• Mozilla 2010 goals finalized
• Firebug 1.3.0 final released
• Time to update your add-ons for Firefox 3.1
• Labs update: December 2008
• Snowl: new release and blog posts
• Mozilla community theme
• A user’s experience when downloading Firefox
• Camino 2.0 Beta 1 released
• Developer calendar
• Subscribe to the email newsletter

Mozilla 2010 goals finalized

Mitchell Baker has posted the final, consolidated set of Mozilla 2010 goals. You can still give feedback if you believe there are any major issues that have yet to be addressed, but given the levels of discussion and involvement throughout the process it is likely that this is the final revision. The four goals centre around openness, data, mobile, and Firefox, and you can read the full final version of the list at Mitchell’s weblog.

Firebug 1.3.0 final released

Rob Campbell has posted that Firebug 1.3.0 has been released and is available through addons.mozilla.org. “As mentioned previously, this version will not be compatible with Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) and up. For that you’ll need a Firebug 1.4 alpha, available on getfirebug.com’s releases directory. Notes are available on the releases page.” Firebug 1.3 includes improvements to the Net panel, the Script panel, debugging features, and the console. There’s a new Tracing panel for debugging Firebug itself, and the team is starting to work on unittest coverage using the new FireUnit system. For more information, see Rob’s original blog post.

Time to update your add-ons for Firefox 3.1

Firefox 3.1 development and testing continues apace, and the good folks at the Add-ons Blog have posted that it’s time for add-on developers to start updating for the Firefox 3.1 final release. “[A]s of 3.1b2, no changes are planned which should affect add-on compatibility. Don’t hesitate! With each subsequent beta, more people make the switch and having 3.1 compatibility will ensure a seamless upgrade experience for your users.” For details, including handy links and more information, see the Add-ons blog post.

Labs update: December 2008

The team over at Mozilla Labs has posted their December update, covering recent events and giving a quick update on the status of all the active Mozilla Labs experiments. Included are notes about the University of Michigan Design Jam, campus outreach news, and the most recent “Concepts of the Month” from the ongoing Concept Series project. Experiment updates are provided for Personas, Snowl, Ubiquity, Weave, and Prism. Read the full update at the Mozilla Labs weblog.

Snowl: new release and blog posts

Myk Melez has announced the latest release of Snowl, a Mozilla Labs experiment that integrates messaging into the browser. The release is Snowl 0.2, which you can download and install through Snowl Central. Additionally, Myk has posted a trio of thoughtful and forward-looking blog articles about Snowl, discussing the experiment’s principles, future, and roadmap. If you’re interested in Labs projects, or in the idea of integrating messaging into Firefox, these posts are a great place to start reading and thinking about the Snowl project while you test this latest release.

Mozilla community theme

Tara Shahian writes, “Last week the localization team deployed a set of customizable web tools as part of an ongoing effort to provide better resources to our communities. The toolkit includes templates for community websites, wikis, blogs, and forums that have all been skinned with a brand new Mozilla Community Theme. This will not only help communities establish their web presence more easily, but it also sets a consistent and professional look across the different community sites that choose to adopt it.” For more information about the new community toolkit and theme, check out Tara’s blog post.

A user’s experience when downloading Firefox

The Mozilla Metrics gang recently reinitiated the Funnelcake project, originally started in 2007 to better understand the full cycle of a Firefox user’s experience. November’s edition has provided some insights that they’ve now shared through their blog. “For this discussion, we want to focus on another area — what is the experience of a new user at the precise moment he/she clicks on the download button? At first glance, this may seem like an ultra simple thing to examine. However, there are indeed different hoops a user has to navigate through at this moment in their experience.” To read more about the Funnelcake project and this most recent analysis, check out the Blog of Metrics post.

