Firefox users who want to spice up the new tab page have plenty of options in the forms of add-ons. Example add-ons are New Tab King which displays all kinds of information, or New Tab Homepage which loads the selected home page whenever a new tab is opened.

We already know for some time that Mozilla plans to integrate a new tab page into the browser. First mockups were released in August and Mozilla back then hoped to integrate the final version into Firefox 9.

The new tab page has been integrated into Firefox Nightly and UI builds. Nightly users need to activate it to have the new tab page appear in the browser. This is done by loading about:config in the Firefox address bar.

You then need to filter for the term newtab in the filter box which should reveal the preferences browser.newtab.url and browser.newtabpage.enabled.

Set browser.newtabpage.enabled to true with a double-click. Once done, double-click browser.newtab.url and change its value to about:newtab.

Some Firefox users may need to create the parameters if they do not exist. Right-click on the page and select New > String for the browser.newtab.url parameters, and New > Boolean for the browser.newtabpage.enabled parameter.

The browser should begin to collect data for the New Tab page after a restart.

All you see on the page is a selection of nine web pages that you have visited in the past. You can remove individual pages from the page by hovering the mouse cursor over the entry and clicking on the appearing x icon.

It is alternatively possible to drag and drop thumbnails around, and to pin select sites so that they are always displays on the new tab page. Holding down CTRL while using the mouse wheel zooms in or out of the page.

The only remaining options are to reset the new tab page information and to hide the information which returns to the blank new tab page layout that is currently used (with the exception of a small icon in the upper right corner to turn it on again).

The display has a few issues currently. Some pages for instance show no thumbnail image, only the page title. And since there is no one-page-per-domain limit, you may end up with four, five or even more pages from the same domain displayed on the new tab page.

While Mozilla aims to include a basic speed dial feature into the browser, other browsers make use of more sophisticated new tab pages. Opera for instance supports speed dial extensions which can display dynamic contents on the new tab page.

Users who prefer to stick with the blank page can do so, which is one of the advantages of the browser over its competition.

The new tab page as it is presented now may not be to the liking of most Firefox users. While it may have its uses, it lacks customization. Firefox users are currently better off installing an extension that brings their new tab page to life.

It needs to be considered though that the new tab page has only been included in the nightly version of the browser. Chances are that we will see changes coming to the page before it hits the stable version later this year.

Plenty options are available to do that. Firefox users can make use of tools like Mozbackup or Firefox Environmental Backup Extension, use a service like Dropbox to host the Firefox profile in the cloud, or use the Siphon extension to synchronize add-on data.

All of this may soon be a thing of the past. Mozilla is currently aiming to integrate add-on syncing into Firefox 11. All Firefox users who use Firefox Sync can then synchronize all installed add-ons across all their computer systems. It is however not possible to sync add-ons between desktop and mobile Firefox installations and only add-ons hosted at Mozilla’s official add-on repository can be synchronized this way. Users with third party add-ons, for instance from security suites who install add-ons into the browser, need to find other ways to synchronize those between the browsers.

It is also interesting to note that all add-ons, regardless of their activation status, will be synchronized by Firefox Sync. The add-ons will however retain their activation status on the target computer. There is no functionality at this time to synchronize only selected add-ons between devices.

Existing sync users won’t have the new feature enabled by default. They need to enable add-on syncing in the Firefox Sync preferences to enable it. This is done with a click on the Firefox button, the selection of Options, and a click on the Sync tab in the opening preferences window. New Firefox Sync users will have add-on synchronization enabled by default.

Additional information about the planned implementation are available on the Bugzilla website. (via Sören Hentzschel)

Hotfix add-ons bypass the problem as they allow time critical patches to be issued as add-ons. This reduces the time needed to release an update to less than 24 hours.

When you look back at Firefox’s update history, you will notice quite a few updates that would have benefited from this new hotfix updating mechanism. This includes updates that removed an insecure certificate provider from the browser, and updates where add-ons have caused browser instabilities.

