Ancient people used the sun to calculate the passing of time. That isn’t necessarily the most accurate time-keeping method around now – especially with the whole daylight savings time thing – but fortunately, us modern types have something just as reliable to keep track of the days: Firefox’s new rapid-release schedule. Six weeks after Firefox 7 launched, Firefox 8 is now available for download – but you’ll need to scrounge around a bit for it.
With few exceptions, Microsoft's share of the browser market has been steadily declining since at least November 2009, which is how far back Net Marketshare lets us look. Back then, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the dominant browser on desktops with a 64.46 percent share. And today? It's still dominant with a 52.63 percent share of the market, but the gap is quickly narrowing.
Soon after Mozilla was done with the release of Firefox 4, it launched an effort to develop an in-browser PDF viewer built entirely in HTML5 and JavaScript. While the ultimate aim of the project was, and still is, to make PDF.js an integral part of Firefox, the team working on the project has released the reader as a restart-free extension.
For a long time, Mozilla and Google were a match made in heaven. Both of them were spunky open-source aficionado and that common goal sent them into each other’s arms; even now, the vast majority of Mozilla’s funding comes from a search deal between the two organizations. Then, with the launch of Chrome, things got complicated. Google wasn’t quite the same search engine Firefox fell in love with. And now, Mozilla is officially Keeping Its Options Open with the unveiling of the new “Firefox with Bing” Browser.
Earlier in the week Microsoft unveiled a new online security test to help educate users on the dangers of surfing with outdated browsers. The concept is noble, but they also succeeded in stirring up the Mozilla folks, and with just cause. The site 
Mozilla just can’t catch any slack; the new, memory-improved Firefox 7.0 is barely off the virtual printing presses and already some users are complaining that the thing is crash-tastic. Not so fast: Mozilla pays attention to those crash reports that users send back, you see, and the company noticed that McAfee’s ScriptScan add-on was the cause of a lot of those fatal errors. In fact, ScriptScan was creating such a high volume of crashes that Mozilla tossed the add-on in their blocklist yesterday.
For years, the browser race was a one-horse affair: it was Internet Explorer’s way or the highway. Then Firefox crawled out of the Netscape wreckage and established itself as a viable, free alternative to Microsoft’s bundled software. Google’s Chrome may be the feisty new kid on the block, but a new report says it very well may unseat Firefox by the end of the year for the worldwide number two slot in the cut-throat browser wars.
It took mankind well over six years to go from Firefox 1.0 to Firefox 4.0, but less than five months to proceed to version 6.0 from there. Not to mention that the next version is due out in late September. But some Mozilla developers aren’t satisfied with the current rapid release schedule the open-source outfit adopted earlier this year. Mozilla engineering manager Josh Aas recently put forth a proposal to further expedite the release process.
Is trawling through page after page of text generated in response to one of your search queries your idea of fun? We didn’t think so. Let’s face it: as great as the internet can be, trying to track down what you’re after online can sometimes be a yawn-inducing drag. While it might not help you break any web search speed records, SearchPreview for Firefox and Google Chrome does make scrolling through search results a little more colorful by offer up an image of every page your search engine latches on to.
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