Archive for June, 2010
June 30th, 2010
Firefox 4 will be a big change when it comes to how we all interact with the browser. One slight change that people either cheer or boo is adding tabs on top of Firefox, rather than the current position most of you use today.
So why has Firefox made the jump from the current tab position to putting tabs on top of the browser? Alex Faaborg does a great job at explaining thing here:
If you are not a fan of having your tabs on the top of the browser, do not think of changing browsers or not updating just yet. They make it clear that Firefox’s user interface is still totally customizable, so you can drag your tabs back down to the Firefox 3 position if you fear the user interface change.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
June 29th, 2010
Students around the world love Mozilla’s products and embrace our mission. Our 2,100 student evangelists have a global presence, reaching schools in 77 countries around the world. To more effectively communicate with our student leaders, we are going international with our student guide as well.
We are relaunching the Mozilla campus program as Student Reps. Previously known as Campus Reps, our student community will now live at studentreps.mozilla.org. More than just a fresh design, the new Student Reps site also offers localized content to make it even easier for students to participate around the world. Our very own Student Reps made this possible, translating the site into their native languages with the help of our localization team.
Students can use the site to brainstorm project ideas, find marketing tips, and learn from other reps. The new Student Reps site is already viewable in Albanian, German, Hungarian and Spanish. Look for more languages to be added in the coming weeks!
June 29th, 2010
Bespin 0.9a1 features multiple Bespin instances, the start of code completion, simpler packaging and a curious new version number.
Multiple Bespins
Ever since we released the first Bespin Embedded, we’ve had requests on and off for the ability to have multiple Bespin editors on the page. When you factor in complexities around the plugin system, allowing multiple Bespins on a page is non-trivial. But, now multiple editors on the page works fine:
Multiple Bespins with command lines in white
The screenshot above shows off multiple Bespins with two of the new features from Bespin 0.8 (the white theme and the ability to include the command line). A couple of interesting implementation notes: Bespin uses Charles Jolley’s Tiki CommonJS module loader, which supports separate “sandboxes” of modules. The modules are downloaded from the server once, but each Bespin instance gets its own sandbox. That way, modules that store data in module-global variables will not get confused about which Bespin they’re working with. Settings and themes are shared between Bespin instances.
Code Completion
The other big new feature is one that is available today, but will become easier and smoother to use over time. Bespin can now do code completion, take a look at this screenshot for an example:
Code Completion Example
As soon as you hit “.”, Bespin will try to figure out what is available on the object you’re accessing. That information is gathered up beforehand in the well-known ctags format. We’re using the jsctags project (from Bespin team member Patrick Walton) to generate the tags. Using jsctags, we’ll eventually be generating the tags right in your browser (that’s the “easier and smoother” part that’s coming in the future).
Simplification
Bespin 0.9a1 simplifies two things over 0.8. First, there is now just one downloadable “Bespin Embedded” package that combines the features of both the “Drop In” and “Customizable” packages that we offered in previous releases. You can download this one package and deploy the contents of the “prebuilt” directory to your server, and you’re all ready to go! If you need to go beyond that, you can make sure you have Python installed and customize away.
The second thing we’ve simplified was the signature of “command” functions. A “command” in Bespin is basically any action you take in the editor or the command line. In versions prior to 0.9, commands took an “env” argument as the first parameter. With 0.9 onward, you should no longer include that parameter and instead just grab the “env” variable from the “environment” module. There are more details of this change in the Bespin 0.9 Release Notes. A new tutorial on making commands is coming today or tomorrow.
Version Numbering
To date, every release of Bespin has been an alpha release. With 0.9 (codenamed “Edison”), we’re switching to the kind of release cycles used by stable and mature projects. We’ll start with a series of alpha releases that are not yet feature complete. Then we’ll move to beta test releases to work out any kinks before having a final release. 0.9a1 is no more or less “alpha” than 0.8 was, but the version number reflects that we’re heading toward a stable state.
Download Bespin Now
Download Bespin Embedded 0.9a1. Take a look at the full 0.9 Release Notes for more information about what’s new.
Stay tuned for more interesting developments in Bespin this week.
– Kevin Dangoor, on behalf of the Bespin team
June 29th, 2010
Want to know specific details about an image you are looking at? You can quickly find an image’s width and height with the Image Spider add-on for Firefox.
