beta @ amanzi

The Read/Write Web blog is reporting that Mozilla are updating the Firefox Addons site shortly. I haven’t seen the changes live yet, so I can’t comment on what they look like but I do hope they fix the search functionality. I’ll update this post when I see the changes, but most searches for extensions turn up dubious results:

• Search for “mouse gestures” – 1st is Easy Gestures, 2nd is Tab Catalog, 3rd is Mouse Gestures.
• Search for “del.icio.us” – 1st is Groowe Search Toolbar, 2nd is del.icio.us Bookmarks.
• Search for “web developer” – 1st is Web Developer, but search for “Web Developer toolbar” and the Web Developer extension doesn’t even show up in the results!

Password Manager Bug Exposes Passwords

Today, Mozilla publicly admitted a bug (#360493) in Firefox’s Password Manager allows a malicious website to expose usernames and passwords saved from previously visited sites. Chapin Information Services have provided a proof-of-concept page where you can see the results for yourself.

This bug will likely initiate close scrutiny of the Password Manager in Firefox so I’m betting that other vulnerabilities may arise. Mozilla’s only recommended solution at this time is to not use the Password Manager. Slashdot have reported that this targets Firefox 2.0 only, but comments indicate that Firefox 1.5.0.8 is also affected – and I can confirm this is the case.

There is a great race in the world of blogging to be the first to break news, but unfortunately many websites are a little too eager at times. Firefox 2.0 has not yet been released but it is due to be released tomorrow as planned.

Please don’t click links in these fake blogs, many of them are pointing directly to mirror sites which costs the mirrors thousands of dollars in bandwidth fees. Check here (subscribe) for any announcements, or keep an eye on the Mozilla official Firefox site.

No, we have. Not. Released. Firefox. 2. Yet.

Source: preed’s blah-blah-blahg: The Anti-release

UPDATE: Firefox 2.0 has now officially been released – read more here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

The news that IE7 will be released this month is big news on the web at the moment, but serious web browsers will be looking towards Mozilla for news about Firefox 2.0 which is also due to be released soon. Release Candidate 2 is now available and brings several new features which will be welcome additions.

Starting up Firefox 2.0 RC2 (hereafter referred to as just RC2) brings up a place-holder for a first-run page, as well as the additional Firefox home page which we’ve grown to love. I like the way it opens with two tabs, instantly letting people see that tabs are there to be taken advantage of. Earlier versions started with the tab bar closed, and tabbed browsing not selected as the default method of opening multiple pages. You’ll also notice that the close button is now located on each tab as apposed to on the right side of the tab bar, which is what I personally prefer. The chrome has also been tidied up a bit and now there is a clear defination between the tab bar and the toolbars. The buttons are now also a little clearer and have just a touch of glass (class?) added to them. The Options dialog has also been redesigned and looks a lot better and well-layed out.

Subscribing to RSS/Atom feeds in Firefox couldn’t be easier. As in IE7, you can click the little orange feed button to show a nice display of the feed on the current site you are visiting. You can then select to subscribe to the feed using Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, or the feed reader of your choice. Most common desktop feed readers should be detected, and FeedDemon, my favourite, was obviously there. Unlike IE7 though, Firefox has given users the ability to subscribe to feeds with a single click. I selected FeedDemon as my default feed reader, and then clicking on the feed button instantly launched FeedDemon with the feed ready to be subscribed to. This can also be set in the options panel too.

Another nice feature which had been left to plugins previously, is the option to open the tabs that were open prior to the browser being closed. In other words, you could be in the middle of a serious browsing session with a whole heap of browser tabs open, when you need to reboot the computer for some reason. You can safely close the browser knowing that when you reopen Firefox, your existing browser session will still be there. This isn’t as good as the Google Sync extension as this can sync between different computers, but it is still very useful.

Another useful feature is the “Undo close tab” feature, which, as you may have guessed, allows you to reopen a tab that you may have closed accidentally. I’m sure many of you have closed a tab by accident before, only to have to try to find it in the history – this solves that problem.

There are lots of other cool features available, but hopefully I’ve given you a taste of what’s to come. If you’re not sure about switching completely to Firefox 2.0 yet, download the portable version (link below) that you can run on the same computer as a previous version without affecting your other profile.

• Download Portable Firefox 2.0 RC2
• Download Firefox 2.0 RC2
• Firefox 2.0 Release notes

The good people over at CyberNet have written up some great articles on the new Firefox 2.0 betas that are out now. An especially good article is the one on how to remove some of the annoying new ‘features’ that have been implemented such as the scrolling tab bar and the close buttons on each tab. Firefox has been receiving some average coverage recently so hopefully Mozilla can sort these issues out before launch.