Camino 2.0 Beta 1 released

The Camino project has been hard at work, and has released Camino 2.0 beta 1. “Camino 2.0 Beta 1 contains several notable improvements, including support for rearranging tabs by drag and drop, the ability to disable “Block Flash animation” on a per-site basis, tab overview, full content zoom, better support for Full Keyboard Access in the browser window, and a “Recently Closed Pages” menu. Camino 2.0 Beta 1 also has all the improvements in version 1.9.0 of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine, leading to better performance with popular plug-ins and enhanced support for web standards.” To get the download, visit the Camino preview site.

Developer calendar

For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

Subscribe to the email newsletter

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

Due to the security fixes, we strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this latest release.

If you already have Thunderbird 2.0.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 Release Notes.

Please note: If you’re still using Thunderbird 1.5.0.x, this version is no longer supported and contains known security vulnerabilities. Please upgrade to Thunderbird 2 by downloading Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 from www.getthunderbird.com.

• Mobile Firefox (Fennec) alpha 2 released
• Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.20 now available
• “Fox For All” wins Impact Mozilla
• Camino 1.6.6 released
• Fireunit, testing in the Firebug world
• Firebug in Firefox 3.1b2 and beyond
• JSON explorer for Firebug
• New Mozilla design community mailing list
• Localization Testing and QA survey
• Interview: Mozilla Weave project lead
• Quality Assurance community site now in beta
• Automatic project creation coming to Mozdev
• New Firefox feature videos on mozilla.com
• Last issue of 2008!
• Developer calendar
• Subscribe to the email newsletter

Mobile Firefox (Fennec) alpha 2 released

Stuart Parmenter writes, “We’re happy to announce that our second alpha release of Fennec has come together. While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted, we’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance. We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading. We’ve refactored a significant amount of the front end code resulting in substantial speed improvements as well as providing a much better base for extension authors to build upon.”

Additionally, the Fennec team has released desktop versions of mobile browser as they did with Fennec alpha 1, which you can download for Windows, OS X, and Linux. These builds allow content and extension authors to experiment with the mobile browser on their desktop. Release notes are available for Fennec alpha 2, with information on how to install the browser, what’s new, known issues, and how to provide feedback. Further information can be found in Stuart’s original announcement.

Firefox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.20 now available

As part of Mozilla Corporation’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.0.5 and Firefox 2.0.0.20 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mozilla is not planning any further security and stability updates for Firefox 2, and we recommend that you upgrade to Firefox 3 as soon as possible. Additionally, the Phishing Protection service will no longer be available for Firefox 2 users. Firefox 3 offers a new and improved Phishing and Malware Protection service, so again, we strongly urge you to upgrade to Firefox 3. You can download Firefox 3 at GetFirefox.com

“Fox For All” wins Impact Mozilla

Mozilla is proud to announce “Fox For All” as the grand prize winner of Impact Mozilla. “Fox For All” was authored by Phani Kumar Vadrevu and Uttam Byragoni of India. “We’re extremely grateful to all ten finalists. The degree of hard work and the diversity of ideas contributed by the teams far exceeded all expectations. Impact Mozilla also succeeded in reaching out to groups not traditionally part of the Mozilla community (e.g., MBA students).” More information about the wrapping up of Impact Mozilla can be found at the Mozilla Blog.

Camino 1.6.6 released

The Camino Browser team has just released Camino 1.6.6, a maintenance release which contains various security and stability updates. All Camino users are urged to update. In addition, Camino 1.6.6 is now available in the following languages: Catalan, Czech, Dutch, English (US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian (Bokmal), Polish, Portuguese (Brazillian), Russian, Spanish (Castellano), and Swedish. You can download Camino at CaminoBrowser.org.

Fireunit, testing in the Firebug world

Jan Odvarko and John Resig have been working hard on a new Firebug extension called Fireunit. Fireunit provides a simple JavaScript API for doing test logging and viewing within a new tab of Firebug. Jan writes, “This very promising extension is intended as an automated testing framework for Firefox extensions and it should also be useful for testing web pages in the future. It’s still at the beginning, but growing and starting to be very useful for testing Firebug itself.” For more information, you can read Jan’s blog post and John’s blog post, and the extension itself is available at Fireunit.org.

