Whilst acknowledging that a six-week release cycle is disconcerting for some users, the chair of the Mozilla Foundation says that quicker releases of new versions of Firefox ensure that new capabilities are not delayed for almost a year before they can be delivered to men and women.

Macworld

Mozilla is wasting no time putting its proposed “Do Not Track” HTTP header onto the web. The latest Firefox nightly builds now include support for the new header and it may even make the final release of Firefox 4, due later this month. The new HTTP header, which Mozilla announced last week, is designed to tell online advertisers to stop tracking your web browsing habits.

If you’d like to see how Mozilla has implemented the header, grab the latest Firefox nightly build. There have been a few changes since Mozilla first announced its plan, including renaming the header to simply “DNT.”

To turn the header on, open Firefox’s preferences panel and select the Advanced tab (eventually Mozilla will add the option to the more appropriate Privacy tab). There you’ll see a new option to “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.” Of course even if you turn the header on today and broadcast “DNT: 1″ to the web, it won’t do anything.

For the header to actually protect your privacy, websites and online advertisers will have to support it. While there’s plenty of debate as to whether they ever will, it definitely won’t happen until the feature is widely available. Mozilla is hoping that including the new header in Firefox 4 will spur advertisers to support it.

For now, broadcasting “DNT: 1″ will be, as Alexander Fowler, the Global Privacy and Public Policy Leader at Mozilla, puts it, “akin to displaying EFF’s Blue Ribbon campaign.”

The current plan is to test the privacy header in the next beta release of Firefox 4 and then, assuming there are no bugs, roll it out with the final release of Firefox 4 later this month.

See Also:

• Mozilla Plans ‘Do-Not-Track’ Privacy Tools for Firefox
• Chrome Add-on Kills Tracking Cookies
• New Privacy Icons Aim to Save You From Yourself
• Warning: This Site May Be Sharing Your Data

View full post on Webmonkey

Hot on the heels of last week’s beta 9 release, Mozilla has pushed out another update for Firefox 4. With the final release drawing near, Mozilla is hard at work squashing the last few bugs blocking the Firefox 4 release. While the latest release, beta 10, doesn’t get them all, it is stable enough for early adopters.

If you’d like to try out beta 10 and help out in the testing process, head over to the Mozilla beta downloads page and grab a copy.

For those that have been using Firefox 4 beta releases for some time, there isn’t much new in this release. Most of the focus has been on improving stability and performance, particularly when it comes to hardware acceleration, one of the much-touted new features in Firefox 4.

Beta 10 sees Mozilla taking a more conservative approach to hardware acceleration by restricting it to only certain graphics cards. For the time being, if your graphics card isn’t completely up to the task, Firefox 4 will automatically disable it via a new graphics driver blacklist. Eventually Mozilla plans to expand its hardware acceleration support, but for now only cards from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia will make the cut.

On the Mac side, Flash performance should be a bit better in this release, and, perhaps more importantly, it should be less likely to crash your browser. There have also been some small tweaks to cut down on Firefox 4’s memory footprint.

While this beta shows Firefox 4 very close to complete, Mozilla is still planning at least one more beta release before Firefox 4 is considered ready for prime time. The current roadmap puts the final release of Firefox 4 near the end of February 2011.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Enters Home Stretch With Beta 9 Release
• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• Try Firefox 4 with Tabs in the Title Bar

View full post on Webmonkey

Mozilla wants to create a new HTTP header that will allow Firefox and other browsers to shut off web tracking tools like cookies. The new header would offer a universal way to tell websites that a user wishes to opt-out of third party, advertising-based tracking.

Behavioral advertising, as such tracking is known, is becoming increasingly common on the web. Advertisers use cookies to follow you around the web, tracking which sites you visit, what you buy and even, in the case of mobile browsers, where you go. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has already outlined a Do Not Track mechanism (PDF link), which would work much like the FTC’s Do Not Call list, offering a way to opt-out of online tracking.

The proposed do-not-track HTTP header is one of several ways Mozilla plans to implement the FTC’s suggestions. While the header idea has been around for a while — the Do Not Track Firefox add-on from the Stanford Law School is one example — currently most online opt-out schemes use cookies to set user preferences. Mozilla believes “the header-based approach has the potential to be better for the web in the long run because it is a clearer and more universal opt-out mechanism than cookies or blacklists.”

