But the technology market is different, and in the last three years we’ve seen it take on a whole new dimension where Windows is no longer the obvious operating system choice, and where comparisons are increasingly being made with IBM.  On tablets, a market that Microsoft invented back around 2003 they’re going to have a real fight on their hands, and in computing generally it’s no longer clear what devices and form factors we’ll be using in even five or ten years time.  What is obvious however is that the traditional desktop PC is well and truly on its way out.  Lastly new operating systems such as iOS, Android and WebOS have blown away the notion that people will resist a learning curve on new devices.  So what would the world be like if Microsoft stopped making Windows desktop and server products?

First of all it’s not very likely, Microsoft would probably drop Windows products last of all with their expensive research and development centres and other products such as Xbox falling by the wayside first, so there’s no need to worry in the short term.  Windows 8 is a big gamble though and if it fails then Microsoft will either have to backtrack with Windows 9, pull an immensely impressive rabbit out of their hat or face the consequences of poor decision-making.

There has already been talk that Google would like to bring Android to the desktop.  HP said the same of WebOS, which they are still developing or at least maintaining, and could put extra resources back into quickly.  Ubuntu Linux is now at least as friendly as Windows XP was, only the lack of big name software for the platform is holding it back now and Apple’s OS X is becoming more like iOS with every release.  So it’s already clear that there’s plenty of choice.

We might also expect an open-source upstart operating system to appear too and it might even be a reinvigorated WebOS.  Companies such as the Mozilla Foundation might see an opportunity as their Firefox browser begins to fade in popularity, and this is just one of several places where a new operating system might emerge.

In the business space, some of the GNU/Linux companies including Red Hat, might jump in with versions that will run Windows programs on the desktop.  This isn’t new and has already been done with operating systems such as Lindows (later renamed Linspire).  This product still exists today and could prove popular with businesses if Windows 8 and Windows 9 fail to deliver the working experience that they need.

Again it’s very unlikely that Microsoft will cease development of Windows in the next twenty years at least.  If they’d have done it even five years ago there would have been almost no alternatives to choose from.  Should they do it now though businesses and consumers would probably just shrug their shoulders and quietly move on to the next big thing.

The Stop Online Piracy Act in the US is getting ever more publicity with GoDaddy one of the high profile companies to suffer from supporting it as we wrote a couple of days ago.  In our previous article Martin summed up SOPA very effectively.

If you are living in the United States, you should have heard about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and Protect-IP, which, when passed, would give companies rights that they should not have. If it passes, IP rightsholders (a term vaguely defined) could send notices to payment processors or ad services like Google Adsense to force them to stop doing business with listed websites, all without legal process.

Site owners have five days to file a counter-notice, but neither payment processors or ad networks have any obligation to respect it. Even worse, they are granted “immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement”.

Now a loose confederation of Internet giants are considering shutting down the entire websites for 24 hours and instead showing a messagew urging their visitors and customers to contact their representative in the US congress the day before the vote goes to the house there.

The coalition is made up of some very big names on the Internet including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, eBay, PayPal, AOL, Foursquare, IAC, LinkedIn, Mozilla, OpenDNS and Zynga.  If the plan goes ahead all these services could be taken offline for 24 hours.

In a report by CNet…

When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you’ll know they’re finally serious.

True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option–possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP–but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.

“There have been some serious discussions about that,” says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. “It has never happened before.”

This wouldn’t be the first piece of anti-piracy legislation around the world to face stiff opposition.  France have already passed an Internet copyright law but the Digital Economy Act in the UK stalled in the face of arguments from major Internet Service Providers British Telecom and TalkTalk.

Many reports say that SOPA is still set to pass the US congress and that very few Americans have heard about it.  Shutting down services such as Facebook and Google, and replacing them with anti-SOPA messages for a day would certainly raise awareness, but a question mark remains over whether doing so only one day before the congress vote would be effective enough.

This is the first time ever that major websites have threatened to effectively go on strike to boycott something, and it is completely unprecedented.  It is unclear at this time whether the services would be taken down worldwide or just in the US and also how serious the coalition are about the boycott, which would inevitably lose them all a day’s trade.