Hotfix add-ons can furthermore be distributed to a specific language version of the browser to resolve a particular issue. Instead of having to release an update for all browser versions, Mozilla can now release a hotfix for part of the Firefox user base which also opens the door for A-B tests.

Possibilities do not end here. Malicious add-ons, and add-ons with stability issues can be added to the global blocklist using hotfix add-ons to protect Firefox users from using those add-ons.

Equally interesting from a user perspective is the ability to undo recent browser changes that have received negative community feedback.

The developers integrate a hotfix add-on ID into the browser that is linked to the browser’s add-on updater. It will look for hotfixes whenever add-on update checks are performed. The updates are then installed as Hotfix Add-ons which will be removed with the next major Firefox release.

The integration of hotfix add-ons into Firefox allows Mozilla to speed up the delivery of updates for the browser. Firefox users benefit from faster security and stability updates that resolve issues faster than before.

Mozilla plans to integrate Hotfix add-ons into Firefox 11. (via, more information here)

Firefox users who have installed the extension and rebooted the browser afterwards need to configure it first before they can make use of the functionality it provides.

The easiest way to do that is to load the about:addons page in the Firefox address bar. Locate the TrayhotKey extension in the listing and select options to open the preferences.

The options are divided into three different groups. First a hotkey area at the top which can be used to change the default Ctrl+’ hotkey to another one. Please note that this hotkey triggers one of the “aces”. New users may assume that the hotkey lets them minimize Firefox to the system tray. This is only partially correct. This hotkey hides Firefox on the system. The browser window disappears from the taskbar and is not displayed in the system tray. Experienced users can still find out that the browser is running with the help of the Windows task manager or a process explorer. Another tap on the hotkey brings Firefox back to the front.

The tray group in the options handle if and when the Firefox icon is displayed in the system tray. Always show tray will display a permanent icon in the tray, while minimize window to tray only when the browser minimizes. This option changes the default behavior so that the browser is minimized to the system tray area in Windows. Close window to tray finally takes over the close Firefox process. A click on the x in the Firefox window usually closes the browser. If the close window to tray option is enabled, it will instead minimize the browser to the system tray.

The remaining options handle the the web browser’s opacity and transparency levels. Here it is possible to make the browser window transparent to see what’s underneath.

TrayHotKey adds two core features to the browser. First the ability to hide Firefox on a system with the help of a hotkey, and second the option to minimize the browser to the system tray.

Firefox users can download TrayHotKey from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The Firefox release was pulled from the Mozilla server and things went quite for a few days. Today, Mozilla has released Firefox 8.0.1 to the public.

What does that mean for users who have downloaded the previous version that was pulled? These users need to download Firefox 8.0.1 for their computer manually from Mozilla again and install it over the current version.

Firefox 8.0.1 fixes two issues. First a Mac OS X crash that can occur when a Java applet is loaded in the browser with Java JRE 6.29 installed, and second a startup crash on Windows that is caused by versions older than 7.6.2 of the popular RoboForm extension.

Firefox users who are not on a Mac with that particular version of Java or on Windows with one of the affected RoboForm extensions do not need to update the browser right away. While it certainly does no harm, it won’t give them any benefit either (other than the reassurance that they are running the latest version of the browser).

Firefox users interested in the Firefox 8.0.1 release notes find them on this page. The internal updater should have picked up the new version by now. Users who already have version 8.0.1 installed should visit the download Firefox page to download the new release version manually for their language and operating system.

Update: Some users have reported that the new update is installed on systems where the pulled Firefox update has been installed. It appears that it may not be necessary to download the new version manually after all.

He first describes how Firefox is currently applying updates to the browser. Updates are downloaded into a special directory during runtime. The browser on next start up will check for updates in that directory and if any are found, will apply them to the browser. This process is visualized to the user with the dreaded Firefox Update: Firefox is installing your updates and will start in a few moments message.

The updater restarts the browser after the update as been completed.