Firebug in Firefox 3.1b2 and beyond

Rob Campbell has written a blog post where he clarifies some of the confusion that has been recently surrounding Firebug and its compatibility with Firefox 3.1. Not only is Firebug 1.2.1 not compatible with Firefox 3.1, neither is Firebug 1.3. “If you want to use Firebug with Firefox 3.1, you will need to use Firebug 1.4. Get the latest version from the releases directory and install it. No compatibility override required. Don’t let the alpha version tag frighten you, it’s really quite decent.” Details about the different versions are available on GetFirebug.com’s releases page.

JSON explorer for Firebug

In another bit of Firebug-related news, Jan Odvarko writes, “Thanks to Ashish Datta, Firebug has fresh new support for inspecting JSON in net responses. This feature allows you to see JSON formatted as an expandable tree of items and also explore them using Firebug’s Dom tab. The view is available within the Net panel and is visible as soon as a JSON request is expanded. This feature should be part of Firebug 1.4a11. Ashish is a senior at Tufts University and he did this work as part of his class focusing on open source development. It’s great to see how community around Firebug is growing and willing to contribute to this indispensible tool!” For more information see Jan’s blog post, and find out more about Firebug at GetFirebug.com.

New Mozilla design community mailing list

John Slater, part of Mozilla’s super fun marketing team, writes, “Following the successful examples of our developers, localizers, marketers, QA testers, etc we’re going to be making a major push to organize and grow our visual design community. I’ll share more details soon — including our plans to create a new site for posting and sharing your artwork — but if you’re curious to learn more the first thing to do is sign up for our new design mailing list.”

“Of course, there already is a Mozilla design community — just look at the 3,500+ people who participated in our Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest or Google around for Firefox art — but there’s so much more that can be done. This is an entirely new way we can put our greatest advantage to good use, and we should get a lot of cool stuff to look at, too. The possibilities are incredibly exciting.” For more information, see John’s post and sign up for the mailing list.

Localization Testing and QA survey

The l10n-drivers team recently launched a Testing and QA survey targeted at the localization community. The survey will remain open until December 26th. Stas Malolepszy writes, “Many localization teams have worked out their own practices and procedures regarding testing. So it’s natural that when Mozilla starts thinking about localization testing plans, we first look at what’s been already invented and proved to work well. There are many localization teams, each with their own way to test the localization, suited for their needs and resulting from their approach and past experience. What if we could share these practices between the localization teams and help other teams adopt them? This briefly summarizes the objectives of the survey.” If you are part of the Mozilla localization community and would like to help, you are strongly encouraged to take the survey. For more information, see Stas’ blog post.

Interview: Mozilla Weave project lead

Dan Mills, Lead Engineer of Mozilla Labs’ Weave project sat down with Aza Raskin for a brief chat. In this video he talks about what Weave is, what it’s good for, how it ties in with Firefox Mobile, when it will be in users’ hands, and what you can do to help. View the full video interview.

Quality Assurance community site now in beta

Jay Patel writes, “After over a year and a half of experimentation, discussion, design, development, and testing…I am proud to announce the launch of the ‘official’ QMO beta. While we used to rely on our team mailing list and the QA blog on mozillaZine, we now have a robust community website that I believe will help bring the Mozilla QA team and our growing community of volutneers together. We will be able to better collaborate to improve the quality of all Mozilla products and services, and QMO will provide a place for others to join us and learn more about Mozilla QA.” For more info, see Jay’s blog post, or head right on over to the new QMO website.

Automatic project creation coming to Mozdev

silfreed writes, “It’s been a long time coming, but your requests to speed up the project creation process are coming to fruition. Over the past couple of years there have been two major pain points in setting up new projects: tracking the requests to make sure they’re handled properly and actually creating projects. We finally have the tools in place to handle tracking the project requests and creating projects which should dramatically increase the response time of setting up new projects. We still have some work to do, but we’re well on our way to making those things happen.” Further details are available at silfreed’s weblog, and you can request a project at the Mozdev site itself.

