Mozilla Unveils Firefox OS Smartphones At Mobile World Congress

 

ReadWrite - It started with a gecko, of sorts. It then became a fennec, a type of winter fox. Now, it is a smartphone, and soon it will be available all over the world. 

We are, of course, talking about Firefox OS, the open source, Web-based smartphone operating system created by Mozilla. The company announced Sunday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, that it has partnered with device manufacturers and mobile operators across the world to launch Firefox smartphones in 2013. 

Mozilla also officially launched the Firefox Marketplace, an app store featuring mobile Web applications and websites that will be able to operate on the new smartphones. Both the Firefox OS and Marketplace are optimized towards HTML5 development and open Web standards using Mozilla’s Firefox browser as its backbone.

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Mozilla invests in Everything.me, marking first VC foray

CNET - 
 
The company has been working closely with Everything.me on "creating a compelling content experience" for the Firebox browser.

Mozilla has taken its first step into the VC world, investing in Everything.me to support the startup's efforts in creating HTML5 mobile app technology.

Mozilla was one of several investors in a new $25 million round for Everything.me. The investment was led by the Silicon Valley-based venture team of Telefonica Digital, and it also includes funding from SingTel Innov8 and previous investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, DFJTF, BRM Group, and Horizons Ventures.

Everything.me, formerly DoAT, provides technology that enables smartphones to quickly and easily match a user's needs with the most relevant HTML5 content. The Israeli-based company plans to use the funding to expand its team and drive Everything.me's ongoing development.

Here's how Everything.me describes itself:

Everything.me is powering a new paradigm for smartphones --- changing them from "smart" to "dynamic." Rather than the static experience of today's smartphone, a dynamic phone adapts its offering of apps on the fly, matching the content and services a user needs with the most relevant apps available -- whether locally or from the cloud. This shift bridges the gap between the web and applications on mobile. Apps appear on the screen according to user intent and are all instantly available and ready to use whether the user downloaded them or not. This dynamic platform enhances mobile OS and app store experiences by providing easy access to thousands of apps, games and services available on HTML5.

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Firefox 15 beta boasts support for Opus audio format, reduces add-on memory leaks

Engadget - Can't bear to part with your favorite browser extensions, but can't stand to see them devour your system memory? Maybe you should check out Firefox 15. According to Mozilla's Hacks blog, the browser's latest beta should patch up the majority of memory leaks gushing from Firefox add-ons. Also new, is the beta's support for Opus, a free audio format partially supported by Mozilla.     More

Firefox Beta 15 supports the new Opus audio format

What is it?

Opus is a completely free audio format that was recently approved for publication as a standards-track RFC by the IETF. Opus files can play in Firefox Beta today.

Opus offers these benefits:

• Better compression than MP3, Ogg, or AAC formats
• Good for both music and speech
• Dynamically adjustable bitrate, audio bandwidth, and coding delay
• Support for both interactive and pre-recorded applications

Why Should I care?

First, Opus is free software, free for everyone, for any purpose. It’s also an IETF standard. Both the encoder and decoder are free, including the fixed-point implementation (for mobile devices). These aren’t toy demos. They’re the best we could make, ready for serious use.    

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Mozilla giving Thunderbird the (effective) axe, leaving its fate to the community

Engadget - Mozilla's Thunderbird mail client just hasn't enjoyed the same level of stardom as its Firefox cousin. Their developer must be feeling this discrepancy more than most, as the company has confirmed plans to take the organization out of active Thunderbird development. The shift is officially being spun as an adaptation that lets the Foundation center its energy on Firefox OS and the usual browser plans, but when Mozilla proper will only be handling bug fixes and security updates for a client that's "not a priority," we'd say it's putting Thunderbird on ice.    More

Firefox survives first round of surgery

CNET - Mozilla’s three months into an ambitious plan to bolt a long list of features into its browser. Competitors left it no choice.

Firefox to change its look–again (screenshots)

 

After years of tough competition from dominance-seeking Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, Mozilla faces a second year in a row of forced adaptations. Its aggressive Firefox 2012 development plan calls for surgeries both minor and radical to integrate many new pieces into the browser, but it may not survive post-op. At least, not as you know it.

So far, the changes have resulted in a Firefox which, simply put, runs better. Two of the most tangible new tools have changed add-on behavior. The addition of add-ons to Firefox Sync let you mirror the same add-ons at work and at home, and you won’t have to reinstall them manually if your computer crashes.

A second add-on change marks around 80 percent of add-ons as compatible by default with each new version of Firefox. This prevents the browser from worrying about the “maximum version compatibility” issue that was relevant back in Firefox 3, when updates were annual, but is much less of a problem when updates come every six weeks.