The new idea is not fundamentally different. Updates will be applied to a copy of the browser files in the background while the browser is running. When the user restarts the browser the updated version is copied over the old version of the browser, a process that is noticeably faster (as there are no prompts and copying is faster than applying those updates during browser start).

Now, the reason that this approach fixes the problem is that swapping the directories, unlike the actual process of applying the update, is really fast. We are effectively moving the cost of applying the update to right after the update has been downloaded while the browser is running. This leaves only the really fast copy operation to be performed the next time that the browser starts up.

A long document is available here that details the background updates process.

• Firefox finds an update
• The update is downloaded
• Updater is launched in the background with the UI disabled
• The existing installation will be copied to /firefox/updated/
• The patches are applied to the copied version of Firefox
• Update will be aborted if errors are encountered, e.g. read write errors, running out of disk space

What about changes that you make to the browser in that time? What about add-ons that you install or configuration changes? Those in theory should not be a issue as they are stored in the profile directory and not in the Firefox directory on the system.

I can still see issues here, like high cpu, ram or disk usage when the updates are applied.

What’s your take on the new updating proposal?

A fast release like this usually indicates a serious problem that needs to be addressed right away. Most issues that require an immediate response are security related in nature. This time though it seems to be a popular add-on that is causing stability issues for Firefox 8 users.

An extension block request has been posted at Bugzilla. The request to hard block the popular Roboform extension has been added on November 2. According to information posted there Firefox 8 users are experiencing the majority of crashes while users of other Firefox versions are also experiencing crashes but to a lesser extent.

Add-ons that are blocked can usually be added to a blocklist remotely. This did not work in the case of the Roboform add-on as it was hooking dlls into Firefox which needed to be blocked by adding code to the browser.

The changelog has not been posted yet, it will later be available on this page. It is not clear if additional patches have made it into Firefox 8.0.1.

For now, we can only assume that the Roboform patch is the only code change in the new version of the web browser. This means that Firefox users who do not work with Roboform do not need to update their version of the browser to the latest version right away.

The Mozilla homepage is currently listing Firefox 8 as the latest version. Third party websites like Softpedia are already hosting the new version on their servers.

I’ll update the news as soon as the update is available at Mozilla.

The official release notes do not paint a pretty picture, new features are scarce. This becomes obvious when you look at the first new feature listed on the release notes page: The forward button is now hidden by default and becomes available only after the user has navigated back. This new change is only available for Windows users currently.

Other changes include anti-aliasing for WebGL, new CSS Style Inspector which can be helpful for web developers, integration of the new full screen API to build full screen web applications and support for CSS3 3D-Transforms.

That’s not a lot and nothing to get to excited about. Sören Hentzschel discovered additional under the hood changes in the new browser version. The Customize option that allows Firefox users to drag and drop interface elements to another location is now highlighting screen elements that cannot be moved around.

Other changes include improvements in cursor key scrolling , a better Firefox Sync installation workflow and the ability to display statistics about HTML5 videos via right-click > Show Statistics.

The Firefox development team plans to integrate additional features into the release. Softpedia has published a list that includes a new tab page, better suggestions in the Firefox address bar, the ability to import settings and data from Google Chrome and silent updates which basically updates the web browser without user interaction, much like Google Chrome does.

Have you had the chance to play around with Firefox 10? If so, what is your impression of the web browser and your opinion on the new features introduced in the version?

With Firefox 8 being released the minutes we speak, it is time to look at the improvements that Mozilla has in store for Firefox users. I have already covered the planned changes of Firefox 9, and the big JavaScript performance boost of that version in detail.

More interesting in regards to the browser’s memory efficiency and footprint are Firefox 10, or maybe Firefox 11. Firefox 10, which is currently available as a Nightly release (think of it as regularly released alpha versions that are not suitable for productive environments, may be the version of the browser that changes the user perception from a memory eating browser to a slim and efficient one.

