Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Released

While mozillaZine has not made an announcement yet, CyberNet Tech News has, Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 is out! A couple interesting changes in Beta 2, the new default theme or visual refresh is in place now. Also noticed a couple minor changes with the tab bar. After opening a certain number of tabs you will get arrows on either end to scroll through your open tabs. However, I much prefer the drop-down tab list (see below) over the arrows. Also, the session restore has been setup now to automatically restore where you left off in the event of a crash as well as when Firefox needs to restart (due to installing/removing an extension or theme).

This release was only 3 weeks later than predicted and the next step will be Release Candidate 1, which is tentatively scheduled for September 19th with the final release of Firefox 2.0 in late October.

UPDATE mozillaZine announced on September 1st: Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 2 Milestone Released

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Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 MIA?

Per the Mozilla Developers Calendar, Firefox 2.0, Beta 2 was suppose to be released today after being delayed the last 3 weeks. So far there is no news from Mozilla. However, a quick Google News Search for 'Firefox 2.0 Beta 2' came up with an article from InfromationWeek:

Barring more bugs, Firefox Beta 2 will release Thursday, Mozilla Corp. developers reported after a weekly status meeting held Tuesday.

"[We are] on target to release Thursday, Aug. 31st assuming no stop-ship items [are] discovered," the meeting's online minutes read.

For Mike Schroepfer's sake (see the State of the Firefox) let's hope it does come out on Thursday.

The Mozilla Museum

If you have a high speed connection and some time to kill, check out the Mozilla Museum, a collection of pictures of Mozilla painted by Vincent van Mozh. There are tons of great Mozilla themed graphic, especially at this page (Warning: high speed connection recommended!) Here a few samples below:

Windows Vista Boot Up Sound

Over the past few days there been some interesting news and outrage about Windows Vista's Boot Up sound. I first learned of this outrage via CyberNet Tech News, Vista Will Not Let You Disable the Startup Sound:

"Microsoft may not give me the option to disable the startup sound in Windows Vista though. Why would they do such a thing? Robert Scoble had the pleasure of talking with Steve Ball, program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team, who gave a reason for this decision:

"A short, brief, positive confirmation that your machine is now conscious and ready to react. You can turn on your Vista machine, go eat some cereal, while your machine is cold booting and then this gentle sound will come out telling you that you can log in." "

Then today on Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, Debate over Windows Vista's startup sound:

"For details, see Robert Scoble's notes on his conversation with Steve Ball, Microsoft group program manager for Windows audio and video. According to the post, the purpose of making it unchangeable would be to help create a "spiritual side" to the Windows "branding experience" and to help people calibrate the volume on their computers at startup. Ball told Scoble that a final decision hasn't been made, but he said that's the current plan."

There are several valid comments in regards to Todd Bishop's Article, most have to do with using a Windows PC in a corporate environment. More so having to reboot for software updates or even if the freakin' PC crashes. I never gave this much thought, even though on some days I have to reboot my Windows PC at work several times. The reason being, we don't have speakers on our PC's, if we want to listen to audio, we use head phones.

FF 2.0 Beta 2 Teaser

According to CyberNet Tech News, Mozilla has released the 2nd Release Candidate (RC) for Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 (quite the release name). As it is stands now and this could likely will change, the official release of Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 is scheduled for Wednesday, August 30th. CyberNet also indicates a possible release date for the final version of Firefox 2.0 on October 24th. However, they don't declare where they got this piece of information as the Mozilla Developer's Calendar only goes up to Firefox 2.0 RC1 on September 19th (and even that is subject to change). More information to come soon.

A Look Back at Dell in 1996

CyberNet Tech News take a look at Dell's Homepage from 1996. I do love the author's closing thoughts,

Looking back really makes you appreciate the 3GHz machines that we can buy now at the 233MHz prices from back then!