Services are commonly targeted for IP addresses anyway and it wouldn’t be difficult for these companies to target messages to their US-based users.  With many millions of visitors every day in the US, companies such as Google and Facebook could achieve this on their own.  Imagine then how much more leverage they would have with Amazon, Yahoo! and others on board.  If this goes ahead it is still possible that other companies could follow suit, effectively crippling the Internet in the US for the day before the vote.

So what do you think of SOPA and your favourite websites being taken offline for a day?

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?

Mozilla had to halt the distribution of the update to rush out an update to Firefox 7.0.1 two days later. User reports at the official Mozilla Support forum now suggest that the new version has a problem of its own. Firefox Sync, the synchronization service that Firefox users can utilize to sync passwords, bookmarks and other data appears to be broken in the new release.

Many users receive the message “Sync encountered an error while connecting: Service incorrectly configured. Please try again” when they try to sync or configure synchronization in Firefox 7.0.1. Users who try to delete their sync accounts or date cannot do so as well. They get error messages like “We had a problem purging the data from your account. Please try again later.” when trying to purge data and the following message when trying to delete the account.

Oh dear.

Looks like one of the dinosaurs escaped again.
We keep them away from the data, so that should be safe.

Please try again later when we’ve wrestled him back
onto the treadmill.

According to Tom’s Guide there are other issues that users reportedly experience under the latest stable version of the browser. These issue include Java incompatibilities, Yahoo Mail errors and incompatible toolbars.

Mozilla has acknowledged the issue on the Mozilla Services page stating that “Sync is currently having intermittent problems due to server overload. Services Operations is working on it”. The advice given on the page suggests that “warnings about incorrect passwords or Sync Keys are likely due to the load problems” and to “try syncing again at a later time”.

The Twitter feed indicates that Mozilla is working on the issue.

The Sync issues shed some new light on the delayed advertised update for Firefox 3.6 users to Firefox 7 that Mozilla decided to postpone yesterday. (thanks Venkat)

Update: Mozilla notes that users are currently having issues with Sync due to server overload issues.

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?

The company was quick enough to provide a temporary solution for the bug that brought back all the add-ons for affected users. We covered the issue and workaround here in detail.

Firefox 7.01, the update that fixed the hidden add-on issue is now available for all users. It can be downloaded from the official website or via the web browser’s internal updating. To do that one would have to click on Firefox > Help > About Firefox to trigger the check for a new version of the Internet browser (assuming that the one button Firefox menu is the preferred layout).

This new Firefox release fixes only this single issue. Some users have questioned why Mozilla did not catch the bug in the Nightly or Aurora phase of development. While it is probably to easy to link the bug to the rapid release cycle, one has to consider the fact that the accelerated release process could have something to do with it.

Taking into consideration that this is the first major bug, and that the last two releases did not contain serious bugs that required an emergency patch, it is to early to tell if the rapid release process had any influence here.

Tech interested users and websites like mine will however look closely at the coming releases to see if history repeats itself, so to speak. I give Mozilla the benefit of the doubt and assume that a bug like this could have been missed before the rapid release cycle as well.

Please let me know what you make of it.

Update: Mozilla Thunderbird, the email client, has also been updated to version 7.0.1.

When you open the new homepage you will see lots of featured add-ons and stuff on that page similar to how Google is promoting extensions on the Google Chrome web store. One thing that I dislike is the fact that version compatibilities are hidden on the add-on pages.

Not everything has turned to the worse though which can be mainly attributed to the new up and coming extensions category that has not been there before. Unlike Most Popular, which is an overall indicator for an add-on’s popularity since its release on the Mozilla website, up and coming looks solely at the most popular new add-ons.

The easiest way to display add-ons of that category is to open this link in your web browser.

You won’t find information about the sorting or rating of add-ons on the up and coming page. I’d assume that it calculates that from user comments, ratings and downloads, but I could be wrong. Regardless of that, it is fair to say that you find mostly new add-ons there that have been uploaded to the repository less than 60 days ago.

There is no guarantee that you find the next big add-on hit there first, but chance is high that you won’t miss out on popular add-ons anymore if you visit that site regularly.

