Beta 2 addresses over 900 memory issues as well as various stability issues within the Gecko core itself with Mozilla migrating over to the 1.9 platform for Firefox 3.0 and the new Mozilla 2.0 platform for Firefox 4.0 and other issues like XSS (Cross Site Scripting) leaks through JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) which is used as a data interchange format.

Also making an appearance is the new highly touted download manager, and the awesome bar AKA the new location bar.

The browser also features a complete backend rewrite for using the SQL engine and garbage collection (software memory usage). Now that Firefox could also support offline applications like the ever popular Google Reader through its own built in functionality or through the usage of Google Gears which has also been in use for ZohoWriter – an online word processor and competitor of Google’s.

Functionality wise, Firefox 3.0 functions and behaves as well as other 2.0 and 1.5 cousins with the added bonus of better RAM usage and built in PDF page printing (currently not implemented in the UI).

For those of you who are hardware conscious about the RAM GB’s, there’s an extension available from Mozilla’s Stuart Parementer “RAMBack” which empties Firefox 3.0’s memory caches both disk and RAM.

Conclusion

After having used Firefox 3.0 solidly for the past 3 weeks I was impressed with the results of the work Mozilla have plagued into the browser. Looking through some of the other features, it’s clear that they have listened to the community regarding the direction of the browser. Features such as an integrated restart function for when new items – extensions/themes are installed and an all in one location bar.

I look forward to seeing the final product when it’s released later on this year.

Posted by Si Howard – Si Is currently studying for a Bachelors in Computer Science and turned to Firefox and Thunderbird after many years as a Netscape user. He maintains a personal blog at devastator.wordpress.com

While these “eye catching” sites may offer up a new level of interactivity and/or functionality, there’s always a price to pay no matter how good the engineering/technology is. For example, everyone these days a Gmail account. It extensively uses AJAX which, while making it appear very functional, also takes its toll on the browser in terms of memory usage, in this case Mozilla Firefox.

Recently, the Mozilla Foundation released Prism (renamed from WebRunner) from the Mozilla Project which is stripped down version of the XULRunner platform using the Firefox runtime environment (Gecko). It handles JavaScript/CSS etc…. well and is light on the memory usage from personal usage and handles several web applications well – Gmail, GReader, Facebook, Twitter etc… As well as the option of programming your own and has a list of user contributed web application scripts.

Prism can become a very useful application for those who just want to visit a few selected sites and since there are no high memory issues then it can also be run without issue on legacy hardware. Although those that prefer a full desktop browser know where to look (Mozilla Project page)

Since rebranding from WebRunner, Prism has had a number of feature added to it. Including:

• “CSS themes - Bundles now support common (all platforms) and OS specific CSS theme overrides. You can make web applications take on different CSS styles
• Spell check support – Red squiggles and suggestions on the context menu.
• Better external link handling – Spreadsheets from Google Docs were opening in the default browser.
• Tooltips support – We now display tooltips for elements with “title” attributes.
• Copying hyperlinks – Context menu supports copying a link location, if you right click on a link.
• More “Install Shortcut” options – Quick Launch Bar and Start Menu were added on Windows and Application folder was added on Mac.
• “Install Web Application” – similar to the “Install Shortcut” dialog, but this will create a web application *without* needing a webapp bundle. Launching Prism without any parameters, or from the Start Menu or Finder, to activate the dialog. (Alex’s post has more details).”*

*Source: Mark Finkle’s Weblog

Prism’s development looks set to advance and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves within the Mozilla Project especially with the Mozilla-based browser Flock on the social networking side.

Posted by Si Howard – Si Is currently studying for a Bachelors in Computer Science and turned to Firefox and Thunderbird after many years as a Netscape user. He maintains a personal blog at devastator.wordpress.com

Yet there is a person – no let me rephrase that. There is a monster trying to take away our rights to this wonderful service.

If you haven’t seen his site yet, it’s the same one referred to here:
http://www.firefoxfacts.com/2007/08/21/anti-firefox-loons-go-off-deep-end/

It has changed since then. At first, he offered a script that blocked everybody using Firefox because everybody that uses Firefox uses ABP. Wait a minute, where’s the logic in that? But then he figured out his stupidity (one part of it anyway) and came out with a script that actually blocks only people using ABP, but before you know it, the ABP people come out with an update that basically renders his script useless.

Now Mr. Anti-freebrowsing is pouting up a storm on his website:

whyfirefoxisblocked.com

Serves him right! The people have a choice of what they want to view. I don’t want to see ads. That is MY choice, not the advertisers. What ever happened to basic liberties? Here’s your answer: it’s monsters like this that take them away. Stand up for your freedoms, people.

More on this subject:

Blocking Firefox?

Dear WhyisFirefoxBlocked.com,

whyfirefoxisblocked: adorable muppets

http://whyisfirefoxblocked.com/ (not to be confused with the original)

Post by Samuel Brisby – Sam is currently a student majoring in computer science who loves and supports anything open-source especially the Firefox browser. Questions or comments can be sent to spamuel42 (at) gmail.com.

