Using Firefox

[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.

Hey SFXers:

Mozilla is looking for experienced web developers and highly technical users to give us feedback on the latest milestone for the next major version of Firefox, Gran Paradiso Alpha 7.  Built on top of Gecko 1.9, Gran Paradiso Alpha 7 is now available for testing purposes. In particular, we're testing for website compatibility and stability.

You can find the full release notes and download Alpha 7 here: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a7/releasenotes/

Also, testers can back up their profiles using the following instructions: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup

Gran Paradiso 1.9 Alpha 7 contains the following notable changes:

    * Support for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) has been removed. Gecko 1.9 will no longer build or run on Mac OS X 10.3.
    * Default visited pages history size 9 to 180 days (see bug 332748)
    * Full page zoom of images, layout and text (see bug 4821)
    * Many fixes for context menus, clipboard, and drag services on Mac OS X.
    * Reworking of XUL menus and popups (see bug 279703)
    * document.all now returns a NodeList of elements (see bug 259332)
    * Several new clipboard events (see bug 280959).
    * A class of wrappers to mediate access between web pages from different origins (see bug 367911)
    * Cross site XMLHttpRequest specification implemented (see bug 389508)
    * A method for opening modal dialogs from content (see bug 194404)
    * Color profile support (see bug 16769)
    * Text in <canvas> (see bug bug 339553)
    * SVG lighting (bug 383184) and tile filters (bug 373572)
    * Support for CSS text-rendering property for HTML (see bug 387969)
    * Many fixes to CSS font property bugs (see bug 377947, bug 216456, bug 383979), bug 388458), and bug 383979)
    * -moz-border-*-start and -moz-border-*-end CSS properties are implemented (see bug 74880)
    * -moz-initial implemented for all remaining CSS properties except quotes and -moz-border-*-colors (see bug 80887)
    * window.getComputedStyle supports all supported CSS properties (see bug 316981)
    * Dropped SOAP support (see bug 332174)
    * Browser-side support for windowless plugins on Unix/X11 (see bug 137189)
    * A full Gecko 1.9 bug fix list

We're excited to announce the launch of another tool that will allow you to surf your web, your way: Rock Your Firefox!

 


Rock Your Firefox is an application built on the Facebook® Platform allowing you to personalize, customize, and essentially rock out your browser, and share it with your friends. Browse through more than 2000 add-ons and recommend those you like to your friends - and see what they recommend for you.

Add-ons in your favorites list will appear in your profile and encourage others to rock their Firefox through newsfeed stories.  The more add-ons you list as your favorites, the more people will find out about the awesome ways to rock out your Firefox.  Through this method, we hope to be able to seed Firefox throughout the Facebook community.   

But that’s not all.  If you add the application before August 8th, 11:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), you will be in the running to win one of twenty exclusive Rock Your Firefox t-shirts.  Get started now at rockyourfirefox.com!

    I didn't contribute to any of Lifehacker's "Show Us Your Firefox" posts awhile back (you can find them here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).  Before I read those articles, I thought I had already determined what I wanted.  I still remember browsing through pages of extensions, trying to determine what I wanted when I took that leap into extending my browser experience, and the only one not listed was Freenigma's - which I now use alongside FireGPG (which I'll get into the "why" in another post).

    I use various operating systems for running my business: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and I have found at least 1 Firefox add-on that's specific to each OS.  The one that I found that I like for Firefox on a Mac is the 1Password add-on by Agile Web Solutions.  The only downside is you have to pay for 1Password, but you can download a trial, and there are deals online that can be found (like this one).  It stores passwords, serial numbers, credit card numbers, etc, and it integrates well with Firefox so a user can recall data, create passwords, etc. with a couple key taps or mouse clicks.

    There are 2 things that I really like about the add-on, in addition to the capability it provides (I'm not trying to sound like a commercial ... really):  1. a password generator, 2.  button and/or toolbar options.  The password generator is pretty simple to use; you can create a good password by working 3 sliders that determine length, character/number ratio, and how many symbols.  From there you can either copy it to the clipboard or have it automatically fill a password block.

    The add-on comes in 2 flavors: 1. button, 2. toolbar.  If you want, you can use both.  However, I'm anal about screen real estate, so my preference is with the button.  Clicking the button gives you a drop-down menu that has all the options available via the toolbar.  However, the toolbar gives you direct access to each function that you want to use.

     Lastly, there is 1 more option that I like, but seldom use - which is why I didn't say 3 things I like.  It's the Identity feature.  When there's a new site that I want to try for a while, but I'm not comfortable about putting too much info out there, I have an alias stored in 1Password that I use.  When I get to a registration page, I press Command-Option-(corresponding number) and it automatically fills all the information in (name, e-mail, location, etc), and it will store up to 3 different identities.

    Anyways, that's my "Mac only" Firefox add-on.

Check out my website/blog called Where Did America Go? at http://wdag.org
And of course... it is best viewed using Firefox.  I'll keep spreading the word to Amercia and spreading the use of Firefox!

Thanks,
Editor - wdag.org
 

Maybe everybody knows this, but...

Something that seems like it came from Firefox Extensions. It adds a button to your toolbar to "email this". Although the instructions did not mention Firefox, they did say Netscape in the list.

I took a chance and dragged the button to my toolbar, and it works. You do have to sign up for the free service for the companion button, "Save This", but big deal.

http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/

会社が IE オンリーなので，つい Firefox の事を忘れていたんですが，いつの間にかこんな活動が・・・

HHDのススメ の方でも，バナーを貼っておきました。