Mozilla has relased a quick Firefox update to address several stability bugs that may lead to crashing in very specific cases like sites that use a GIF image as their favicon.
Users are encouraged to update as soon as possible by selecting Check for Updates… in the Help menu. Otherwise, you should be prompted for the update in the next few hours.
You can check the release notes for more details.
If you already know that Firefox 3.7 and beyond will feature page loading progress bars in the tabs themselves (making you a true Firefox fan), you may also want to know there is an extension that lets you try this feature about a year before it becomes generally available.
Tab Progress Bar, developed by Frank Yan, adds just this feature which I found so far to be more informational than the old common progress bar in the status area.
Get Tab Progress Bar from Mozilla Add-ons.
It may suggest that being Mitchell Baker the head of Mozilla, there is no gender distribution issues within the open source community and Mozilla in particular.
It’s not the case however. Delphine Lebédel, a French Mozilla intern, explains: “The numbers I found astounded me: only 2% of women work in FLOSS communities, against more than 25% in proprietary software. In the development field, numbers are even lower: the percentage of Open Source women developers falls down to almost 1% (European Commission FLOSSPOL 2002-2005)”
Following previous Firefox theme updates for Windows and Mac OS X platforms, here is the mockup for Linux platforms, in this case the Ubuntu distribution.
As with other platforms, the update is planned in a two phase approach.
For Firefox 3.7, plans include combining the stop and reload buttons as their function is mutually exclusive; move the home button to the tab bar, and add a progress bar to each tab instead of the throbber currently features in all platforms. Unlike Windows, however, the menu bar is kept still. Also from other platforms, the keyhole shape for the back and forward icons is in. For cleaner looks, the toolbar separator are also gone.
Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is now available for download!
Before starting the review, keep in mind that Firefox 3.6 will be the smallest upgrade Mozilla has released to date. Before this, version jumps have been in the 0.5 (Firefox 1.0 to 1.5, 3.0 to 3.5) or 1.0 (2.0 to 3.0) order, and while version numbers are not mathematically representative, the slight 0.1 version increase reflects the overall tone of this update, and Firefox development in general which is moving to a faster release pace.
Personas
Without a doubt, the most significant addition is support for lightweight themes, also known as personas, that was previously only available with the Personas extension.
On November 9, 2004, a brand new product stroke the web, and it changed. After a halt of 5 years , innovation became again part of the game and it hasn’t stopped since then bringing on millions of users, locales, communities, and equally importantly, competitors: Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera are all in the game of exploding the web again, and maybe not breaking it this time.
To celebrate, Mozilla is organizing Light the Web with Firefox.
Fans of the classic Mozilla Internet Suite rejoice. A major update to SeaMonkey has been released featuring a large number of significant improvements. Here are a few of them:
SeaMonkey 2 is available in 18 locales for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Get it from the SeaMonkey project web site.
Mozilla has released a new update for Firefox 3.5 featuring several stability bug fixes and most notably, six critical vulnerabilities, among a total of 11 for this release.
As usual, you will be prompted to update in the next few hours or you can force it by selecting Check for Updates… in Firefox’s Help menu.
More details in the release notes.
With over 30,000 personas now available at Mozilla Add-ons, it’s no surprise there are now 81 Halloween themed available ready for the scary night!
Here are my favorite five, but there is something for everyone: really scary, cute , and even pink ones!
In preparation for Firefox 3.6, due later this year and which will feature lightweight themes support or personas, Mozilla Add-ons has just added a section dedicated to personas, so users won’t have to go a separate site for all their customization needs.
Like GetPersonas.com, you just hover the personas thumbnails to live preview it on Firefox. If you like it, just press Wear it to keep it. To choose another theme, open the Add-ons Manager and select a different one in the Themes tab.