New Firefox feature videos on mozilla.com

The Mozilla Blog reports, “We’ve launched a new video section on mozilla.com to help bring some of the many great features of Firefox alive. The feature-specific videos are narrated by the people who helped bring them to Firefox. The new video section even includes a walk through on how to install Firefox — perfect to help people make the switch.” The videos currently include: Firefox 3 overview, How to switch to Firefox with Asa Dotzler, Security features in Firefox 3 with Johnathan Nightingale, Bookmarks and tags with Alex Faaborg, and the Awesomebar with Seth Spitzer.

Last issue of 2008!

Just a quick reminder that this is the last issue of about:mozilla for 2008. We will resume our regular weekly schedule after the holidays, either January 6th or January 13th depending on how much news there is to report the first week back. Happy holidays to everyone, and a have a safe and happy new year.

Developer calendar

For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

Subscribe to the email newsletter

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

Firefox 2.0.0.20 is now available for download on Windows, Mac, and Linux from our website.

We strongly recommend all Firefox 2 users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 2, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For more information, please see the Firefox 2.0.0.20 release notes.

Note: Mozilla is not planning any further security & stability updates for Firefox 2, and recommends that you upgrade to Firefox 3 as soon as possible. It’s free, and your settings and bookmarks will be preserved.

• Firefox 3.0.5 is available at http://getfirefox.com/
• Firefox 2.0.0.19 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

Mozilla is not planning any further security & stability updates for Firefox 2, and recommends that you upgrade to Firefox 3 as soon as possible. It’s free, and your settings and bookmarks will be preserved.

Also, the Phishing Protection service will no longer be available for Firefox 2 users. Firefox 3 offers a free Phishing and Malware Protection service, which will continue to protect you from online scams and attacks.

If you already have Firefox 3 or Firefox 2, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 3.0.5 Release Notes and the Firefox 2.0.0.19 Release Notes.

• Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 now available!
• Today: 2010 goals brownbag meeting
• Mozilla Labs meetup: this Thursday, Mountain View
• Updating your add-on to Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
• Mozilla Foundation: December board report
• Localization QA and testing survey
• Impact Mozilla: Vote now!
• Firefox in your country survey
• about:mozilla - holiday hiatus
• Developer calendar
• Subscribe to the email newsletter

Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 now available!
Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality of the new features and platform changes that will be included in Thunderbird 3. Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 includes new database technology that will make it possible to build fast new ways of navigating mail. For more background and for previews of experimental add-ons, see David Ascher’s blog post: “Thunderbird 3 beta 1 - a platform for innovation shapes up“.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include: Tab interface for Mail, improvements to IMAP for faster message viewing, improved message reader view, new add-ons manager, improved address book interface, improved import of mail from other Mail clients, integration with Windows Vista search, and integration with Mac OS X Address Book.

Please read the release notes before downloading for more information about this release including known issues. Testers can download Thunderbird 3 Beta 1 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 38 different languages. For more information, see the full release announcement.

Today: 2010 goals brownbag meeting
Mitchell Baker is in the process of finalizing Mozilla’s 2010 goals which have been under discussion within the Mozilla community for quite some time. Mitchell writes, “I’m going to consolidate the feedback received to date and create a new version in the next couple of days. I will do a brown bag [presentation and discussion] on Tuesday, December 16 at 12:30 Pacific time (8:30 p.m. GMT) for final feedback. We’ll stream the discussion on Air Mozilla and moderated chat is available on #brownbag. We’ve had a lot of discussion so there may not be a lot of interest in this session. That’s fine. Also great if there is. The next version is likely to be very close to final, if not the final version itself. So if you have any thoughts you haven’t expressed, please do so asap.” Revised drafts of the proposed goals have been posted to Mitchell’s weblog, including the “Firefox” goal, the “data” goal, the “mobile” goal, and the “centerpiece” goal.