Even better, you can subscribe to the listing to receive updates in the feed reader of choice. Please note that the feed is updated whenever a new extension makes it into the up and coming listing, handy if you ask me. Subscriptions are actually available for all different add-on sorting options.

I personally like the idea of the up and coming category, as much as I like to parse the updated category.

Are you using the add-on repository over at Mozilla? If so, what’s your favorite category and feature?

With this guide, I would like to take a look at the features that the developers plan to add to future versions of Firefox. I’m concentrating solely on features that will make a big difference in day to day activities in the browser.

Reset Firefox (Release Target: Firefox 9)

Many Firefox users reinstall the web browser when they experience issues like crashes that they cannot fix. The reinstallation however does not fix issues that are user profile related. And creating new profiles in the browser is something that the majority of Firefox users is unfamiliar with. This is mostly due to the complicated technical way of doing it,

The Reset Firefox feature would automatically create a new Firefox user profile and migrate the user’s data, including bookmarks, history and passwords.

Third-Party Add-On Warnings (Released: Firefox 8)

One of the frustrating experiences as a Firefox user is the inability to block third party add-on and plugin installations. Mozilla tackled half the problem in Firefox 8 by blocking automatic third party add-on installations in the web browser. Users now have the option to accept or deny installation of the add-on. The feature is integrated in Firefox 8. See Firefox To Get Better Third Party Add-On Security

This falls directly in line with the feature to uninstall third party add-ons in the browser which can only be disabled but not uninstalled in the browser. There is no projected release version of Firefox yet for that feature.

Improve Responsiveness with Memory Reductions

Firefox especially over long sessions may see memory usage grows and as a result of that responsiveness issues. Mozilla is working on improving memory usage over long sessions. It is currently unclear when the improvement will make its way into Firefox.

Opt-In Plugin Activation

Plugins install automatically in the web browser currently. The user has options to block plugins only after they have been recognized by the browser. Some advanced configuration settings are available to block specific plugin locations from being scanned by Firefox. This is highly technical and still not as effective as it should be.

Mozilla plans to give the user a say before plugins are activated in the web browser. A whitelist will be used for the most common plugins.

64-bit Firefox for Windows 7 / Vista

64-bit support for Windows 7 and Vista is long overdue. The developers are finally starting to make progress in this regard, and it is likely that we will see 64-bit versions of Firefox for Windows regularly in the near future.

Mozilla Network Installer (Release Target: Firefox 9)

A lightweight, localized installed for Windows and OXS that allows a user to “select Mozilla applications and/or related components which are then downloaded in the background and installed”.

• Installation of default versions of Mozilla products (Firefox, Thunderbird)
• Installation of default versions of Mozilla products plus authorized addon(s) (combinations of extensions, search plugins, themes, and/or personas)
• Installation of default versions of Mozilla products bundled with authorized, secondary installer(s) (e.g. Network installer functions as a meta installer)
• Installation of authorized, customized versions of Mozilla products (e.g. product plus contents of distribution directory, with option for secondary installer(s))

Display add-on performance information (Release Target: Firefox 9)

This feature appears to be much like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer feature that notifies users about add-ons that slow down the browser.

Web Developer Tools

Web developers will get several new tools and features that will make their work more comfortable. This includes a Style Inspector to view CSS rules applied to a specific element on a web page, a Highlighter that highlights elements on a page, a Style Editor to see CSS changes applied immediately to the page or a Style Doctor feature which the developers intent to answer the “why doesn’t this look the way I expected it to?” question.

Verdict

Mozilla has a lot in store for Firefox users over the coming release cycles. Some features are really improving the user experience, like the ability to block add-ons and plugins before they make their way into the web browser. Interested users can take a look at the Features listing over at Mozilla Wiki for an extended list of upcoming features.

Mozilla recently announced plans to remove the version information from the About Firefox page. Many interpreted this as a way to make Firefox users less aware of the rapid release cycle that speed up the release of new major versions in the browser significantly. The browser this year alone made it all the way from Firefox 3 to Firefox 6 Stable with the likelihood that Firefox 8 Stable will be released by year’s end.

The basic idea here was to remove the version information from the About Firefox page and replace it with information about the update status of the browser (is up to date, is not up to date) and the last time updates were checked.

