Firefox

Mozilla releases patches for Firefox

Paul Mah — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:03:23 -0400

Mozilla has released patches for both versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the Firefox web browser. The updates patch two security vulnerabilities that have been rated as "critical" by Mozilla, including a variant of a vulnerability that could be exploited to do what has been termed as a "carpet bombing" attack. The second patch fixes the way Firefox handles references to CSS objects, which can be exploited to force a crash that can lead to malicious code being executed. A third patch resolves a security hole that applies only to Firefox 3.0 running on the Mac OS X, which was discovered by a security engineer at Apple.

Mozilla took the opportunity to issue a reminder that Firefox 2.0 will only be supported with security updates until mid-December. Users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.

For more on the new Firefox patches:
- check out this ComputerWorld article

Firefox 3 RC1 now available

Paul Mah — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:13:51 -0400

Release candidate 1 of Firefox 3 was made available late last week to the public. RC1 purportedly offers significant improvements in the area of performance, memory usage and stability over earlier versions. Some nifty features include the ability to resume downloads, offline support for tailored web applications, and full page zoom from both view menu and keyboard shortcuts. There also is an improved download manager that makes it easier to locate downloaded files, and better password management that allows users to save passwords via an information bar after a successful login. No final ship dates have been given for Firefox 3, though sources in the Linux community say final copies are promised by June.

For more on the release candidate of Firefox 3:
- check out the official release notes here

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron released

Mehan Jayasuriya — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:48:01 -0400

Just because they release early and often doesn't mean that you shouldn't still get excited: the good folks at Canonical have just unleashed version 8.04 of their beloved Linux distro Ubuntu and the update brings a number of new features to the table. "Hardy Heron," as it's called in alliterative Ubuntu creature-speak, runs GNOME 2.22 and Firefox 3 Beta 5 (which we raved about a few weeks ago) and also supports Wubi, which will allow you to easily install and uninstall Ubuntu on the same partition as Windows, if you so desire. If Ubuntu happens to be your cup of open-source tea, hit up their website for the full download.

For more on Hardy Heron:
- visit the Ubuntu website

Hands on: Firefox 3 beta 5

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:01:08 -0400

As Firefox version 3 has inched closer and closer to final product status, the chorus of voices declaring that the betas are ready for prime-time has grown deafening. So this week, I decided that I could wait no longer: I dove right in and made Firefox 3 beta 5 my primary browser on both my Windows XP and Mac OS X Leopard machines. Based on my experiences so far, I can say that the chatter filling the blogosphere is totally on-point: not only is beta 5 (the final beta, mind you) totally stable, fast and reliable--it's actually more stable, faster and more reliable than Firefox 2.0.

While Firefox was once clearly the king of the browser hill, I've recently felt that Safari 3 and Opera 9 have edged out the aging Firefox 2.0 in terms of performance and stability. However, judging by my experiences with beta 5, Firefox is back with a vengance. Not only is it blazing fast, it scrolls smoother than the other browsers, has a more unified look under both Windows and OS X and finally resolves the memory leakage issues that plagued version 2.0. Don't believe me? Check it out for yourself. Be sure to note, however, that this still technically is beta software, so back up your Firefox 2.0 extensions and preferences beforehand, okay?

For more on Firefox 3.0:
- download beta 5 at the Mozilla developer center

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron goes beta

Mehan Jayasuriya — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:54:25 -0400

Chomping at the bit for a new Ubuntu release? Well, here you go: The beta of Ubuntu version 8.04, colloquially known as "Hardy Heron," has officially been released to the waiting masses. Onboard you'll find GNOME 2.22, Linux Kernel version 2.6.24 and even that hot new Firefox 3 beta 4 that you've been hearing so much about. If you're a Windows user who's looking to dual-boot, you'll be happy to hear that Hardy Heron plays even nicer with Windows than previous versions of Ubutnu. A new feature called "Wubi" allows Ubuntu to be installed and uninstalled like any native Windows app. What's more, it doesn't require a dedicated partition or affect the existing bootloader while running in a dual-boot configuration.

