The new Spread Firefox is live and visiting http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. This site will remain here at http://archive-sfx.spreadfirefox.com as an archive of the first two years of Spread Firefox.

Over the coming days and weeks, this site will stop accepting new content and accounts and will become essentially read-only with all of the new Firefox spreading happening at the new site.

We're almost ready to flip the switch, pull the lever, press the shiny big red button!

As you all have been reading here for some time, the new Spread Firefox is an action-oriented, project-based platform. We're transitioning away from a platform dominated by discussion to one that focuses on taking action to spread Firefox.

This means that blogging is going away, to be replaced by projects. Projects are like mini-sites within Spread Firefox that give you the tools to manage specific activities to spread Firefox. Anyone can create one of these projects which come with a discussion forum, a mailing list, a project calendar, a document and image repository, etc.

Those projects that get traction will be featured on the front page of Spread Firefox. Projects that look like they need help getting support can also be featured on the front page.

In addition to Spread Firefox member projects, the Mozilla Marketing team are increasingly running their projects and programs at Spread Firefox. You'll find Mozilla Events, Mozilla Materials and Logos, Stats and Metrics, and more, all running out of Spread Firefox.

You all are encouraged to sign up with projects or programs that interest you and to create projects yourself.

The transition to the new site is going to be happening in a matter of hours. Your bookmarks and the URL http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. You'll have to re-login but your accounts, including your affiliate points, your private messages, and profiles should all be intact. The old Spread Firefox will be archived at a new URL, probably http://archive.spreadfirefox.com and will, sometime over the next few months be transitioned to a read-only site. We'll post links to the old site as soon as the URLs are updated and we'll keep you updated on the changes to the archive so that you have time to transition any of your documents to the new site or to re-locate your personal blogs.

In addition to the transition to the new platform, we're also going to be introducing you all to a larger team of Spread Firefox leaders, from Mozilla, Glaxstar, and the broader community. I'm still going to be around, but my involvement with the site-wide project will wane and I'll shift my focus to specific projects.

You all are what makes Firefox such a success. You've brought us 130 million Firefox users and helped make Firefox a household name. With Firefox 3 ever-closer at hand, you all will be the ones to take us to 200 million users and beyond. Thanks to all of you for your amazing efforts over the last three years and I look forward to everything you all will accomplish in the next three years.

- Asa

[Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Beta 2 today, Dec 18 at approximately 7:40pm PST. See Mike Beltzner's comprehensive post from DevNews, crossposted below. Reminder that the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release is intended for testing purposes only and is not for casual users.]

Firefox 3 Beta 2 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 2 is now available for download. This is the tenth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 2 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 25 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Beta 2 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

After an overwhelming response and some tough decision-making, the winner of Operation Firefox has been announced! Winner Agent R.W. from Georgia Tech University and team plastered the giant Firefox logo on their school's football stadium for thousands to bask in.

The Firefox logo soared to new heights on runner up Agent Teren's plane.

The Firefox sticker also graced the set of the New York City Opera, as well as a concert bus at an Iowa State tailgate. You can check out all the amazing pictures here or check out the Operation Firefox blog for the full scoop. We want to thank all our special agents for their creativity and participation! Over and out!

Personas for Firefox has been updated and officially moved into Mozilla Labs as part of our exploration of dynamic personalization.

Be sure to grab the latest version it's a major rewrite of the code and includes dozens of new designs (including a bunch in time for the holidays!). It also now works with the beta releases of Firefox 3.

Special thanks to Rhian for coordinating the development of new designs, and to Myk for driving this round of development.

A new Web site and developer APIs will be released within the next couple of weeks.

This is cross-post from http://newsfx.spreadfirefox.com/tistheseason2007, since we're still in the transition phase from the old to the new SpreadFirefox.com:

I can think of two simple ways anyone can help spread the word about Firefox this holiday season:

1. Bring "Firefox Home for the Holidays" by helping family and friends install Firefox on their computers and show them how to use some of the features.  Show them you care by telling them why Firefox is the browser of choice this holiday season... and help them customize it with a few Add-ons.

2. Give "The Gift of Firefox" by sending family and friends Firefox holiday e-cards with your persnalized message and a link to download and install Firefox.  You can even put Firefox on a USB key or get a CD and other great Firefox gear (check out the Mozilla Store at http://store.mozilla.org) and send a nice holiday package!

Those are just a couple of things that came to mind, but I look forward to hearing more great ideas from our community!  We also need to get some new holiday images together for people to use, so if you know of any artists that want to help create some holiday art with Firefox flare... please get them involved! 

I look forward to hearing everyone's stories throughout the 2007 holiday season... so please share with us how you plan to spread Firefox with some holiday cheer this year!

Happy Holidays!

- Jay & the SFX team

When someone at Mozilla sneezes, there's someone somewhere writing about it. From Twitter to the New York Times and everything in between, Mozilla attracts an amazing volume of coverage.

This volume is both good and bad. We don't have the marketing and pr budgets of the software mega-companies so the press buzz we get organically is wonderful. The downside is that because of the sheer volume of coverage, it's difficult to follow it all and make sure that Mozilla is being represented fairly.

What Mozilla lacks in marketing and pr budget, however, it more than makes up in the enthusiastic and capable community of participants who have already brought Firefox to 130 million users and made Mozilla a household name.

For the Record (FTR) is a community-driven public relations and press response program that will harness the energy and knowledge of the Mozilla community to 1) catalog all of the online coverage of the Mozilla Project, 2) develop a sustainable team of spokespeople who feel empowered to respond to online coverage, and 3) build a collection of talking points and responses to frequently asked questions.

To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email address-book and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you've forwarded the story.

The For the Record team, Mozilla's marketing team, PR representatives, or various spokespeople will take it from there.

Want to join the For the Record team, and help us further develop the program and write a set of FAQs and other materials that will make it easier for in the Mozilla community to better tell the Mozilla story and respond effectively when needed? Well, that's easy too. Simply subscribe to the mailing list. Please note, unless you're really interested analyzing the flow of Mozilla news and helping to distill relevant content into documentation, this probably isn't the list for you. If, on the other hand, that sound like great fun, we'd love to have you involved.