Now I can not see where this would be useful for your normal day to day Firefox users. I can see where it could serve as an important tool for web site designers. For any image on a website you can pull up details such as the width, height, natural width, natural height, and HTML elements such as the alt, title tag and border tags.
To use it, all you need to do is click on the new icon it places in the navigation toolbar.
In the options, you can define how the text box looks that delivers you all the image details, as well as the fonts for that text box and the border color that goes around a image after you have clicked the Image Spider icon.
Overall it is a simple extension for Firefox that does a great job at serving a simple purpose. You can download Image Spider yourself from the Firefox Add-ons web site.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
June 29th, 2010
Well, it has been over a year since I messed around with the design of FirefoxFacts.com, so I thought we were long overdue for a new look here. I have tried to both simplify things and make the layout and design more user friendly too.
Some of the most noticeable changes include:
- Bigger fonts/easier to read posts and pages
- Better search, dropped Google Site Search
- Simplified the navigation too, you can easily jump from categories to related "facts" to the next post in the archive all with one click
I really hope you enjoy the new look, and tell your friends to come visit too. Thanks for reading Firefox Facts, and there will be plenty more Firefox tips, themes, add-ons, tutorials and more in the future.
Anything else you’d like to see? Leave a comment and let me know!
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
June 27th, 2010
Today, we launched an update to our crash protection feature to extend the amount of time Firefox will wait before terminating unresponsive plugins.
The crash protection feature, first introduced in Firefox 3.6.4, protects Windows and Linux users from crashes and freezes caused by third party plugins such as Flash and Silverlight. When a plugin crashes, users can reload the Web page to restart the plugin and continue browsing. When a plugin freezes, making the whole browser unresponsive, Firefox 3.6.4 terminates the unresponsive plugin after waiting 10 seconds. These changes were tested with a beta audience of close to one million users.
Following the release of Firefox 3.6.4 we heard from some users, mainly those using older computers, that they sometimes expect longer periods of non-responsiveness from plugins, especially with games. For these users the default timeout of 10 seconds was too short. To address this, we increased the amount of time Firefox waits for a plugin to respond before terminating it from 10 to 45 seconds. This change has been made in Firefox 3.6.6, which was released today as an automatic update for all users.
We would like to thank vendors, such as Zynga, for working with us to ensure that Firefox continues to provide the best user experience for our shared users. For more information, please see:
June 27th, 2010
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.6.6 is now available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://www.firefox.com. This release makes a small change to the crash protection feature introduced in Firefox 3.6.4, increasing the amount of time that Firefox will allow a plugin to remain frozen before terminating it. For more information, see the Mozilla Blog announcement about the release.
We recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.6 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 3.6.6 Release Notes.
All Firefox 3 and 3.5 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu and clicking on “Get the New Version”, then checking for updates again once Firefox 3.6 is installed.
June 26th, 2010
We are excited to announce that Mozilla won the American Business Awards Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year (with less than 2,500 employees) in the software category!
More than 2,700 entries from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration in more than 40 categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year and Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year.
We are so pleased to accept this award on behalf of the always innovative Mozilla Community!
June 25th, 2010
Let us end this week with one more win in the Firefox column.
Over at Download Squad, they have been doing some really interesting browser testing. In a 4-way HTML5 speed test, Firefox 3.7 beat Internet Explorer 9, Opera and Chrome. The Video really speaks for itself, but if you want to learn more – be sure to check out this post over at DownloadSquad.com.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
June 25th, 2010
- Tabs API – Provides easy access to tabs and tab-related events.
- Request API – Lets you easily make network requests.
- Load/unload reasons – Add-ons can now find out when they are being loaded for the first time after being installed or enabled and unloaded because they are being uninstalled or disabled.
- Localization API – Provides simple localization functionality. It makes it possible to retrieve localized versions of the strings in your code. And it doesn’t require you to solicit localizations from localizers or bundle localizations with your code, as the module retrieves them automatically from a web service based on the strings your code is using.
- Selection API – Provides a means to get and set current text/HTML selections as well as observe new selections.
- And in case you have not been following the latest Jetpack developments, we also launched Page Worker, Widget, Simple Storage and Private Browsing APIs in previous releases. A complete list of APIs can be found in the core library reference.
- Discuss, debate, and get help in the discussion forum.
- Chat via IRC in #jetpack on irc.mozilla.org.
- Submit a bug report.
- Grab the source code and fix a bug or add a feature.