For more on the latest release:
- see this Slashdot article

Safari 3.1 is first to support HTML 5

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:59:56 -0400

Upping the ante in the ongoing browser wars, Apple has released Safari version 3.1 for both OS X and Windows. The company claims that the new version "loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2" and runs JavaScript "up to six times faster" than the competition. What's more, the browser is the first to support HTML 5 (video and audio tags) and CSS animations. Other new features include support for CSS web fonts and HTML 5 offline storage, as well as improved SVG support.

For more on Safari 3.1:
- see this Ars Technica article
- and hit up Apple's website for the free download

Firefox 3.0 beta 4 released

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

Beta 4 of Firefox 3.0 was released just yesterday. According to Mozilla, this latest iteration sports more than 900 enhancements over the previous beta, and is a direct result of community feedback. The new beta includes drastic improvements to performance, stability and memory usage--the latter especially over long browsing sessions. Other notable mentions include a new download manager to make locating downloads easier, the inclusion of a full page zoom, improvements to JavaScript and offline data storage for web applications. In addition, continuing look and feel improvements have been added in terms of platform-specific icons, buttons and other user interface elements on the various platforms such as Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

For more on Firefox 3.0 beta 4:
- check out the Mozilla blog

Microsoft releases IE8 Beta 1

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:59:55 -0500

Finally reworked those web apps to be fully compatible with Internet Explorer 7? Good, because here comes IE8. Earlier this week, Microsoft posted Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 on its website, in order to offer a sneak peek to developers. The beta is available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 and can be downloaded by anyone, not just developers. Among the revamped features are a new Favorites bar, an improved antiphishing filter and automatic crash recovery (a la Firefox). IE8 also will bring a number of brand new features like "WebSlices" (basically a clone of the "Web Clip" feature seen in OS X Leopard) and "Activities," which will allow users to create their own mashups. Though it should go without saying, this is beta software, so exercise caution when installing and running it on your system.

For more on the beta:
- see this ComputerWorld article

How to: Customize iTunes

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:59:52 -0500

Of course, you've got your Firefox browser all tricked out with more plug-ins than you can remember but what about your iTunes? Most of us take the venerable music playing app for granted if we have iPods--after all what choice do we have? Well, none, really--but that doesn't mean that we can't customize the heck out of iTunes with all sorts of add-ons.

IE more secure than Firefox?

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:59:59 -0500

Well, that's certainly not a headline that you see every day. According to a report authored by Jeffrey Jones, a researcher and the Security Strategy Director at--where else?--Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, Internet Explorer is a more secure browser than Mozilla's Firefox. As the grounds for his report, he compared the security track records of Firefox 1.5 and IE6 as well as Firefox 2.0 and IE7. For his purposes, he breaks down vulnerabilities into three distinct levels of severity: high, medium and low. The most telling statistic is as follows: "Since November 2004, Microsoft has fixed 87 total vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, while Mozilla has issued 199 fixes to Firefox 1, 1.5, and 2.0."

Of course, a Microsoft study of a Microsoft product is not going to go uncontested and to that end, Mozilla responded to the report in a recent blog post. "We count every defect distinctly," Mozilla chief evangelist Mike Shaver wrote. "We count the ones that Mozilla developers find in-house. We count the things we do to mitigate defects in other pieces of software, including Windows itself and other third-party plugins. We count memory behavior that we think might be exploitable, even if no exploit has ever been demonstrated and the issue in question was found in-house. We open our bugs up after we've shipped fixes, so that people don't have to take our word for our severity ratings." What's more, he suggests that Microsoft spend more time addressing vulnerabilities instead of "hoping that defects aren't found by someone who they can't keep quiet." Oooh, burn!

At any rate, what's clear here is that you can probably prove that anything is secure, provided that you choose the right parameters by which security is measured. As Ars Technica aptly points out, this study in particular "neatly coincides with the release of IE 6 for Windows XP SP2," which, as you may already know, "was the culmination of a massive two-year refocusing on security by Microsoft that mandated security training for every developer in the company." Ultimately, it's difficult to take the results of this report too seriously though it does raise an interesting question--which browser really is more secure? Hit us up in the comments with your thoughts.

For more on the report:
- see this Ars Technica article