Foxkeh February 2008 wallpaper

Following the Olympic Games theme for this year, Foxkeh is trying curling during February.

You can get it from Foxkeh’s blog in a variety of sizes with or without a calendar.

600 million Mozilla add-ons downloaded to date

Mozilla Blog of Metrics announced some interesting numbers about Firefox add-ons server by Mozilla Add-ons:

• 4000 extensions available.
• Between 800,000 and 1 million downloads per day.
• About 4.5 million page views per day.
• About 100 million checks for updates occur every day, which represents the minimum number of add-ons currently in use. 96% of these come from Firefox installations.
• More than 600 million add-ons (themes + extensions) have been downloaded (obviously not counting updates).

Firefox vulnerability severity raised, fix on its way

After further investigation, the severity of the chrome protocol directory traversal vulnerability disclosed last week has been raised from low to high by Mozilla Security.

The flaw, that affects some 600+ add-ons that are distributed as expanded files and folders instead of packed in a .jar file, could allow a malicious site to get access to user files in known locations.

Firefox 3 Add-ons Manager is almighty too

Firefox Add-ons Manager has finally got extended to feature complete integration with Mozilla Add-ons (AMO) site through a new page added to the Add-ons Manager.

The Get Add-ons page features a search box, a browse all add-ons link that takes you to Mozilla Add-ons, and a list of recommended extensions and themes by default.

Thunderbird 3 plans include calendaring and more

David Ascher, head of Mozilla’s messaging subsidiary, has posted an outline of the roadmap for Thunderbird 3 signaling the start of a new stage in Thunderbird’s development which has lacked a clear plan of action since Thunderbird 2 release last year.

Increasing Thunderbird already large user base will become a priority, as a way to maximize its impact. As a new Mozilla subsidiary it also has the need to achieve financial sustainability and a larger user base would definitely help.

Firefox 3 theme icons on Windows XP

In preparation for Firefox 3 Beta 3 release, Mozilla has finally landed today the updated icons for Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. On Mac OS X, the landing is actually the addition of the Proto theme in development for a couple of months now as the default them for Firefox 3.

For Windows XP and Vista, we can finally see the result of the changes announced a while ago and the icons commissioned to Iconfactory.

Firefox global market share reaches 21.1%

XiTi Monitor has released the latest web browser utilization figures updated to December 2007 based on a sample of 112,000+ sites.

Little change can be observed for Europe except Finland showing the highest market share with 45.4%, surpassing Slovenia which becomes second with 44.6%. In general, Europe saw an increase in Firefox usageof about 0.7% compared to November but just 0.3% compared to the previous high of 27.7% reached last July.

Mozilla CTO, Brendan Eich on ZDNet’s Super Techies

ZDNet’s Super Techies video series is featuring a brief interview (approx. 12 minutes) with Brendan Eich, Mozilla CTO and father of JavaScript.

ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber talks with Brendan “about his career as a programmer in Silicon Valley. Eich discusses his early work at Netscape creating the JavaScript programming language, battling Microsoft in the browser wars, and his current role at Mozilla, overseeing new technology enhancements for the company’s flagship Firefox browser.”

The history of Mozilla and the people that drive it is as usual very interesting stuff.

Firefox vulnerability affects some extensions

A vulnerability in how Firefox handles chrome: addresses, which are used to load specific Firefox and extensions’ interface elements like windows, buttons and dialogs, could allow a malicious site to access local files in known locations.

Mobile Firefox first steps

As part of it mobile strategy, Mozilla has unveiled the first designs of what may become in time, Mobile Firefox’s user interface. The design considers two scenarios: touch screen enabled devices like most PDAs and smart phones and those were screen navigation is performed with a keyboard or similar, like most cell phones.

Perhaps the most noticeable change in these first previews is the aim for look and feel and even functionality consistency with Firefox 3, a true challenge for an application constrained to cell phones and PDAs limited computing resources.