labs project that makes the add-on building process easier, mixing elements of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Mozilla has released an awesome Jetpack Gallery, which serves as a community for Jetpack developers and add-on users.
Interview with Anthony Lieuallen, Greasemonkey Guy
You might not know the name Anthony Lieuallen, but I bet you have heard of Greasemonkey before. It is the Firefox extension that allows you to extend or customize your favorite web sites in a number of different ways.
Anthony is one of the driving forces behind that project, so I thought it would be fun to pick his brain to find out what his part in the project is, and what advice he might have for other hopeful Greasemonkey script writers or Firefox add-on developers.
What all have you done in development for the Firefox Greasemonkey extension?
I’ve definitely lost track of when and how exactly I first learned about Greasemonkey, and when I got involved. Luckily, I can look up enough old records to get a pretty good idea of what the right answer here is.
I first interacted with Greasemonkey as a user. Quickly though I graduated to User Script author. My earliest blog post about a script I authored was in March of 2005. I wrote a few scripts, some quite popular, for a while. By June, Mark Pilgrim contacted me about being included in the “Greasemonkey Hacks” book, essentially a cookbook-like collection of existing User Scripts, with discussion about what they were and how they worked. I was included as a contributor when that book was published.
A Chat with the Man Who Makes Your Tabs Colorful
Not often do the people behind the absolutely awesome Firefox add-ons, tools and the browser itself get much time in the spotlight. I recently had the chance to talk with the ColorfulTabs extension author, Shivanand Sharma, to get his views on his creation and a number of other development related questions.
What first inspired you to create the ColorfulTabs add-on for Firefox?
Before I begin I’d like to congratulate you and commend you for the great and popular blog and content you have created. A ‘hello’ to all your visitors and fans of Firefox.
Back in the old days when Firefox caught my attention, there was a page with a walk-through on how to use userchrome.css to style your toolbars and buttons. The article was created by Flexer and I was so fascinated that I spent hours coloring and styling every aspect of the browser. One day the idea just struck – what if every tab was a different color? At least the tab boundaries will be more distinguishable. It was a small idea that gave birth to ColorfulTabs. Initially ColorfulTabs just used 32 fixed colors to color each tab in a cycle (after the 32nd tab color cycle just restarted).
Interview with Michel Gutierrez of Video DownloadHelper
Video DownloadHelper is by far the most popular of the video downloading add-ons out the for Firefox. Only proof you need is to check out the most popular downloads page yourself. It gets 480,759 weekly downloads. With that in mind, I wanted to talk with the man behind what might be one of the most popular add-ons for Firefox, ever. Who is this man? Michel Gutierrez is the brain behind the Video DownloadHelper and I was lucky enough to get him cornered to answer a few questions I had about the extension.
Out of all the different, “download the video from that video sharing site” services out there – what does it feel like to be the most popular one, right now?
It’s good and that’s even better to be one of the most popular Firefox extensions overall :)
I started computing in the early 80s on a Sinclair ZX81 (2KB of RAM!) and since then, i wrote many lines of code within a lot of various projects but DownloadHelper is by far the application that got the best success. So when you write a piece of software that will be executed one million times everyday, you for sure feel useful but a bit anxious as you have the responsibility to make this code work flawlessly.