How To Tweak Firefox 2.0 Beta 1

In my hasty mini-review of Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 (also know as Bon Echo) I didn’t get around to opening up multiple tabs in the browser window. If I had, I would have found another new “feature” of Bon Echo – each tab has it’s own close button. My earlier concern now seems more plausible that the Places window seems to have been inspired from Internet Explorer 7’s new bookmarks window. Now, the tab close button also seems to be taken directly from IE7 which implements the same thing.

I don’t like this at all, but I recall reading that the IE team put the close button on each tab based on tester feedback so I’d be interested to hear why people prefer the inline close button. I personally prefer the close button to appear in one fixed place so that I can close consecutive tabs without needing to move my mouse to each tab. A typical scenario where this is useful for me is when I visit a web page that has a lot of interesting links – I’ll middle-click each link and let them load in their own tab. Then I’ll switch to the last tab opened and glance over the page to see if it’s interesting – if it’s not, it’s a breeze to close the tab and switch to the next tab. I can quickly close a whole bunch of tabs easily this way.

Another note… although I don’t like the inline close button, at least IE7 implements it better – you can’t close a tab that doesn’t have focus. This prevents you from accidentally closing a tab that you don’t have active yet. In Bon Echo, you can click a close button on an inactive tab and it will instantly close. As this is pre-beta software, I’m sure this won’t be the final behaviour of how this works but it should be noted anyway.

Please leave comments on whether you prefer the separate close button or the inline close button, perhaps I’m missing something obvious here…

I just wanted to clarify a couple of things about my last post about Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1:

• The Mozilla hasn’t yet announced this yet, and there is probably a good reason too.
• This is ALPHA software! Do not install it on your main computer unless you know what the implications are with installing ALPHA software.
• Don’t install this software thinking that it will be more stable than Firefox 1.5 – this is ALPHA software and is likely to contain more bugs than the current version and has features that aren’t yet fully implemented.
• If you have any questions about memory usage in Firefox, read this post before jumping to conclusions: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=354828

This post is partly in response to a post that Mike Arrington made on his TechCrunch website. I’m a big fan of his site and it was also an inspiration to start up this blog, but his comments were thoughtless and without foundation – very disappointing indeed.

The news just out today is that the first Alpha version of Mozilla’s Firefox has been released, although it hasn’t yet been officially anounced. I’ve downloaded and installed this latest version and as to be expected, there aren’t any major changes yet from the current version.

Installation is the same as usual, with the nice addition of the code name of the new version: “Bon Echo.”

First time the program runs there is nothing new, you are prompted to import your Internet Explorer settings, which all works as expected. If you’re interested, the first screenshot below shows the warning message that you’re prompted with from Windows OneCare Live which I covered in this article.

At first glance, there is nothing different between this new version and the current 1.5 version. I had a close look through the options dialogue which appears to not have changed yet either. The only new thing that can be seen is the small icon on the bookmarks toolbar – highlighted by the red circle below. Clicking this button brings up the new “Places” window:

Interestingly, this new Places window strikes a remarkable similarity to the new Favorites Center in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2. Both display bookmarks, subscriptions/feeds and history within an easy to manage window. The most useful feature of this would be searching through your favourites and history, which is a feature that Firefox implements while IE7 leaves you to click through until you find what you’re looking for.

My only concern with this new feature is that it seems to be a bit of a copy-cat act from IE7. Obviously this is a really early alpha version and I’m sure the final release is going to change a LOT from now, but hopefully Firefox can make this their own – already the search feature is an indication of this.

I hunted around for some new features and came across the following button in the customize toolbar dialogue. I added it to the default toolbar and found out that it’s a quick and easy way to add a new bookmark.

This interface doesn’t actually do anything yet – it’s just an indicator of things to come. I’d like to see some tagging added to this interface too, and then perhaps this could be extended to interact with services like del.icio.us or other online bookmarking services.

So in summary, there’s not much to see here yet, but no doubt millions of other beta-geeks will download this over the next few days. I’ll keep tracking this over the months to come and I look forward to some great innovations with the bookmarks management! I wouldn’t recommending this on your main computer as the features aren’t even near to complete – rather wait for the Mozilla announcement and then make up your mind then. For the curious though, here’s the link:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/tinderbox-builds/pacifica-mozilla1.8/