Tag: Mozilla
Mozilla Pushes Out A Critical Firefox Update
Grab it now.
As web browsers become increasingly complex with more features added (as well as APIs) every month or so, creative people find new ways to exploit them.
The latest example comes from the built in PDF viewer in Firefox, which was hacked, allowing attackers to browse through your local files and upload them to the remote servers if needed. In addition to that, once the script was executed, it removed itself from the system, making it harder to detect by the consumers.
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Mozilla Complains About The Windows 10
Now here is an interesting piece of drama before the weekend begins. As you might know, Microsoft has started pushing Windows 10 to all the user’s around the globe. However, it looks like Mozilla is not particularly happy with the way software giant is handling updates.
In an open letter, Mozilla’s CEO, Chris Beard said that “the Windows 10 upgrade experience strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existing user preferences for the Web browser and other apps” and that they have tried to work things out but it did not result in any meaningful progress. And this is why they have decided to go public. In addition to that, he claims that it is now much harder for people to use the third party apps and change the default.
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Firefox 40: Idea Town Is Coming
August 11th is the date.
While Microsoft has user voice page, it looks like Mozilla is trying different approach with a new program called “Idea Town”, which will allow Firefox users to test new browser features and give feedback.
As stated in the GitHub page, “Idea Town is an opt-in platform for Firefox that facilitates controlled tests of new, high-visibility products in the general release channel. Idea Town will allow us to make informed and user-tested product decisions quickly and without compromising user privacy or experience.”
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Mozilla: Firefox OS Will Be The Most Customizable OS Ever
Coming in November.
Recently, Mozilla has ditched its low end phones approach and committed to new releases every 6 months. Now, the open source organization has revealer more details about the next major release: Firefox OS 2.5, promising for it to be the “most customizable, secure, locally relevant and empowering Firefox OS experience yet”.
As announced in the blog post, the upcoming build allow users to view and customize the source, making it super easy to add or remove any changes you want (see the video below).
In addition to that, Firefox OS will also support Firefox like extension mechanism, which will enable to add or remove user interface features or enhance phone capabilities.
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Firefox 41 Will Download Symbol Fonts Even When Disabled
Will ship in September, 2015.
If you are a web developer, then Font Awesome or other symbol fonts should sound familiar to you, especially of some of your visitors have complained about the troubled icons. As for everyone else, here is a neat new feature that should ensure better compatibility and web site rendering.
Have you ever seen small rectangles instead of icons? If so, then you are one the affected people and starting with Firefox 41, the issue should be fixed once and for all as updated browser will downloading web page fonts despite the setting.
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Firefox OS Spinoff With 40+ Mozilla Employees Receives A $100 Million Boost
Mozilla must be kicking themselves in the foot.
Back in May, Chris Beard, the CEO of Mozilla, has announced plans to drop the $25 version of Firefox OS and overhaul the overall plans for the mobile operating system.
Shortly afterwards, a couple of execs have left the company, including the president, Li Gong, who have since formed a new startup codenamed “Gone Fishing”, to create a new mobile solution, which is partially based on the Firefox OS itself. Since then, more than 40 former Mozilla employees have also joined the company as well as people from other sources.
Now, it looks like the very same startup (Acadine Techologies), has received a $100 million investment from China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, with a goal to create a better mobile operating system called H5OS, which is set to target tablets, smartphones and wearable devices.
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Palemoon To “Dump” Gecko
While press screams doom and gloom for Firefox, here’s a real explanation.
Not so long time ago developers behind Palemoon, a web browser based on Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine, have announced that they will be switching away from Mozilla’s to their own rendering engine called Goanna.
Now, before you start thinking about the PR disaster for Mozilla, it does not take rocket science to figure out that nothing actually changes. How so? Here’s a story in 60 seconds or less:
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Firefox For Windows 10 UI Revealed
Shows no substantial changes yet, as expected.
As we all await for the promised Firefox build for Windows 10, Mozilla has published their very first concept on what could the first release look like.
If you were expecting any major changes then be prepared for a disappointment as it’s pretty similar to the native Windows 8 skin, at least for now.
Could you have guessed which one is which?
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Mozilla Abandons The 18 Week Firefox Release Schedule
Promises to ship fixes to users in minutes.
With Microsoft finishing Windows 10 later this week and releasing it globally at the end of this month, it looks like Mozilla is too working hard on a Windows 10 specific version of Firefox, which (according to them) is coming out soon.
What is more interesting however is the fact that the company has decided to abandon its “18-week development” plan and instead, focus on shortening the time it takes for new Firefox features to reach the users. On a message board, Mozilla’s Dave Camp has stated that “today [code deployment] isn’t done on an 18-week cycle. We think there are big wins to be had in shortening the time that new features reaches users. Critical fixes should ship to users in minutes, not days.”
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Firefox 41 Will Use 5x Less Memory (In Certain Cases)
Release date: September 22, 2015.
If you have installed and enabled the Adblock Plus extension on Firefox, then we have some great news: the upcoming Firefox 41 release will use less memory than ever before.
As it turns out, just by enabling Adblock Plus, users see an additional 60-70 MB increase to the memory usage. In addition to that, it adds an additional 4 megabytes per iframe, which means that in very rare cases (such as loading Techruch and rolling over all their social buttons for every story), Firefox memory usage becomes pretty insane:
Firefox (default): 194 MB
Firefox with AdBlock Plus: 417 MB
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