Easy Firefox

Archive for the ‘Developer News’ Category

A Mozilla Developer Preview is now available for download. This is the second pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.3 platform, which forms the core of Firefox and other Mozilla projects.

Out-of-Process Plugins

The main feature of this release is out-of-process plugins: on Windows and Linux, plugins such as Flash and Silverlight run in a separate process from the browser. If a plugin crashes it will not crash the browser, and unresponsive plugins are automatically restarted. (Note that we are working on this for Macs as well, but is not part of this preview release.) We are making this preview release available so that it can get wider testing and generate feedback.

You can help test this release by visiting sites that make heavy use of plugins.

Performance Improvements

• We’ve removed link history lookup from the main thread and made it asynchronous. This results in less I/O during page loads and improves overall browser responsiveness.
• Loading the HTML5 spec no longer causes very long browser pauses.
• A large number of layout performance improvements have been made, including work around DOM access times, color management performance, text area improvements and many other hot spots in the layout engine.
• The JavaScript engine has many improvements: String handling is improved, faster closures, some support for recursion in TraceMonkey to name a few.
• Improvements to the performance of repainting HTML in <foreignObject>.
• Strings are not copied between the main DOM code and web workers, improving performance for threaded JavaScript which moves large pieces of data between threads.

Web Developer Features

• Support for Content Security Policy. This is largely complete, minus the ability to disable eval().
• The placeholder attribute for <input/> and <textarea> is now supported.
• Support for SMIL Animation in SVG. Support for animating some SVG attributes is still under development and the animateMotion element isn’t supported yet.
• Support for CSS Transitions. This support is not quite complete: support for animation of transforms and gradients has not yet been implemented.
• Support for WebGL, which is disabled by default but can be enabled by changing a preference. See this blog post and this blog post for more details.
• Support for the getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect methods on Range objects. See bug 396392 for details.
• Support for the setCapture and releaseCapture methods on DOM elements. See bug 503943 for details.
• Support for the HTML5 History.pushState() and History.replaceState() methods and the popstate event. See bug 500328 for details.
• Support for the -moz-image-rect() value for background-image. See bug 113577 for more details.

For the full list of new web developer features please visit our page on Upcoming Features for Web Developers.

Release Information

Please note that this release intended for developers and testers. Mozilla encourages web developers to test this developer preview against their web sites and file bugs on any problems.

For more information, including a complete list of new features, see the release notes, as well as the “Upcoming Firefox feature for developers” article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Download

• Installer for Windows
• DMG for Mac OS X (Leopard or better required)
• Archive for Linux

Go to Source

Thunderbird 3.0.3 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getthunderbird.com/. This release fixes an issue with mail folders for some users who updated to Thunderbird 3.0.2.

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, we strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this release. If you already have Thunderbird 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird release notes.

Go to Source

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, Thunderbird 3.0.2 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getthunderbird.com/.

We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this release. If you already have Thunderbird 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird release notes.

Go to Source

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.8 and Firefox 3.0.18 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:

• Firefox 3.5.8 is available at http://firefox.com/
• Firefox 3.0.18 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3, 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 3.5.8 Release Notes and the Firefox 3.0.17 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 3 users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu in Firefox 3.0.18.

Go to Source

A Mozilla Developer Preview of improvements in the Gecko layout engine is now available for download.  This is a pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.3 platform, which forms the core of rich Internet applications such as Firefox. Please note that this release is intended for developers and testers only. As always, we appreciate any feedback you may have and encourage users to help us by filing bugs.