Mozilla Labs meetup: this Thursday, Mountain View
The Mozilla Labs team writes, “It’s time for another Monthly Meetup. This month’s Labs Night will be Thursday, December 18th, 6pm at Mozilla’s office - 1981 Landings Drive, bldg K in Mountain View, California.

Last month’s meetup with the Seedcamp teams was awesome, thanks so much to all who attended. This week - the final meetup of 2008! - we will hear progress updates on various active Labs projects. If anyone is up for sharing we would love to hear from you. As always, there will be plenty of opportunity for discussion and hacking. And of course, pizza!

If you are in the Bay Area we’d love to see you! Please RSVP so we know how many to expect. Thanks!”

Updating your add-on to Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
Paul Rouget has written a great post about how to update your add-ons for Firefox 3.1 beta 2. “Many add-ons should work out of the box with beta2. Others might need a little tweak. If you have tested and you are sure that your extension works with Firefox 3.1 beta 2 and doesn’t need any code updated, just update the compatibility version (3.1b2) on the AMO dashboard. If you know that you must update some code, do so and update the install.rdf file (increase the version of your extension and update maxVersion to 3.1b2), then upload your xpi file.” If you’re not sure about how to update your add-on, Paul has included handy step-by-step instructions as part of the full blog post. Check it out over at the Mozilla Add-ons blog.

Mozilla Foundation: December board report
Mark Surman has posted the Mozilla Foundation December board report to his weblog. “This past month was about trying things out, and continuing to move on planning and team building. Education ideas are getting more concrete. Conversations about ‘Mozilla as a social movement’ continue, including one (aborted) attempt at a community workshop and renewed energy around the Mozilla Manifesto. We’re involved in a couple of small efforts to help governments w/ participation and openness. And next step ideas on education got a bit more concrete. On the internal front, Mitchell posted about our 990 and financials.” More details, including a list of next month’s priorities, are available at Mark’s weblog.

Localization: QA and testing survey
Mozilla’s Localization drivers team (aka: l10n-drivers) has launched a QA and Testing survey that will help them analyze how our localizers create test plans and test localizations leading up to a product release. If you are part of a Mozilla localization team or have contributed in some way to a localization, please take this survey: Mozilla L10n QA and Testing survey. The survey includes 20 questions in four sections and should take about 10 minutes to complete. Please answer as accurately and carefully as possible.

Impact Mozilla: Vote now!
Ken Kovash writes, “The Impact Mozilla competition has reached its final phase - and now it’s your turn to determine the winner. After a month of hard work, all ten finalists have returned with their developed strategies and complete marketing plans.” To judge all ten entries, go to impactmozilla.com/vote, giving yourself ample time (at least an hour) to read through multiple plans and carefully consider all finalists. The entry with the most votes will win the Impact Mozilla competition. Everyone is allowed to vote, although only one vote per person is allowed, and voting closes on Wednesday, December 17th. Mozilla intends to execute the winning idea in early 2009. For more information, see Ken’s original post as well as his ongoing series of posts showcasing the Impact Mozilla Finalists: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV so far.

Firefox in your country survey: Round 2
Last week the Mozilla Marketing team launched round 2 of the Firefox in your country survey with a new list of countries and new and improved questions. The survey will remain open until December 26th. In this round the team is hoping to hear from people in the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Sri Lanka, Spain, The Netherlands, and Vietnam. Please help spread the world to others, whether or not they use Firefox. The link to the survey is the same for everyone, and the page should automatically display the survey in the appropriate language. If it shows the wrong language, use the pull-down menu at the top right to change it. For more information, see Alix Franquet’s weblog post.

about:mozilla - holiday hiatus
The holiday season is upon us, and that means it’s time for about:mozilla’s annual holiday hiatus! Since there’s likely to be a dearth of news during the last week of December, the newsletter will not be published on Dec 30th. We reserve the right to skip Jan 6th as well, depending on whether there’s any news to pass along at that point.