The version of the browser would still be displayed under Help > Troubleshooting information. The reason for this move was to “aavoid confusion and make sure users always have the most current version of Firefox”. The question here is why Mozilla did not add those information to the About page without removing the version information.

A post on Tuesday by Alex Faaborg on the Mozilla.Dev.Usabilioty newsgroup revealed that Mozilla dropped the plan to remove the version number from the about window.

Just in case this got lost amongst the many threads in progress: there are no plans to adjust the version number. It will remain in its current place in the about window, and we are going to continue with the current numbering scheme.

An attribute of working entirely in the open is that we sometimes create significant confusion as we discuss design work that is in progress. However the bright side is that there is never a shortage of feedback :)

There you have it. The version stays where it is already displayed, at least for now.

Mozilla interestingly enough plans to hide the version number in the Firefox web browser. Asa Dotzler added an entry to Bugzilla to remove the version of the browser from the about Window dialog in the browser.

Firefox users who currently want to know which version of the browser they are running can click on Firefox > Help > About Firefox to find out.

The original idea by Asa is to remove the version information in the about window and replace it with the more general information that the user is running the latest version of the browser.

When a user opens the About window for Firefox, the window should say something like “Firefox checked for updates 20 minutes ago, you are running the latest release.”

Experienced Firefox users, or at least those who know where to look, can still access the version information on the about:support page.

What is Mozilla hoping to achieve with the removal of the version number listed in the about window? No information is posted on Bugzilla, it is however likely that Mozilla wants to reduce the impact a version number change has on the global community, and especially on the update ratio of users.

Removing the version number does not change the fact that Firefox is reaching what is generally perceived as major versions more frequently, and most tech news sites will still use the version number when they write about those changes. The idea is to make versions less important.

Then again, we would not have that discussion if Mozilla had made the decision to use “minor” version increases for the rapid release cycle. Instead of having to deal with Firefox 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, we would have then had to deal with Firefox 4.1, 4.2., 4.3, Firefox 5 and Firefox 5.1.

Mozilla is basically trying to use the argument that opponents of the major version increase had when they were first announced:

The opponents said that versions do not mean anything if the browser does not deliver, and that it does not make sense to increase the browser version if the changes are only minor.

Mozilla now says that versions do not mean anything, and that users simply should not look at them anymore.

Hiding the browser versions, and the supposed change is nothing more than that, does not resolve the underlying issue. Especially not so if the update screen still displays the new version the browser will get updated to. (via)

Update: To clarify, Mozilla will only remove the version number from the about Firefox window, not from other locations, like the Troubleshooting Information page.

Update: Mozilla has dropped the plan to remove the version from the About window in the Firefox browser.

When you open the add-ons section over at Mozilla, you are now greeted with a modern design that focuses on staff picks, featured extensions, up and coming extensions and featured Personas on the start page.

The Explore menu at the top left leads to featured, most popular and top rated add-ons. I personally dislike that Mozilla has removed the created and updated links from the repository start screen. Below that are the usual categories, on the other side the ten most popular extensions.

When you click on one of the Explore links you are redirected to the old layout and design, which includes options to sort the add-ons by creation or update date. It is likely that this layout will be changed over time as well. (Please Mozilla, do not remove the option to sort by creation date, as Google has done on the Chrome Web Store)

Individual add-on pages have been redesigned as well. Add-ons now separate information more clearly.

You now get the name, icon, developers and a short description on top. Images are displayed below, then again information about the add-on followed by reviews of it. I personally think that the images have the focus on that page. They furthermore divide the information and disturb the reading flow. Lastly, you got a lot of white space on the page.

Users who scroll all the way down get related information, for instance which other add-ons users of that particular add-on use, which collections it is included in and if the developers have created other add-ons. These links are interesting, they can for instance be used to discover new add-ons.

Have you noticed the new design over at Mozilla yet? What is your impression of it?

The project, which was announced on a Mozilla forum, aims to provide a direct competitor to Android on these devices now that Nokia and Intel’s tablet OS, Meego is being discontinued.

In some ways the platform will be a hybrid of two Google operating systems, Android and Chrome OS, in that Mozilla want to harness their Gecko rendering engine from their Firefox browser and Thunderbird email package, to run applications that are web-centered but that run independently of the need of a browser.

