FeaturesEverything Firefox Users Need to Know About Internet Explorer 8 
Posted 09/02/08 at 11:00:00 PM by Norman Chan
Microsoft released the second Beta for Internet Explorer 8 last week, which paves the way for a final release later this year. The new browser demonstrates a number of usability, security, and privacy features that make it a huge improvement over IE 7, including abilities that FireFox users have taken for granted since the FireFox 3 (and even in previous versions). Familiar features such as a better Address Bar, crash recovery, and improved in-page search won’t get Firefox devotees to switch over, but genuinely innovative tools like InPrivate browsing and Tab grouping may warrant your attention. We sort through the full list of Beta 2 features to see what ideas IE8 did and didn’t borrow from its world record-breaking open-source rival.
NewsGoogle Enters the Browser Market with Open-Source "Chrome"
Posted 09/02/08 at 02:05:46 PM by Paul Lilly
Update: Chrome Beta is now available for download! Get it here
Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominate the browser market, and more than a handful of alternative browsers have been able to carve out a niche following. With all the competition already in place, is there room for another contender?
Google thinks so, and tomorrow will release its Google Chrome browser in beta form to more than 100 countries. The announcement comes earlier than expected thanks to a leaked comic book making the rounds on the web. In it, the characters discuss what Google Chrome purports to bring to the table.
"Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there," Google wrote on its blog. "We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."
Google claims its new open-source Chrome browser will be clean and fast. To help with speed, Google says Chrome will keep each tab in an isolated "sandbox," with a separate process rendering each one. Not only should this help with performance, but if there's a bug in the code, you'll only lose one tab instead of crashing the entire browser. This also means that memory leaks can be identified and addressed by closing a single tab instead of exiting the browser.
These and all the other goodies outlined in Google's leaked cartoon all sound good on paper. Should Mozilla and Microsoft be worried?
NewsMozilla Extends Deal with Google for 3 Years
Posted 08/29/08 at 11:04:13 AM by Paul Lilly
Google inked another 3 year deal with Mozilla to remain the default search option in the open-source Firefox browser. Originally set to expire back in 2006, the deal was extended to 2008 and will now run through 2011.
"We're very, very happy about our relationship with Google," said John Lilly, Mozilla CEO, "and this makes sure that Mozilla will be sustainable and thrive for quite a long time to come."
Lilly has good reason to be happy, as the partnership netted Mozilla around $57 million in 2006 alone, or about 85 percent of the company's total revenue. The funds go towards paying staff, supporting its bandwidth and hardware infrastructure, and to distribute grants.
Google comes out ahead, too. As Firefox continues to grow its marketshare and increase its userbase, that means more searches and clicks for Google, which in turn translates to advertising revenue. But for as much as Google and Mozilla may seem intertwined, Mozilla maintains that the two operate independently.
"We develop our product and technical direction as part of an open process unrelated to the search relationship with Google," Mozilla wrote its 2006 Financial FAQ. "We talk to Google about the parts of the product that offer Google services (i.e., the Firefox Start Page) and the services they provide, like anti-phishing. Otherwise Google does not have any special relationship to Mozilla project activities."
NewsTraceMonkey Will Supercharge JavaScript Execution in Future Firefox Versions
Posted 08/26/08 at 08:27:34 AM by Mark Edward Soper
In Firefox 3, JavaScript execution is already 20% faster than in Firefox 2. That's great, but it's minimal compared to the speedups coming in future Firefox versions, thanks to a new JavaScript rendering engine called TraceMonkey now in development at Mozilla (Firefox 3's JavaScript rendering engine is known as SpiderMonkey).
Techspot.com reports that the new TraceMonkey JavaScript execution engine coming in future versions of Firefox will provide at least a 2x performance increase over SpiderMonkey, based on information posted by Mozilla's Mike Shaver (its VP of Engineering). However, that might be a conservative estimate. Shaver reports that TraceMonkey runs core JavaScript primitives such as function call, global loop, and empty loop at at speeds over 20 times faster than in Firefox 3. Benchmark performance (see figure accompanying this article) is just as impressive. According to Shaver:
The goal of the TraceMonkey project — which is still in its early stages — is to take JavaScript performance to another level, where instead of competing against other interpreters, we start to compete against native code.