We’re always looking for feedback about the newsletter, so if you have any comments, questions, or thoughts on how to improve it, we would really appreciate it if you could send a note to about-mozilla@mozilla.com. Thanks for reading, and happy holidays.

Developer calendar
For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

Subscribe to the email newsletter
If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

• Firefox 3.1 beta 2 now available
• Mozilla Community Store is now open!
• Firefox 2.0.0.18 users to be offered a major update
• Mark Surman: One Mozilla
• Firefox malware?
• Mozilla mission and financials
• Ubiquity 0.1.3 preview available
• Firefox surpasses 50% market share in more regions
• Firefox wins software award in Brazil
• Developer calendar
• Subscribe to the email newsletter

Firefox 3.1 beta 2 now available

Firefox 3.1 beta 2 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko. Beta 2 is available in 54 languages, includes the new Private Browsing Mode, and includes a host of other changes and additions. For more information including how to download the beta, please see the Firefox 3.1 beta 2 announcement at the Mozilla Developer News weblog.

Mozilla Community Store is now open!

After a huge amount of hard work, the Mozilla marketing team has launched the fantastic new Mozilla Community Store. The store is a new community-sourced approach to Mozilla’s t-shirt creation process that allows anyone to submit original t-shirt designs and make them publicly available for purchase.

“The Store gallery is comprised entirely of community-generated art from around the world, all of which can be fully customized through Zazzle. The process is pretty straightforward and there are lots of options to choose from.” The Mozilla Community Store was inspired by the Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest which resulted in dozens of incredibly high-quality designs and a demand to make more of them available for print. All Community Store proceeds go to the Mozilla Foundation, and there’s a 20% off launch special on until December 25th.

For more information, check out the original launch announcement. Also, the Thunderbird and Calendar teams are looking for people to contribute Community Store t-shirt designs for their projects, so if you’re an artistic type this is a great way to dive in and get involved with Mozilla community!

Firefox 2.0.0.18 users to be offered a major update

It’s been four months since Firefox 2 users were last offered a “major update” to effortlessly upgrade their browser to Firefox 3. In that time Firefox 3 has been improved further, and the majority of add-ons have been updated to work with the new browser. As Firefox 2 is rapidly approaching the point where Mozilla will no longer be actively issuing security and stability updates, we strongly recommend that users upgrade to Firefox 3. For more information about this major update, see Mike Beltzner’s original announcement and blog post.

Mark Surman: One Mozilla

Mark Surman has been working diligently on the Mozilla 2010 goals process, helping refine thinking, facilitate discussion, and generally make the process as open and transparent as possible. As part of this, he recently posted a thoughtful and thought provoking piece that talks about there being only “one Mozilla” that is made up of a number of constituent parts. “[T]here really is only One Mozilla. Yes, we have a number of different orgs, teams and communities, of which the foundation team is one. But, IMHO, we are all Mozilla and should be working towards the same overarching goal.” Mark’s post is really worth a read, particularly if you’re interested in high-level discussions about the Mozilla project, its purpose, and its future.

Firefox malware?

Johnathan Nightingale, one of Mozilla’s security folk, has posted an article talking about the so-called “Firefox malware” that has been recently reported in the news. “A crappy thing happened last week — someone wrote some malware that infects Firefox. We obviously don’t like that very much at all, but I wanted to make it clear what is and isn’t happening, since there’s some confusion out there.” Johnathan goes on to explain what the malware is, what it does, how to find out if you have it, and how to easily disable it. He also explains how and why this malware attack does not mean that Firefox is insecure. For more information and Johnathan’s full post, see his weblog.

Mozilla mission and financials

Chris Blizzard has written a great post that helps frame some of the discussion around Mozilla’s 2007 financial filings that Mitchell Baker posted about recently. “When you’re in the thick of operations — shipping, feedback, building programs, executing and talking to people on a day to day basis — sometimes it’s hard to take a step back and really think about what has happened over the last couple of years and how far Mozilla as a project has grown. Mitchell’s post is a reminder that the project is very healthy.” Chris’ full post is available on his weblog.

