Articles about Firefox

Almost four months ago the European Commission opened an investigation after Microsoft failed to distribute the browser ballot to Windows users. The problem, according to the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation, only affected 10 percent of PCs, but Mozilla says there's more to it than meets the eye. Microsoft claims a glitch, lasting 18 months, caused the ballot to disappear.

Harvey Anderson, who works at Mozilla on business and legal affairs, revealed some numbers that portray the impact on Mozilla Firefox downloads. Prior to Microsoft fixing the problem daily downloads of the popular open-source browser decreased by 63 percent to 20,000 per day. After Microsoft decided to fix the issue the number of Mozilla Firefox downloads increased by 150 percent to 50,000 per day. The European Commission isn't overly excited by what happened, and sent Redmond a "statement of objections". That usually implies that a fine is underway...

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Hot on the heels of Mozilla pulling the latest stable release from its download servers after discovering a security vulnerability, Firefox 16.0.1 FINAL has now been released. Those who had already upgraded to version 16 should upgrade automatically now the updated version is available. Full details about the vulnerability can be found here.

In the meantime, Mozilla has updated all pre-release versions of the popular cross-platform, open-source browser to versions 17 (Beta), 18 (Aurora) and 19 (Nightly/Elm/UX) respectively. Once again, confirmed changes are thin on the ground, although the recent release of the “Elm” branch of Firefox Nightly, previewing the new Modern UI-based version of Firefox for Windows 8, is a noteworthy addition.

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Only two days after announcing Firefox 16, Mozilla removed the browser in response to a security vulnerability affecting all early installations.

Mozilla warns that the flaw allows a malicious website to "potentially" determine where Firefox 16 users have been and to gain access to the URL or URL parameters. The open-source group says it had no knowledge of the exploit and as a safety measure recommends that anyone who installed Firefox 16 should "downgrade" to Firefox 15.0.1 and wait for the browser to be upgraded to the new, fixed, version.

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Do you want to know what’s annoyed me most about recently switching from Google Chrome to Firefox (or, more precisely, its 64-bit variant, Waterfox)? The lack of a built-in PDF viewer, that’s what.

In Chrome, you’d click on a PDF link, and it would open in Chrome: do the same in Firefox, and it would save the PDF to disk instead. Incredibly annoying. The development of a built-in PDF previewer was welcome news to my ears, but having appeared in Firefox 15 Beta, it disappeared from the final version. The good news is that it’s there, and you can switch it on. If you know how.

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Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the uncrowned king back in 2008 with Mozilla's Firefox snagging away half a percent or so from IE's market share each month. Mozilla in that year released Firefox 3.0, a controversial version of the browser that divided the browser's user base into the Firefox 2.x and 3.x camp. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, a version of the browser that still fell short in many areas even though it was seen by many as a huge improvement over the company's previously released Internet browsers.

And in that year came the first public release of Google Chrome for Windows, and with it fundamental changes to the web browser landscape. Chrome's impact in the browser's first year of existence was limited, and while Google managed to increase the market share over the important 1 percent mark in 2008, it took the company another year to surpass Opera and Safari to take the coveted number three spot for the first time near the end of 2009.

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In addition to releasing Firefox and Thunderbird 15 Tuesday, Mozilla also released a new version of Firefox for Android tablets running ICS and Honeycomb!

Last year, I put together a list of what I believed were the ten best apps for Android Honeycomb, and I included both the Dolphin Browser and Opera Mobile in the list. At the time, not even the Nightly build of Firefox was available for Honeycomb devices. That did not come until five months later, and it was still in a very early UI form.

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The recent release of Firefox 14 FINAL means the whole developmental cycle has moved on again, and as expected versions 15 (Beta), 16 (Aurora) and 17 (Nightly/UX) of Mozilla’s web browser have made their first appearances. Version 14 was a relatively minor release after the excitement of version 13, but versions 15 and 16 both promise some exciting new features as we reveal below.

Get a head’s up on what’s coming and discover which build is best for your personal needs with our updated guide to what the future holds in store for Firefox.

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Mozilla has updated both its open-source browser and email clients with the release of both Firefox 14.0.1 FINAL, and Thunderbird 14.0 FINAL.