Other early 2012 victories for Firefox include Chrome migration; a new design for HTML5 media controls; better developer and Web platform tools; and a Firefox “hotfix” system for pushing out minor updates that don’t require a browser restart. Granted, these are the equivalent of medicating a patient to lower a fever while the virus still infects the body, but they’re good starts. They’re just more about keeping up with the competition than they are about forging ahead.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The second quarter of 2012 doesn’t look particularly life-saving, either. Some of the highlights of what Mozilla wants to achieve before the end of June include an improved Home Tab and New Tab experience; in-location bar search that ensures user privacy; automatic browsing session restore with tabs-on-demand; a panel-based download manager; and silent updates.

These are achievements that Firefox is not boldly leading on. Some of them, such as the Home Tab and New Tab, and silent updates, are already in the Firefox Aurora development build, which means that they’re well on their way to reaching most people.    More

Mozilla begins development of Firefox for Metro

Summary: Mozilla today announced that it has begun “a very large project” to build a Metro styled version of Firefox for Windows 8. Can Firefox for Metro really be ready this summer?
Mozilla’s Brian R. Bondy revealed today that development has begun on Firefox for Metro.

Last month, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler announced that a Metro version of Firefox was in early planning stages, with a blog post about Mozilla’s goals that in turn linked to a roadmap. Dotzler is listed as the product manager.

Today’s announcement fleshes out some of the key decisions that the Mozilla team has made in the past month.

According to Bondy, Firefox for Metro will mimic Internet Explorer 10’s split personality, as a “Metro style enabled desktop browser”:

Unlike Metro applications, Metro style enabled desktop browsers have the ability to run outside of the Metro sandbox. Meaning not only can we build a browser, but we can build a powerful browser which gives an experience equal to that of a classic Desktop browser.

Metro style enabled desktop browsers have access to most Win32 API and the entire new WinRT API.

Unfortunately a browser can only participate in Metro mode if it is the default browser. So if Firefox is not the default browser on a system, you can’t use it in Metro mode. This is a decision made by Microsoft.                   More

Mozilla slows pace of Firefox 9 upgrades

Computerworld – Mozilla dramatically slowed the update pace of Firefox 9, the browser it shipped late last month.

The company also said it may repeat the slow-down in the future.

Firefox 9, which Mozilla released Dec. 20, has yet to be completely “unthrottled,” or offered as an update to all users, according to notes from a company meeting last week.

Like other software vendors, including Microsoft and Apple, Mozilla can offer upgrades to a fraction of its users rather than to everyone at once. The practice is designed to ensure that download servers aren’t overwhelmed, and to prevent bugs — if there are any in the update — from reaching all users.

Firefox 8, the edition that launched Nov. 8, 2011, accounted for 40% of all versions of Mozilla’s browser five days after its release, and broke the 50% mark 18 days after it shipped, according to usage statistics from Irish metrics firm StatCounter. Meanwhile, Firefox 9 accounted for just 7% of all editions of Firefox five days after its debut and required 24 days to reach 50%.

The slow-down was related to several bugs in Firefox 9 that Mozilla developers have investigated, including one mentioned last week in a status meeting that blocks some users running Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, from playing Netflix content.

While Mozilla issued Firefox 9.0.1 a day after shipping Firefox 9 — the former removed code that caused some Mac, Linux and Windows browsers to crash — it has not released a version 9.0.2 to patch any of the bugs that prompted it to throttle the upgrade process.                   More

The Best Firefox Extensions, 2011

PCMag.Com - You can’t beat the number of choices to add on to your Firefox browser. But if that’s too much for you, we’ve narrowed it down to 23 everyone should install.

It’s not much of a stretch to say Mozilla owes the success its Firefox browser has had these last six years to add-ons. Firefox was the first browser to embrace them. Add-ons encompass plug-ins (like Flash, Adobe Reader, QuickTime, etc) that make existing Web tech work, themes for changing a browser’s look, and of course, those capability-enhancing programs known as extensions that go beyond a developer’s dreams.

Of course, you could go your entire browsing life without installing an extension. Many people do. But without them, you’re missing out on making Firefox the powerhouse of Web surfing it can be. Take a look at our 23 choices for the best extensions, install a few, and try them out (they’re free, after all) and you’ll see just how useful they are.

 

 

1. FireFTP
Need to access a server somewhere with full-fledged FTP but don’t want to exit your browser? You don’t have to with FireFTP . It loads in a tab and gives you all the access you need without loading a separate program. It works with Firefox on Mac, Windows, or Linux, too.