Ubiquity 0.1.3 preview available

There’s a new preview release of the Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity add-on available. “We’re currently working on Ubiquity 0.1.3, a release that improves Ubiquity’s responsiveness and adds skinning support. In preparation for this, I’ve just released the first Ubiquity 0.1.3 Release Candidate. Please feel free to download it — you’ll automatically be upgraded to each new release candidate as it becomes available, as well as the final 0.1.3 release. Any bugs that you can report either to our bug database or our mailing list would be much appreciated.” For more information about this release candidate, see Atul Varma’s original announcement. For more about Ubiquity, check out the shiny new Ubiquity website.

Firefox surpasses 50% market share in more regions

In addition to the exciting news that Firefox has passed 20% worldwide marketshare comes the news that Firefox has reached 50% marketshare in two new regions: Slovenia and Macedonia. Ken Kovash writes, “A tremendous amount of credit here goes to the Mozilla community. John Lilly summed it up best: ‘The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way.’” Read Ken’s full post at the Blog of Metrics.

Firefox wins software award in Brazil

Alix Franquet writes, “Firefox was just chosen by Info Magazine as the best software and best browser of the year for 2008. See this year’s complete list of nominees and awards on the Info website. Mozilla was represented by Bruno Magrani, Mario Rinaldi, and Clauber Stipkovic.” Photos of the award ceremony are available, and you can follow other Mozilla Brazil news at the new Mozilla Brasil weblog.

Developer calendar

For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

Subscribe to the email newsletter

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3.1 can be followed at the Firefox 3.1 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #shiretoko.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• This beta is now available in 54 languages - get your local version and let us know if it looks right.
• A new Private Browsing Mode that allows you to browse without Firefox storing any traces of where you’ve been - perfect for online holiday shopping!
• New functions that make it easy to remove the history of your past few hours of browsing, or remove all traces of a website.
• New support for web worker threads.
• The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is now on by default for web content.
• Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
• Removed the new tab-switching & preview behavior based on feedback from Beta 1 users
• Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Testers can download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 builds for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 54 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3.1 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

It’s been four months since the last time Firefox 2 users were offered a “major update”, and in that time we’ve improved Firefox 3 and seen more and more of our Add-Ons become compatible with that version. As Firefox 2 is rapidly approaching the point where Mozilla will no longer be actively issuing security and stability updates, we strongly recommend that users consider upgrading to Firefox 3.

If you’re running Firefox 2.0.0.18 you will see the offer in the next couple of days, though if you’re eager you can always “Check for Updates” in the “Help” menu. This is what the offer will look like:

• select Later if you don’t want to decide now; Firefox will ask again in 24 hours
• select Never if you don’t want to accept this upgrade offer; we might send you another offer again in the future, but it won’t be for several weeks or months
• select Get the new version to continue on with the upgrade process!

• Add-on-Con: Dec 11, Mountain View, CA
• Firefox: Tree logistics, migrations and checkin rules
• Add-ons: time to start updating for Firefox 3.1 Beta 2
• Mozilla Manifesto now available in over a dozen languages
• Firefox market share up in November
• Bugzilla 3.2 released
• Performance dashboard (v2)
• 38 languages are part of Thunderbird beta 1
• Mitchell Baker profiled in Investors Business Daily
• Developer calendar
• Subscribe to the email newsletter

Add-on-Con: Dec 11, Mountain View, CA

Mozilla is taking part in the upcoming Add-on-Con that’s being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on December 11. “Google, Microsoft and Mozilla will come together to discuss the future of the browser platform. Learn from industry leaders about the technology and business of browser add-ons. Network with your peers.” Mozilla’s VP of Engineering, Mike Shaver, will be giving the closing keynote, and Mark Finkle will also be presenting at the conference. Check out the Add-on-Con website for more information.