While the new header is just a proposal at the moment, Mozilla already has some code ready and is considering adding the feature to future versions of Firefox. The current plan is to create a new preferences option that would allow you to opt-out from tracking. Check the box in the preferences and Firefox will start sending the do-not-track header each time you request a new page.

Interestingly, the header Mozilla proposes is not the same as the “X-Do-Not-Track” proposal, which is already implemented in Firefox add-ons NoScript and Adblock Plus. For more details on how Mozilla’s new HTTP header will work, see Mozilla developer Sid Stamm’s blog post.

Like Mozilla’s proposed privacy icons, the problem with the new header is getting third-party ad sites to obey it. Mozilla calls it a “chicken and egg” problem and hopes to jumpstart the idea by including the header in future releases of Firefox. At that point it would be up to third party websites to support the header and, as Mozilla puts it, “honor people’s privacy choices.”

See Also:

• New Privacy Icons Aim to Save You From Yourself
• Warning: This Site May Be Sharing Your Data
• Firefox 4 Enters Home Stretch With Beta 9 Release

View full post on Webmonkey

That dark spot no one clicks? Yes, that’s the RSS button

Firefox 4 is nearly complete. The next version of the venerable web browser introduces dozens of new features — everything from built-in bookmark syncing to hardware acceleration — but it also removes a few noteworthy features as well.

The now-departed status bar — which has been replaced by the add-ons bar — isn’t the only thing that’s been relegated to dustbin in Firefox 4. The familiar RSS icon in the URL bar is gone as well.

RSS has a long, complicated history and, despite its usefulness to the web at large, it just never caught on with mainstream users. RSS may power much of the web behind the scenes, but from a user’s point of view it remains an awkward tool with a terrible user interface. As Firefox developer Leslie Orchard points out, clicking the old Firefox RSS button would give you “a plainly-styled version of what you were probably already looking at on a site.” Of course, if you knew what you were doing, you could quickly either create a live bookmark or add the RSS feed to a feed reader. But for the uninitiated, the UI was confusing enough that Orchard says “some people would think they broke the page when the button was clicked on accident.”

According to Mozilla’s user study the RSS icon was clicked by a scant 3 percent of users. The only thing more neglected is the scroll left button, which is only present on very wide websites. With no one using the button, Firefox designers decided to remove it from the increasingly cluttered URL bar.

Cue the outrage and pleading for its return.

But just because the RSS button has lost its former position in the toolbar doesn’t mean you can’t easily subscribe to RSS feeds in Firefox 4. There’s a new menu option under the Bookmarks menu that will offer to “Subscribe to this page” and you can also add a subscribe button to your toolbar if you like. Just head to the customize option under the View menu and you’ll see a new toolbar button for RSS feed. Drag that button to the toolbar and you’ve restored the RSS button.

Given that seemingly no one used to original button, removing it hardly seems a bad thing, especially when it’s easy to get it back.

See Also:

• How To Bring Back the Status Bar in Firefox 4
• Firefox 4 Enters Home Stretch With Beta 9 Release
• Try Firefox 4 with Tabs in the Title Bar

View full post on Webmonkey

Mozilla has released a new beta version of Firefox 4, as the next major update for the popular web browser nears completion. Firefox 4 beta 9 is primarily a bug fix release, though there a couple of small new features.

If you’d like to take Beta 9 for spin on your desktop, head over to the Mozilla beta downloads page. It’s been a very long development cycle for Firefox 4 — the final version isn’t likely to arrive until the end of February — however, the enhancements being made over versions 3.5 and 3.6 are substantial.

Fortunately for early adopters the beta releases are stable enough to use in day-to-day browsing, so it’s not like we’re waiting a long time for nothing. We can reap the rewards well before the official release date.

On the Windows platform, beta 9 now ships with the tabs-in-the-title-bar feature we covered earlier this month. Firefox 4 beta 9 also includes support for IndexedDB, which allows approved sites to store data on your computer for offline use. Other improvements include an overhaul of the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and improving Firefox’s startup performance.

The best news for those eagerly awaiting the final release of Firefox 4 is that beta 9 has squashed some 660 bugs. Indeed, beta 9 is among the fastest and stablest betas we’ve used, but it’s still not ready for prime time. Problems remain with the new tab-sorting interface — dubbed “Panorama” — and there are enough other small problems that it looks like we’ll see a beta 10 before Firefox 4 is official.