Firefox developer Nicholas Nethercote some days ago detailed the changes that Mozilla has in store for the upcoming versions of the browser. According to Nicholas, the JavaScript engine is often the component of the browser that is “responsible for consuming the most memory”.

What Nicholas describes then are pages of “programmers-talk” about how Mozilla intents to reduce the browser’s footprint by optimizing various components and technologies of the browser’s JavaScript engine.

Probably the biggest news here is the retirement of the JavaScript engine TraceMonkey which will reduce the browser’s overall memory footprint and make the Firefox itself a smaller program. Jaegermonkey for the time being will become the only Just-In-Time compiler of Firefox. This again will change in the near future with the introduction of IonMonkey, a JIT compiler that is said to “generate code that is not only much faster, but much smaller”.

Mozilla developers are furthermore experimenting with technologies that reduce the overall size of JavaScript compartments in the browser. Some of the improvements promise great memory reductions. Luke Wagner’s proposition to reduce parts of scripts that are never run could reduce the “script-data” usage of the browser by up to 70%. Objects in SpiderMonkey, represented by JSObjects may see a size reduction of about 60%, while Shapes, another important data structure, will see optimizations that take them from 40 or 64 bytes to 24 or 40 bytes.

The majority of those memory optimizations will likely land in Firefox 10 or Firefox 11. Firefox users who now head over to the Nightly repository to download the latest Firefox 10 version right away will notice that the browser is not really showing any memory footprint improvements right now. Improving the browser’s memory efficiency is a work in progress.

What’s your take on browser memory consumption and speed? Is Firefox really that heavy on RAM usage?

I covered the major changes of Firefox 8 back in August when it was released to the Aurora channel which is a new release channel between the nightly releases and beta releases of the browser.

Probably the biggest new feature of Firefox 8 from a security perspective is how the web browser handles third party add-on installations. You may have encountered those while installing a security suite on your computer or other security related products. Before Firefox 8 no checks were performed when a third party software installed an add-on for the browser. Third party add-ons were installed and enabled right away and without user notification, which, from a security standpoint, left the browser wide open for local attacks.

Firefox 8 introduces other features as well. The browser gives users more control over add-ons after upgrading to a new Firefox version. Users can now disable or enable individual add-ons on first start with Firefox suggesting add-ons that may not work due to incompatibilities.

Firefox users can furthermore configure the browser to only load the selected tab on browser start, and the remaining ones once they are activated by the user. This can speed up the start significantly. The feature can be enabled under Tools > Options > General.

The browser ships with other minor improvements and changes. Included in the browser is now a Twitter search engine to search for Twitter messages from the browser’s address bar and search bar.

The browser is already available for all supported operating systems and languages on the official Mozilla FTP server. Only a handful of official mirror servers list the Firefox 8 Stable releases currently. This is certainly going to change in the next hours. Download portals like Softpedia or Major Geeks will surely have the Firefox 8 release available for download before it is distributed to all mirror servers and announced officially on the Mozilla website.

Firefox 7 users who are not in a hurry should wait until the release is officially announced by Mozilla. Their browser’s auto-updating feature will recognize the new feature and prompt for an upgrade to Firefox 8 automatically.

The beta release notes are available here. They will be converted into the final release notes once Firefox 8 has been officially announced by Mozilla.

The built-in profile manager has been used by Firefox users to configure and run multiple user profiles on the same computer. This was helpful for web developers for instance who wanted to separate work from their regular browsing (no need to run slow loading applications like Firebug under the regular profile).

The new standalone version of the Mozilla Profile Manager improves upon the built-in tool. The program detects all installed Firefox versions automatically and displays them along with their associated user profiles in the application window.

Users can add portable program versions to the application. This is done with a click on the Manage Firefox versions button and the selection of Add in the new window. This makes it possible to add portable versions of the browser to the profile manager.

The profile manager indicates the default profile in the interface as well. One of the interesting features here is the ability to link user profiles to specific Firefox versions.

Another new feature is the ability to run Firefox with a temporary profile that’s created for the session. This profile gets deleted once the browser is closed.