The price/technology difference is incredible. I remember back in 1994 I upgraded my then desktop (the thing literally was the size of a small desk) computer from 1 to 2 MB of video RAM and 4 MB to 8 MB main RAM. The video upgrade wasn't too bad about $25, but the main RAM for those 4 MB cost me $256!!! All this so I could play Sim City 3000 which was about another $50. So, you ask how much RAM can you get today for $256? Doing some quick research I could get 2 GB for around the same price today.

Oh, one final thought in regards to this comment,

However, they don’t seem any faster because the applications are more resource intensive.

I had always thought those older computers were faster. Of course back then Microsquish didn't have an operating environment that ate up half of your computer's resources!

Yahoo's New Anti-Phishing Mechanism

From CyberNet Tech News. Simple yet effective, in many ways similar to what Bank of America has done for their online site with SiteKey.

Unusual Way To Promote Firefox

Someone has come up with a clever way to promote Firefox. Just follow the link: http://www.ie7.com/

Update: FF 2.0 Release Schedule (Yet Again)

FF 2.0 Beta 2 has been delayed yet again, this time to August 30th. No official word as to what is causing the delays although rumor has it, may have something to do with the 'Visual Refresh'. Here the latest release schedule per the Mozilla Developers Calendar:

• August 30th - Beta 2 UPDATED
  
• September 19th - Release Candidate 1
• TBA - Release Candidate 2
• TBA - Release Candidate 3
• TBA - FINAL RELEASE

In my State of the Fox entry from last week I pointed out a couple comments from Mike Schroepfer about the FF 2.0 release schedule:

"He says Firefox 2.0 "definitely ship by the end of this year...with beta 2 out sometime in August." Kinda cutting it close on the beta 2 release as we are already up to August 23rd, but another week's delay would put it August 30th. I'm little surprised, but then again not about the 'definitely ship by the end of this year' comment. Granted FF 2.0 has taken a bit longer then expected, granted not as bad as IE 7 or Windows Vista. But still year's end? Last we heard we were looking at then end of September (26th)."

I guessed correctly about the week's delay on Beta 2. However, I wondering now when FF 2.0 is going to ship since now the Mozilla Developers Calendar doesn't have anything past RC1 in late September. This announcement is a bit ironic being Microsoft annoucned today, Windows Vista will ship as scheduled which is either November or January depending if business or consumer edition.

The state of Firefox

NewsForge recently (August 4th) did an interview with Mozilla Corp.'s Vice President of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer. The bulk of the interview they talk about JavaScript, security as well as better migration for Linux users who got Firefox packaged with their Linux distribution. In regards to JavaScript, Firefox 2.0 will ship with the new and improved JavaScript 1.7, which is the first upgrade in nearly 6 years (sorta like IE).

Further, transitioning to Firefox 2.0 should go much smoother compared to what many of us went through when we went from 1.0.7 to 1.5 last December. Many of us experienced the heart-ache of our favorite extensions becoming broken and desperately waiting for the developers to make them compatible with 1.5. Mike Schroepfer explained, "the 2.0 branch was developed on an API freeze from 1.5, so there should be very little breakage between releases."

Finally, Mike does give us a brief glimpse into the FF 2.0 & 3.0 timeliness. He says Firefox 2.0 "definitely ship by the end of this year...with beta 2 out sometime in August." Kinda cutting it close on the beta 2 release as we are already up to August 23rd, but another week's delay would put it August 30th. I'm little surprised, but then again not about the 'definitely ship by the end of this year' comment. Granted FF 2.0 has taken a bit longer then expected, granted not as bad as IE 7 or Windows Vista. But still year's end? Last we heard we were looking at then end of September (26th).

Mike's comments about Firefox 3.0 are intriguing, "...architectural changes in 3.0 to upgrade the graphics subsystem, and it's likely that 3.0 will include a revamped bookmark system that didn't make the cut for the 2.0 series." 'Revamped bookmark system'? That's a bit wordy Mike, did you mean 'Places'?