This isn’t a new concept, Adobe’s AIR platform has been doing this for some considerable time now, but Mozilla’s offering will aim to bring HTML and other web apps out of the browser.  While we can be certain they are not the only technology company headed this way, they’re certainly the first to announce it.

The project is currently in its “infancy”, but the core building blocks of the OS already exist.  Mozilla began publicising the existence of their new OS to try and get experts from within their user communities to help and contribute.  This will make it the first properly open-source mobile OS.

While Google’s Android is powering ahead in popularity it has been plagued by security and malware issues.  Mozilla’s Firefox browser has a tremendous reputation when it comes to security, and as such the goodwill carried with the Mozilla name will inevitably give any new product form the company a huge boost both from hardware vendors and the public at large.

The ultimate goal of the project is “breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world” and making an open source operating system “the way we think open source should be done.”

The tablet operating system market is already very crowded with products already available from Apple, Google, HP and RIM dominating the space and Microsoft releasing their Windows 8 OS next year.  Some people may say therefore that another OS may confuse matters and consumers even more or even dilute the market to the point where any new OS release becomes pointless.

Anybody who lived through the home computing revolution of the 1980′s will be familiar with how successful multiple consumer operating systems can be when made available side by side.  Back then, companies such as Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore and Texas Instruments were among literally dozens of companies all releasing products with their own proprietary operating systems.

The difference between then and what we have now is the the communications technologies that bind devices together have become standardised.  Therefore anything that you could ever want to do on one tablet is possible on all the others.

This means that the operating system itself is becoming less of an issue as it essentially disappears, to an extent anyway, into the background and the focus is placed on the content that users want to access and the web pages they visit.  This was what Microsoft said they want to achieve with Windows Phone, and many people will argue they were successful in bringing the content to the front and centre of the user experience.

How successful Mozilla are in this space though depends on a variety of factors.  These include the amount of time it will take to develop the OS and what their competitors do in the mean time.  Mozilla have a very fast development process, with a new version of Firefox out every three months.  This is aided by a strong user community of programmers and developers.  What they don’t have though is money and we can see from operating systems such as Google’s Chrome OS that development of a mobile OS can be a complicated and time-consuming process.

We’ll bring you all the latest updates on Mozilla’s entry into the tablet space here at gHacks.

We have seen services in the past that try to tackle the issue with a global ID. Open ID is one of those services. You basically create a single account at Open ID and can use the account information to sign in on sites that support the technology.

Mozilla has now introduced their own service, called BrowserID. The technology has been designed to work with all browsers and mobile devices. Users benefit from a streamlined process. They only have to verify their email address once before they can use BrowserID to sign into any website supporting BrowserID with two clicks.

BrowserID displays a popup window when a user clicks on sign In on a website that supports it. If the user is logged into BrowserID, all email addresses associated with the account are displayed. All it takes to sign in is to select one, or use the default selection, and click the Sign In button in the window afterwards. A password does not need to be entered anymore.

Mozilla has published a short tutorial for web developers who want to implement BrowserID on their websites and services. The tutorial is available here on the BrowserID website. There is also a short guide that describes the BrowserID technology.

A blog post over at Mozilla summarizes the benefits of the technology:

• Easy to use: Users sign up once and can use BrowserID on any website supporting it. They save time and get the same log in experience on all of those sites.
• Secure: Uses the verified email protocol. Public Key Cryptography is used to verify account ownership.
• Cross-Browser: Works on all modern browsers
• Decentralized
• Future browser support
• Respects Privacy: Does not leak back information to a server about the sites a user visits.

The project is experimental in its current stage. Plans are to integrate the feature into the Firefox web browser at a later point in time.

It is to early to tell if BrowserID will take of in the future. It might if Mozilla succeeds in implementing BrowserID into the Firefox browser natively.

What’s your take on it? (via)

One would normally assume that opening a tab increases memory usage, and that closing the same tab would drop memory utilization again to levels prior to opening that tab. That assumption up until now has not been true, which can be attributed largely to JavaScript fragmentation.

Firefox allocates 1 Megabyte chunks for the browser’s JavaScript heap. These chunks are returned once they are completely empty of data that is used by the browser. The only problem until now was that chunks contained objects and elements from various processes, sites and browser features.