Firefox: Tree logistics, migrations and checkin rules

Mike Beltzner recently posted about the Firefox 3.1 / Gecko 1.9.1 code repository changes, wherein development activities for these will be moving from mozilla-central to the mozilla-1.9.1 repository. After the trees re-opened, new check-in rules came into play which can be reviewed on the Tree status wiki page. Further information, including related Bugzilla and Tinderbox changes, is available in Beltzner’s blog post at the Mozilla Developer News site.

Add-ons: time to start updating for Firefox 3.1 Beta 2

Paul Roguet writes, “Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 will likely be released the first week of December. With Beta 2 we’re making the promise that we won’t be changing interfaces that break add-ons, so now is the time to start updating.” The Firefox team has also added a third beta to the schedule, where they’ll start aggressively pushing Firefox out to users. This means that it’s very important that a significant number of add-ons are updated for Firefox 3.1 before Beta 3 so as many users will update as possible. For more information, including links to documentation, see Paul’s full post at the Mozilla Add-ons weblog.

Mozilla Manifesto now available in over a dozen languages

The Mozilla Manifesto is now available in over a dozen different languages. The Mozilla.org site was updated recently to provide links to various translations of the text that were already available and the localization community has been very active providing new versions to add. You can now read the Manifesto in Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, English, French, Frisian, Galician, Greek, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian and Vietnamese. Thank you to everyone who has contributed their time and effort to help with this.

Firefox market share up in November

Asa Dotzler has posted about the NetApplications monthly Browser Market Share report, which shows Firefox hitting 20.72% of the global market in November. “This is a pretty solid jump over October, but also fairly consistent with the kind of growth Firefox has seen in the third quarter of previous years.” For more information and some pretty graphs, check out Asa’s blog post.

Bugzilla 3.2 released

Bugzilla 3.2 has been released, having been under development for roughly a year and a half. There are a tremendous number of changes in this new release, and while it is a major release it isn’t called “4.0″, the reasoning for which is explained in the latest Bugzilla Status Update. For more information about this release and all that has gone into it, see Max Kanat-Alexander’s weblog post.

Performance dashboard (v2)

About a year ago, Johnathan Nightingale built a dashboard for getting at-a-glance views of Firefox performance metrics, making it easier to spot regressions and assess the state of the tree. He has now released a new version of that dashboard. “It’s in its infancy right now. It only pulls data for the 1.9.1/Firefox 3 branch, and it only pulls a couple of tests thus far, but those are easy to add.” Johnathan has made the code available thorugh a public hg repository if you’re interested in adding features. Further details are available in Johnathan’s blog post.

38 languages are part of Thunderbird beta 1

Simon Paquet writes, “A little over three weeks ago, when I announced the string freeze planning for beta1, I said that I hoped that we could increase our number of supported locales for this release to 30 or maybe even (in my most optimistic case) to 35 locales. Well, as of now 38 locales (including en-US) have opted in for the Thunderbird 3 beta 1 release, thereby totally blowing away my expectations. This is notable, because already with beta1 we’re just one locale short of what we had achieved with the Thunderbird 2 final release. So thanks a lot to everyone in the l10n community. You guys rock!”

Mitchell Baker profiled in Investors Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily has written an interesting profile piece about Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker. “Baker had been put in charge of the newly created Mozilla Organization, a unit of Internet pioneer Netscape Communications. Amid the tech collapse of 2001, Baker got the ax yet refused to leave. ‘Executives were stunned a week later when they learned she was still working on the project and making phone calls,’ said Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s chief technology officer. ‘She could do that because Mozilla had become a community project. It was no longer a Netscape creature.’” Mitchell has always played a critical role in the Mozilla Project, and the IBD profile demonstrates how valuable her persistence, vision, and dedication have been through the years. It’s a great read, particularly if you’re interested in some of the project’s history.

Developer calendar

For an up-to-date list of the coming week’s Mozilla project meetings and events, please see the Mozilla Community Calendar wiki page.

Subscribe to the email newsletter

If you would like to get this newsletter by email, just head on over to the about:mozilla newsletter subscription form. Fresh news, every Tuesday, right to your inbox.