FF 1.5.0.7 Coming

In about two weeks Mozilla will release an update for Firefox. Version 1.5.0.7 is addressing some possible security issues and any known regressions. Now, hopefully this update will go smoother than the 1.5.0.5 update did when Mozilla pulled a 'Microsoft'. In this instance a 'Microsoft' is causing a problem with fixing another problem, which they quickly fixed with the 1.5.0.6 release. At this time there are no planned updates for Thunderbird which will remain at the current 1.5.0.5 version.

More information on the Firefox 1.5.0.7 Planing Page

Update: FF 2.0 Release Schedule (Again)

Bad news.,there seems to be one pesky bug (and is big one) that won't go away. The burrito-overflow bug (Cannot eat 10 burritos in 2 hours without vomiting) is a pesky one. Okay, so the developers are were just trying to break the tension with a little fun. There is a serious bug though it has to do with the rendering. This however has knocked the current release schedule totally out-of-whack with all the major milestones being pushed back a week. There is some good news though, if everything goes as planned (which thus far it hasn't) FF 2.0 is still scheduled for final release on September 26th. Here is the new (and subject to change) release schedule:

• August 23rd, Beta 2
  
• September 8th, Release Candidate 1
• September 15th, Release Candidate 2
• September 22nd, Release Candidate 3
• September 26th, FF 2.0 FINAL RELEASE

Firefox 1.5.0.6 Released

Shortly after the release of Firefox 1.5.0.5, users discovered one of the new security fixes created a new problem. Bug 346167 was created on July 27th due to the Windows MediaPlayer plugin stopped working on certain sites. This bug fix is the Firefox 1.5.0.6 release.

If your Firefox did not auto-updated to the new version, you can obtain the download by selecting from the Help Menu, 'Check for Updates...' or you can get the update here.

200 Million Downloads

On Monday, July 31st, the Firefox download counter crossed the 200 million mark. More info can be found at Spread Firefox.

UPDATE: Firefox 2.0 Release Schedule

The Firefox 2.0 Release Schedule has been updated slightly. The Beta 2 release has been pushed back until August 15th now to give developers time to finish the 'visual refresh' (look) of FF 2.0 release. CyberNet has more information about the Visual Refresh including screen shots.

Trojan Horse Mozilla Firefox Extension

mozillaZine posted an article/warning on Thursday, July 27th, in regards to a Trojan Horse Mozilla Firefox Extension. The Trojan Horse, dubbed by McAfee as FormSpy and Sophos as Troj/FireSpy-A is installed by a Windows malware known as Downloader-AXM. This piece of malware is used to download and install various Trojan Horses. For Firefox users, it downloads and silently installs (bypasses the installation warning) a modified version of Numbered Links 0.9 extension. While Numbered Links 0.9 is a legitimate extension the Trojan version will capture and send banking info along with passwords entered in Firefox as well as those for ICQ, IMAP, FTP and POP3 to a remote computer.

So, you ask how does this happen and how does this Downloader-AXM get onto a users computer? The process is quite simple and yet avoidable. The Downloader-AXM is an e-mail attachment contained in an e-mail claiming to be an order confirmation from WalMart.com. When users open the attachment, Downloader-AXM is installed and it then scans the computer for software it can exploit. It also known to take advantage of a 3-year old exploit in IE. When running Firefox FormSpy will install the modified Numbered Links 0.9 extension.

To check for infection, simply review your extensions list via Tools Menu and Extensions (note FF 2.0 users select Add-Ons. If it is in the list and you did NOT install this extension prior chances are your computer is infected. Take a look at McAfee virus profile of FormSpy for more information.

A couple things to keep in mind, McAfee has declared FromSpy as a low risk virus. Further the only way FormSpy is going to get on your machine is if you open the e-mail attachment from the bogus WalMart.com e-mail. Most users know better than to open e-mail attachments and further most anti-virus programs scan incoming e-mail attachments.