So, how long before TraceMonkey elbows SpiderMonkey out of the way as "top monkey" in the Firefox JavaScript execution game? A stripped-down version of TraceMonkey is now being incorporated into Firefox 3.1 (it's turned off by default in current builds), but the full version of TraceMonkey won't see the light of day until version 4.0, according to Techspot.com.
Hit the jump for your chance to comment on what you think faster JavaScript execution will mean for you.
NewsBookmark Tagging and Organizing Dominate Extend Firefox 3 Grand Prize Winners
Posted 08/22/08 at 08:16:37 AM by Mark Edward Soper
Mozilla's Firefox browser's biggest strength has always been customization. When Mozilla created Firefox 3, the huge improvements in its underlying architecture made Firefox 2 plugins obsolete. To help encourage a new generation of add-ons, Mozilla Labs launched the Extend Firefox 3 contest in March to create a new generation of plugins.
Entries wrapped up on July 4th, and after spending the rest of the summer judging over 100 entries, Mozilla Labs has finally announced the winners of Extend Firefox 3.
"The Envelope, Please"
Extend Firefox 3 presented grand prizes in three categories:
- Best New Add-on
- Best Updated Add-on
- Best Music Add-on
And, now, the winners (drum roll, please):
Best New Add-on
- Pencil - a GUI prototyping and diagramming application
- Tagmarks - one-click tagging for bookmarks
- HandyTag - automatic tagging for bookmarks
Best Updated Add-on
- Read it Later - offline page reading
- Tag Sifter - browse bookmarks by tags
- Bookmark Previews - adds album and thumbnail views to the bookmarks manager
Best Music Add-on
- Fire.fm - accesses last.fm music library (last.fm co-sponsored this category
What do you think about the winners? Do you have a favorite that didn't make the cut? Catch us after the jump for your chance to create your own award show.
NewsMicrosoft Live Labs Photosynth Brings 3D Imaging Power to Everyone 
Posted 08/21/08 at 11:57:17 PM by Mark Edward Soper
Microsoft Live Labs, where Microsoft is helping to create the future of online information, released its Photosynth 3D imaging service yesterday, CNet reports.
Photosynth enables you to create a freely-navigable and zoomable 3D space by combining hundreds of photos with overlapping data, but unlike panorama-stitching programs, you get better results if you shoot your photos from a variety of different angles and zoom settings (or different focal-length prime lenses).Photosynth isn't for photography snobs, either. It works with all types of digital camera images, even from camera phones.
To sign up for Photosynth, you need a Windows Live ID (a free Hotmail account will work). After you sign up for Photosynth, you download free software for viewing synths (Microsoft's term for the 3D images you create with Photosynth) and for creating them. For best "synthiness," you'll need to shoot at least 100 pictures, and many of the examples you can view on the Photosynth website include 200 or more images. If you ever wondered why you need a 4GB or larger flash memory card for your camera, wonder no longer. A thorough Photosynth session can use up every bit of space on your largest memory card.
To learn more about Photosynth, and to give us your comments on this new imaging tool, catch us after the jump.
NewsIt's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Snowl
Posted 08/08/08 at 07:31:12 PM by Chris Moody
Think about all the ways we converse and communicate online now. RSS/Atom feeds, Twitter, blogging, web discussion forums, social networks, email and others. It gets to be a jumbled mess in just a short time.
Now the folks that brought you Firefox are trying a new experiment in managing all this information in the form of Snowl.
Make the jump to find out what key ideas are going into Snowl's development.
NewsMozilla Seeks Ideas to Shape Web's Future
Posted 08/06/08 at 07:05:19 PM by Pulkit Chandna
Mozilla has issued an open invitation to all people with a vibrant imagination, regardless of their calling, to posit ideas that could determine the future of Firefox and the web. It is especially interested in bringing aboard designers that haven’t worked on open source projects hitherto. Mozilla Labs’ website is asking for people to turn in their ideas that can be “a sentence, paragraph, or even bullet-points kick-start the process.” If Mozilla sights real potential in the idea it will turn them into reality. The website also flaunts a number of exciting browser concept videos. If you have any fascinating ideas, feel free to deposit them in the comments section.
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