When you look at the options you will notice that there are four to select from.

• Rin Firefox in offline mode – Starts the browser in offline mode without Internet connection.
• Run Firefox in safe mode – Starts the browser without add-ons, settings or themes.
• Start Firefox with a console – Loads a console with Firefox
• Start new instance – Can be used to run two instances of Firefox with different user profiles at the same time.

The Profile Manager can be used to backup and restore some or all profiles on the current computer system. It is in addition possible to create a new profile or copy an existing profile.

The profile manager is configured for the Firefox browser by default. Thunderbird or Seamonkey users need to use a command line argument to change that. This is done by adding the name of the program to the command, e.g. profilemanager thunderbird to manage all Thunderbird profiles on the system.

Wonder why Mozilla is pushing for the change? Mozilla employee Benjamin Smedberg has this to say about it:

Startup time is *not* a reason for this change. The code complexity of named profiles and their poor interaction with OS integration and remoting features is the primary reason for this change.

The new profile manager makes it easy to link profiles to versions of Firefox which makes it easier to work with multiple profiles and multiple versions of the browser on the same computer and under the same user account.

The Mozilla Profile Manager can be downloaded from the official Mozilla ftp site. (via)

What’s your take on the new Mozilla Profile Manager?

Plugin-container.exe basically is Mozilla’s attempt of separating core plugins from being executed in the same process as the Firefox web browser. This is done foremost to improve stability. A plugin crash previously would have often causes the whole browser to crash as well. With plugins moved to plugin-container.exe the browser remains unharmed if a crash happens.

Back in 2010 Firefox used one instance of plugin-container.exe for the three plugins Adobe Flash Player, Microsoft Silverlight and Apple Quicktime.

Firefox users nowadays may see more than one instance of the plugin container process on their system and some may wonder why that is the case. The idea from the very beginning was to move core plugins into their own process eventually, and that’s what has been integrated into the browser now.

You can test it on your system easily. Make sure you have the Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight plugin enabled. Visit YouTube and start watching a video to trigger the Flash plugin-container.exe. Now open a new blank tab and visit a site that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to play videos. You will notice that plugin-container is launched twice and that the processes stay open when the video stops playing and even if the page is closed.

Not all plugins will be launched in their own plugin-container.exe process. If you launch a Java application you will notice for instance that it is not launched in its own plugin container process.

Firefox users can disable plugin-container.exe completely in the advanced configuration of the browser. Enter about:config in the address bar and hit enter. Now filter for the following term and set their values to false to disable the feature.

• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled

You can also disable separate processes for a specific supported plugin instead.

• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll (Microsoft Silverlight)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll (Apple QuickTime)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (Adobe Flash)
• dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll (NPAPI test plugin)

Many Firefox users are reporting issues that they have with plugin-container.exe all over the Internet. What is your experience with Firefox’s out of process plugins?

Preferences and bookmarks are generally benign and it is an easy way to customize Firefox to your own specifications.
If there are other users on your PC, they and you might benefit from creating new user profiles in Firefox. You could also use this to create multiple profiles for yourself to adapt the browser to certain tasks. Having more than one user accessing a browser always causes confusion in terms of preferences and bookmarks. It even makes signing into your email account(s) annoying because you have to switch between passwords and usernames. Avoid these conflicts by utilizing the Firefox add-on called Switchy. This will allow you to create new profiles and alternate between them with ease.

Download Switchy for Firefox from the following URL. If you are not using Firefox as a default browser, it would be best to switch to it now and copy/paste the URL into the browsing window.

Click Add to Firefox. You will be prompted to restart the browser after installation. You may also get a warning from Windows that the author has not been verified and that this could be malicious software. Since it comes from Mozilla.org, this is unlikely, but you can run a security scan to be certain even after it is installed. The Switchy button will be added in the upper right adjacent to the URL bar.