So far Mozilla is sticking to its “when it’s ready” slogan and has not set a final release date for Firefox 4. With the latest nightly builds already renamed to beta 10, you can expect one more beta. After that there will be at least one release candidate, which pushes the final release of Firefox 4 well into February.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• Try Firefox 4 with Tabs in the Title Bar
• Fourth Firefox 4 Beta Adds ‘Panorama,’ Hardware Acceleration

View full post on Webmonkey

On Friday, Mozilla shipped Firefox 4 Beta 9, perhaps the last it will release before it pushes toward a final version.

View full post on Macworld

Firefox 4 will bring a significantly revamped user interface to the popular Mozilla browser, including some welcome changes like automatic bookmark and history syncing, a better add-ons manager, tabs-on-top and dozens of other improvements.

Firefox 4 is also notable for what isn’t included — the venerable status bar. The status bar is an almost universal element of browsers and Mozilla decision to remove it is, well, curious.

Mozilla says that ditching the status bar gives Firefox a simpler, smaller user interface. While that’s true, it comes at the expense of something that every other browser manages to offer — URL previews in the lower left corner of the browser window.

Defenders of the change point out that all of the elements that used to be in the status bar are still in Firefox, they’re just in different places. The page load information is now displayed on each tab, and the URL preview seen when hovering links has moved to the URL bar.

It’s the later change that irks many long-time Firefox users. Part of the problem is that there simply isn’t as much room in the URL bar so URLs are truncated with ellipses, giving you less information about where a link leads.

Mozilla plans to improve the URL preview interface before the final release of Firefox 4, but that doesn’t change the fact that Firefox’s URL preview is now in a different place than every other browser on the web (Chrome and IE 9 don’t have permanent status bars, but both still show link previews in the bottom left corner of the browser window).

Luckily there’s already a Firefox add-ons that brings back the status bar. If you’re using the Firefox 4 beta and you miss the status bar, the appropriately named Status-4-Evar will restore it to its former glory.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger
• Firefox Home Syncs Your Faves to Your iPhone
• Try Firefox 4 with Tabs in the Title Bar

View full post on Webmonkey

Top: Maximized window with tabs in the titlebar. Bottom: Normal tab bar

Firefox 4 has entered the home stretch. The recent release of beta 8 added the last of the major new features for Firefox 4, including a new add-ons interface, better syncing and more hardware accelerated WebGL support. From now until the final release later this year, Firefox development will primarily focus on squashing bugs and refining the user interface.

The Firefox 4 UX roadmap outlines the user interface changes that Mozilla is hoping to complete before Firefox 4 is released. Most of the changes are very small — improving the contrast of the type in the URL bar or tweaking the session restore dialog — but there’s one welcome change in the list that many Firefox fans have been clamoring for — tabs in the titlebar.

The idea of saving screen real estate by smashing tabs up into the title bar of the browser windows started with Google Chrome and has since been copied by other browsers and applications.

It’s a tiny tweak, probably not more than a few dozen pixels are saved, but it can make all the difference when you’re using a netbook or other small screen device. Putting tabs at the top of the browser window also adheres to Fitts’ law, which says that the closer things are to the edge of the screen, the easier they are to click.

In Firefox’s case Fitts’ law seems to be the main reason for the new look — tabs are only pushed into the title bar when the window is maximized, making it easier to flick the cursor to the top of the screen and click a tab.

The new tabs-in-the-title-bar look is expected to arrive in Firefox 4 beta 9 (which will be the next release in Firefox’s beta cycle), but you can preview it today by grabbing a special build of Firefox for Windows and Linux. The builds are the work of Firefox developer Bill Gianopoulos, and as such are not official releases nor are they supported by Mozilla.

Also bear in mind that the code used to create these experimental versions of Firefox comes from Firefox’s nightly builds, which means there may be more bugs than you’ll find in the latest Firefox beta. That said, these builds worked just fine for us on Windows 7 and XP.

If you’ve got a small screen or have been looking for a way to make Firefox’s tabs a bit more like Google Chrome’s, grab the experimental builds. If you prefer to wait for something official, Firefox 4 beta 9 should be released in the relatively near future.