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2. Tweetlight
Why cut and paste items you like into Twitter? With Tweetlight , just highlight, hit Ctrl+Shift+E (or use a context menu), and your selections can instantly get micro-blogged to followers. v

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3. Site to Phone
Sometimes porting favorite sites from your desktopbrowser to your mobile browser is a pain. Site to Phone minimizes that so you can send links that will work every time to iOS, Android, WebOS, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone 7 phones. This one works in every browser, with extensions for IE and Chrome, too.                   More

Mozilla puts mobile Firefox on the front burner

Mozilla is expanding development of Firefox for Android with new efforts to improve its performance, lower its power consumption, adapt it for tablets–and keep the browser maker relevant in the hottest area of computing.

Firefox is the second-most widely used browser on computers, but things are different in the mobile arena. There, Firefox is at a serious disadvantage compared to mobile browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Google’s unbranded Android browser that are built into the operating systems.

Mozilla, by comparison, must convince people or phone makers to install Firefox, and even then restrictions keep it off several mobile operating systems.

But Mozilla clearly has recognized that mobile computing is rapidly expanding beyond the niche of technophiles and wealthy folks who want a high-status phone. Firefox won’t have an easy time carving a place for itself on new mobile devices, but Mozilla is doing its darndest to build a browser that will attract users.

One illustration: When Mozilla programmer Dave Mandelin began an active discussion about what Firefox needs to run better on ARM processors, which dominate the phone and tablet market, a broad, active discussion took off. Mandelin wasn’t very gentle.

“If you have a powerful device, Firefox performance is in many ways pretty good. But UI [user interface] responsiveness and memory usage seem to be in pretty bad shape,” Mandelin said. “So we need to get better measurements and start improving performance in those areas, today.”

And Mozilla, barred from bringing its browser to major mobile operating systems such as Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone, is moving beyond browsers, too.

“Smartphones and tablets are where the next billion people will expect their personalized experience to be available to them anytime, anywhere,” Mozilla said in its vision statement that Mozilla Vice President of Products Jay Sullivan published earlier this year. “To significantly affect Internet life in the future, we will have to deliver value on major OSes, whether we are allowed to ship our own browser engine or not.”


Getting a Fennec foothold
That operating system barrier has made it harder for Firefox for mobile, code-named Fennec, to gain a foothold.

The two initial operating systems for Fennec were Maemo from Nokia and Windows Mobile from Microsoft. Maemo became MeeGo when Nokia merged the effort with Intel’s mobile Linux project, but through a major Nokia restructuring, MeeGo has been consigned to oblivion.

Microsoft, meanwhile, overhauled Windows Mobile 6.5 to produce Windows Phone 7–and one aspect of that shift is the removal of the software interfaces necessary to run Firefox.

Another possible avenue, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry operating system, doesn’t look promising, either. Although RIM started a closed beta test of a native developer kit (NDK) last week for BlackBerry tablets, the company told CNET in a statement that won’t enable browsers such as Firefox, as it’s currently engineered, on phones.

“We do not have any plans to bring an NDK to the BlackBerry OS today,” the company said in a statement. “It would have to be written in Java to run on our platform. Opera, Bolt, and other browsers have been ported to the BlackBerry smartphone platform to date.”                   More

Mozilla to build mobile OS for the Web

IDG News Service - Mozilla has launched a new project to build an operating system for mobile devices that will run applications primarily on the Web. 

"We want to ... find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are --- in every way --- the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7," a group of Mozilla developers wrote on a new wiki page about the project.

They call the project Boot to Gecko (B2G) and say the plan is to build a "complete, standalone operating system for the open web."

The goal appears similar to one that Google cited when it initially started work on Android. In an online discussion about B2G, Andreas Gal, one of its lead developers, said the ultimate goal was "breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile devices world."

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Mozilla hustles to handle demise of Google Toolbar for Firefox

May update Firefox 3.6 next month to give users a way to migrate bookmarks

Computerworld - Mozilla is scrambling to deal with Google's decision to drop the Google Toolbar for Firefox, according to notes on Mozilla's website.

Earlier this week, Google announced it was killing Google Toolbar for Firefox, and would not be updating the add-on to support Firefox 5 or future versions of the open-source browser.
Mozilla shipped Firefox 5 a month ago.

"For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser," said Google in a message Tuesday. "Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions."

Mozilla slates Firefox 5 update to fix Lion crash bug

'Out-of-band' update only for Mac users

Computerworld - Mozilla on Friday said it would update Firefox for the Mac to deal with a bug in Apple's impending Lion operating system.

Firefox 5.0.1 is "coming soon," Mozilla announced in a blog post, but did not set a release date. Users running Microsoft Windows or Linux will not see the update.

According to Mozilla, Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, contains a bug that causes Firefox 5 to crash when displaying websites that use downloadable fonts.

"We alerted Apple to the problem before the release of 10.7 but they did not fix the problem before 10.7 went to final release," Christopher Blizzard, Mozilla's Web platform director, said on the company's blog. "We've changed the font APIs that we're using to newer versions which appear to fix the problem."