By clicking this button, you will be able to access the Profile Manager and alter different parameters. When you first open the Manager, which is the second bar from the top, you will see “default” as the only existing profile. Click “create a new profile” to begin the customization. The default profile is the one that you are currently using. You may choose to rename the default profile and use that as your own. Give it a new name and you are finished.

Creating a new profile is simple. After you have either kept or changed the name of the default profile, click Create Profile.

Click Next when the Create Profile Wizard starts and then give the new profile a name.

Click Next and you will see the new profile in the Choose User Profile window.

Add websites to a profile by using the “Add new websites” option in the left pane. As for other specifics such as browsing history and preferences, all of them can be added by the user as they use their profile to browse. Notice that you have the option to check “Don’t ask at startup”.

If you leave this checked with a user selected, Firefox will not prompt you to choose a user profile at startup. With multiple users, do not leave this box checked. You also have the option to work offline with a profile. Startup options can be customized for each user.

Overall, this is a nice add-on for Firefox running on a PC with more than one user. It offers not only privacy, but also a certain level of convenience.

Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights

While you could go hunting for a different version of the song that is not blocked on YouTube or a proxy server to bypass the restriction you may prefer an automated solution instead.

The Firefox extension ProxTube – Unblock YouTube does that. It currently works perfectly fine in Germany and the Netherlands and may be working in other countries as well according to some user comments.

When you open a video on YouTube that is blocked in your country you will see a loading indicator and the message that “ProxTube is unblocking this video now”.

The Firefox add-on reloads the video automatically so that it can be watched on YouTube just like any other video. The speed is really good which can sometimes be an issue with proxies.

It should also be mentioned that you stay on YouTube and can watch the blocked video on the site. This is unlike other solutions that redirect you to a third party site.

The extension adds an icon to Firefox’s Navigational Toolbar to enable or disable the functionality.

ProxTube is a handy add-on for YouTube addicts living in Germany or the Netherlands who want to watch blocked YouTube videos. The developer has promised better support for other countries in the near future.

Firefox users can download the latest version of the add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

While some may be able to calm down by postponing the action, others may be in need for stress relief. Instead of hammering your fists on your keyboard, hurting your computer mouse or kicking your PC tower, you may have found the right stress relief in the form of Destroy The Web for the Firefox web browser.

The Firefox extension can turn any website into an arcade game with the objective to destroy as many elements on the page as you can in 30 seconds time.

The add-on places an icon into the Firefox navigational toolbar after installation and restart of the browser. Users who do not display that toolbar in the browser or want the icon placed somewhere else need to customize the toolbar layout to do so.

A click on the icon starts the game on the active page. The first time you click the icon you have the option to load a page with instructions.

The mouse cursor turns into a cross hair, a left-click on the page tries to destroy the underlying element. If you hit an element you get points for that, if you miss you get negative points.

The goal now is to get as many points as possible in half a minute. The extension adds sound and visual effects to the experience which are quite nice for a browser add-on. The score is displayed once the time runs out. Here you see information about the different elements that you have destroyed in that time and the total score.

You can submit your score to an online highscore list or dismiss it. The website will return to its state once the game ends.

Firefox users can download and install Destroy the Web from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

When users try to open the McAfee ScriptScan or McAfee SiteAdvisor page at the official Mozilla Add-on repository, they are redirected to the add-on’s Blocklist entry.

The reason for blocking the add-on is a high volume of crashes according to that page. Affected by the block are all ScriptScan versions 14.4.0 and below for Firefox and Seamonkey, and users of McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Firefox users who run one of the blocked add-ons in the browser will see the following message in the web browser: Firefox has determined that the following add-ons are known to cause stability or security problems

A click on Restart will disable the add-ons completely. Users who try to install the add-on see a similar message: The add-on name has a high risk of causing stability or security problems and can’t be installed.

The initial bug report requested to add McAfee ScriptScan and McAfee SiteAdvisor add-ons to the blocklist. It also mentions that both add-ons have caused more than 10,000 crashes in a one week period for Firefox 6.0.2 and Firefox 7 users.