Gregor Wagner analyzed the behavior and noticed that about 30% of the 1 Megabyte chunks could not be deleted because of small files that were still in use in the chunks.

Wagner implemented a patch that separated long and short lived objects by “placing system and user objects into separate chunks”. He defines long lived objects as browser elements that do not come from web pages. The core benefit of this approach is that chunks can be emptied a lot quicker which means that they can be returned to the operating system.

An improvement of about 30% was noticed on average on patched versions of the firefox web browser.

Closing all tabs after surfing:

• 108,003,328 B — js-gc-heap (without patch)
• 20,971,520 B — js-gc-heap (with patch)

Memory footprint of the whole browser:

• 310,890,496 B — resident (without patch)
• 219,856,896 B — resident (with patch)

That’s an impressive improvement which will likely make its way into the upcoming Firefox 7 browser.

Nicholas Nethercote posted a summary of Firefox memory improvements on his Mozilla based blog which includes information about George Wagner’s optmizations, but also information about other parts of the browser that get optimized.

Firefox users can look forward to the next but one version of the browser that ships with all those improvements. In related news, the first Firefox 8 Nightlies have been spotted on the Mozilla server.

So, the http prefix is gone in the latest Firefox 7 nightly builds. As is the trailing slash at the end of the web address. This is how the Ghacks homepage looks like when opened in the latest Firefox nightly.

The highlighting of the domain name has been in previous builds before. The only protocol that is currently removed from the display is the http protocol. Other protocols like the previously mentioned https and ftp protocols are still displays in the address bar.

A https website is now displayed in the following way in the address bar. The https part of the url is displayed in light grey now which means it is mostly visualized by the colored certificate verification area in front of the address now.

This is slightly different from Google’s approach on https websites. Users who open secure sites in Google Chrome see a colored lock and the https procotol in the address bar. Google unlike Firefox and Opera does not change the color of the subdomain (like www.). Only the directories are shown in a light grey color.

The Opera web browser handles it differently as well. The browser hides all protocols by default, but displays them when the user left-clicks on the address bar. Opera users can furthermore right-click on the icon in front of the url to show the full web address all the time.

A secure site in Opera looks like this:

Internet Explorer 9 finally uses yet another color and display scheme for web addresses. It is the only browser that displays all protocols all the time. The standard http protocol, the subdomains and the directories are shown in a light grey color to emphasize the domain name.

Four browsers, four different ways to display website addresses. Which is your favorite and why?

Firefox 4, or more precisely its only update Firefox 4.0.1 was released April 28, less than two months ago.

Firefox 5, which has been released yesterday is seen by Mozilla as a security update for Firefox 4. It in turn means three things:

• Mozilla Firefox 4 users will not get any more updates
• Firefox 4 users who have not updated yet are running a browser with security vulnerabilities
• Support for older versions of the browser has been reduced significantly

Some users might say that it is not all that bad. Just update from Firefox 4.0.1 to Firefox 5 and you are protected again, and update again from 5 to 6 and so on. Some arguments speak against this practice. Enterprise users need to do a lot more testing because of the new release process, and users who came to rely on specific add-ons, might have to disable them or force compatibility on them to get them to work in the next major version of the browser.

Mozilla notes that the major version updates are typically less likely to cause incompatibilities and other problems, due to the rapid release process which pushes out smaller releases regularly instead of big releases occasionally.

One thing that I’m personally a bit confused about is whether automatic updates are applied to Firefox 4, or not. I installed a test version, and while it shows a new update for the browser under Help > About Firefox, it does not seem to apply that update automatically when I close the browser and open it again. The Aurora release on the other hand applies updates automatically on every start.

Does that mean that Firefox 4.0.1 or 4.0 users are not getting Firefox 5 delivered as an automatic update? If that is the case, does it mean that Firefox 4 users are running a browser with known security vulnerabilities?

If you are running Firefox 4, I recommend to update to the latest version of the browser immediately.

What’s your take on all of this? Let me know in the comments. You can read the lifecycle policy discussion here at mozilla.dev.planning.

