Did you miss these 26 software downloads last week? Get them now
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.
Which Firefox is right for you -- 6, 7, 8 or 9?
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.
Finally, Firefox for Android is stable and primed for tablets
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.
Thunderbird 6 arrives, but was it too fast?
Mozilla has placed the final release of Thunderbird 6 on its download servers to coincide with the earlier release of Firefox 6. Changes are few and far between in this latest build, with the only noteworthy feature being support for Jump Lists in Windows 7.
Thunderbird 6's release reflects the email program's switch to the same rapid development cycle as its sister product, Firefox. With so few changes being implemented, it's tempting to think the move doesn't make much sense except from the point of view of keeping the version numbers of both products the same.
NSS tests claim IE9 blocks 96% of social engineering attacks, Firefox 8%
Three months ago, Microsoft published some statistics pulled from Internet Explorer 9's SmartScreen Filter anti-phishing and anti-malware tool which led the IE9 team to conclude that the browser cuts malware threats by 95%. Today, research firm NSS Labs released a study that backs up Internet Explorer 9's internal statistics, and gives IE9 a block rate of 96.2%, putting it far ahead of Chrome 12, Firefox 4, Safari 5, and Opera 11.
NSS used the same "live testing" methodology it debuted in 2009, and has used for bi-annual tests since that time. In addition to traditional threat detection rates, it uses a metric called "time to defense" which measures the time between when a security vendor first classifies a potential new threat and when protection to that threat is added to consumer products.
Network admins stunned and reeling from repeated Firefox upgrades
What, another major Firefox release? Tuesday will see the release of Firefox 6.0, eight weeks after the release of 5.0 and less than 5 months after the release of 4.0 which they have already end-of-lifed.
It's all Google's fault. Version 1 of Chrome released on December 11, 2008. Here we are, less than 1,000 days later, with version 13 as the stable release. Of course Mozilla is the descendant of Netscape which invented the idea of releasing products formally designated as beta, which Google extended to having some products never leave beta. Together the two have taken any meaning out of version numbers.
Why wait until tomorrow, when you can download Firefox 6 today
Although not due to be officially released until tomorrow, Mozilla has placed Firefox 6 Final on to its download servers. The latest version of Mozilla's open-source browser -- the third major release in five months -- sports a brand new Permissions Manager, which allows users to set privacy controls on a site-per-site basis.
Developers can make use of a new scratchpad window for testing Javascript snippets, while domain names are highlighted in the Address bar to aid identification of websites. Other changes are mostly beneath the hood, designed to improve compatibility, performance and security.
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