This developer preview introduces several new features, including:

• Support for CSS Transitions. This support is not quite complete: support for animation of transforms and gradients has not yet been implemented.
• Support for SMIL Animation in SVG. Support for animating some SVG attributes is still under development and the animateMotion element isn’t supported yet.
• Support for WebGL, which is disabled by default but can be enabled by changing a preference. See this blog post and this blog post for more details.
• Support for the getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect methods on Range objects. See bug 396392 for details.
• Support for the setCapture and releaseCapture methods on DOM elements. See bug 503943 for details.
• Support for the HTML5 History.pushState() and History.replaceState() methods and the popstate event. See bug 500328 for details.
• Support for the -moz-image-rect() value for background-image. See bug 113577 for more details.

and several other significant changes, including:

• On Mac OS X, we render text using Core Text rather than ATSUI.
• We rewrote major parts of the code for handling scrolling. See bug 526394 for details.
• We rewrote the way a snapshot of a document is taken in order to print or print preview. See bug 487667 for details.
• We made significant changes to table border handling. See bug 452319 and bug 43178 for details.
• We made various architectural changes to improve Web page performance.

More information on these changes is in the release notes, as well as the “Upcoming Firefox features for developers” article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Please use the following links when downloading this Mozilla Developer Preview:

• Installer for Windows
• DMG for Mac OS X (10.5 or better required)
• Archive for Linux

Go to Source

The Mozilla community is proud to announce that Firefox 3.6 has shipped and is now available for free download at www.firefox.com. Firefox 3.6 and the new Gecko 1.9.2 platform were built by a global community of passionate contributors, including thousands of experienced developers, security experts, localization and support communities, and hundreds of thousands of active testers.

What’s new in Firefox 3.6:

Below are some of the new features in Firefox 3.6:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

What’s New Under the Hood for Developers

• Support for the latest HTML5 specification, including the File API for local file handling
• Font Support: In addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, 3.6 now supports the new Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
• CSS gradients: Supports linear and radial CSS gradients which allow for a smoother transition between colors
• Device orientation: Firefox 3.6 exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to Web pages
• See more complete information in this article for web and software developers

How to get Mozilla Firefox 3.6:

Firefox 3.6 is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in more than 70 languages – more platforms and languages than any other browser! You can download Firefox 3.6 at www.firefox.com.

Go to Source

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, Thunderbird 3.0.1 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getthunderbird.com/.

We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this release. If you already have Thunderbird 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird release notes.

Go to Source

An update to the Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate is now available. This second release candidate is available for free download and has been issued as an automatic update to all Firefox 3.6 Beta and Release Candidate users.

More information about the Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate can be found in the release notes and detailed information for developers can be found at the Mozilla Developer Center. As always, the Mozilla community would appreciate hearing about any feedback you have about this release, or any bugs you may find.

Go to Source

The Mozilla community is proud to announce the availability of a release candidate of Firefox 3.6. This preview software is available for free download and has been issued as an automatic update to all Firefox 3.6 beta users. Over 75% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6. If your favorite Add-on isn’t yet marked as compatible, you can help the Add-on author test it out using the Add-on Compatibility Reporter. This release candidate may update itself periodically, and will eventually be exactly the same as the final Firefox 3.6 release itself.

Firefox 3.6 (built on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform) introduces several new features for users and developers:

• Users can change the browser’s appearance with a single click using Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 alerts users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Changes to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
• Improved automatic form fill provides better options from your form history.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Support for the HTML5 File API.
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Web developers and Add-on developers should read more detail about the many new features in Firefox 3.6 for developers on the Mozilla Developer Center. For the full list of changes since the alpha release of Firefox 3.6 see this list (it’s big).

If you’d like to get a sneak peek at Firefox 3.6, please download the release candidate and try it out!

If you already have Firefox 3.6 Beta, you should be automatically updated to the release candidate. You can also choose to manually “Check for Updates” from the Help menu.

As always, the Mozilla community would appreciate hearing about any feedback you have about this release, or any bugs you may find.

Go to Source

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.7 and Firefox 3.0.17 are now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as free downloads:

• Firefox 3.5.7 is available at http://firefox.com/
• Firefox 3.0.17 is available at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3, 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 3.5.7 Release Notes and the Firefox 3.0.17 Release Notes.

Note: All Firefox 3 users are encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu in Firefox 3.0.17.

Go to Source