Mozilla Firefox

This afternoon, we’re excited to release the first official Mozilla application on Facebook. The app is a 5 question quiz designed to teach users some quick tips about how to stay safe online. At the end of the quiz, you’ll be prompted to go check out our newly refreshed security page on the Mozilla website.

Facebook applications are notorious for capturing lots of data about the user. That’s simply not how we roll at Mozilla. We took the extra step of hashing the facebook user ID to ensure that if you take the quiz all of your personal data will stay with you. The only thing we’ll know is how quiz-takers (in aggregate) scored on the quiz.

Go take the quiz and find out if you’re a security ninja or a security newbie!

Editor’s note: Mozilla released Firefox 3.6 beta 3 on Tuesday, November 17, 2009. Check out the Mozilla Developer News announcement reposted below for more details.

Last night the Mozilla community released Firefox 3.6 Beta 3, making it available for free download and issuing an update for all Firefox 3.6 beta users. This update contains over 80 fixes from the last Firefox 3.6 beta, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. More than half of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta. If your favorite Add-on isn’t yet compatible, you can also download and install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter – your favorite Add-on author will appreciate it!

The Mozilla community appreciates your feedback and assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox. Your beta software will update itself periodically, and eventually will be updated to the final release itself.

The Beta of Firefox 3.6 / Gecko 1.9.2 introduces several new features for users to evaluate:

• (New in this update) A change to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
• (New in this update) The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• A mechanism to prevent incompatible software from crashing Firefox.
• Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• 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.
• 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, see this list (it’s big).

Please use the following links to download Firefox 3.6 Beta, or visit the beta download page:

• Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 Setup.exe
• Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 3.dmg
• Linux: firefox-3.6b3.tar.bz2

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

Editor’s note: Mozilla released Personas 1.4 today. New features allow you to discover new art, rotate through your favorites and undo. Check out the Personas Blog post below for more information.

Personas 1.4 Released

Personas gets a set of new features that lets you discover new art, rotate through your favorites, and undo.
With feedback from the Personas community, Labs recently released Personas 1.4. Here is a video describing some of the features:

Introducing Personas 1.4 from Mozilla Labs on Vimeo.

What you can Expect from 1.4

1. More From the Designer: Say you’re browsing through the Personas gallery and pick a design you like. The next day, you want to know whether the designer has created any other cool designs. Before, you would need to go to getpersonas.com and either search for the designer name or find the design you liked and click on the designer by-line. Now, you can simply click on your extension (the little fox on the bottom left corner of your screen), mouse to the top of the menu, and then mouse right to the submenu.

2. Favorites: In the last version of Personas, we enabled you to easily favorite any Persona design in the gallery and have it instantly accessible in the “my favorites” section of your menu (see more about the 1.3 release).

3. More From the Category: Say you’re in the mood for a Holiday persona design. Within the extension menu, you mouse through the Holiday category but can’t find anything you like. Before, you needed to navigate to the Holiday gallery by navigating to getpersonas.com and finding the Holiday gallery. Now you can get there in one step by clicking “More From Holiday” in the extension.

4. Undo: Personas gives you the ability to preview a design before you select it. But still, maybe you chose a design and instantly regret the decision. Before, to undo you would need to go to “recently selected” designs in your extension menu and click on the last design you were wearing. Now, an undo notification bar drops down every time you select a design that you haven’t used recently, or haven’t marked as a favorite.

Get Personas 1.4

If you are already using Personas 1.3, Firefox will automatically update it to Personas 1.4 the next time it checks for add-ons updates. If you aren’t using Personas yet, or you want to get the new version immediately, install it at getpersonas.com.

Thanks!

Many thanks to Erik van Eykelen, Jose Bolanos, Ryan Doherty, Carsten Book (a.k.a. Tomcat), Toby Elliott, Zandr Milewski, and all the Personas localizers on Babelzilla (AtteL, dogi, drry, Ersen Yoldac, fernph, Funkin2x, funTomas, Joergen, jojaba, jooliaan, kkemenczy, kustodian, Lisman, lois, loveleeyoungae, moZes, pia, SiiiE, spjutster, steekid, stoyan, Wareczek, and wtspout), who did great work to make this feature possible, along with all the folks in the discussion forum who suggested the feature, tested early versions of it, and reported problems!

What’s Next?

We’re looking to make this feature even better and easier to use. To continue to evolve Personas quickly, and in the right direction, we need your feedback and participation. Join the conversation in the discussion forum and add helpful hints to the support wiki. And stay tuned to this blog for updates!

- Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez on behalf of the Personas development team