See Also:

• Firefox 4 Beta 8 Arrives With Faster Graphics, Better Sync
• New Privacy Icons Aim to Save You From Yourself
• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger

View full post on Webmonkey

For those of you who are into Firefox, Beta 3 has made its way into the public ready for Beta’ing. Quite a few changes and addtitions have made its way into this version, including:

Android

• Improved support for Android keyboards, both hardware and on-screen
• New Android-style menus
• Fixed a bug in opening links from other apps
• Support for uploading files
• “Save as PDF” command in the site menu
• Fixed rendering of Arabic and Farsi text (on devices with Arabic/Farsi fonts installed)

Firefox Sync

• New UI for simpler setup
• Support for custom Firefox Sync servers

Video

• Full-screen open video
• Improved audio performance

User interface

• Copy/paste in URL bar
• Search engines appear in the awesomescreen as you type
• Browse recommended add-ons through the add-on manager
  

For developers

• localStorage API
• orientation events (new on Android)
  

Support

• Crash reporting for crashes in web content

The option to Save as PDF is one that jumps off the paper at me, as well as some copy/paste upgrades.

If you’d like to see how this browser is coming along for yourself, direct your Android 2.X device to http://www.firefox.com/m. Bear in mind, this requires about 32MB of internal storage and another 12MB on your SD card.

[Full notes at Mozilla]

View full post on Android Phone Fans

Mozilla has dropped the eighth beta release of Firefox 4. Originally intended as a quick update to fix some issues on beta 7, Firefox 4 beta 8 actually brings over 1,400 bug fixes, some improvements to the new add-ons interface, better syncing and more hardware accelerated WebGL support. There’s also a beta update for Android and Maemo mobile phones, which we’ll look at later.

If you’d like to take Beta 8 for spin on your desktop, head over to the Mozilla beta downloads page. It’s been a very long development cycle for Firefox 4 — the final version is still a couple of months out, since once the betas are done, Firefox 4 moves into the release candidate stage. However, the enhancements being made over versions 3.5 and 3.6 are substantial, and these releases are stable enough to use in day-to-day browsing, so it’s not like we’re waiting a long time for nothing. We can reap the rewards well before the official release date.

The improvements to Firefox’s new sync feature — which syncs bookmarks, browsing history, user preferences and open tabs between both desktop and mobile versions of Firefox — make signing up and starting sync easier for new users. Most of us use multiple screens every day — one or two computers, and at least one smartphone with a web browser — keeping it all in sync is increasingly difficult. That’s where Firefox’s sync tools come in and the streamlined sync interface makes it even easier to pick up where you left off, no matter what device you’re using.

The sync updates in Firefox 4 beta 8 coincide with similar improvements in Firefox Mobile 4 beta 3 for the Android and Maemo mobile platforms.

Firefox 4 beta 8 now supports WebGL on more graphics cards across both Mac and Windows operating systems. WebGL bridges the gap between HTML5 tools like the new Canvas tag and OpenGL, an OS-native graphics engine, to speed up HTML5 web apps and animations. If you’d like to see the new WebGL support in action, grab Firefox beta 8 and head over to the Flight of the Navigator demo page, or check out the release notes page which has a video of the demo.

The latest beta isn’t just faster with HTML5 graphics either. Although Mozilla hasn’t released any precise speed figures, in our testing, the start up time was faster than beta 7 and general browsing felt snappier as well.

The new Firefox Add-ons page

Firefox 4 beta 8 refines the main add-ons page (which is now a page, rather than a separate window, a nice improvement). The URL bar has been removed for the add-ons page, and the button design has been revamped. Although the new, slicker-looking buttons do make the interface a bit nicer, add-ons are still variously referred to as “extensions” and “add-ons.” You can see which “extensions” you have installed, but then you “Get Add-ons.” Firefox veterans aren’t likely to even notice the difference, but it could be confusing for new users.

The list of bug fixes for this release is extensive, but Mozilla’s nightly builds have already been renamed to beta 9, which means we’ll see at least one more, possibly two more beta releases before Firefox 4 arrives in final form. Mozilla hasn’t set an official release date for Firefox 4 yet, but it’s expect to arrive sometime in early 2011.