Firefox 14’s most notable new features are the switching on of secure connections when performing Google searches for better privacy, plus an updated site identity indicator system in the Address bar. It also introduces silent updates for Windows users for the first time, while OS X Lion users can enjoy native full-screen support for the first time. Thunderbird 14 contains no new features of note, in line with its recent move to an extended support phase.

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Mozilla's move to a rapid release process has been controversial. The company basically switched from a "when it is done or necessary" approach to a release cycle that would see a new major version release of the browser every six weeks, regardless of new features, improvements or fixes included in that release.

Mozilla's problem: part of the browser's user base does not welcome the change with open arms, as they feel that rapid release is to interrupting, unnecessary or breaks features or extensions that users grew accustomed to.

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Mozilla is the nonprofit organization that gave the world the first true rival to Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox is the second-most used web browser in the world today and because of it the way we surf the Internet has changed dramatically.

Their success was in part based on the lack of competitors. Firefox started gaining share when there was no one else around. Opera didn’t capitalize on this, but Firefox did. Their goal to penetrate the most difficult market has been achieved and it’s their desire to enter the mobile operating system world as well. Is this going to be tougher than the browser market? Considering that they haven’t yet released Firefox OS the answer is a very loud and clear: yes!

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Mozilla on Tuesday announced the latest update (v.14.0) to Firefox for Android is now available in Google Play for devices running Android 2.2 and up. The famous browser, now in its second year on Android, has received a significant feature upgrade this time around, and includes an all new UI and start screen, a sped up experience, and support for Adobe Flash.

Even though Mozilla's mobile Firefox has been in development for more than four years, it is still something of a baby in the Android world. Firefox 4 for Android turned out to be kind of a resource hog, kind of slow, and not entirely stable. The beta of Firefox 5 improved on some of the shortcomings of its predecessor, but clearly needed some work.

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Next week, at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, Mozilla will be launching its own app store for HTML5 web apps, called the Mozilla Marketplace, much like Google did with the Chrome app store that launched worldwide just under one year ago.

Mozilla's offering will differ from Chrome in that it will be more of a platform than a simple HTML5 app store. The Mozilla Web Apps platform will include APIs that Mozilla has submitted to the W3C for standardization, and it will include a new user identity scheme so that web app users can tie their apps to their identity rather than their device.

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It was such a busy week -- what with Google planning to buy Motorola Mobility and HP killing TouchPad -- you could easily have overlooked a momentous number of new software releases. As the new week begins, we look back on what you might have missed during the last one.

The major release last week was more about the migration of Mozilla Firefox 7 from Aurora to the Beta channel, rather than the recent announcement that Firefox 6 is now stable. Firefox 7 is a bigger update, with much improved memory management and a host of similar features. Read through the blog announcement for more information. In addition to Firefox 6 going stable and Firefox 7 entering beta, Firefox 8a2 hit the Aurora channel, whilst the first preview of Firefox 9a1 hit Nightly. None of the planned UI enhancements have been implemented in this first alpha of Firefox 9 and, for OS X Lion users, these recent Firefox updates may leave you disappointed. The full screen mode does not place Firefox on a separate space and the scrollbars do not mimic the new bars introduced in the new operating system.

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The browser market moves at a hectic pace these days, and so while a month ago most people were happily using Firefox 5, Mozilla has released Firefox 6, Firefox 7 beta, Firefox 8 Aurora, and even Firefox 9 via the Nightly channel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the changes are internal and will make little immediate difference to most people.  We ran a few benchmarks on the various builds, for instance, and found Firefox 9 had around a 4 percent lead over Firefox 6, but otherwise the performance of Firefox 7, 8 and 9 proved very similar.

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Along with Firefox 6 for PCs, today, Mozilla also released the mobile version, which I must say looks damn good. But it feels even better. There's a solidness about the browser that makes it ready, finally, for prime time. Firefox fans, this is the one you've been waiting for.

I tested Firefox 6 for Android, quite unexpectedly, on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. I had planned to use the Nexus S but let the battery run down. Good thing, too, because I might have waited days to try the tablet experience -- and, whoa, is it good. So let me preface that the screenshots here are stock ones from the Android Market and they show the browser on a smartphone. The browser looks much better on the Tab. That's right, Mozilla optimized this release for tablets.

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