Then a relatively new browser came along by the name of Mozilla Firebird, shortly afterwards because of a trademark dispute it changed to Fire Phoenix. Then, finally, it changed again in February 2004 to Firefox. Back in 2003 the (newly established) Mozilla Foundation announced they were to begin working exclusively on Firefox and Thunderbird as part of the Mozilla Project.

Late in 2004 (August/September), I switched over to Firefox. Then shortly afterwards, Thunderbird. They both – in my opinion fitted in with the Unix philosophy:

Do one thing but do it really well

Firefox had its web standards (HTTP/SSL) and Thunderbird had its E-mail standards (IMAP/SMTP/POP3) and both accomplished their tasks admirably. The interfaces were simple and not cluttered; they loaded quickly and ran smoothly. They are both modular programs – developers can at their discretion add theme’s/extensions much like the latest Sun Microsystems (and now IBM) backed OpenOffice.org release. In short, they complimented each other perfectly.

3 years on, and Firefox has become the browser of choice for most people along with its official forks – Flock (http://www.flock.com), Wyzo (http://www.wyzo.com) and K-Meleon (http://kmeleon.sf.net).

Now Thunderbird is moving to its own stable for the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation to focus its efforts on Firefox but, will still remain with the Mozilla Project and under the Foundation’s guidance.

The decision was announced by CEO/Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker late Monday to go with Mozilla’s second option – to make a taxable entity – MailCo – under the Mozilla Foundation whose sole focus was Thunderbird thereby keeping it in the Mozilla Project and still within the Foundation.

The news comes in addition to Eudora releasing their binaries of the Penelope project (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope) – collaboration between Mozilla developers and Qualcomm developers to port the Eudora E-mail client over to the open-source Thunderbird framework with Penelope available as an extension to provide all the additional functionality.

If Mozilla commits even a fraction of the resources it has available for Firefox to the Penelope project, then I can see it becoming a very useful client in the same vain as Thunderbird and Firefox.

I am fully aware of the move to webmail that most people use; case in point – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Etc…. But, I still firmly believe that there will always be a need for an E-mail client (I prefer to use an IMAP/SMTP E-mail server) and still praise Mozilla with making Firefox a better browser and improving Thunderbird and the Penelope Project.

Posted by Si Howard – Si Is currently studying for a Bachelors in Computer Science and turned to Firefox and Thunderbird after many years as a Netscape user. He maintains a personal blog at devastator.wordpress.com

Since the beginning of AllPeers, there have been many different collections of plugins offering BitTorrent functionality to Firefox and its other Gecko-based variants of Flock, K-Meleon and Wyzo, a Mozilla Firefox-based browser that fully integrates BitTorrent functionality into its core along with Firefox 2.0 code.

There have also been numerous plugins as well:

AllPeers (http://www.allpeers.com)
FireTorrent (http://www.wyzo.com)
FoxTorrent (http://www.foxtorrent.com)
BitFox (currently in development)
Firestorm (http://firestorm.mozdev.org).

FireStorm and BitFox, are both currently in active development. Wyzo is in alpha stage of development and have an alpha release (not for deployment in a production environment). FoxTorrent has been reviewed a few times before and installs a background DAEMON process to handle the transfers.

Wyzo/FireTorrent are both in alpha release although the Firefox extension is still available to download for testing purposes. From the list, it is plain for all to see that there is no shortage of BitTorrent extensions for Firefox at all.

However, the nature of Mozilla’s open-source platform and of the BitTorrent protocol mean that this list is by no means exhaustive and other projects are sure to take advantage to Firefox’s modular nature.

Posted by Si Howard – Si Is currently studying for a Bachelors in Computer Science and turned to Firefox and Thunderbird after many years as a Netscape user. He maintains a personal blog at devastator.wordpress.com

1. Click on Bookmarks.
2. Right-click on any bookmark you have there.
3. Choose properties.

Now, third from the top, there is a text box called “Keyword”. Most likely, this is blank because by default it’s not used at all. Welcome to the wonderful world to keyword bookmarking. Let me show you how to use it.

Say for instance that you wanted to create a keyword bookmark for the search on firefoxfacts.com. Ok, lets go to that page. After using the Firefox Facts search using the words “test”, I come to the page:

http://www.firefoxfacts.com/index.php?s=test

If I bookmark it, it will look like any other bookmark.

Then, if I look at the properties of my newly created bookmark, I can make a few changes to it to transform it into a keyword bookmark:

1. Notice that the my search term “test” is in the address in the location field.
2. Replace that with the string “%s” to get http://www.firefoxfacts.com/index.php?s=%s.
3. Add a keyword to the keyword field. I chose “fxfacts” but anything will work. Use something short and you can remember.
4. Press OK.

Yay, now we have a keyword bookmark. This is how to use it:

1. Type the keyword of the bookmark in the address bar. (In my example “fxfacts”)
2. Type any search terms after that. (My example: “fxfacts bookmarks”)
3. Press the enter key.

Firefox will now take me to the Firefox Facts search for bookmarks just like that. Let’s see IE7 can do that!

Post by Samuel Brisby – Sam is currently a student majoring in computer science who loves and supports anything open-source especially the Firefox browser. Questions or comments can be sent to spamuel42 (at) gmail.com.