Even worse, if you follow the initial bug reports you will find a comment by Robert Kaiser who mentioned that Mcafee ScriptScan alone was responsible for more than 15,000 crashes on September 28.

We had 1555 processed crashes on 6.* yesterday, with the 10% throttling rate, this means that roughly 15,000 crashes happened during a single day with this signature!

Something really needs to happen here, do we have any contact with them to get on this fast?

The Blocklist page only lists the block of McAfee ScriptScan on October 3. If you go through the list you find a McAfee SiteAdvisor from March 14.

Users who try to open the McAfee SiteAdvisor add-on page get the same blocked information page though, which means that both add-ons have been blocked by Mozilla.

It is good to see that Mozilla is taking a stand, even if it means to pull add-ons from a big company from the site. It is not the first time that big companies got hit with a block. If you look at the list you will see applications by Microsoft, Yahoo, AVG or Skype on there as well.

McAfee reportedly is working on a fix, according to a moderator response:

1) It’s NOT a security issue

2) It’s a decision made by Mozilla based on crashes that have been reported to Mozilla

3) McAfee is aware of it, has a bug filed and is working with Mozilla to address the problem

4) Until it is fixed, the primary workaround is to re-enable the ScriptScanner. Alternatives include use another browser for now (with most browsers you can import bookmarks and homepages). Also, SiteAdvisor 3.4 will provide *some* overlapping protection, specifically for scripts run in iFrames on webpages

Ed Bott now suspects that McAfee is not solely to blame for the crashes. In his opinion, it is the rapid release process that “plays havoc with the makers of browser add-ons”. Bott supports the claim by mentioning that Symantec also experienced compatibility issues in some of their products.

What’s your take on the issue?

Brian Bondy addressed one of the issues in a post entitled “Mozilla Firefox and silent updates” on his personal blog. In it he mentions that Windows’ User Account Control is a minor annoyance for Firefox users considering that the prompt will be displayed whenever the web browser is updated.

His plan is to find a way to bypass UAC prompts during updates after it has become clear that the user has enough permissions on the system to install and update the web browser.

Mozilla is currently experimenting with a Windows service approach. According to Brian, the Mozilla Application Updater service would be an “optional component” that users of the browser could install to automate the “software update process better”.

Those of you who follow the development of the Chrome browser may now think that this is exactly what Google is doing to update their web browser. And while both techniques have similarities on first glance, there are fundamental differences under the hood. The Firefox service for one is an optional component which Firefox users can uninstall or disable at any time. Firefox will receive updates in the future even with the service uninstalled, stopped or disables. The browser will simply switch to the old way of updating.

Mozilla tries to tackle the frequent update fatigue issue from other angles as well. The organization plans to make add-ons default to compatible during updates in the first quarter of 2012. This basically means that Firefox will no longer assume that add-ons do not work with an updated version of the browser. The benefit here is that fewer users will see the update prompt. Firefox for some time now downloads new versions of the web browser in the background and will install them as well unless add-ons are found to be incompatible. This can be changed under Firefox Options > Advanced Update.

Other methods include showing the What’s New page less frequently, increasing the time it takes before users receive notifications that an update has been downloaded and needs to be installed and to apply updates on shutdown.

If you read the comments under Brian’s post you will notice that nothing’s set into stone yet. The basic idea behind all proposals and plans is to make the updating process more comfortable to the user.

What’s your take on the development? Would you install a Firefox service on Windows for the updating of the browser?

Whenever Firefox Aurora gets a bump, I write about the new features and changes of the release to give beta and stable users a heads up what they can expect when their channel moves to that version.

Firefox 9 introduces type inference in the browser which improves the browser’s JavaScript performance in the two digit range. The Mozilla developer who worked on introducing type inference noticed performance increases of up to 44%, independent testers results between 20% and 30%.