See Also:

• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger
• Firefox Home Syncs Your Faves to Your iPhone
• Firefox With WebGL Brings Powerful 3-D Graphics to the Web

View full post on Webmonkey

Firefox has released the new beta version of Firefox 4 mobile web browser for Android and Maemo devices. Android-specific changes in Beta 3 include:

• Improved support for Android keyboards, both hardware and on-screen
• New Android-style menus
• Fixed a bug in opening links from other apps
• Support for uploading files
• “Save as PDF” command in the site menu
• Fixed rendering of Arabic and Farsi text (on devices with Arabic/Farsi fonts installed)

Tons of other improvements are noted as well:

• Firefox Sync
  • New UI for simpler setup
  • Support for custom Firefox Sync servers
• Video
  • Full-screen open video
  • Improved audio performance
• User interface
  • Copy/paste in URL bar
  • Search engines appear in the awesomescreen as you type
  • Browse recommended add-ons through the add-on manager
• For developers
  • localStorage API
  • orientation events (new on Android)
• Support
  • Crash reporting for crashes in web content

You can try out the Firefox 4 beta for free on your Android device by visiting this link in your mobile browser.

Firefox 4 Beta 3 for Android has been released

View full post on Android News, Rumours, and Updates

Thanks to licensing issues and exorbitant fees, Mozilla doesn’t support the H.264 video codec in Firefox, but Microsoft (yes, Microsoft) is aiming to change that.

Microsoft has created a Firefox plug-in that will tap into Windows 7’s native H.264 support, allowing Firefox 3.6 and the 4.0 betas to play H.264 encoded video.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can download a copy of the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in from Microsoft’s Interoperability Labs.

The HTML5 video tag promises to eliminate the need for third-party plugins like Flash or QuickTime. Sadly, it’s a long way from “promises” to “delivers.” While HTML5 offers a video tag for authors to easily add videos to their webpages, it’s up to the browser to actually play that video. And that’s where the problem arises — what video codec should the browser use?

Apple is standing firm behind the H.264 video codec. But H.264 has licensing requirements, fees and is not free in any sense of the word. Mozilla Firefox supports Ogg Theora and WebM, both of which are open and free. Google’s Chrome supports all three codecs. Opera supports Ogg Theora and WebM. Microsoft has decided to support H.264 and WebM in IE9.

In short, varying codec support across browsers has made native HTML5 video a mess.

Microsoft’s new add-on brings support for H.264 to Firefox whether Mozilla wants it or not. The add-on parses HTML5 pages and replaces video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in. Unfortunately it’s not perfect. To deal with the different codec support in each browser, many sites use JavaScript to determine the browser’s codec support before presenting a video. If that’s the case, the new add-on won’t work because the detection code won’t see the H.264 support (the H.264 support is an add-on, not a native part of Firefox).

Ironically, native web video isn’t supported at all in Microsoft’s own browsers, regardless of the codec used (IE9 will introduce support for HTML5 video when it is released next year). Third-party developers have already created an experimental IE add-on to help current versions of IE get in on the native web video fun.

Microsoft’s add-on is far from ideal, but if you’ve been frustrated by Firefox’s lack of H.264 support, it does offer a partial solution. Hopefully, in the long run, browsers will standardize around WebM, which seems to enjoy the most widespread support (Apple’s Safari is current only browser that hasn’t pledged WebM support), but if that doesn’t happen solutions like this one may become even more common.

See Also:

• Developer Gives Internet Explorer the Gift of HTML5 Video
• SublimeVideo Hopes to Simplify HTML5 Web Video
• More Cool HTML5/JavaScript Video Players
• Why Flash Isn’t Going Anywhere, iPad Be Damned

View full post on Webmonkey

Mozilla Thursday issued patches for 13 bugs, 11 of which were rated ‘critical.’

View full post on Macworld

Firefox and Opera have both disabled support for HTML5 WebSockets in the latest builds of their respective browsers. The move comes on the heels of a protocol vulnerability that could leave thousands of sites harboring malicious code.

New in HTML5, the WebSocket protocol enables a key mechanism found in modern web apps, allowing servers to independently send data to a client browser without the need for page refreshes or complex JavaScript. The most immediate use for WebSockets are apps that rely on full-duplex communication channels, like web-based chat tools and other real-time sharing apps.

Unfortunately, flaws in the WebSockets protocol also make the current spec easy to exploit.

The vulnerability was discovered by Adam Barth, who has demonstrated that a serious attack against the protocol could poison caches that sit in between the browser and the internet. That means, for example, a common JavaScript file like a Google Analytics script, could be replaced on a cache with a malware file.

As Mozilla’s Hacks Blog notes, the exploit doesn’t just affect browsers implementing WebSockets, but also Flash and Java. As the blog post says, “to avoid a lot of malware showing up without being easily traceable, we need to fix the protocol.”

