Firefox gains 30 million new users in just eight weeks.
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Mozilla CEO John Lilly tweeted the Firefox user base increased 30 million in the past 8 weeks. ZDNET UK confirmed this with the President of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, who says this calculation is based on the browser's daily pings for software updates. Since its beta launch in September 2002, Firefox has captured 23.75 percent of the browser marketshare. While gaining nearly three percent since November 2008, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has dropped a whole five percent from its previous 70 precent share.
Firefox coming to Nokia and Android devices
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Mozilla confirmed plans to bring Firefox to the Android and Nokia devices, operating on the Nokia Maemo and Android NDK platforms. "We had to wait for a while for devices to get better to handle this modern browser," said Mozilla CEO John Lilly. There is no release schedule mentioned.
Mozilla disables insecure Microsoft plugin
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Mozilla has temporarily disabled Microsoft's WPF plugin for Firefox to protect users from a vulnerability that allows it to be exploited when visiting a malicious webpage with carefully coded XAML content. Although Microsoft has already pushed an update that fixes the security hole, Mozilla is keeping the plugin on its blocklist for the time being, citing the serious security risks it poses.
Firefox set to hit a billion downloads
Mozilla's popular open source broswer, Firefox, is set to hit one billion downloads within the next 24 hours. This number includes all versions of Firefox since it was released in 2004 but does not include automatic updates. Firefox currently holds 31% of the market-share in the desktop browser world. Firefox holds the world record for the most downloaded software in 24 hours with 8 million when Firefox 3.0 was launched.
Mozilla presents Firefox 4.0 mockups
Design plans for Mozilla's Firefox 4 browser are now publicly available for viewing on the Mozilla Wiki. Design changes are much less subtle than previous major releases of the browser, with some UI elements taking a page from Google Chrome's school of design, such as tabs replacing the titlebar on top. The pictures shown on Mozilla's wiki are mockups however, and are likely subject to change.
Firefox 3.5.1 released
Mozilla has released the first update to Firefox 3.5Â (released on June 30) and includes such fixes as a TraceMonkey JavaScript engine bug, as well as slow start-up times on some Windows machines caused by the way Firefox generates encryption keys as part of its security procedures. Firefox 3.5.1 is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users as a free download from www.getfirefox.com.
Mozilla to get Chrome-like task management
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Electrolysis, the code name for a new Mozilla labs project, is aiming to add "process" based browsing to Firefox, the same that Google's Chrome browser has. The feature set will work almost exactly the same, in which plugins and web pages are all treated as separate processes, so if one becomes unruly, it can be quit without dumping the whole browsing experience. While there is no easy way to simply try the feature out with a plug-in, functionality is expected to arrive in the near future versions of Firefox.
The browser wars: Google on top?
It's funny that 10 years after Microsoft was busy monopolizing the browser space, we've seen a flurry of competition that makes even the most anti-competitive practices seem easy to overcome. Take, for instance, the recent report claiming Microsoft's IE share dropped 11% in March. Whether the data proves to be accurate or not, the more important takeaway is that people are leaving Internet Explorer in droves, whatever the percentage. Today, we talk to Clayton Morris from Fox News and Harry McCracken from Technologizer about the browser wars, and where they're headed.
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Internet Explorer market share drops 11.4%
Internet Explorer, Microsoft's market share leading browser, continues to lose market share to its closest competitors. Overall IE has fallen 11.4% since March due to a dwnward trend in IE6 and IE7 that offset IE8's growth since it's March release. It is speculated that while some loss may be seen as part of the transition to IE8 the overall trend is towards alternative browsers such as Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, and Mozilla's Firefox.
Development underway on next release of Firefox
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Codenamed "Namoroka", the next major release of Firefox is already being developed. Expected features include major speed improvements browser-wide, the ability to turn on or off add-ons without relaunching Firefox, and improved support for web apps such as the capability to save a page as an application. Don't hold your breath, though, as plenty could change before the planned early- to mid-2010 release.