Firefox fans looking for a major update to the open-source Web browser probably will get a final version of it next month.
"We're looking for final ship sometime in June," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, in an interview Wednesday. Mozilla, which was spun out of AOL more than 10 years ago, oversees the Firefox programming project.
Mozilla leads development of the Firefox and Thunderbird projects.
(Credit: Mozilla)One of the Firefox's strengths is the broad collection of hundreds of add-ons, but that also means things move more slowly when programmers must update their projects to be compatible with Firefox 3. And that's part of what Mozilla is watching closely as it seeks feedback from the 1.5 million people who have installed the Firefox 3 release candidate 1, which Mozilla issued a few days ago.
"We're in a phase where we're letting add-ons get a chance to update," Schroepfer said. "We like to have RCs (release candidates) out for a while to gather feedback."
More release candidates are possible, he said. With Firefox 2, there were three. "We're in better shape this time, but there's no reason to rush this," he said.
The release candidate is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you want to try it out, it's best to read the release notes first, in particular the known issues that could trip you up.
After Mozilla's years-long slow start, Firefox has gained significant market share against its top rival, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Although the latter still dominates the market, Firefox has helped to reignite the browser wars to an extent: Microsoft is investing more resources in IE development, Apple has brought its own Safari to Windows, and Apple and Google are among those devoting attention to the open-source Webkit browser engine project.
Browsers have also become more important as the Internet has begun moving to the more lavish and interactive pages of Web 2.0. For that reason, performance has become a concern: browsers now must execute large amounts of JavaScript code that power-hungry sites such as the office applications of Google Docs and the photo editing of Picnik use.
The Mozilla Foundation has grown significantly over the years. It's set up two subsidiaries, Mozilla Corp. to handle the browser, and the newer Mozilla Messaging group to handle the Thunderbird e-mail software.
Firefox extensions need to catch up before Firefox 3 is released.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Based on market share statistics and the number of Firefox browsers that check Mozilla servers for updates, Schroepfer estimates there are about 175 million Firefox users today.
Firefox crossed the 500 million download mark in February, and now has been downloaded more than 556 million times.
What are Schroepfer's three favorite things about Firefox 3?
• "No 1. is definitely the "awesome bar"--the Smart Location Bar. It changed the way I use the browser. With a couple keyboard presses, it figures out what page I want to go to." The Smart Location Bar starts suggesting Web addresses based on the user's browsing history and can sidestep problems with complicated, hard-to-remember URLs.
• Second is "the performance and memory work. It's 2 to 3 times faster than the previous version and nearly 10 times faster than IE 7," he boasted. "We really tuned the heck out of memory use, so it uses a lot less memory, especially with lots of windows and tabs."
• Third: "The antimalware and security features. We used to tell people not to go to the bad part of the Net. Now we're seeing legitimate sites being taken over," so it's good to have better protection by default.
The CNET review of Firefox 3 RC1 generally concurred with Schroepfer's assessment, though we found the memory improvements were "nothing to write home about," and some performance improvements might be related to the fact that incompatible add-ons weren't running.
Mozilla released Firefox 3 beta 1 on Monday.
(Credit: Mozilla)A few months later than had been planned, Mozilla released on Monday night the first beta version of an overhauled Firefox, the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 beta 1 includes a number of significant features that Mozilla said should improve security, ease of use, rendering of Web pages, and location of previously visited Web pages. And for the new era of rich Internet applications, the browser can run Web-based applications even when the computer is disconnected from a network.
The software is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux at Mozilla's download site in 20 languages. You can also download the English versions for Windows or Mac from CNET Download.com.
Although Microsoft's Internet Explorer remains the dominant Web browser, the open-source rival has achieved a critical mass of users--Firefox has been downloaded more than 400 million times--and it's now common for designers to make sure their Web pages work with the browser. Even Microsoft has bowed to the reality, testing its Live.com Web sites with Firefox and helping with technical issues such as playing Windows Media files from Web pages.
According to the release notes, the core Gecko rendering engine--the component that interprets Web page instructions and draws text and graphics on your screen--has seen major changes in the upgrade to the new version 1.9 used in Firefox 3.
"Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability," the notes said. Those changes "put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in beta 1, and will show further gains in future beta releases."
The Firefox 3 beta had been due to arrive in July, and there's no word yet on when the software will come out of beta. "The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users," the release notes said--a polite way of saying it'll be ready when it's ready.
The location bar automatically presents Web pages with the text you type.
(Credit: Mozilla)
A quick test
A quick test of the new browser revealed that various important sites including eBay, Gmail, Amazon.com, and Icanhascheezburger appeared to work fine.
However, I got error messages at two, both with snazzier Web 2.0 user interfaces. Yahoo Mail threw errors and choked, and Adobe Systems' Buzzword online word processor told me the browser wasn't supported. On the other hand, others rich sites were happy, including Picnik and Flickr's Organizr.
Even in just a few minutes of use, I found the location bar's automatic search handy. It popped up lists of previously visited URLs and page titles that contained the words I typed into the location bar, trimming a couple steps out of a few searches.
Yahoo Mail wouldn't work for me with Firefox 3 beta 1.
(Credit: Mozilla)One of Firefox's chief merits is the large collection of extensions that can be downloaded to bring new abilities to the browser. Alas, all four of the ones I use--Fotofox, FireFTP, Delicious Bookmarks, and Foxmarks--don't yet work with the new beta. That's no surprise--the release notes warn such breakage is likely.
Another feature I've been eagerly awaiting is the support for color profiles, which lets people see photos correctly even when they're encoded with color systems besides the long-in-the-tooth sRGB standard. It's not enabled by default, but I switched it on and was delighted to see the test images in a CNET News.com story displayed correctly.
New features
Besides Gecko 1.9, there are a number of areas of change for Firefox 3. Among them:
• Security. New features include the ability to integrate antivirus software with downloads; one-click Web site identity verification; automatic testing to make sure plug-ins aren't older versions found to be insecure and automatic disabling if they are; and support for Windows Vista parental controls.
The location bar indicates bookmarked Web pages with a star.
(Credit: Mozilla)• Ease of use. Touted improvements include downloading that can be resumed after the browser has been restarted or network connection reset; users can zoom in and out of Web pages in their entirety, including layout, text, and graphics; plug-ins can be managed centrally with the Add-On Manager; and mailto links can now launch Web-based e-mail applications such as Gmail, not just local applications on the PC such as Outlook.
• Personalization. Web pages can be bookmarked with one click and tagged with a double-click (though the interface looked rough to me); the aforementioned feature provides a list of possible matching Web pages based on what you type in the location bar; and a new Smart Places folder provides access to pages that are frequently visited or that have been recently bookmarked and tagged.
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