Details of the exploit can be found in Barth’s paper [PDF link] and a series of messages to the Internet Engineering Task Force mailing list. Fortunately there appears to be a solution, but it will require rewriting some of the WebSockets spec.

However, until that solution is implemented both Mozilla and Opera have disabled support for WebSockets. Mozilla expects other browser to follow suit, though so far Opera is the only other browser to disable support. WebSocket support isn’t just a feature in desktop browsers either, the recent Mobile Safari upgrade in iOS 4.2 added support for WebSockets.

So far neither Adobe, which makes the Flash Player plug-in, nor Oracle, which oversees Java, have addressed the issue.

If you’ve been experimenting with WebSockets, be aware that the as of Firefox 4 Beta 8 (due in the next few days), Mozilla will no longer support your code. Neither will Opera 11. We really don’t expect this to be a long-term issue, so if you want to continue testing apps based on the nascent protocol, you can re-enable the features by changing a hidden preference in Firefox and Opera.

Photo by Andy Butkaj/Flickr/CC

See Also:

• New Beta Release Gives Firefox a Shot of Jäger
• Mobile Safari Gets More HTML5 Love in iOS Update
• Chrome Gets New ‘Crankshaft’ Engine, Syncing, WebGL Support
• Chrome 8 Offers Built-in PDF Tools, Security Fixes

View full post on Webmonkey

Earlier this year, the Firefox add-on Firesheep created quite a controversy by making it easy to capture unencrypted web traffic.

Firesheep sniffs unencrypted cookies sent across open wi-fi networks. That means anyone with Firesheep installed can watch your browsing sessions while you lounge at Starbucks and grab your log-in credentials for Facebook, Twitter or other popular sites. Armed with those credentials, anyone using Firesheep can essentially masquerade as you all over the web, logging in to other social sites, blogs and news sites using your Facebook or Twitter username and password.

None of Firesheep’s mechanisms are new. But Firesheep made sniffing web traffic point-and-click simple — it was suddenly dead easy to do something that used to require a good bit of hacking knowledge.

The best way to protect yourself from Firesheep is simply avoid connecting to unencrypted sites when you’re on an open wi-fi network. That means making sure that you connect over HTTPS rather than HTTP everywhere you surf. But sadly, doing so is complicated and depends on which site you’re trying to connect to.

That’s where the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere Firefox add-on comes in. The extension makes it easy to ensure you’re connecting to secure sites by rewriting all requests to an HTTPS URL whenever you visit one of the sites it supports.

Of course if the website you’d like to visit doesn’t support HTTPS, there’s nothing the add-on can do, but for many big sites — Twitter, Facebook, Google, PayPal, The New York Times, Bit.ly, Amazon — HTTPS Everywhere automates the process for you.

With HTTPS Everywhere installed, if you type “twitter.com” in the Firefox URL bar, the browser will automatically connect to https://twitter.com rather than http://twitter.com.

That’s a good start, but it won’t completely protect you from anyone sniffing with Firesheep. The latest beta release of HTTPS Everywhere, released over the long weekend, improves the add-on’s protection against Firesheep, but you’ll need to do some extra stuff.

First, head the HTTPS Everywhere preferences (Tools -> Add Ons -> HTTPS Everywhere -> Preferences) and check the “Facebook+” rule. Then install the Adblock Plus extension and use it to block the insecure http:// advertisements and tracking sites that Facebook (and other sites) sometimes include. There are more instructions on the EFF’s site.

Now you can browse Facebook at the coffee shop in relative peace. Certain parts of Facebook may not work properly — some applications can’t use HTTPS, and the chat app won’t work — but at least you aren’t broadcasting your login credentials to anyone who wants to listen. The EFF says it has alerted Facebook to the incompatibilities, and that it’s waiting for Facebook to fix them.

See Also:

• Gmail Now More Secure With OAuth Support
• Google Chrome Beta Adds Privacy and Content Controls
• EFF Reveals How Your Digital Fingerprint Makes You Easy to Track

View full post on Webmonkey

PCWorld’s Katherine Noyes takes a closer look at the latest beta version of Firefox 4.

View full post on Macworld

A new beta version of the next Firefox browser has arrived.

Mozilla released Firefox 4 Beta 7 on Wednesday. Unlike the last couple beta releases which mostly just tidied things up, this release is a substantial step forward. Most notably, it includes a new JavaScript engine called JägerMonkey that give the browser a performance boost on script-heavy sites.