The few remaining features and changes are not that spectacular. Mozilla notes that the browser is now supporting the new application toolbar and icon styles of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as well as multi-monitor support and two-finger swipe navigation gestures on the operating system.

Web developers can make use of JavaScript DNT Detection which detects if a user has opted out of behavioral tracking. The only other feature is supported for chunked XHR requests which can be utilized to display “data as it arrives instead of waiting for an entire download to complete”.

Firefox for Android users who can download a version of Firefox 9 for their system as well will notice a lot of changes. The browser now has a new look and feel to it. This includes a new awesome bar design with quicker access both to bookmarks and history items but also to preferences, add-ons and downloads. Back and forward buttons have been added to the awesome bar for easier navigation.

Firefox for Android users will benefit from faster start-up times, especially on devices with slow file systems.

Type inference is without doubt the biggest new feature of Firefox 9. One could say that it is the only end user feature of the desktop version. Only Mac users benefit from additional support for the new Lion operating system.

If you are interested in Firefox 9 you can download it from the Future of Firefox website for desktop and mobile devices.

You may remember that both Firefox 5 and 6 did not ship with big new features or improvements. Well, this changes with the release of Firefox 7. When you look at the new features you will notice one sticking out: Mozilla managed to improve memory usage of the Firefox web browser drastically (that’s the organization’s word). What does it mean in detail? A blog post by Nicholas Nethercoate over at Mozilla has the answers:

Firefox 7 uses less memory than Firefox 6 (and 5 and 4): often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less. In particular, Firefox 7′s memory usage will stay steady if you leave it running overnight, and it will free up more memory when you close many tabs.

Up to 50% less memory usage is a big number. Probably even more important than that is that the browser won’t feel like eating up all the RAM over time anymore, which is definitely a good thing, considering that the browser has a reputation for being memory inefficient.

The changelog lists addition features, including a new rendering backend that speeds up Canvas operations on Windows, support for text-overflow: ellipsis and the Web Timing specification and faster bookmark and password changes syncing when using Firefox Sync.

Firefox 7 is currently not available on the official homepage. It is likely that the developers are still preparing for the new release. Some mirror servers are already listing Firefox 7 for all supported operating systems and languages, while others do not. Expect a release announcement in the next 24 hours.

Firefox stable users will receive update notifications shortly in the browser to update automatically to the new version.

Beta, Aurora and Nightly users will also be pushed to a new version in the coming days. Check out Future Firefox Features, What I’m Looking Forward To for some pointers as to what you can expect in those versions.

Mozilla identified another issue as a consequence of this. Companies, organizations and individual users blocked the browser from updating to the most recent version because of that certification process.

• The release schedule doesn’t allow sufficient time for the organizations and their vendors to certify new releases of the products
• The associated end-of-life policy exposes them to considerable security risk if they remain on a non-current version past Firefox 3.6.

A proposal has been added to Mozilla wiki that suggest Extended Support Releases (ESR) to meet those needs. The basic idea is to offer extended support for certain releases. In the most recent proposal an Extended Support Release would be maintained for seven release cycles which would equal 42 weeks instead of the usual six weeks. The ESR releases will overlap two cycles to “allow organizations to qualify and test against Aurora and Beta builds for twelve weeks leading up to the ESR, and an additional 12 weeks to certify and transition to a new ESR”.

Mozilla proposed now that Firefox 8 or Firefox 9 would be made the initial ESR. Mozilla will support all ESRs with critical and high security bug fixes throughout their support cycle, and optionally with additional stability and security updates.

Extended Support Releases will have their own update channel so that automatic updates are available. Unlike other channels, the ESR will only be marketed through the Enterprise Wiki page and not on other Mozilla properties.

Firefox 3.6 users should note that the initial ESR release marks the beginning of the 12 week end of life cycle for the browser.

You can read up on the extended support proposal for Firefox here. I personally think that this is a step in the right direction, especially since relations between enterprise users and Mozilla have been tense since the beginning of the rapid release cycle. (thanks Ken for pinging me on Facebook)