A new version every three months or so, and a confusing assortment of release channels makes it less interesting to keep an overview over each channel. With four channels for Firefox and Google Chrome alone each, it would mean to spend more time monitoring the development to stay up to date.

Thunderbird recently joined the rapid release process as well, with the beta versions recently jumping a version to version 5.

Instead of using Firefox’s naming convention, which is stable, beta, aurora and nightly, the developers have decided to introduce a new set of channel names. The nightly versions of Thunderbird are called Shredder, the Aurora versions Earlybird and the beta versions Miramar. The latest nightly versions are already at version 7, while the latest stable releases are at version 3.

We have already looked at the features that Mozilla Messaging plans to introduce in Thunderbird 5. You can get the full overview here.

Among the changes are a new add-on manager that looks identical to the extensions manager of the Firefox web browser. Other new features include a revised account setup wizard that has been optimized once again, an optimized display of email attachments including attachment sizes, tab reordering and a new troubleshooting information page.

Interested users can download Thunderbird 5 Beta from the early releases page over at Mozilla Messaging. The beta version is available for all supported operating systems and languages. Nightly releases are currently only available at the official ftp server.

What’s your take on the rapid release process and the new names for the different Thunderbird channels? Let me know in the comments. (via)

Internet Explorer finally displays a list of popular sites and options to reopen the last session or recently open tabs.

The problem with static contents on the new tab page is that some may lose their value to the user. They are also never related to another open website in the browser.

Predictive Newtab is a new Mozilla Labs project that adds dynamic site suggestions to the new tab page of the Firefox web browser. Dynamic means that the add-on calculates possible matches by searching a user’s bookmarks and history.

If you are on YouTube for instance and press the new tab button, you may get suggestions to visit Gametrailers, Hulu or Dailymotion, while a visit on Ghacks might suggest Lifehacker, Neowin or Makeuseof instead.

The plugin displays information about each link, tags, a computed score and whether the site has been bookmarked on the new tab page. It is likely that the interface will get polished up before its release to a wider audience.

The developer notes that Predictive Newtab works best on systems with a large number of well tagged bookmarks, but that it will work even on systems without any bookmarks. All computations are done in the browser, and stay on the local system.

The basic idea behind the add-on is that users who open a tab on a specific type of site are more likely to visit another site of the same type. I’m not sure if that assumption is correct. It would probably be better if the developer would add suggestions plus a compilation of the most visited sites or a custom selection of sites on the new tab page, to give the user the best of both worlds.

Firefox users who would like to test the experimental add-on can download it at the official Firefox add-on repository. The add-on is compatible with all versions of the browser from version 4 onwards. (via)

What really distinguishes different connections to the same server is the size of the sending congestion window (CWND) on the server. If the window is large enough to support the next response document then it can all be transferred (by definition) in 1 RTT.

It basically means that Firefox may load resources faster if connection handling and priorities are changed.

I’ve done an experiment to show the best case – a link to a 25KB resource off of a page that contains a mixture of small and large content. In both cases the 25KB resource is loaded with an idle persistent connection. In the historic case it reuses a connection that had loaded a small image previously and it takes 3RTT (793ms) to transfer it.. in the case of sorting by cwnd the window is large enough to accommodate the entire resource and it is all complete in 1 RTT (363ms). Cool!

Even better, the worst case scenario is the status quo of Firefox 4. Users who are interested in a longer, more technical explanation, can visit the Bitsup blog for a taste of that.

Firefox 4 transfer

Firefox 5 transfer

The guys over at HTTPWatch have tested the new feature and found the “the performance benefit [to be] substantial”.

In other news: Firefox has a bad reputation for excessive memory usage, and related to this slow downs especially on startup or when closing the browser window. While that is certainly not the perception of all Firefox users, many perceive Firefox as a browser that uses to much memory.

The MemShrink project aims to optimize Firefox’s memory consumption. The developers list speed, stability and perception as the three core benefits of optimizing the memory usage of the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

The project members will analyze memory leak reports and prioritize them based on numbers of affected users and their default priority.

The developers have created a new website called Are We Slim Yet which tracks the process of cutting down on Firefox’s memory usage.

If things go forward as planned, we might see considerable memory footprint reductions in coming versions of the browser.