It has better support for web graphics and fonts, and it has been deemed complete enough for add-on developers to begin porting over their creations from older versions of Firefox.

If you’re a beta tester already, you’ll see an automatic update today or Thursday. If you’d like to download beta 7 for Windows, Mac or Linux, you can do so from Mozilla’s beta site.

Wednesday’s release comes on the heels of the recent announcement that Firefox 4 won’t be ready until early 2011. Mozilla’s release dates have always been somewhat loose, but the last update was over a month and a half ago, and we were originally expecting the browser to arrive some time between October or January. Now, it looks like Firefox 4’s release date could stretch out as far as the second quarter of next year. It’s a blow to fans of the open source browser, especially since Firefox is seeing increased competition from Chrome, which shifted to an accelerated release schedule earlier this year, and from Internet Explorer 9, which entered a public beta phase in September.

The silver lining here is that it’s looking like Firefox 4 will be much different than 3.6, the current version, and that the update will be worth the wait. Also, the beta releases have been remarkably stable, and, with very few exceptions, are capable enough for every day use.

For the full list of what’s new, check out the release notes. Here’s what has us the most excited.

The enhancement sure to make the biggest splash is Firefox’s new JägerMonkey just-in-time JavaScript compiler. Complicated, JavaScript-heavy sites like Facebook and web apps like Gmail will be more nimble, and you should see a big speed increase on games and demos that previously only impressed those running Chrome or Safari. It’s a rewrite of the TraceMonkey code that powered previous versions of Firefox (love the naming convention, by the way) and you can read more about the change on Mozilla engineer David Mandelin’s blog.

The new Firefox release has expanded support for 3D graphics in the browser using WebGL and some more hardware acceleration (if you have the right hardware).

Something else to look forward to in this beta is more support for the OpenType, a font format that allows for richer, more “book like” typography on the web. For years, magazine designers have been moaning in their Rob Roys about the limitations of type on the web. And while super-pretty print-quality type treatments on web pages are still a ways off, OpenType is one of those technologies that’s getting us a whole lot closer. OpenType supports some really fancy stuff, like ligatures and swashes. If you’re not a type nerd, this post from John Dagget will give you a good overview of why OpenType is blowing minds and breaking hearts. Or, just visit this page and play around with the text — click on a word and start typing.

Firefox 4 beta 7 also has an Add-on API that’s stable and reliable, so Mozilla has given add-on developers the green light to start updating their add-ons to work in Firefox 4. If you were waiting to join the public beta program because of that one add-on you can’t live without, you’ll want to keep your eyes open, because now is the time the serious add-on update work begins.

Finally, Mozilla engineer Josh Aas tells us about some crazy voodoo going on in the Mac OS X version of Firefox using the operating system’s native tools.

See also:

• Firefox 4 Pushed Back to Early 2011
• Firefox for Android Is Growing Up Fast
• Firefox 4 Update Fixes Mac, Windows Bugs

View full post on Webmonkey

The Second Beta of Firefox 4 for Android is now available for download. It’s faster and sleeker, loads pages more quickly and of course its install size has been reduced. Looks like it’s almost ready to go live. I have already installed it and am impressed with the performance so far.

Mozilla’s next big browser update is running a bit behind schedule.

Firefox 4’s estimated release date has officially been pushed back to early 2011. The browser’s release schedule, which is posted on a public wiki, has been updated to show some new dates: beta 7 in early November, then three more betas before the end of the year, with the release candidate due early next year.

We were originally expecting Firefox 4 to be finalized by now, in late October, when the schedule was first laid out several months ago. But Mozilla’s release dates are always moving targets, so we were expecting things to change. But not this much. Now, the wait for Firefox 4 looks like it could stretch out to three more months, which is sure to upset those eagerly awaiting an update.

The good news is that the current beta is very stable (at least in our testing) and has enough polish to make it safe for day-to-day use. If you’re feeling a little bit rock and roll, we’d recommend downloading the latest Firefox 4 beta. The new features like the updated user interface, expanded support for new standards like HTML5 and CSS 3, plus a much-improved JavaScript execution engine make it worth the very small risk of a crash.

See also:

• Firefox 4 Update Fixes Mac, Windows Bugs
• Mozilla Labs’ New ‘Prospector’ Hopes to Improve Firefox’s Awesome Bar
• Mozilla Shows Off Plans for an Open Web App Store

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